Analysis of the Criticism and Defense of Feminism in Social DiscourseA Case of Patriarchal Protection in Sports

  1. Carolina Vázquez Rodríguez 1
  2. Carmen Martínez Martínez 2
  3. Inés Heras Pozas 3
  4. Maite Martín-Aragón Gelabert 1
  5. María del Carmen Terol Cantero 1
  1. 1 Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche
    info
    Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche

    Elche, España

    ROR https://ror.org/01azzms13

    Geographic location of the organization Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche
  2. 2 Universidad de Murcia
    info
    Universidad de Murcia

    Murcia, España

    ROR https://ror.org/03p3aeb86

    Geographic location of the organization Universidad de Murcia
  3. 3 Universidad de Salamanca
    info
    Universidad de Salamanca

    Salamanca, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02f40zc51

    Geographic location of the organization Universidad de Salamanca
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Journal:
Feminismo/s
  1. Gómez Trigueros, Isabel María (coord.)
  2. Carabias Álvaro, Mónica (coord.)

ISSN: 1696-8166,  1989-9998

Year of publication: 2025

Issue Title: Brechas digitales y competencia digital: retos de las mujeres en la sociedad digital

Issue: 45

Pages: 265-294

Type: Article

DOI: 10.14198/FEM.2025.45.10 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor HANDLE: https://hdl.handle.net/10045/150154

More publications in: Feminismo/s

Abstract

The social discourse against feminism has become broader and more explicit. This is generating a controversy that is taking shape in various spheres. Our research shows this controversy by analyzing comments made on digital versions of newspapers about a gift awarded to female squash players at a tournament in the north of Spain in 2019, which included a vibrator, an electric foot file, and hair removal wax. From forty headlines in Spanish, Latin-American and British newspapers, the obtained data set were 1,279 comments. Using a thematic analysis, the comments were classified in six subthemes: gender, offense, politics, patriarchal sexuality, context, and sponsor. The subthemes were grouped in three themes: new misogyny, sexist outrage and corporate advocacy. Two conflicting discourses, both based on two opposites men/women, equality/discrimination, show the social and political conflict in Spanish society. However, the sponsoring company is not questioned. Gender appears as a performative act whose reproduction maintains a tense relationship between what is presented as two different images of women: real/normal versus feminist. Results indicate that the comments reflect deep-rooted attitudes about gender and power, using ambivalent sexism and anti-feminist rhetoric to maintain the status quo, and how corporate sponsorship is presented as a justification mechanism. The debate focuses on the social discourse that pits the feminist model against the patriarchal one, understood as an epistemological stance. From the so-called new misogyny, which presents men as discriminated against, a false parallelism is used that misrepresents the concept of equality, accepts a pre-discursive order on women’s sexuality and neoliberalism through the defence of the corporate market.

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