Women against feminism: Exploring discursive measures and implications of anti-feminist discourse

Abstract

The present paper studies anti-feminist discourse within the tumblr-based group Women Against Feminism, and explores how the sentiments of these anti-feminists, as expressed in a multi-modal format, may help to understand the difficulty feminism has with gathering support from its female audience. The textual corpus, gathered through the site, is analysed with methods inspired by Fairclough's 2012 version of CDA, focused on discovering social issues within feminism as it relates to a female audience. By considering implicature and counter-discourse, the analysis demonstrates that anti-feminists perceive feminists as victimising the female population and depriving them of agency, and call for feminism to consider their viewpoint. Conclusively, the created perception of victimisation then serves to illustrate how language works to construe modern feminist discourse in a negative light, and how this may further hinder feminism in reaching the audience it desires.