Misogyny and the construction of toxic masculinity in the Spanish Manosphere (Burbuja.info)

Autores/as

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.mar.15

Palabras clave:

Manosphere, Misogyny, Hate speech, Sexism, Burbuja.info, Feminism, Masculinities, Identities, MRA, MGTOW, PUA, Incels

Resumen

The anonymity of the Manosphere has provided a fertile breeding ground for the spread of misogyny through increased hate speech on the Internet. In recent years, this virtual space composed mostly of men, has been the subject of numerous studies aimed at identifying the discursive mechanisms of identity constructions that underlie the denigration of women. This paper takes the findings from international research on the subject to address a phenomenon still little explored in Spain through the analysis of misogynistic comments on Burbuja.info. Economic forum. The analysis sample comprises 4,281 messages that include the lexeme "woman" posted over 2.5 years, 761 of which contain expressions that ridicule, disparage, or insult women. Thematic analysis demonstrates the repetition of misogynistic topics and tropes common in the most radical Reddit and 4chan subforums, such as hypergamy, objectification, and the constant disparagement of the world of women, not to mention criticism of feminism, left-wing political parties, and legislation on gender violence. The results obtained show that the "male identity crisis" is narratively constructed in the messages on Burbuja.info using the motif of sacrifice -the cornerstone of a monotypic story in which the purpose of the hero-man-victim´s journey is to punish the villain-woman. Furthermore, we also found that there are different configurations of identity related to attitudes toward women; these match up with the four most prominent masculinist subcultures identified in the leading literature on the subject: Men Rights activists (MRA), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), Pickup Artists (PUA), and Involuntary Celibates (Incels).

Descargas

Los datos de descargas todavía no están disponibles.

Citas

Azzolari, Davide; Borodi, Valeria-Marina; Garusi, Diego (2021). "Il Forum degli Incel: La costruzione del consenso politico nella Manosfera italiana". Rivista di digital politics, n. 2, pp. 379-395. https://doi.org/10.53227/101949

Banet-Weiser, Sarah (2018). Empowered: Popular feminism and popular misogyny. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN: 978 1 478 00291 8 https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478002772

Bates, Laura (2020). Men who hate women. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 978 1 471 19433 7

Bazzano, Manu (2022). "Everybody wants to be a manager: On masculinity, microfascism and the manosphere". European journal of psychotherapy & counselling, v. 24, n. 2, pp. 173-186. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642537.2022.2090588

Bonet-Martí­, Jordi (2021). "Los antifeminismos como contramovimiento: Una revisión bibliográfica de las principales perspectivas teóricas y de los debates actuales". Teknokultura. Revista de cultura digital y movimientos sociales, v. 18, n. 1, pp. 61-71. https://doi.org/10.5209/tekn.71303

Braun, Virginia; Clarke, Victoria (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. London: Sage. ISBN: 978 1 473 95324 6

Bujalka, Eva; Rich, Ben; Bender, Stuart (2022). "The Manosphere as an online protection racket: How the red pill monetizes male need for security in modern society". Fast capitalism, v. 19, n. 1. https://doi.org/10.32855/fcapital.202201.001

Caldevilla-Domí­nguez, David; Barrientos-Báez, Almudena; Garcí­a-Manso, Almudena; Matarí­n-Rodrí­guez-Peral, Eva (2022). "Neurocomunicación y manosferas: estudio de caso Forocoches". Historia y comunicación social, v. 27, n. 2, pp. 509-519. https://doi.org/10.5209/hics.84402

Carreras, Judith (2019). "Neoderechas y antifeminismo". Viento sur, n. 166, pp. 51-62. https://doi.org/10.5209/hics.84402

Dupuis-Déri, Francis (2012). "Le discours de la crise de la "˜masculinité´ comme refus de l´égalité entre les sexes: histoire d´une rhétorique antiféministe". Recherches féministes, v. 25, n. 1, pp. 89-109. https://doi.org/10.7202/1011118ar

Ebner, Julia (2021). Going dark: The secret social lives of extremists. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN: 978 1 5266167 9 1

Farrell, Tracie; Fernandez, Miriam; Novotny, Jakub; Alani, Harith (2019). "Exploring misogyny across the Manosphere in Reddit". In: WebSci "˜19 Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on web science, pp. 87-96. https://doi.org/10.1145/3292522.3326045

