As a reaction to the demand for women’s suffrage and equal rights in the late-1800s, American antifeminism emerged. In the article by Janet Saltzman Chafetz and Anthony Gary Dworkin, “In the Face of Threat: Organized Antifeminism in Comparative Perspective,” the authors concluded that the growth of a countermovement is contingent upon the success and size of the movement it opposes.1 This conclusion is applied to the actions, counter-actions and subsequent growth of both antifeminism and feminism. However, as feminism succeeds with small advancements in equality, antifeminism escalates its oppositional strength by creating accusations against women, using labels based on gender stereotypes and initiatives that incite divisive discourse in the pursuit of equal rights for all human beings. Graphic design is a catalyst for both antifeminism and feminism visual language. To find inspiration for my exhibition, I examined one-hundred years of design used by both movements. Based by my research, the exhibition, “5th Wave: The Fault of Women,” navigates through the growth and history of antifeminism and visually examines antifeminist labels and initiatives and the culmination of these techniques used during the fifth wave of antifeminism. The exhibition, “5th Wave: The Fault of Women,” exposes and challenges the efforts of the fifth wave of antifeminism in an effort to evoke an understanding of the importance of feminism’s fight for equality and the betterment of all human beings. Using research and design to expose antifeminism’s growing labels and initiative, feminism can combat the techniques used to punish those who challenge patriarchy and heteronormativity. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Thesis (M.A.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Philosophy, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Michelle Brattain, committee chair; Charles Steffen, Hugh Hudson, committee members. Electronic text (113 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Aug. 2, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-113).

The Victorian era paved the way for the emancipation of the modern British woman. The women who fought for the parliamentary vote, especially those who were imprisoned and experienced the torture of forcible feeding, eventually won their cause. Women who opposed enfranchisement did so for their own reasons. Both sides of the suffrage campaign claimed the majority was on their side and struggled to prove it. This thesis argues that those women who opposed were a subaltern group and compares them with the colonised subjects of the British Empire. The emancipation of women ran against the interests of the state which treated the cause as an insurgent movement. The political leaders spared no effort to thwart the liberation of women and the middle-and upper-class Anti-Suffrage women sided with ruling class interests. This work divides women into three sub-sections; resistance, colonised public and collaborators. Eliza Lynn Linton, Flora Shaw, Janet Hogarth and Gertrude Bell are well known middle-class Victorian women for whom the emancipation was of more benefit than opposition. The study throws a fresh look at these women by tying the notion of the collaborative elite with the State's exploitation of the intellectual subaltern. Linton, Shaw, Hogarth and Bell are studied in detail as case studies for this theory. Through the textual analysis of selected works, published articles, public and private correspondence, available diaries, biographies and autobiographies it emerges that although these women were ardent 'Antis' in public they were feminists in private. The thesis explains the reasons behind their public opposition to the emancipation of women.

Despite critics‟ negative appraisal of Lars Von Trier's Antichrist (2009) for its ostensible misogyny, a deep thematic resonance exists between its representation of women as historical victims of patriarchal discourse, and the positive representations of women as Christ-like figures found in his Golden Heart Trilogy (1996/1998/2000). Arguably, it is important to recognize this, because these films together comprise an exercise in cinematic resistance to the narratives of the „backlash‟ against women's rights, thematized by Susan Faludi in her Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women; resistance which is undermined when these films are considered disparate or incongruous.

This thesis offers an overview of the representational politics of the online antifeminist community known as the ‘manosphere’. It analyzes how gender and gender politics are represented in the discourse, with an eye to how traditional gender constructs, and traditional gendered norms and inequalities, are reproduced. This project—the first study to focus exclusively on the manosphere—contributes to our understanding of the community in two ways; it addresses a significant gap in the literature on the topic, and it tests the accuracy of the ‘conventional wisdom’ on the manosphere. Using mixed-methods critical discourse analysis, the study analyzed the discourse of the two primary subcultures of the community, and found that traditional gender norms and relations are reproduced therein, and that for the most part the conventional wisdom is accurate: femininity and women are disparaged, masculinity is imagined to be ‘in crisis’ (constantly under siege by feminizing forces), and feminism is represented as hypocritical and oppressive.

This thesis examines the role of online platforms in relation to anti-progressive counterpublic dynamics. Counterpublicsare understood as alternative discursive arenas that form in response to exclusion from the wider public sphere. The relevance of counterpublics derives both from their ability to influence mainstream political discourse and from how anti-progressive counterpublics have been found to contribute to real-life violence. As the internet becomes an increasingly important venue for political discussion and contestation, the public sphere is extended online. This study explores how platforms can be seen as enabling (or constraining) the dual function of online counterpublics, i.e. as both inward and outward-oriented in relation to opposing publics, by examining the anti-feminist online community known as “Men Going Their Own Way” (MGTOW). The role of platforms is understood in terms of platform affordances, and netnographic methods were used to study these in relation to two online platforms. The results show that the two platforms presented different opportunities for the MGTOW counterpublic to some extent, suggesting that this counterpublic is able to utilise platforms for different purposes. Twitter was found to be particularly suitable for the outward-oriented function, i.e. for interacting with and opposing other publics, while mgtow.com was shown to be fertile ground for the inward-oriented function, and in that sense enabled contact between members in a way that contributed to the development of anti-progressive counterdiscourse.

