Free Speech or Free to Hate?: Anti-LGBTQ+ Discourses in LGBTQ+-Affirming Spaces on Gab Social

ABSTRACT

This article presents a critical discourse analysis of groups on the free speech social media platform Gab that were intended to be LGBTQ+-friendly but became spaces of queerphobia. Results indicate that Gab users deployed discourses of difference to situate the platform as heteronormative and to denigrate the LGBTQ+ community. In particular, discourses utilized in the name of free speech were used to establish LGBTQ+ individuals as abominations, undergird hegemonic masculinity, and marginalize queer folk by reducing them to sex acts and sex organs. This study provides a better understanding of the (in)efficacy of “free speech” as a content moderation policy and unpacks how anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech spreads in digital spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• LGBTQ+
• social media
• free speech
• hate speech
• Gab
• critical theory
• discourse analysis
• cultural studies
• gender and sexuality studies
• homophobia
• mixed methods
• prejudice
• qualitative
• media
• LGBT studies

Acknowledgment

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions. They also thank Dr. Elia and the editorial staff for their assistance during the review and publication process.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. We use the + to signal the range of marginalized orientations, non-cisgender identities, and sex distinctions which are included within the umbrella term.

2. The groups also used these pages to defend their actions after the fact, most often referring to the need to protect, and stand up for, innocent children.

3. For the purposes of this paper, we have deliberately chosen not to recreate the slurs posted by Gab users; however, it is important to note that these slurs were not censored by the users, or the platform, and appear without asterisks in the original data set. “Based” is a term used by individuals, especially on social media, to signal their support of far-right ideologies.

4. Importantly, this ignores a contradiction common in this kind of argument: that if gender and sexuality were natural and immutable, they would not need to be policed and reinforced (e.g., Petrey, 2020).

5. This finding is consistent with research that shows that men who adopt feminine traits tend to experience higher levels of disparagement compared to women who adopt masculine traits (Bradley, 2013).

6. Interestingly, while gay male desire was evident in discourses produced on Gab’s LGBTQ+-friendly pages, there was little discussion of sex organs, especially as it related to transgender individuals (Brody et al., 2022).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an SDR-XI collaborative research grant from the College of Communication and Information at the University of Kentucky.