Abstract
This paper examines discourses of bullying in international climate politics. Drawing on two cases, first the (social) media coverage which surrounded climate activist Greta Thunberg’s visits to the UK in Citation2019, and second Thunberg’s interactions with former US President Donald Trump, alongside a theoretical framework inspired by feminist geopolitics, the paper argues that discourses of bullying can be conceptualised as a series of figurations (the ‘bully’, the ‘bullied’, and the ‘anti-bully’) which reproduce individuated relations of power. Overall, the paper argues that individuating bullying discourses perpetuate a politics of white innocence which preserves petro-masculine power in international climate politics. To contest these unequal power dynamics, the paper argues for an anti-bullying politics grounded in collective, intersectional challenges to climate injustice.
Introduction
In a 2019 column written for The Guardian (July 19th) describing the treatment of activist Greta Thunberg, commentator Aditya Chakrabortty (Citation2019) notes that ‘something extraordinary has happened in our politics … a bunch of grown men have began bullying a schoolgirl’. Chakrabortty’s claims reflect a chorus of commentaries on the bullying of Greta Thunberg and other climate activists (Cillizza Citation2019; Nelson and Vertigan Citation2019; Sales Citation2019; LeBlanc Citation2020). Bullying as a term is not infrequently used in climate change debates, for example accusations that science teachers are being bullied by US climate sceptic groups (Turrentine Citation2018), or charges that climate sceptics are being bullied by those on the ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming side of the argument’ (Martz Citation2019). However, despite these examples, bullying discourses remain underexplored in critical scholarship on climate geopolitics.
Drawing on feminist geopolitics (Sharp Citation2021) and Castañeda’s (Citation2002) analysis of figuration, this paper traces bullying discourses (what Ringrose and Renold (Citation2010, 573) term ‘bully discourses’) in international climate politics and contends that these discourses can be partially interpreted as a series of contested ‘figure-effects’ (developing Spivak’s ([Citation1987] 2002, 204) conception of the ‘subject-effect’). The paper proceeds in four sections. Firstly, there is an overview of academic accounts on the concept of ‘bullying’ and of feminist geopolitics as a theoretical framework to conceptualise bully discourses. Secondly, the paper introduces the empirical case of Greta Thunberg in international climate politics, particularly (social) media coverage of her visits to the UK in 2019 and her interactions with Donald Trump. Thirdly, the paper charts three ‘figure-effects’ of how Greta Thunberg is (partially) understood in international climate politics: ‘bully’, ‘bullied’, and ‘anti-bully’. The paper argues that these figure-effects, especially those of ‘bully’ and ‘bullied’, work through individuating logics of white innocence to uphold petro-masculine power structures (Daggett Citation2018). The paper concludes with an argument that, because bullying discourses draw on individuated relations of power, a politics of anti-bullying should be grounded in intersectional, collective solidarities against climate injustice.
A feminist geopolitics of bullying discourses?
Whilst international concern about ‘bullying’ has been prominent in a variety of spheres since at least the 1990s (Walton Citation2005), it is in education that the concept has gained most traction (Cornell and Limber Citation2015). Olweus (Citation1994, 1173, original emphasis) defines bullying in the following sense: ‘A student is being bullied or victimized when … exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other students.’ Bullying behaviours can be attributed to both individuals and groups and include physical violence and harassment, verbal insults, and psychological bullying (Berger Citation2007; Hymel and Swearer Citation2015). Fundamentally, bullying is characterised by an imbalance of power between the ‘bully’ and the ‘bullied’ (Foreman Citation2015). A substantial literature also explores ‘cyberbullying’ in digital contexts, with disagreement as to the extent to which cyberbullying differs from ‘conventional’ bullying (Li, Craig, and Johnson Citation2015; Deschamps and McNutt Citation2016; Olweus and Limber Citation2018). Cyberbullying encompasses a range of different behaviours, including intimidation, stalking, impersonation, and sharing video recordings and images of violent assaults (Brydolf-Horwitz Citation2022). Ash, Kitchin, and Leszczynski (Citation2018) note the ambiguities of ‘digital’ spaces, with a range of aesthetic, material and sociotechnical phenomena intertwined with computing systems. Bork-Hüffer, Mahlknecht, and Kaufmann (Citation2021) demonstrate these ambiguities with their study of an Austrian school context, noting that bullying practices stretch across entangled physical (e.g. school grounds), material (smartphones), and digital (social media platforms, messaging apps) spaces.
Walton and Niblett (Citation2013) contend that psychological accounts of (cyber)bullying are underpinned by a positivist philosophy, framed by its emphasis on empirical measurement and rational behaviour. Ringrose (Citation2008) argues that psychological models of bullying rely on a conception of power as a quality possessed by individuals. Such an account risks replicating categories of ‘bully’, ‘bullied’, ‘victim’ and ‘bystander’ which do not encapsulate the messy realities of bullying (Galitz and Robert Citation2014; Ringrose and Rawlings Citation2015). This conceptualisation of bullying has also been critiqued for its emphasis on individual responsibility at the expense of structural inequalities in bullying dynamics (Zine Citation2006; Meyer Citation2016). For example, in his analysis of the IGB (It Gets Better), anti-homophobic bullying campaign in the US, Meyer (Citation2017) investigates intersections between heteronormativity, neoliberalism and classism. Gay men presented (in campaign videos) as ‘successful’ are associated with higher levels of income and educational attainment, ‘moving to the city’ from their hometowns, and property ownership. This reading excludes low-income LGBTQI + individuals who lack opportunities to pursue ‘success’ according to these metrics (Meyer Citation2017). Reflecting on an antiracist feminism course in women’s studies, Ringrose (Citation2007) recounts experiences of black students whose learning needs were marginalised by defensive reactions of white students in the classroom, rendering the role of whiteness in racist bullying as ‘invisible’ or relegating it to the status of an isolated, individual act.
Whilst there is relatively little geopolitical scholarship that directly addresses bully discourses, there is a political geographic literature on related forms of violence. For example, in her account of different terrorisms, Pain (Citation2014) argues that both global and everyday terrorisms (domestic violence) are characterised by gendered politics of fear, disrupting a binary which suggests that one form of violence is ‘public’ and ‘national’/’international’ in scale, whilst the other is ‘private’ and experienced in the ‘home’. Feminist geographers have also drawn attention to the violences of academia (Valentine Citation1998; Tolia-Kelly Citation2017), highlighting the marginalisation and harassment reproduced in academic spaces. A growing body of scholarship also highlights schools as sites of geopolitical contestation (Nguyen Citation2020; Lizotte and Nguyen Citation2020). Alongside these studies, scholars have produced a substantial body of work critiquing the violences of climate geopolitics (Dalby Citation2002; Nixon Citation2011; Chaturvedi and Doyle Citation2015; Boyce et al. Citation2020). Kaijser and Kronsell (Citation2014) argue that climate change scholars could draw productively from an intersectional feminist framework, emphasising that social groups are differentially affected in terms of vulnerabilities, responsibilities and decision-making capacities in the context of the violences of climate change. An intersectional approach would entail transformative responses to climate injustice which centre marginalised climate-changed lives (Hathaway Citation2020).
