Feminist Media Studies

ISSN: 1468-0777 (Print) 1471-5902 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfms20

“It's Like She's Eager to be Verbally Abused”: , Trolls, and (En)Gendering Disciplinary Rhetoric

Kirsti K. Cole

To cite this article: Kirsti K. Cole (2015) “It's Like She's Eager to be Verbally Abused”: Twitter, Trolls, and (En)Gendering Disciplinary Rhetoric, Feminist Media Studies, 15:2, 356-358, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2015.1008750 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2015.1008750

Published online: 13 Feb 2015.

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MCCAUGHEY, MARTHA. 1998. Real Knockouts: The Physical of Women’s Self-Defense. New York: New York University Press. RENTSCHLER, CARRIE A. 1999. “Women’s Self-Defense: Physical Education for Everyday Life.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 26 (1): 152–161. RENTSCHLER, CARRIE A. 2014. “ Culture and the Feminist Politics of Social Media.” Girlhood Studies 7 (1): 65–82. SHIFMAN, LIMOR. 2014. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. “‘STOP RAPE’ DISLODGING ‘STAY SAFE’ ADVICE ON SOCIAL MEDIA.” 2013. CBC.ca Storify. Accessed October 16, 2014. https://storify.com/cbccommunity/both-sexes-boost-stop-rape-answer-to-stay- safe-adv THRIFT, SAMANTHA C. 2014. “#YesAllWomen as Feminist Meme Event.” Feminist Media Studies 14 (6): 1090–1092. “TOP TEN TIPS TO END RAPE.” 2012. Glasgow: Rape Crisis Scotland.

“IT’S LIKE SHE’S EAGER TO BE VERBALLY ABUSED”: TWITTER, TROLLS, AND (EN)GENDERING DISCIPLINARY RHETORIC

Kirsti K. Cole, Minnesota State University

Commonplaces about feminists, about women’s rights, bodies, and rhetoric participate in a cycle of violence and consciousness-raising. This paper articulates the particular way in which violent anti-feminist engagement in social media functions as disciplinary rhetoric. I contend that the goal of this rhetoric is to silence the women participating in public as feminist. Disciplinary rhetoric individualizes bodies which are distributed and circulated in a network of relations (Michel Foucault 1995). The implication of such rhetoric indicates an intensification of the kind of backlash that Susan Faludi outlined in 1991: the tendency in social media to discipline women speaking in public. When applied to women in online spaces, the backlash singles them out. The disciplinary rhetoric used by trolls individualizes the woman acting within the digi-feminist network by threatening her body with violence. She is an easily identifiable target because her larger network is clearly labeled in social media as feminist. The nature of the backlash towards women is ubiquitous: “Every single female writer I know has had threats of violence and rape ... Every. Single. One. #” (Laurie Penny 2014). Foucault’s definition of disciplinary rhetoric helps us grapple with the pervasive and threatening interactions between trolls and feminists in online discourse. Disciplinary rhetoric gives us a tool through which to parse the contradictions of feminist agency in public discourse. Twitter hashtags such as “mencallmethings” and “YesAllWomen” offer the promise, on the one hand, of a potentially liberating model: a model in which power is COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM 357 relational, which calls into question rhetorical agency (Rebecca Dingo 2012). This model points to a networked literacy that blends shifting identities offering temporal and liberating opportunities for feminist writing (Jacqueline Rhodes 2004). On the other hand, these networks have been largely ignored (Jacqueline Jones Royster and Gesa Kirsch 2012), enabling a cultural logic (Krista Ratcliffe 2005) that takes as commonplace disciplining women. Blogger Greta Christina emphasizes her inability to rid herself of the disciplinary gaze. Christina (2012) writes that she “get[s] this all the time. I get this so often, I’ve lost track. As has every other woman I know who speaks publicly about feminism.”. Journalist and blogger (2014) summarizes the experience of feminists speaking in digital space in a recent note: “I spen[d] the better part of the day fielding tweets and messages about what a slut I am. That I should be ‘jizzed on’ ... that I want to be gangbanged, that I’m worthless.” Rape is the most frequently used threat in response to women online (see Courtney Stanton 2011). In a significant portion of such tweets the author attempts to qualify the threat by using an emoticon, an acronym such as “LOL,” or a joke. Humor is used in order to make the violence socially acceptable. However, the use of humor and sarcasm does not dismiss the inherent threat but functions as a part of the discipline. When qualified with humor, threats that include smiley-face emoticons represent the discipline as readable and acceptable within the cultural logic of violence against women.1 These threats do not go unnoticed, and the cultural logic of disciplinary rhetoric is not invisible. Arrests have been made based on threats of violence on Twitter (see Rebecca Camber 2014). Shutting down content, reporting or “flagging” users, and legally apprehending perpetrators is a possible solution. However, backlash against women online is clearly a far more complicated and multifaceted issue. The use of humor by these trolls indicates a cultural logic that is normatively biased towards and comfortable with the violent discipline of women in order to keep them in their perceived place. The online backlash to feminists is so highly visible in social media, and so prevalent, it is also amplified. If cultural logic is a way of reasoning common to groups, then the prevalence of rape threats against women participating in feminist activism online points to the acceptance of what is meant to be rendered as the harmless threat. When trolls post comments such as, “You should be raped! LOL” they seek to discipline feminists into silence while simultaneously proclaiming that their version of rape is somehow funny, somehow safe, and somehow different. The use of humor to qualify rape does not disarm the threat; rather it highlights the social acceptability of rape as a tool to discipline women. The rape threat is emblematic of Foucault’s disciplinary model, demonstrating the ways in which individual bodies can face violence in a networked power structure. As we consider the possibilities of transnational and global networked rhetoric, hashtags such as these allow bloggers, activists, and women to see and hear each other opening the space for transnational, temporal, and liberating feminist rhetoric. However, hashtags such as these should also encourage feminist rhetoricians to further complicate writer, audience, and text; ethos, action, and subjectivity. Analyzing the cultural logic of disciplinary rhetoric in social media enables scholars to ask important questions about the encounters that women rhetors have when the interactions are networked and relational. 358 COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my writing group, Valerie Renegar and Kristin Swenson, for their insight and encouragement.

NOTE

1. Of course, it isn’t just male or male-identifying trolls who participate in this kind of backlash. A recent study published by Demos indicates that women are almost as likely to use violent, disciplinary rhetoric as men. The study reveals that between December 26, 2013 and February 9, 2014 in UK Twitter accounts, “12 percent [of 100,000 tweets] that contained ‘rape’, and 20 percent that contained ‘slut’ or ‘whore’—seemed to be a direct threat or insult” (Jamie Bartlett et al. 2014).

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