The present study aims to investigate men's perception of feminism. The interest in studying this is based on the circulation of feminist and anti-feminist content on social media. The study therefore also investigates whether social media has a role in creating or affecting men's perceptions of feminism from their perspective. Feminism is an ideology that has received a lot of attention around the world. Feminism is mostly spread today on social media. As a reaction, anti-feminism has given rise to harassment, threats and hatred of women. Men may have a negative point of view on the feminist changes taking place in society, which is why it is important to examine men's views. Previous research sheds light on a profound and nuanced view of feminism and deals with different perspectives on feminism from the men's point of view, anti-feminism and its spread on social media. The theoretical frame of reference was limited to theories about Norbert Elias' theories about "us and them" and group identity, and also Simone de Beauvoir's theories about women as "the other sex" and masculinity. This study is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews, where 6 young men's perceptions of feminism are in focus. The result showed that half of the respondents had a more positive view of feminism while the other half had a more negative view of it. However, all respondents agreed that social media has a weight in what you witness in your own flow and that it can have an influence on your values. There was also a clear agreement where the majority of respondents agreed that it is mostly a negative image of feminism and anti-feminism that is spread on social media. / Föreliggande studie syftar till att undersöka mäns uppfattning om feminism. Intresset för att studera detta grundar sig i spridningen av feministiskt och antifeministiskt innehåll på sociala medier. Studien undersöker därför också huruvida sociala medier har en roll i att skapa eller påverka mäns uppfattningar om feminism från deras perspektiv. Feminism är en ideologi som har fått stor uppmärksamhet runt om i världen. Feminism sprids till största del idag på sociala medier. Som en reaktion har antifeminism gett upphov till trakasserier, hot och hat mot kvinnor. Män kan ha en negativ synvinkel på de feministiska förändringar som sker i samhället, därmed är det viktigt att undersöka männens uppfattning. Tidigare forskning belyser en djupgående och nyanserad bild av feminism och behandlar olika perspektiv om feminism ur mäns synvinkel, antifeminism samt dess spridning på sociala medier. Den teoretiska referensramen begränsades till Norbert Elias teorier om “vi och dem” samt gruppidentitet, och även Simone de Beauvoirs teorier om kvinnor som “det andra könet” och maskulinitet. Denna studie grundar sig på kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer, där 6 unga mäns uppfattningar av feminism står i fokus. Resultatet visade att hälften av respondenterna hade en mer positiv uppfattning av feminism medan den andra hälften hade en mer negativ bild av den. Samtliga respondenter höll dock med om att sociala medier har en vikt i vad man bevittnar i sitt flöde och att det kan ha ett inflytande i ens egna värderingar, speciellt om man är en tonåring. Det fanns även en tydlig överensstämmelse där majoriteten av respondenterna höll med om att det är till mesta dels en negativ bild av feminism och antifeminism som sprids på sociala medier .

The aim of this is thesis is to study and understand the development within the gaming community in the latter half of 2014, where a harassment campaign against the female developer Zoe Quinn led to an industry-spanning controversy that divided large sections of the gaming community, and how this fed into a far-right radicalization of certain groups of young male gamers. This thesis focuses on the idea that the controversy in question helped mobilize these games into an online social movement that aimed to “take back our games” from the perceived outside threats of feminism and political correctness, and how they through that process became an easy target for assimilation within large far-right and white supremacist movements. To prove this, data have been collected from two points: from the comment section on YouTube of the pre-controversy 2013 trailer of the video game Wolfenstein: The New Order, and from the YouTube comment section of the post-controversy 2017 trailer of the sequel, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. These points have been chosen to interpret the difference in reaction between the two games, and whether or not the controversy had a mobilization and radicalizing influence. To study social movements, Sidney G. Tarrow’s definition of what a social movement is and contentious collective action will be the main theoretical thread of the thesis, but it will be supplemented with theories from W. Lance Bennet and Alexandra Segerberg’s study of online collective action, Cass R. Sunstein’s work on in-group radicalization, along with further theories.

Den här studien undersöker vilka affordanser sociala medie plattformarna X, Instagram och Rumble förser och hur affordanserna används av tre olika antifeministiska kreatörer. Vi använde oss av Treem och Leonardis teori om affordanser, där observationsschemat delades in i synlighet, varaktighet, redigerbarhet och anknytning. Resultatet i studien visar att användarna interagerar över flera plattformar och ofta använder länkar för att koppla samman sina konton. Detta ger dem möjlighet att sprida och förstärka antifeministiska perspektiv över olika kanaler. Affordanser används både av användarna och publiken för att uttrycka hat mot kvinnor i exempelvis livechatten i livestreams eller inlägg på X. Detta kan skapa en "vi" mot "dem" mentalitet vilket utnyttjas av antifeminister för att locka publik. Designen i sociala medier plattformarna främjar inte heller kritiskt tänkande bland publiken vilket underlättar för antifeminister att skapa och upprätthålla en lojal publik som inte får möjligheten att ifrågasätta de budskap som antifeministerna förmedlar. / This study examines the affordances provided by the social media platforms X, Instagram, and Rumble and how these affordances are utilized by three different anti-feminist creators. We applied Treem and Leonardi's theory of affordances, where an observation chart was divided into visibility, persistence, editability, and association. The results of the study indicate that users interact across multiple platforms and often use links to connect their accounts. This allows them to disseminate and reinforce anti-feminist perspectives across different channels. Affordances are utilized both by users and the audience to express misogyny, for example, in a live chat during livestreams or posts on X. This can create an 'us' versus 'them' mentality, which is exploited by anti-feminists to attract an audience. The design of social media platforms also does not promote critical thinking among the audience, facilitating anti-feminists in creating and maintaining a loyal audience that is not given the opportunity to question the messages conveyed by the anti-feminists.