Building on feminist climate change scholarship, this paper proposes a feminist geopolitical analysis of bullying discourses in international climate politics. Feminist geopolitics postulates that geopolitical phenomena are not only restricted to the national or international scales, but also circulate at the scales of the body, the home, and the intimate (Dowler and Sharp Citation2001; Williams and Massaro Citation2013). As such, feminist geopolitics calls for a more situated account of geopolitical knowledges (drawing on Harraway (Citation1988)). Dixon (Citation2014) expands on this conception to explore how ‘estranged phenomena’, e.g. flesh and bones, travel within assemblages that cross international boundaries. Dixon (Citation2015) clarifies that this approach does not dismiss the ‘the body’ or ‘subject’, but rather emphasises its material constitution. Hyndman (Citation2019) contends that whilst Dixon’s (Citation2015) critique of individuated subjectivity opens up important space for discussion of ‘material states’ in feminist geopolitics, she cannot relinquish the political struggles and opportunities for resistance that the individual subject and body impute. Drawing on forensics as an analytic, Sharp (Citation2021) proposes a feminist geopolitics which recognises the (re)formation of bodies and subjects from fleshy materialities (individual speaking bodies, injured bodies, body parts), whilst also engaging with the ways in which these bodies are oriented in geopolitical representations which render these materialities meaningful.
Drawing inspiration from feminist geopolitical theorisations of subjectivity, this paper argues that the subject positions (re)constituted in bullying discourses in international climate politics can be conceptualised as geopolitical figures. Castañeda (Citation2002) argues that embedded within the idea that children are ‘the citizens of tomorrow’, or that they ‘grow up’ to be adults, is the notion of childhood as potentiality. Childhood is inherently tied to futurity, to emergence into uncertain futures (de Waal Citation2021). This assumption allows for an analysis of how the ‘child’ is figured, with figuration an on-going process. Figuration in this sense is material and discursive: ‘figures’ are context-specific configurations of knowledges, practices and power embedded in trajectories of potentiality (Castañeda Citation2002, 3-4). Here, ‘figures’ are similar to ‘subjects’ as formulated in feminist geopolitical scholarship: assemblages of material (digital technologies, bodily materials, etc.) and discursive (tropes, images and textual representations) phenomena related to individual and collective bodies. These configurations produce what Spivak terms ([Citation1987] 2002, 204) ‘subject-effects’: specific ‘knottings’ of discourses, materialities, and ideologies which produce the effect of a coherent, sovereign ‘subject’. Cautiously bringing together Castañeda’s (Citation2002) and Spivak’s ([Citation1987] 2002) theorisations, I argue that a feminist geopolitics of bully discourses in international climate politics can be conceptualised as a contested geopolitics of figuration. The ‘bully’, ‘bullied’ and ‘anti-bully’ are conceptualised as figure-effects – always in a state of emergence and characterised by configurations of material, discursive, and affective components. In using the term ‘effect’, my intention is not to suggest that figurations of bullying do not carry influence; rather, as Castañeda (Citation2002) argues, these figures are both ‘effects’ of such configurations and are themselves constitutive of them.
In adopting this conceptual approach, I argue that bullying discourses in international climate politics are partially characterised by two features. First is a politics of individuation, following the critique of Ringrose and Renold (Citation2010), which reduces complex social relations to binaries between individuated subjects (whether these are individual persons or individual groups). These binaries could be between ‘bully’ and ‘bullied’, ‘bully’ and ‘bystander’. Individuating bully discourses, through a performative logic of white innocence, can obfuscate the petro-masculine power which underpins climate injustice. In addition, through a focus on the individual person of Greta Thunberg, casting her in opposition to particular others (subjects that she is argued to ‘impose’ behaviours onto, or subjects that she is being ‘manipulated’ by), bully discourses carry the performative effect of undermining collective political possibilities: they cut through socially interconnected opportunities for solidarity (Butler Citation2020). Second is that bully discourses curtail political agency. Whether Greta Thunberg is constructed as a ‘bully’ that constrains the ability of others to engage in polluting behaviours, or whether she is ‘bullied’ through personal attacks by individuals such as Donald Trump or accusations that she is being ‘manipulated’, the agential possibilities of the subject of bullying are reduced.
Whilst figuration provides a useful framework through which to explore bully discourses, it also risks reconstituting individuating categories. The paper’s focus on Greta Thunberg also reconstitutes unequal power relations underpinning climate activism. As Rafaely (Citation2021) notes, the voices of indigenous climate activists and climate activists of colour are marginalised in international climate politics. An egregious example of this relates to representation of Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate. Nakate was one of five climate activists invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, 2020. The Associated Press (AP), as part of a report on climate activism at the conference, presented a photograph to caption the article; however, whilst the other four (white) climate activists were in this image, Nakate had been cropped (for what the AP claimed were compositional reasons) (Evelyn Citation2020). Nakate accused the AP of racism and erasure of African activists in the climate debate (Barnes Citation2021). As Najafi (Citation2020) argues, the exclusion of Nakate and simultaneous presence of Greta Thunberg (one of the activists in the AP photograph) reinforces an exclusionary whiteness in contemporary climate activism. Whereas Thunberg is privileged to speak about the global implications of climate change, Nakate is denied this agency and challenged on her specific responsibility to speak for ‘African voices’ in climate politics (Barnes Citation2021). Thunberg’s activism is predicated upon the action of indigenous climate activists and climate activists of colour and yet they are said to be ‘following in her footsteps’ (Najafi Citation2020). This paper, with its focus on bullying discourses related to Greta Thunberg, is embedded within these unequal structures of climate injustice. The aim of the paper is not to elevate the individual figure of Greta Thunberg, but rather, through an empirical analysis of bullying discourses in the context of Thunberg’s activism, to emphasise that bullying discourses performatively reconstitute broader structures of petro-masculine power. I also do not claim that bullying discourses are the only way to interpret the specific relations discussed around the figure of Greta Thunberg; this paper focuses on bullying discourses as this is a frequent lens through which these relations have been interpreted. Specifically, in proposing a geopolitics of figuration, what this analysis tries to do is elaborate on the specific intersectional dynamics of bully discourses and their political effects. An intersectional approach, centred on the inseparability of different forms of marginalisation and which aims to contest the gendered, racialised, aged injustices of climate change (Hathaway Citation2020), provides a strong foundation for a politics of anti-bullying in climate change politics.
