Online discourses of violence against men: portrayals of neglect, discrimination and equality gone too far

Discourses that highlight men's victimisation, specifically in intimate relations, have become increasingly widespread in the last two decades. Such discourses are reproduced with the most vigour in online contexts, where they are frequently accompanied by anti-feminist rhetoric, specifically among the loose, globally influential network of actors and sites constituting the so-called manosphere. In this chapter, I demonstrate how anti-feminist rhetoric on men's victimisation is constructed and how it functions in online discussions that focus on intimate partner violence committed by women toward men. The online discussions come from Finland, a country with both a high prevalence of men's violence against women and a national image as a gender-equal welfare state. I illustrate how the portrayals of men in online discussions employ widely available discourses concerning both intimate partner violence and contemporary gender relations in western societies, and how they gain affective and discursive force to influence public understandings of these issues. I conclude with a discussion on the kinds of masculinities evoked through these portrayals, where seemingly contradictory characterisations of men's victimhood are mobilised with efforts to retain men's powerful position in relation to women, and thus to reinforce gendered hierarchies.