Intersectional Misrepresentations of ‘Noncompliant’ Women as a Driver of Polarisation

The next speakers at I-POLHYS 2024 are Elena Pavan and Antonio Martella, whose interest is in polarised intersectionality in online debates, where exclusion is often weaponised. This shifts our understanding of political polarisation beyond (party-) political actors, and instead centres on the interlocking dimensions of oppression and discrimination along multiple aspects of identity that are operationalised in polarised debate.

Polarisation on intersectional aspects is not necessarily aligned with a simple left/right political spectrum, but proceeds by valorising specific in-group identities and excluding the identities of out-groups that are positioned as undesirable and unacceptable. This exclusion is often carried out on the bodies of women, through intersectional misrepresentations that are crafted across the ideological spectrum and instrumentalists – and weaponised – against political opponents.

The project explored such polarised debates on Twitter in the context of several recent debates in Italy, using a network approach that identified clusters of users who had retweeted the same tweets; these were interpreted as semantic communities, and analysed for their ideological leanings based on the key actors in such clusters. Tweets were also analysed through topic modelling (with particular focus on how these communities represented women) and semantic analysis (to identify the aims and targets of these communities and assess their use of ideological and affective polarisation rhetoric).

This confirmed the instrumental use of women’s identity for political purposes in these communities. Right-wing groups circulate intersectional misrepresentations of women, while left-wing groups respond to such attaches in ‘defending counterpublics’; intersectional aspects are relevant in the construction of political otherness, then, and attacks often centre on ‘noncompliant’ women who refuse to follow traditional gender stereotypes. Such attacks are collectively challenged by mainstream parties, but this also engenders affective polarisation. This can foster a process of co-radicalisation, and also marginalises women as a subject of their own stories.