Greta Thunberg in international climate politics
Following the Citation2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on global warming of 1.5 °C, there has been a significant upsurge in climate justice activism (Ebrey, Hall, and Willis Citation2020; Bevan, Colley, and Workman Citation2020). Inspired by movements such as Fridays for the Future and Extinction Rebellion, an estimated 1.4 million people participated in a climate strike on March 5th, 2019 (Boulianne, Lalancette, and Ilkiw Citation2020). In September 2019, an estimated 7.6 million people participated in a Global Climate Strike (Martiskainen et al. Citation2020). A significant factor behind the current impetus in climate activism is the organising of Greta Thunberg; on August 20th (2018), ahead of the Swedish national election, Thunberg sat outside the Swedish Parliament holding a placard that read ‘Skolstrejk för Klimatet’ (School Strike for the Climate) (Olesen Citation2020). Thunberg continued to strike every day and her actions spurred the development of an international movement. She was subsequently named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2019 (BBC Citation2019). In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Thunberg has continued to push for transformative climate policies, particularly in light of the UN Conference of Parties in Glasgow (November, Citation2021), further underscoring the reality of climate breakdown.
A highly influential activist, Greta Thunberg has been described as a global ‘icon’ and ‘hero’ (Olesen Citation2020). She has also been subject to a range of critiques, from claims about the supposed alarmism of her arguments to misogynistic, ageist, ableist attacks on her personal integrity and appearance (Park, Liu, and Kaye Citation2021). This paper explores how bully discourses are formulated around Greta Thunberg as a climate activist in these critiques. The paper focuses on two empirical contexts. First, figure-effects of ‘bully’ and ‘bullied’ are explored in the empirical context of UK (social) media coverage of Greta Thunberg, particularly that which surrounded her UK visits in 2019. The second context, investigating the figure-effect of the ‘anti-bully’, draws specifically on Thunberg’s Twitter exchanges with Donald Trump. Textual examples for this second case are not only from 2019, but spread between 2019 and 2021. Together, these examples help to shine a light on bullying discourses in international climate politics and the political possibilities that such discourses foreclose.
Greta Thunberg as ‘bully’
A figure-effect of Greta Thunberg as ‘bully’ draws upon the discursive trope of Greta Thunberg as a leader judging how individuals should behave in their everyday lives. It is also comprised of compositions of Thunberg’s bodily materiality, the femininity of her ‘pigtails’, co-assembled with aged, gendered discourses of abjection. In an illustrative example, former Conservative MP Neil Hamilton tweeted (July 25th, 2019, cited in Mosalski Citation2019), alongside an image of Thunberg with red eyes:
Have you done anything this week that Greta might disapprove of?
It’s shaping up to be the hottest day of the year.
Please remember: no electric fans. DEFINITELY no air conditioning.
Greta has spoken.
In the sense that this subject feels a threat to its ‘individual sovereignty’ from rules imposed by elites, these reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic echo some responses to Greta Thunberg’s activism. I argue that these two discursive moves – the construct of Greta Thunberg as a bullying authority figure, and the (often masculine) subject threatened by calls for collective climate action – performatively constitute an innocent ‘us’ or ‘I’ that climate activism threatens. These discursive tropes engage in a kind of scalar obfuscation: the focus on Thunberg as an individual ‘bully’ detracts from the transnational, collective character of climate activism on the one hand, and the identification of individual subjects threatened by this activism detracts from transnational petro-masculine political structures which resist climate action, on the other. The figure-effect of Greta Thunberg as ‘bully’ also assembles affective and material components in its articulation. These components constitute Thunberg on the basis of gendered tropes that manifest around aspects of her corporeal materiality (her ‘pigtails’). In a second example, from The Daily Express (April 28th, Citation2019), political commentator Nick Ferrari writes (as part of a discussion of Thunberg’s interactions with UK Members of Parliament (MPs) in April 2019):
Our cowardly MPs are paralysed by a 16 year old’s pigtails, says NICK FERRARI
Rather than making the case that, the UK has taken this issue far more seriously than virtually any other nation, our pitiful politicians nodded in submission
In the case of Greta Thunberg, it is illustrative that her pigtails are associated with both her age and femininity: Ferrari identifies a ‘16 year old’s pigtails’ and a ‘pigtailed teen’. Dagbovie-Williams (Citation2013) notes that in representations of young African American females (and in young females more generally), pigtails can signify an infantilised, sexualised imagery, a youthfulness that coexists with representations of sexual maturity. In the specific case Greta Thunberg, it could be that representations of her pigtails not only speak to histories of sexualised white femininity, but also co-constitute Thunberg as a risky subject with too much agency. Here, Thunberg’s pigtails construct her as gender deviant and abject: innocent ‘pigtails’ highlight that Greta Thunberg is different to that which she is expected to be (according to heteronormative prescriptions of feminine innocence). Ferrari’s use of ‘paralysed’ to describe the agency of pigtails indicates the performative force of this material and discursive construction: that this assumption detracts from the ‘reality’ of Thunberg. Ferrari describes MPs as ‘cowardly’, ‘pitiful’, and ‘craven’, implying not only that UK politicians are attention-seeking and fearful of Thunberg, but also that they lack courage to oppose her. Greta Thunberg’s youthful innocence, illustrated by the corporeal agency of her pigtails, becomes a form of gendered deviancy against the heteronormative frameworks these writers use to position girlhood. Configurations of corporeal materialities (the performative power of Thunberg’s pigtails) and discursive tropes of feminine girl-ness co-constitute the figure-effect of Greta Thunberg as ‘bully’. I argue that this figuration, because of the implication of deference, fear or even ‘submission’ for those subjected to Greta Thunberg’s actions, performatively confers (white) innocence upon those subjects affected by this subjection and the popular everyday practices that they engage in. The next section further develops this argument, detailing how a figure-effect of Greta Thunberg as ‘bullied’ is constituted in context-specific moments of international climate politics.
Greta Thunberg as ‘bullied’
Whilst a figure-effect of ‘bully’ can construct Greta Thunberg’s girlhood as abject in relation to what is expected of heteronormative femininity, these characteristics are also a part of a figure-effect of ‘bullied’. Thunberg has been dismissed as young, naïve, and ignorant (Mkono, Hughes, and Echentille Citation2020). This discourse draws on Greta Thunberg’s childhood as a means to differentiate her – in terms of maturity, education, reasonableness of her views, etc. – from an older generation or ‘adults’. Generational difference frames an unequal power relation whereby Greta Thunberg is bullied, manipulated, or controlled by ‘adults’. In a piece for The Times (April 28th, Citation2019), political commentator Neil Oliver writes:
Children need our love and attention, not manipulation. The little Swedish girl has Aspergers, a form of autism. I am sure she is motivated by heartfelt anxiety about the world her parents have told her about … The adults should have a care.
