Gendered Hate Speech in Swiss WhatsApp Messages

Language, Gender and Hate Speech A Multidisciplinary Approach ◽

10.30687/978-88-6969-478-3/003 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Larissa Binder ◽

Simone Ueberwasser ◽

Elisabeth Stark

Keyword(s):

Hate Speech ◽

Swiss German ◽

Manual Analysis ◽

Gender Specific

This paper provides a first manual analysis of the use of 14 gender-specific swear words in Swiss WhatsApp messages in (Swiss) German, French and Italian. We will show that gender-specific swear words only concern non-participants of the discourse when used offensively, in our data. When such items are directly addressed to the interlocutor, they are rather used ironically or even hypocoristically. Furthermore, we will show that gendered hate speech in this context is not a matter of mutual discrimination by the two sexes, but that Swiss WhatsApp users also refer to people of their own sex using gender-specific swear words.

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Invoking the Secular: Gendered Delineations of Muslim Belonging in Switzerland

Entangled Religions ◽

10.46586/er.11.2020.8645 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Mirjam Aeschbach

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

Sexual Violence ◽

Gender Equality ◽

Fault Line ◽

Swiss German ◽

Joint Declaration ◽

German Speaking ◽

Gender Specific

In contemporary public discourses across Europe, concepts of religion and secularity are drawn on in delineations of national ‘selfs’ and acceptable Muslim positionalities. Based on six Swiss-German media outputs discussing Islam in Switzerland in 2016, I argue that concepts of the ‘secular’ as progressive and the ‘religious’ as potentially dangerous, disruptive and as currently arriving from the outside, shape images of national identity and belonging in Switzerland. Analyzing the entanglements of these images with gendered issues, such as gender equality as tied to ‘secular’, male (sexual) violence and the oppression of women as inherently ‘religious’ and particularly Muslim, I illustrate the specific positionalities that mark the fault line between acceptable and unacceptable Muslimness. In this context, the joint declaration of the group Secular Muslims is introduced as an example of how gender-specific views associated with current normative notions of the ‘secular’ are invoked to declare belonging to German-speaking Europe.

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