Metaphor and sexuality

a discursive analysis of antifeminists posts on social media

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the functioning of the antifeminist discourse, notably on the effects of meanings around the discursive object “sexual revolution” whose origin can be related to the feminist discourse. The theoretical and methodological framework is Materialist Discourse Analysis, the works of Michel Pêcheux (1988; 1990; 1999; 2006; 2011; 2014) and his group. The corpus consists of four publications collected on self-titled antifeminist pages, hosted on Instagram and Facebook. From these publications, we highlight discursive sequences (COURTINE, 2009) that resume the object “sexual revolution” and we identify: a chain of signifiers that in the antifeminist discourse metaphorizes it in “liberation”, “libertinage”, “promiscuity” and a set of supposed negative consequences of the feminist movement for women and, consequently, for society. We conclude that women's sexuality emerges in antifeminist discursivity in a relationship of frank opposition to what was/is defended by feminist discursivity and with neoconservative and neoliberal ideological formation.