I argue that one performative effect of such bully discourses is to reaffirm the white innocence of petro-masculine power. As Inwood (Citation2018) describes, there are at least three means through which white innocence is historically and geographically constituted. First, white innocence positions racism in historic contexts, dissociating racist subjugation from present-day activities. Secondly, white innocence is transcendent, constructing a geographical logic in which racism is always taking place ‘somewhere else’, independent of one’s vicinity. Finally, white innocence implies not only that whites do not need to take responsibility for the political and socioeconomic economic structures which maintain existing power hierarchies, but also that they can continue to benefit from these structures whilst ‘decrying racism’. Pulido (Citation2016) argues that these logics are intertwined with racial capitalism, reducing racism to ‘individual’ acts that are exceptions to a liberal norm. As Wekker (Citation2016) argues in her analysis of racism in the Netherlands, the conception of the country as ‘tolerant’ and ‘open-minded’ obscures Dutch histories of colonialism and racist subjugation. Constructs of white innocence in the Netherlands vary, but often involve denials of racism and a reluctance to talk about social difference (particularly race and ethnicity) (Wekker Citation2016). In general, white innocence connotes a hiddenness of whiteness, a dislocation of white privilege and supremacy from their sociopolitical and socioeconomic contexts.
Constructs of white innocence are arguably implicated in figure-effects of Greta Thunberg as ‘bully’ and ‘bullied’. On the one hand, Greta Thunberg is isolated as a bullying individual who, partly as a consequence of the ‘normative cruelties’ of her youthful femininity, threatens the individual liberties of unnamed constituencies (a fearful ‘we’ or ‘I’ that Thunberg dictates to). On the other hand, Greta Thunberg is represented as subject to manipulation by environmental elites. Each of these configurations dislocates critique away from petro-masculine power. Daggett (Citation2018, 25) contends that authoritarian movements in the West coalesce around a combination of ‘climate denial, racism and misogyny’ in which fossil-fueled extractivisms uphold ‘white patriarchal rule’. In their analysis of gendered nationalisms in the context of climate skepticism and COVID-19, Agius, Bergman Rosamond, and Kinnvall (Citation2020) argue that toxic masculinities, underpinned by ontological insecurity and appeals to victimhood (particularly amongst white men attracted by a populist message), underpin attacks on Greta Thunberg. These discourses draw on longer-term concerns about the threat that environmentalism poses to (white) masculinist capitalism (Malm and The Zetkin Collective Citation2021). Anshelm and Hultman (Citation2014), reflecting on apocalyptic climate change discourses in Sweden from 2006-2009, note the (predominantly male) climate skeptics who, portraying themselves as marginalised dissidents, opposed the encroachment of climate regulations on ‘industrial society’. In an American context, McCright and Dunlap (Citation2011) identify a ‘white male effect’ in which white conservative males are more likely to be skeptical of climate science and downplay the severity of climate-related risks. McCright and Dunlap (Citation2011) argue that this effect reflects a dismissal of knowledge claims that would threaten these individuals’ privileged status in US society. In her account of two representations of Greta Thunberg in Alberta, Canada, one a defaced mural and another depicting Thunberg as subjected to sexual violence, Keller (Citation2021) identifies how the transnational girlhood Thunberg embodies is challenged in the context of an anxious Albertan petro-masculinity (with Alberta’s ‘tar sands’ a significant source for oil extraction). Greta Thunberg, as a transnational climate activist, thus represents a direct challenge to power structures of petro-masculine extractivism (Keller Citation2021). Constructed as ‘innocent’ in the context of bully discourses, white petro-masculine elites (e.g. fossil fuel companies, climate skeptical think tanks, and nationalist politicians such as Donald Trump) can be presented as both threatened by powerful climate activists on the one hand, and as innocent and unassuming on the other (echoing the hiddenness of white power and privilege). To conclude the paper, I discuss how these discourses are contested, documenting a figure-effect of Greta Thunberg as ‘anti-bully’.
Greta Thunberg as ‘anti-bully’
Ryalls and Mazzarella (Citation2021) note that Greta Thunberg’s girlhood is key to her agency: she is working to instill hope in young people and confront the inaction of ‘adults’. In response to ableist attacks, Thunberg stated (in a tweet on August 31st, 2019): ‘When haters go after your looks and differences, it means they have nowhere left to go … I have Aspergers and that means I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And – given the right circumstances – being different is a superpower.’ Her difference, that which performs Greta Thunberg as ‘abject’ or ‘vulnerable’ in figure-effects of ‘bully and ‘bullied’, is reclaimed as a strength, ‘a superpower’. As Olesen (Citation2020) notes, for Thunberg’s supporters Aspergers reinforces the ‘hero ecology’ surrounding her (Schmitt Citation2019): it demonstrates her personal resilience, a positive resource for climate action. Greta Thunberg’s emergence as a global figure is part of broader cultural economies of ‘girl heroes’ (Taft Citation2020). Drawing comparisons with fictional figures such as Pippi Longstocking, Thunberg’s status can also be situated in Swedish cultures of heroism (Witoszek and Mueller Citation2021). As Taft (Citation2020) argues, girls have historically played significant roles in social movements, for example the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and its links to the US Civil Rights Movement, but current discourses place individual girls as leaders in a broader field of youth activism. Such discourses of the individual girl hero could reinforce neoliberal narratives of individual responsibility at the expense of collective solidarity. In the case of Greta Thunberg, her status as a ‘girl hero’ embodies particular privilege. Whilst her Aspergers is characterised as a superpower, constructed in terms of characteristics such as high intelligence (Matthews Citation2019), the ways in which this intersects with her European whiteness ensure that Thunberg is regularly foregrounded in climate activism in a way that indigenous climate activists and climate activists of colour are not (Najafi Citation2020).
The figure-effect of ‘anti-bully’ is situated in these moments of agency from Thunberg: specific examples of fight-back in bully discourses. The term ‘anti-bully’ captures that Greta Thunberg is ‘standing up to’ bullies, that she is ‘anti’ bullying in a direct sense. I argue that Thunberg’s framing of the anti-bully is framed by ironic subversion. Ridanpää (Citation2019, 732-3) defines irony as ‘the comprehending of words in the opposite way from that in which they are articulated’. Humour and irony are bodily as much as they are representational; they are embodied in the corporeal (e.g. laughter) responses of subjects of ironic subversion (Fluri Citation2019). To explore the anti-bully as a figure-effect saturated with irony, this section documents a number of Thunberg’s Twitter exchanges with Donald Trump. After an earlier tweet (September 24th, Citation2019a) in which Trump described Thunberg as a ‘very happy young girl’ with a ‘wonderful future’ after her speech to the UN Climate Action Summit, he issued another attack when she was named Time Person of the Year (December 12th, Citation2019b):
Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old-fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!
