Abstract
This thesis aims to examine how participants in an antifeminist online discussion forum debate issues of rape and how they further utilize the term rape in their discussions. Research has shown that one of the most common antifeminist discourses on rape online has been the use of rape threats against women and feminists who are prominent in the public sphere and therefore receive media coverage. These threats have found in feminist discussion forums, on women’s personal social media accounts and been sent to women’s personal e-mail addresses. This study however, asks how the discourses on rape are influenced when antifeminists are debating within a space that is considered “their own” with little to no influence or interruption from outsiders who have infiltrated this space, where the participants might be more comfortable with expressing their own true attitudes and opinions. To answer this question, I have conducted ethnographic observations in a particular antifeminist discussion forum and I have further utilized methods such as textual analysis, critical discourse analysis and linguistic analysis in order to analyze and understand the meaning of the data material. Further, I sorted the findings in my data material into six different categories, which helped me detect certain patterns in the discourses on rape found in the comments the participants shared in the forum. These categories were (1) malevolence, (2) impaired credibility, (3) victim blaming, (4) mocking victims and advocates for women’s issues regarding rape and sexual assault, (5) justification of rape and (6) male feminists as gender traitors. These were the general discourses on rape I found in the forum, however, when analyzing the data material further, I also found evidence of misogynist language and discrimination on the bases of sexism, racism and ageism in a variety of the comments, which was on occasion intertwined. This means that in some of the comments I detected instances of intersectional discrimination. I also found that the participants within this particular antifeminist discussion forum seemed to value masculinity and whiteness and feared that they were loosing power and privileges to women an ethnic minorities in Western society and that these fear is part of the reason why they mobilize within their own space and why misogynist and racist language, in particular, are so prominent in this space.