Hate speech is defined in EU law as the public incitement to violence or hatred on the basis of certain characteristics, including race, colour, religion, descent and national or ethnic origin. While the EU Framework Decision on combating racism and xenophobia covers only racist and xenophobic speech, there is agreement that the list should be read as open-ended and most Member States have extended their national laws to other grounds such as sexual orientation, gender identity and disability. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) also explicitly refers to sex, gender and gender identity in their General Policy Recommendation Nº 15 on combating hate speech, also including intersectionality, stating that they are “conscious of the particular problem and gravity of hate speech targeting women both on account of their sex, gender and/or gender identity and when this is coupled with one or more of their other characteristics” (ECRI, 2016).

Hostility and hate speech are complex social, cultural and psychological phenomena (KhosraviNik and Esposito 2018), which can be defined as spreading two types of parallel messages. One is directed to the targeted group, aiming to dehumanise and diminish them, attacking the very core of human dignity (Waldron, 2012). The other message targets those with similar views, reinforcing a sense of a group as opposed to and threatened by “the other” whilst uniting this group of like-minded persons. In this sense, hate speech both divides and unites at the same time (Gagliardone et al. 2015).

At the same time, new technologies can be constitutive of new social dynamics, but also reproduce older structures and conditions. That is, power, contestation, inequality, and hierarchies inscribe digital spaces, in complex imbrications of technology and society (Sassen, 2002). This means that the embeddedness of the web is also gendered, however, with a great variability by place, age, class, race, nationality, issue-orientation. So as argued recently for instance by Harmer and Lumsden (2019), the internet in itself cannot be analysed as a neutral space. This means that in our contemporary world, online interactions are influenced by the very structure and algorithms of the digital spaces, whilst at the same time, hate discourses are amplified by some of the specific affordances of the participatory web (KhosraviNik and Esposito, 2018).

The absence of gender from most institutional definitions of hate speech highlights the institutional unwillingness to acknowledge gender as a social factor that, per se, can trigger hate (Titley, 2012; KhosraviNik and Esposito, 2018). There are several factors that may contribute to this: on the one hand, the assumption that gender equality has already been achieved may account for the reluctance to define sexist speech as hate speech (Lillian, 2007). Further, while hate speech targets “members of vulnerable minorities” (Waldron, 2012: 5) the same cannot be argued for the whole group of women (Lillian, 2007). However, as Khosravinik and Esposito argue, these assumptions fail to account for the many ways in which women are targeted by violent speech within what can be regarded as one of the “most complex and pervasive system[s] of oppression” (Lazar, 2007: 143).

Despite the definition of “gender violence” in the Spanish legal framework as violence within a (heteronormative) couple or ex-couple, this project adheres to a broader definition of this concept, following the Istanbul Convention, which defines gender-based violence as “all violence against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately”. Any online form of gendered violence replicates and extends the gendered power relations that pre-date digital communications technologies (KhosraviNik and Esposito, 2018). As Lewis (2016) observes, the conceptualisation of online abuse as distinct from real-world contexts is problematic, as a technologically deterministic approach views aggressive communications as resulting mainly from the technology used, and its affordances. Rather, it needs to be conceived as part of the continuum of sexual violence (as coined by Liz Kelly, 1987), referring to the various forms of abuse, coercion and force that men use to control women. From this perspective, sexual violence, whether in the shape of gender-based hate speech or a physical transgression is understood as both a manifestation and tool of gendered power relations. As highlighted by Stanko (1985), this continuum of violations results in women being ‘continually on guard’ in relation to the possible threat of (male) violence. Within this project we would add to this perspective the experiences of LGBT persons and especially trans women.

Roiha, M. (2023) «El Discurso de odio online por razón de género: Percepciones, categorizaciones y contradicciones». En Jubany, O.; Roca, J. y Mancinelli, F. (eds). (2023). Categorias Desboradadas. Cuestionando etiquetas, jerarquías y alteridades. Edicions Bellaterra

El discurso de odio por razón de género en los espacios digitales (Orientaciones para cuerpos de seguridad y otros profesionales) [Spanish]

Silenced Voices (Policy Brief) [Spanish] [English]

Jubany, O. & Lázaro Castellanos, R. (2019) Virtual Platforms, Real Racism: Online Hate Speech in Europe in Flubacher, M-C & Hägi-Mead, S. Taboo and Transgression Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Migration, Integration, and Diversity, Technische Universität Dresden

Jubany, O. & Roiha, M. (2018) Las palabras son armas. Discurso de odio en la red. Barcelona: Edicions UB.