So ridiculous. Donald must work on his Anger Management problem, then go to a good old-fashioned movie with a friend! Chill, Donald, Chill!
This irony also plays out in the ways in which Melania Trump’s anti-bullying campaign, Be Best, was debated after Donald Trump’s comments about Greta Thunberg being named Time Person of the Year (Behrmann Citation2019). Melania Trump had earlier voiced her opposition to a joke about Barron Trump from Professor Pamela Karlan (based at Stanford Law School) during an impeachment hearing on December 4th (Smith Citation2019), citing Barron Trump as a child who ‘deserves privacy’ and ‘should be kept out of politics’ (Trump Citation2019c). On December 13th, Citation2019, the White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham stated that ‘the President and First Lady often communicate differently – as most married couples do. Their son is not an activist who travels the globe giving speeches.’ These exchanges arguably reiterate heteronormative tropes of the ‘mother’ and ‘wife’ as responsible for parenting, particularly as Melania Trump is expected to ‘stand up for’ Barron Trump. Speaking through the Press Secretary, Melania Trump also exercises political agency to differentiate herself from Donald Trump (highlighting their different ‘communication styles’). Whereas Donald Trump uses the trope of innocence to patronise Greta Thunberg (that she is a ‘very happy young girl’), Melania Trump downplays Thunberg’s innocence as a ‘child’, highlighting instead her identity as an ‘activist’ who travels to ‘give speeches’, something which is argued to make Thunberg a more acceptable target for these kinds of attacks. However, the fact that Melania Trump emphasises a different subject position for Thunberg (‘activist’ rather than ‘child’), one argued to increase the legitimacy for Donald Trump’s attacks, and her silence with regard to the content of Donald Trump’s tweets, suggests that although she does establish difference in ‘communication styles’, the aggressive white masculinity of Donald Trump is ultimately unchallenged in these exchanges.
The irony embedded in Greta Thunberg’s tweets, on the other hand, suggests a direct approach of ‘standing up to’ the bully. Thunberg exerts her own considerable influence as part of this relation; the ‘anti-bully’, as a figure-effect (comprised of affective, discursive, material phenomena), reflects an individuated power relation: one subject contesting bully discourses in opposition to another subject. This approach allows Thunberg to challenge Trump’s performances of white nationalist masculinity directly. By responding to Trump in particular, Thunberg can use this platform to highlight the petro-masculine structures that Trump represents, something which is more difficult for figure-effects of ‘bully’ and ‘bullied’ where these structures are obfuscated by a logic of white innocence. However, as a politics of individuation, while the figure of the anti-bully could have productive effects, inspiring others to take action against climate injustice, it could arguably obscure the broader social relationships that make climate justice possible. Although Greta Thunberg is clear that she is part of a global movement and advocates for a diversity of voices for climate justice, the emphasis on Greta Thunberg’s opposition to Trump as an individual could possibly overshadow the collective solidarities (across intersections of gender, race, age, disability) which enable this opposition to take place in the first instance. As such, it is crucial that a politics of anti-bullying includes individual subjects resisting bullying practices on the one hand, but also recognises that these acts of resistance are fundamentally enabled by, and situated within, wider collectivities of intersectional solidarity.
Conclusion
This paper has explored bully discourses in international climate politics. Drawing on feminist geopolitics as a theoretical framework (developed through Castañeda’s (Citation2002) conceptualisation of figuration), and the empirical contexts of UK (social) media coverage of Greta Thunberg and Twitter interactions between Thunberg and Donald Trump, the paper has charted three figure-effects through which bully discourses are contested: ‘bully’, ‘bullied’, and ‘anti-bully’. I have argued that, through the dislocating effects of white innocence, as well as Thunberg’s critiques of Trump’s aggressive white masculinity, individuating bullying discourses, as a geopolitics of figuration, do not fundamentally challenge structures of petro-masculine power which underpin climate injustice.
The paper therefore concludes that a politics of anti-bullying must be grounded in collective, intersectional solidarities to counter individuating, neoliberal bully discourses in international climate politics. As Butler (Citation2020, 200) notes, the obligations of nonviolence which bind human beings (and the ecosystems of which they are a part) across ‘zones of geopolitical violence’ are fundamentally social. A politics of anti-bullying should (and continue to) be based on collective solidarities of climate justice activism: social movements which include the crucial work of Greta Thunberg and Fridays for the Future and are co-constituted with intersectional challenges to racialised, gendered, aged, ableist violence. In challenging the categories of ‘bully’, ‘bystander’ and ‘bullied’ in this way, the paper does not present an argument to ‘move past’ bullying practices in climate change politics. Rather, it presents a challenge to the discursive framing of bullying as an individual problem to be responded to by individually responsible subjects. As such, any politics of anti-bullying, as a challenge to petro-masculine power, must be grounded in shared, intersectional calls for climate justice.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank three peer reviewers for their instructive suggestions for improvement of the paper. I would also like to thank Dr Sarah Budasz and Dr John Morris for their support during this paper’s evolution.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrew Telford
Andrew Telford is an Assistant Professor in European Studies (with a focus on climate change and conflict) at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the politics of climate change and security, with a particular focus on climate change, racialisation and national identity.
References
- Agius, Christine, Annika Bergman Rosamond, and Catarina Kinnvall. 2020. “Populism, Ontological Insecurity and Gendered Nationalism: Masculinity, Climate Denial and Covid-19.” Politics, Religion & Ideology 21 (4): 432–450. doi:10.1080/21567689.2020.1851871.
- Anshelm, Jonas, and Martin Hultman. 2014. “A Green Fatwā? Climate Change as a Threat to the Masculinity of Industrial Modernity.” NORMA 9 (2): 84–96. doi:10.1080/18902138.2014.908627.
- Ash, James, Rob Kitchin, and Agnieszka Leszczynski. 2018. “Digital Turn, Digital Geographies?” Progress in Human Geography 42 (1): 25–43. doi:10.1177/0309132516664800.
- Barnes, Brendon. 2021. “Reimagining African Women Youth Climate Activism: The Case of Vanessa Nakate.” Sustainability 13 (23): 13214. doi: su132313214 doi:10.3390/su132313214.
- BBC. 2019. “Greta Thunberg Named Time Person of the Year for 2019.” BBC News, December 11. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50740324.
