Satirical feminism and the Reparative Tweet: a discourse analysis of the gendered language of @manwhohasitall

ABSTRACT

Researchers have established social media as intrinsic to fourth wave feminism. However, even as social media has created a platform for many feminist theorists to share their work, it has also created trolls who perpetuate gender discrimination and gender-biased language. Feminist Twitter users have attempted to push back on discriminatory language, but are often attacked. The Twitter user @manwhohasitall addresses gendered language by using satire, Tweeting from a fictional world where gender stereotypes are reversed. This approach, discussed through a discourse analysis of a corpus of 528 Tweets from the calendar year 2017, illustrates how @manwhohasitall engages with satire, invention, and illustration to address and critique gendered language. This study reveals five major themes that illuminate the media’s gender biases—and identifies a model to humorously address gendered language: Reparative Tweeting. This paper suggests that other forms of Reparative Tweeting or advocacy that relies on satire and community discourse may allow feminists to discuss gender bias without immediate pushback, and offer a model for showing, rather than telling, the story of gender discrimination.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminism
• Twitter
• social media
• feminist rhetoric
• fourth-wave feminism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. A Twitter troll is a person who comments on another user’s Tweets in order to purposefully create discord.

2. In the years since this study was conducted, @manwhohasitall has commercialized. You can now purchase @manwhohasitall’s book (a curated collection of tweets), T-shirts for men that read “male cyclist,” “male scientist,” and “footballer’s husband,” and other paraphernalia quoting the Twitter account. The men’s shirts cost more because “they had to be altered to fit a male body.” Find these at: https://manwhohasitall.teemill.com/. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to look into the impact of this transference of the online world into the offline world, it is an interesting development that supports the claim that what happens in fourth-wave feminism has real consequences to our world. Currently, those consequences may only t-shirts that read “Womankind: a gender-neutral term referring to both women and men,” but it is worth looking for further indications.

3. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore the visibility of male bodies in the world including those men of size or men who are disabled, or men of color. It is also beyond the scope of this paper to investigate the historic preoccupation with the male crotch—especially those of men of color or those living under oppression. However, it is worth mentioning that this Tweet also illuminates visual realities of bodies of size, of color, of disability and the social commentary plagued upon these bodies, and dehumanizing them.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katherine Rothschild

Katherine Rothschild, MFA, PhD, is a Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University writing and researching on feminist rhetorics, classroom social justice, and the intersection of identity and writing knowledge transfer. Her work has been published by Purdue University Press, Curriculum & Pedagogy, and Praxis, among others, and her fiction is published by Soho Press.