Hate Speech against Women Online: Concepts and Countermeasures(Social Imaginaries)

Why are women so frequently targeted with hate speech online and what can we do about it? Psychological explanations for the problem of woman-hating overlook important features of our social world that encourage latent feelings of hostility toward women, even despite our consciously-held ideals of equality. Louise Richardson-Self investigates the woman-hostile norms of the English-speaking internet, the ‘rules’ of engagement in these social spaces, and the narratives we tell ourselves about who gets to inhabit such spaces. It examines the dominant imaginings (images, impressions, stereotypes, and ideas) of women that are shared in acts of hate speech, highlighting their ‘emotional stickiness’. But offering strategies through which we may reimagine our norms of online engagement, the stories that justify those norms, and the logic that makes sense of it all, this book shows how we can create alternative visions of what it means to take up online space as a woman and to ensure that women are seen as entitled to be there. By exploring aspects of ‘social imaginaries’ theory and applying it to the problem of hate speech against women online, this book illuminates why woman-hating has become such a prominent feature of this environment and how we can make these spaces safer for women.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Hate Speech Against Women Online Chapter 1: Social Imaginaries and Imagined Subjects Chapter 2: Sexual Imaginaries Chapter 3: Conceptualising Hate Speech Chapter 4: Analysing Hate Speech Against Women Online Chapter 5: Countermeasures Against Online Hate Speech Chapter 6: Challenging Images of Cyberspace Conclusion: Imaginal (R)Evolution

About the Author :
Louise Richardson-Self is lecturer in philosophy and gender studies at the University of Tasmania. She currently holds two prestigious Australian Research Council grants investigating women’s and queer rights and in 2019 she was the recipient of the Annette Baier Prize awarded by the Australasian Association of Philosophy for most outstanding philosophical paper published by an Australasian woman in 2018. In 2017, she was a Residential Research Fellow with the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute’s Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. In 2016, she was awarded the Australian Academy of the Humanities’ Max Crawford Medal, Australia’s most prestigious early-career award for achievement and promise in the humanities. She is the author of Justifying Same-Sex Marriage: A Philosophical Investigation (2015).

Review :
This book is a superb analysis of the urgent matter of online hate speech, particularly online misogyny. It asks the questions: what does such the speech do, who does it do it to, and how can it be countered? Richardson-Self approaches this through the framework of the social imaginary and articulates the damaging ,and often pre-reflective, imaginaries which both enable such speech and which it reinforces and reproduces. She convincingly demonstrates that such practices of abuse damage groups and not just individuals and explores the range of strategies, legal and other which can be employed to counter such damage. This includes the search for counter imaginings which can take affective hold. There are no easy solutions but we all need this book to get clear exactly what is at issue and to creatively inform our pathways of resistance. This is sophisticated philosophical analysis applied in an exemplary way to one of the key issues of our times. This timely and thought-provoking book presents a brilliant and compelling analysis of online hate speech against women. At the same time, it offers an innovative yet pragmatic approach to ameliorating the harm inflicted by contemporary digital imaginaries. Richardson-Self is at the forefront of an emergent counter-imaginary movement that speaks back to spiteful power with force and dignity.