- Behrmann, Savannah. 2019. “‘Be Best’: Melania Trump’s anti-bullying slogan trends after the president mocked Greta Thunberg.” USA Today. Accessed 15 August 2021. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/12/12/be-best-melania-trumps-anti-bullying-slogan-trends-after-president-mocked-greta-thunberg/4412325002/
- Berger, Kathleen. 2007. “Update on Bullying at School: Science Forgotten?” Developmental Review 27 (1): 90–126. doi:10.1016/j.dr.2006.08.002.
- Bergmann, Zoe, and Ringo Ossewaarde. 2020. “Youth Climate Activists Meet Environmental Governance: Ageist Depictions of the FFF Movement and Greta Thunberg in German Newspaper Coverage.” Journal of Multicultural Discourses 15 (3): 267–290. doi:10.1080/17447143.2020.1745211.
- Bevan, Luke, Thomas Colley, and Mark Workman. 2020. “Climate Change Strategic Narratives in the United Kingdom: Emergency, Extinction, Effectiveness.” Energy Research & Social Science 69: 101580. doi:10.1016/j.erss.2020.101580.
- Bialasiewicz, Luiza, and Hanna Muehlenhoff. 2020. “‘Personal Sovereignty’ in Pandemics: Or, Why Do Today’s ‘Sovereigntists’ Reject State Sovereignty.” Open Democracy, June 30. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/personal-sovereignty-in-pandemics-or-why-do-todays-sovereignists-reject-state-sovereignty/
- Bialasiewicz, Luiza, and Christina Eckes. 2021. “ ‘Individual Sovereignty’ in Pandemic Times - A Contradiction in Terms??” Political Geography 85: 102277. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102277.
- Bork-Hüffer, Tabea, Belinda Mahlknecht, and Katja Kaufmann. 2021. “(Cyber)Bullying in Schools – When Bullying Stretches across cON/FFlating Spaces.” Children’s Geographies 19 (2): 241–253. Children’s doi:10.1080/14733285.2020.1784850.
- Boulianne, Shelley, Mireille Lalancette, and David Ilkiw. 2020. “School Strike 4 Climate”: Social Media and the International Youth Protest on Climate Change.” Media and Communication 8 (2): 208–218. doi:10.17645/mac.v8i2.2768.
- Boyce, Geoffrey, Sarah Launius, Jill Williams, and Todd Miller. 2020. “Alter-Geopolitics and the Feminist Challenge to the Securitization of Climate Policy.” Gender, Place & Culture 27 (3): 394–411. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2019.1620698.
- Brydolf-Horwitz, Rachel. 2022. “Embodied and Entangled: Slow Violence and Harm via Digital Technologies.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 40 (2): 391–318. doi:10.1177/2399654418791825.
- Butler, Judith. 2020. The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bond. London: Verso.
- Castañeda, Claudia. 2002. Figurations: Child, Bodies, Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
- Chakrabortty, Aditya. 2019. “The Hounding of Greta Thunberg is Proof that the Right has Run Out of Ideas.” The Guardian, May 1. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/01/greta-thunberg-right-environmental-activist-attacks
- Chaturvedi, Sanjay, and Timothy Doyle. 2015. Climate Terror – A Critical Geopolitics of Climate Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Cillizza, Chris. 2019. “We Should All Be Appalled by Donald Trump’s Tweet about Greta Thunberg.” CNN Politics, December 13. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/12/politics/greta-thunberg-donald-trump/index.html
- Cornell, Dewey, and Susan Limber. 2015. “Law and Policy on the Concept of Bullying at School.” The American Psychologist 70 (4): 333–343. doi:10.1037/a0038558.
- Dagbovie-Williams, Sika. 2013. “Pigtails, Ponytails, and Getting Tail: The Infantilization and Hyper-Sexualization of African American Females in Popular Culture.” The Journal of Popular Culture 46 (4): 745–771. doi:10.1111/jpcu.12047.
- Daggett, Cara. 2018. “Petro-Masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 47 (1): 25–44. doi:10.1177/0305829818775817.
- Dalby, Simon. 2002. Environmental Security. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
- Dale, Helen. 2019. “The Climate Cult’s Human Shield.” The Spectator Australia, May 4. https://www.spectator.com.au/2019/05/the-climate-cults-human-shield/
- de Waal, Ariane. 2021. “More Future? Straight Ecologies in British Climate Change Theatre.” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 9 (1): 43–59. doi:10.1515/jcde-2021-0003.
- Deschamps, Ryan, and Kathleen McNutt. 2016. “Cyberbullying: What’s the Problem?” Canadian Public Administration 59 (1): 45–71. doi:10.1111/capa.12159.
- Dixon, Deborah. 2014. “The Way of the Flesh: Life, Geopolitics, and the Weight of the Future.” Gender, Place & Culture 21 (2): 136–151. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2013.879110.
- Dixon, Deborah. 2015. Feminist Geopolitics: Material States. Farnham: Ashgate
- Dowler, Lorraine, and Jo Sharp. 2001. “A Feminist Geopolitics?” Space and Polity 5 (3): 165–176. doi:10.1080/13562570120104382.
- Ebrey, Rhian, Stephen Hall, and Rebecca Willis. 2020. “Is Twitter Indicating a Change in MPs Views on Climate Change?” Sustainability 12 (24): 10334. doi:10.3390/su122410334.
- Evelyn, Kenya. 2020. “Like I Wasn’t There’: Climate Activist Vanessa Nakate on Being Erased from a Movement.” The Guardian, January 29. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/29/vanessa-nakate-interview-climate-activism-cropped-photo-davos
- Ferrari, Nick. 2019. “Our Cowardly MPs Are Paralysed by a 16-Year-Old’s Pigtails, Says NICK FERRARI.” Daily Express, April 28. https://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/nick-ferrari/1120010/greta-thunberg-donald-trump-climate-change-john-bercow
- Fluri, Jennifer. 2019. “What’s So Funny in Afghanistan? Jocular Geopolitics and the Everyday Use of Humor in Spaces of Protracted Precarity.” Political Geography 68: 125–130. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.08.011.
- Foreman, Victoria. 2015. “Constructing the Victim in the Bullying Narrative: How Bullying Discourses Affirm Rather than Challenge Discriminatory Notions of Gender and Sexuality.” Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 11 (2): 157–176. doi:10.1177/1741659015588404.
- Galitz, Tara, and Dominique Robert. 2014. “Governing Bullying through the New Public Health Model: A Foucauldian Analysis of a School anti-Bullying Programme.” Critical Public Health 24 (2): 182–195. doi:10.1080/09581596.2013.784394.
- Gökariksel, Banu, and Sara Smith. 2016. “Making America Great Again?”: The Fascist Body Politics of Donald Trump.” Political Geography 54: 79–81. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2016.07.004.