Frenda, Simona; Ghanem, Bilal; Montes-Gómez, Manuel; Rosso, Paolo (2019). "Online hate speech against women: Automatic identification of misogyny and sexism on Twitter". Journal of intelligent & fuzzy systems, v. 36, n. 5, pp. 4743-4752. https://doi.org/10.3233/JIFS-179023

Garcí­a-Mingo, Elisa; Dí­az-Fernández, Silvia (2022a). Jóvenes en la Manosfera. Influencia de la misoginia digital en la percepción que tienen los hombres jóvenes de la violencia sexual. Madrid: Centro Reina Sofí­a sobre Adolescencia y Juventud, Fundación Fad Juventud. ISBN: 978 84 17027 86 5 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7221159

Garcí­a-Mingo, Elisa; Dí­az-Fernández, Silvia (2022b). "Wounded men of feminism: Exploring regimes of male victimhood in the Spanish manosphere". European journal of cultural studies, online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494221140586

Garcí­a-Mingo, Elisa; Dí­az-Fernández, Silvia; Tomás-Forte, Sergio (2022). "(Re)configurando el imaginario sobre la violencia sexual desde el antifeminismo: el trabajo ideológico de la manosfera española". Polí­tica y sociedad, v. 59, n. 1, e80369. https://doi.org/10.5209/poso.80369

Ging, Debbie (2019). "Alphas, betas, and Incels: Theorizing the masculinities of the Manosphere". Men and masculinities, v. 22, n. 4, pp. 638-657. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X17706401

Ging, Debbie; Siapera, Eugenia (2018). "Special issue on online misogyny". Feminist media studies, v. 18, n. 4, pp. 515-524. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447345

Han, Xiaoting; Yin, Chenjun (2022). "Mapping the manosphere: Categorization of reactionary masculinity discourses in digital environment". Feminist media studies, online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.1998185

Hernández, Álvaro (2016). "La "˜aldea de irreductibles´ conspiranoicos que predijo la crisis inmobiliaria". Eldiario.es, 22 julio. https://www.eldiario.es/hojaderouter/internet/burbuja-info-foro-carlos-lopez-historia-origen_1_3894230.html

Hopton, Kathryn; Langer, Susanne (2022). ""˜Kick the XX out of your life´: An analysis of the manosphere´s discursive constructions of gender on Twitter". Feminism & psychology, v. 32, n. 1, pp. 3-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535211033461

Horta-Ribeiro, Manoel; Blackburn, Jeremy; Bradlyn, Barry; De-Cristofaro, Emiliano; Stringhini, Gianluca; Long, Summer; Greenberg, Stephanie; Zannettou, Savvas (2021). "The evolution of the Manosphere across the Web". Proceedings of the international AAAI conference on web and social media, v. 15, n. 1, pp. 196-207. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v15i1.18053

Illouz, Eva (2020). El fin del amor. Una sociologí­a de las relaciones negativas. Buenos Aires: Katz. ISBN: 978 84 15 91746 5Johanssen, Jacob (2022). Fantasy, online misogyny and the Manosphere. Male bodies of dishibition. London: Routledge. ISBN: 978 0 367 46865 1

Juárez-Miro, Clara; Toff, Benjamin (2022). "How right-wing populists engage with cross-cutting news on online message boards: The case of ForoCoches and Vox in Spain". International journal of press/politics, online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612211072696

Kozinets, Robert V. (2015). Netnography: redefined. London: Sage. ISBN: 978 1 446 28575 6

Krendel, Alexandra; McGlashan, Mark; Koller, Veronika (2022). "The representation of gendered social actors across five manosphere communities on Reddit". Corpora, v. 17, n. 2, pp. 291-321. https://doi.org/10.3366/cor.2022.0257

Kyparissiadis, George; Skoulas, Emmanuel (2021). "Manosphere and manconomy: Divergent masculinities in the digital space". Ex-centric narratives: Journal of anglophone literature, culture and media, n. 5, pp. 199-217. https://doi.org/10.26262/exna.v0i5.8501

Lacalle, Charo (2022). (In)dignidades mediáticas en la sociedad digital. Madrid: Cátedra. ISBN: 978 84 376 4479 0

Lacalle, Charo (2023a). "The otherless other: las pasiones misóginas de la Manosfera española". Signa. Revista de la Asociación Española de Semiótica, v. 32, pp. 41-53. https://doi.org/10.5944/signa.vol32.2023.36111

Lacalle, Charo (2023b). "Cartografiando las subculturas de la manosfera española: entre Forocoches y Burbuja.info". In: Bernárdez-Rodal, Asunción; Franco, Yanna G. (eds.). Misoginia online: la cultura de la manosfera en el contexto español. Valencia: Editorial Tirant lo Blanch, pp. 99-114 [en prensa].

