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ABSTRACT
Although attacks against gendered others have proliferated around the world, there remains a paucity of research examining the gender-biased climate that normalizes and condones racialization and dehumanization. In particular, there is scant empirical research investigating the role that gendered and sexualized discourses play in political conflicts and on social media platforms. This study aims to start the process of filling this gap by examining Facebook-based discourses in Israel during the 2014 Gaza war. The findings examine how political conflicts are gendered and sexualized in the digital arena and emphasize how these framings play a central role in demonizing, emasculating, commodifying, and constructing the other as unwanted and contaminated. The study reveals three ways in which political conflicts are gendered: gendering the other (Palestinian), the ingroup (Jewish-Israeli), and the war itself. The findings suggest that the interaction between these three illustrates the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, and racism, normalizes violence, penetrates both the body and land, and dehumanizes the other. This study also takes a closer look at changing usages of gendered discourses in social media among the ingroup, uncovering the ways in which these discourses serve not only to racialize the other, but also to preserve self-perceptions.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their supportive and constructive comments, as well as the Smart Family Institute of Communications at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for the generous support in pursuing this research. Thank you also to Sarai Aharoni, Elie Friedman, Noam Gal, Gilly Hartal, and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The author, however, takes full responsibility for the content of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. While this article focuses on Israeli society, it is part of a larger project comparing the gendering of groups in different countries and by different cultures.
2. Although it is also important to look at discourses in Palestinian society during the war, this study chooses to focus on the use of gendered stereotypes in Jewish-Israeli society as a means of understanding the role of such discourses in the context of the history of gendered anti-Semitism against Jews in the diaspora (Daniel Boyarin Citation1997; Philip Hollander Citation2019).
3. Analyzing materials in Hebrew and translating them into English naturally involves language constraints and differences, which may result in a loss of some of the social and cultural meanings of the original texts. The aim of the translations is to be as true to the original Hebrew as possible; the original version is included for Hebrew readers.
4. Posts published by public figures in Israel, such as this one, are presented with the authors’ full names. I have maintained the anonymity of ordinary posters.
5. Similar pages also appear on Twitter and Instagram under the same name.
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Yossi David
Dr. Yossi David is a visiting scholar in the Department of Communication at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. His primary scholarly interests center on what drives public opinion and social behavior, exploring the interactions between media (both technologies and discourses), attitudes, emotions, and behavior. His current work comparatively tracks the uses and effects of stereotypes and activism in shaping and constructing public opinion and social behavior in political conflict and crises (wars, terrorist attacks, and the COVID-19 pandemic). E-mail: [email protected] [email protected]