- Grisham, Stephanie. 2019. “Statement to Kate Bennett.” CNN, December 13. http://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_28861aaad2f91363625404f179ad2541
- Harraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575–599. doi:10.2307/3178066.
- Hathaway, Julia. 2020. “Climate Change, the Intersectional Imperative, and the Opportunity of the Green New Deal.” Environmental Communication 14 (1): 13–22. doi:10.1080/17524032.2019.1629977.
- Hinsliff, Gabby. 2019. “How Greta Thunberg Became the New Front in the Brexit Culture War.” The Guardian, August 17. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/17/greta-thunberg-brexit-culture-war-nigel-farage
- Hymel, Shelley, and Susan Swearer. 2015. “Four Decades of Research on School Bullying: An Introduction.” The American Psychologist 70 (4): 293–329. doi:10.1037/a0038928.
- Hyndman, Jennifer. 2019. “Unsettling Feminist Geopolitics: Forging Feminist Political Geographies of Violence and Displacement.” Gender, Place & Culture 26 (1): 3–29. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2018.1561427.
- Inwood, Joshua. 2018. “It is the Innocence Which Constitutes the Crime”: Political Geographies of White Supremacy, the Construction of White Innocence, and the Flint Water Crisis.” Geography Compass 12 (3): e12361–11. doi:10.1111/gec3.12361.
- IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2018. An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5 °C Above Pre-industrial Levels and Related Greenhouse Gas Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty. In press.
- Kaijser, Anna, and Annica Kronsell. 2014. “Climate Change through the Lens of Intersectionality.” Environmental Politics 23 (3): 417–433. doi:10.1080/09644016.2013.835203.
- Keller, Jessalynn. 2021. “This is Oil Country”: Mediated Transnational Girlhood, Greta Thunberg, and Patriarchal Petrocultures.” Feminist Media Studies 21 (4): 682–686. doi:10.1080/14680777.2021.1919729.
- Kojola, Erik. 2019. “Bringing Back the Mines and a Way of Life: Populism and the Politics of Extraction.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 109 (2): 371–381. doi:10.1080/24694452.2018.1506695.
- LeBlanc, Cameron. 2020. “When It Comes to Greta Thunberg, Trump Is Exactly Like a School Bully.” Yahoo News, January 23. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/comes-greta-thunberg-trump-exactly-133425320.html
- Li, Joyce, Wendy Craig, and Matthew Johnson. 2015. “Young Canadians’ Experiences with Electronic Bullying.” MediaSmarts, November. https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf
- Lizotte, Christopher, and Nicole Nguyen. 2020. “Schooling from the Classroom to the State: Understanding Schools as Geopolitical Sites.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 38 (5): 920–937. doi:10.1177/2399654420909396.
- Lundström, Catrin, and Benjamin Teitelbaum. 2017. “Nordic Whiteness: An Introduction.” Scandinavian Studies 89 (2): 151–158. doi:10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0151.
- Malm, Andreas, and The Zetkin Collective. 2021. White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism. London: Verso.
- Martiskainen, Mari, Stephen Axon, Benjamin Sovacool, Siddharth Sareen, Dylan Furszyfer Del Rio, and Kayleigh Axon. 2020. “Contextualizing Climate Justice Activism: Knowledge, Emotions, Motivations, and Actions among Climate Strikers in Six Cities.” Global Environmental Change 65: 102180. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102180.
- Martz, Chris. 2019. “Why Climate Bullies Are Anathema To Science.” Climate Change Dispatch, March 29. https://climatechangedispatch.com/climate-bullies-anathema-science/
- Matthews, Malcolm. 2019. “Why Sheldon Cooper Can’t Be Black: The Visual Rhetoric of Autism and Ethnicity.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 13 (1): 57–74. doi:10.3828/jlcds.2019.4.
- McCright, Aaron, and Riley Dunlap. 2011. “Cool Dudes: The Denial of Climate Change among Conservative White Males in the United States.” Global Environmental Change 21 (4): 1163–1172. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.06.003.
- Meyer, Doug. 2016. “The Gentle Neoliberalism of Modern anti-Bullying Texts: Surveillance, Intervention, and Bystanders in Contemporary Bullying Discourse.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 13 (4): 356–370. doi:10.1007/s13178-016-0238-9.
- Meyer, Doug. 2017. ““One Day I’m Going to Be Really Successful”: The Social Class Politics of Videos Made for the ‘It Gets Better’ anti-Gay Bullying Project.” Critical Sociology 43 (1): 113–127. doi:10.1177/0896920515571761.
- Mkono, Mucha, Karen Hughes, and Stella Echentille. 2020. “Hero or Villain? Responses to Greta Thunberg’s Activism and the Implications for Travel and Tourism.” Journal of Sustainable Tourism 28 (12): 2081–2098. doi:10.1080/09669582.2020.1789157.
- Mosalski, Ruth. 2019. “Ukip’s Neil Hamilton Accused of ‘Failing to Uphold Public Office’ After Twitter Attack on Greta Thunberg.” WalesOnline, July 26. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/ukip-neil-hamilton-greta-thunberg-16649047
- Mrozewicz, Anna. 2020. “The Landscapes of Eco-Noir: Reimagining Norwegian Eco-Exceptionalism in Occupied.” Nordicom Review 41 (s1): 85–105. doi:10.2478/nor-2020-0018.
- Najafi, Alast. 2020. “The Politics of Representation in the Climate Movement.” Green European Journal, July 17. https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/the-politics-of-representation-in-the-climate-movement/
- Nelson, Camilla, and Meg Vertigan. 2019. “Why Are Powerful Men So Scared of Greta Thunberg?” The Independent, October 6. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/women/greta-thunberg-climate-change-crisis-strike-austism-misogyny-protest-speech-a9127971.html
- Nguyen, Nicole. 2020. “On Geopolitics and Education: Interventions, Possibilities, and Future Directions.” Geography Compass 14 (9): 1–11. doi:10.1111/gec3.12500.
- Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Olesen, Thomas. 2020. “Greta Thunberg’s Iconicity: Performance and Co-Performance in the Social Media Ecology.” New Media & Society: 146144482097541. doi:10.1177/1461444820975416.
- Oliver, Neil. 2019. “Children Like Greta Thunberg Need Our Love and Attention, Not Manipulation.” The Times, April 28. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/children-like-greta-thunberg-need-our-love-and-attention-not-manipulation-jsxrvvhjb
- Olweus, Dan, and Susan Limber. 2018. “Some Problems with Cyberbullying Research.” Current Opinion in Psychology 19: 139–143. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.04.012.
- Olweus, Dan. 1994. “Bullying at School: Basic Facts and Effects of a School Based Intervention Programme.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines 35 (7): 1171–1190. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.1994.tb01229.x.