Lacalle, Charo; Castro-Mariño, Deborah (2018). "Fandom televisivo y construcción de identidad. Análisis de los comentarios de las fans españolas y los community managers". Revista latina de comunicación social, n. 73. https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2018-1242

Lacalle, Charo; Gómez-Morales, Beatriz; Narvaiza, Sara (2021). "Friends or just fans? Parasocial relationships in online television fiction communities". Communication & society, v. 34, n. 3, pp. 61-76. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.34.3.61-76

Lacalle, Charo; Martí­n-Jiménez, Virginia; Etura-Hernández, Dunia (2023) "El antifeminismo de la ultraderecha española en Twitter en torno al 8M". Prisma social, n. 40, pp. 358-376. https://revistaprismasocial.es/article/view/4837

Lilly, Mary (2016). "The world is not a safe place for men". The representational politics of the Manosphere. Ottawa: University of Ottawa. Thesis. https://ruor.uottawa.ca/bitstream/10393/35055/1/Lilly_Mary_2016_thesis.pdf

Manne, Kate (2018). Down girl. The logic of misogyny. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978 0 141 99072 9

Marwick, Alice; Caplan, Robin (2018). "Drinking male tears: Language, the Manosphere, and networked harassment". Feminist media studies, v. 18, n. 4, pp. 543-559. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1450568

Marwick, Alice; Lewis, Rebecca (2017). Media manipulation and disinformation online. New York: Data & Society Research Institute. https://datasociety.net/output/media-manipulation-and-disinfo-online

Messner, Michael A. (2016). "Forks in the road of men´s gender politics: Men´s rights vs feminist allies". International journal for crime, justice and social democracy, v. 5, n. 2, pp. 6-20. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v5i2.301

Nagle, Angela (2017). Kill all normies. Online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right. Pennsylvania: John Hunt Publishing. ISBN: 978 1 785 35543 1

Palma, Shannan (2020). "Entitled to a happy ending: Fairy-tale logic from "˜Beauty and the Beast´ to the Incel movement". Marvels & tales, v. 33, n. 2, pp. 319-337. https://doi.org/10.17613/rmq3-3v75

Saldaña, Johnny (2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. London: Sage. ISBN: 978 1 473 90249 7

Sugiura, Lisa (2021). The Incel rebellion: The rise of the Manosphere and the virtual war against women. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited. ISBN: 978 1 839 82257 5

Vallerga, Michael; Zurbriggen, Eileen L. (2022). "Hegemonic masculinities in the "˜Manosphere´: A thematic analysis of beliefs about men and women on The Red Pill and Incel". Asap. Analysis on social issues, v. 22, n. 2, pp. 602-625. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12308

Van-Valkenburgh, Shawn P. (2021). "Digesting the red pill: Masculinity and neoliberalism in the Manosphere". Men and masculinities, v. 24, n. 1, pp. 84-103. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184x18816118

Vení¤lí¤inen, Satu (2022). "Nobody cares for men anymore: Affective-discursive practices around men´s victimisation across online and offline contexts". European journal of cultural studies, v. 25, n. 4, pp. 1228-1245. https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494211021097

Vingelli, Giovanna (2019). "Antifemminismo online: I men´s rights activists in Italia". Im@go. A journal of the social imaginary, n. 14, pp. 220-247. https://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/IMAGO/article/view/2406

Zugasti-Hervás, Irene (2022). "Habitar las redes sociales en igualdad: nuevos usos y buenas prácticas". Revista de estudios de juventud, n. 125, pp. 139-149. http://www.injuve.es/sites/default/files/adjuntos/2022/03/revista-estudios-juventud-125.pdf

Publicado

2023-03-22

Cómo citar

Lacalle, C., Gómez-Morales, B., & Vicent-Ibáñez, M. (2023). Misogyny and the construction of toxic masculinity in the Spanish Manosphere (Burbuja.info). Profesional De La información, 32(2). https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.mar.15

Número

Sección

Artí­culos de investigación / Research articles