CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Karro, Piret |
|---|---|
| Title | 'You're being hysterical' and 'This is a Witch-Hunt': Discourses discrediting Gender in Estonian Media |
| Summary | This thesis analyses the terms ‘hysteria’ and ‘witch-hunt’ as analytical categories in the theoretical framework of the anti-gender discourse. I locate the anti-gender discourse in the Estonian context, drawing out its main tactics: self-victimization, being triggered by specific events, and instrumentalising the anti-communist and nationalist elements that are embedded in the social and historical context that the anti-gender actors operate in. Then, I conduct case studies on events in Estonia where the use of ‘hysteria’ and ‘witch-hunt’ has become particularly salient. In the case of ‘hysteria’, I analyse the media coverage of a theatre director’s act of violence against a woman, the media coverage of a feminist campaign condemning the further platforming of this person, and the public anti-feminist outcry that followed in 2017–2018. These events were a part of establishing ‘hysteria’ in the Estonian public discourse as a tactic to discredit gender and obstruct further criticism of violence against women. In the case of ‘witch-hunt’, I analyse the media coverage of the far-right populist party EKRE upon their admission to the Parliament of Estonia in 2015. I look at the political criticism that EKRE’s members received for using racist language and advocating for fascism, and their tactic of titling this criticism ‘a witch-hunt’, comparable with Donald Trump’s use of the term. I draw out how the ‘witch-hunt’ discourse has structural similarities with the anti-gender discourse and how it appropriates a historical gender order in order to diffuse accountability of politically powerful men. The aim of the analysis I conduct in this thesis is to explore how gender has become discredited in a broader sense than the particular anti-gender campaigns observed in the existing literature. I also aim to explore the implications of the normalisation of this discrediting and articulate the tactics that the discourses of ‘hysteria’ and ‘witch-hunt’ entail. |
| Supervisor | Barát, Erzsébet and Zentai, Violetta |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/karro_piret.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University