- Pain, Rachel. 2014. “Everyday Terrorism: Connecting Domestic Violence and Global Terrorism.” Progress in Human Geography 38 (4): 531–550. doi:10.1177/0309132513512231.
- Park, Chang Sup, Qian Liu, and Barbara Kaye. 2021. “Analysis of Ageism, Sexism, and Ableism in User Comments on YouTube Videos about Climate Activist Greta Thunberg.” Social Media + Society 7 (3): 205630512110360. doi:10.1177/20563051211036059.
- Pulido, Laura. 2016. “Flint, Environmental Racism, and Racial Capitalism.” Capitalism.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 27 (3): 1–16. doi:10.1080/10455752.2016.1213013.
- Rafaely, Daniella. 2021. “Cropped Out’: The Collaborative Production of an Accusation of Racism.” Discourse Studies 23 (3): 324–338. doi:10.1177/1461445620982096.
- Ridanpää, Juha. 2019. “Dark Humor, Irony, and the Collaborative Narritivizations of Regional Belonging.” GeoHumanities 5 (1): 69–85. doi:10.1080/2373566X.2018.1536444.
- Ringrose, Jessica, and Emma Renold. 2010. “Normative Cruelties and Gender Deviants: The Performative Effects of Bully Discourses for Girls and Boys in School.” British Educational Research Journal 36 (4): 573–596. doi:10.1080/01411920903018117.
- Ringrose, Jessica, and Victoria Rawlings. 2015. “Posthuman Performativity, Gender, and ‘School Bullying’: Exploring the Material-Discursive Intra-Actions of Skirts, Hair, Sluts, and Poofs.” Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics 3 (2): 80–37. doi:10.3384/confero.2001-4562.150626.
- Ringrose, Jessica. 2007. “Troubling Agency and ‘Choice’: A Psychosocial Analysis of Students’ Negotiations of Black Feminist ‘Intersectionality’ Discourses in Women’s Studies.” Women’s Studies International Forum 30 (3): 264–278. Women’s doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2007.04.001.
- Ringrose, Jessica. 2008. “Just Be Friends’: Exposing the Limits of Educational Bully Discourses for Understanding Teen Girls’ Heterosexualized Friendships and Conflicts.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 29 (5): 509–522. doi:10.1080/01425690802263668.
- Ryalls, Emily, and Sharon Mazzarella. 2021. “Famous, Beloved, Reviled, Respected, Feared, Celebrated:” Media Construction of Greta Thunberg.” Communication, Culture and Critique 14 (3): 438–543. doi:10.1093/ccc/tcab006.
- Sales, Nancy Jo. 2019. “Why Is the President of the United States Cyberbullying a 16-Year-Old Girl?” The Guardian, December 14. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/14/trump-president-greta-thunberg-bullying
- Schmitt, Casey. 2019. “Scapegoat Ecology: Blame, Exoneration, and an Emergent Genre in Environmentalist Discourse.” Environmental Communication 13 (2): 152–164. doi:10.1080/17524032.2018.1500386.
- Sharp, Jo. 2021. “Forensics, Materials, and Feminist Geopolitics.” Progress in Human Geography 45 (5): 990–1002. doi:10.1177/0309132520905653.
- Skilbeck, Adrian. 2020. “A Thin Net over an Abyss’: Greta Thunberg and the Importance of Words in Addressing the Climate Crisis.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 54 (4): 960–974. doi:10.1111/1467-9752.12485.
- Smith, David. 2019. “Impeachment Hearing Joke Draws Angry Response from Melania Trump – and Lays Bare America’s Divide.” The Guardian, December 4. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/04/the-smoking-pun-how-an-impeachment-witnesss-joke-laid-bare-americas-divide
- Spivak, Gayatri. 1987 [2012]. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Methuen.
- Taft, Jessica. 2020. “Hopeful, Harmless, and Heroic: Figuring the Girl Activist as Global Savior.” Girlhood Studies 13 (2): 1–17. doi:10.3167/ghs.2020.1302xx.
- Thunberg, Greta. 2019. “Tweet @GretaThunberg.” Twitter, August 31. https://twitter.com/gretathunberg/status/1167916177927991296?lang=en
- Thunberg, Greta. 2020. “Tweet @GretaThunberg.” Twitter, November 5. https://twitter.com/gretathunberg/status/1324439705522524162?lang=en
- Thunberg, Greta. 2021. “Tweet @GretaThunberg.” Twitter, January 20. https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1351890941087522820
- Tolia-Kelly, Divya. 2017. “A Day in the Life of a Geographer: Lone, Black, Female.” Area 49 (3): 324–328. doi:10.1111/area.12373.
- Trump, Donald. 2019a. “Tweet @RealDonaldTrump.” Twitter, September 24. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1176339522113679360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw.
- Trump, Donald. 2019b. “Tweet @RealDonaldTrump.” Twitter, December 12. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1205100602025545730?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw.
- Trump, Melania. 2019c. “Tweet @MelaniaTrump45Archived.” Twitter, December 4. https://twitter.com/FLOTUS45/status/1202344441924571136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1202344441924571136%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fhttps://www.newsweek.com%2Fmelania-trump-rebukes-stanford-professor-mentioning-her-13-year-old-son-minor-deserves-1475621
- Turrentine, Jeff. 2018. “Climate Deniers Are Bullies, and Science Teachers Aren’t Going to Take It Anymore.” NRDC on Earth, September 21. https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/climate-deniers-are-bullies-and-science-teachers-arent-going-take-it-anymore
- Valentine, Gill. 1998. “Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones”: A Personal Geography of Harassment.” Antipode 30 (4): 305–332. doi:10.1111/1467-8330.00082.
- Walton, Gerald, and Blair Niblett. 2013. “Investigating the Problem of Bullying through Photo Elicitation.” Journal of Youth Studies 16 (5): 646–662. doi:10.1080/13676261.2012.733810.
- Walton, Gerald. 2005. “The Notion of Bullying through the Lens of Foucault and Critical Theory.” The Journal of Educational Thought 39 (1): 55–73.
- Wekker, Gloria. 2016. White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
- Williams, Jill, and Vanessa Massaro. 2013. “Feminist Geopolitics: Unpacking (in)Security, Animating Social Change.” Geopolitics 18 (4): 751–758. doi:10.1080/14650045.2013.816842.
- Witoszek, Nina, and Martin Mueller. 2021. “The Ecological Ethics of Nordic Children’s Tales.” Environmental Ethics 43 (1): 61–78. doi:10.5840/enviroethics20215725.
- Zine, Jasmin. 2006. “Unveiled Sentiments: Gendered Islamophobia and Experiences of Veiling among Muslim Girls in a Canadian Islamic School.” Equity & Excellence in Education 39 (3): 239–252. doi:10.1080/10665680600788503.