When rage is not feminist: processes of cooptation and delegitimization

Abstract

Discourses of feminist digital activism show how anger, can be productive. There is, however, another kind of anger, which is antifeminist, although it is expressed by women. The article explores the mediation of anger through different discursive positions enunciated from anti-feminist positions by Carla Toscano, Macarena Olona and Rocío Monasterio, three of the political representatives of the Spanish far-right party Vox. We explore the messages sent from their X accounts during the period between September 1 2021 when the parliamentary process of the Only Yes Means Yes Law began- and March 7 2023 when the Congress of Deputies voted to take into consideration the bill presented by the Socialist Party We gathered a sample of 862 tweets by applying a series of structural methodological criteria to the total of 8,510 tweets collected from the three accounts of VOX’s women politicians which reduced the sample to 177 tweets. The resulting sample was analyzed through critical discourse analysis from a model considering the three dimensions that discursively structure the women’s rage. We were able to identify the discursive mechanisms involved in the expression of legitimized rage and how it operates to undermine and co-opt feminist anger.