Protesting Gender by Anna Lavizzari

Author:Anna Lavizzari [Lavizzari, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology, Gender Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies
ISBN: 9781000767926
Google: ekPBDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-12-06T04:59:33+00:00

5

Gender panic! Framing and discursive strategies

Introduction

Social movement framing has been recognized in the literature as a strategic process in which the range of choices around frames, audiences and message dissemination are all part of the same plan of action (Benford and Snow 2000; Maney et al. 2012). Activists implement strategies concerning the issues to pursue, the stakes and the claims, and how to frame them in order to press their demands effectively. The multi-level context and the arena of claim-making influence these strategies and push them in different directions (Ayoub and Chetaille 2017), depending on the presence and positioning of authorities, opponents, potential allies, public opinion, cultural and institutional norms. In other words, “[t]he framing of problems, events, and issues by social movement entrepreneurs does not go uncontested in the political arena” (Johnston and Noakes 2005: 16). In this contested political arena, opposing movements typically affect framing choices in both direct and indirect ways, as they “compete to construct frames that will gain media attention, appeal to the public and mobilize supporters” (Meyer and Staggenborg 2012: 12). As I attempt to emphasize in this chapter, interactionist dynamics affect the framing strategies adopted by each side, especially in the selection of issues and solutions they pursue, but also through processes of mutual evaluation (Mathieu 2012), imitation/mirroring (Staggenborg 1991) and diversification (Ayoub and Chetaille 2017). In the literature on opposing movements, the struggle around sexual and reproductive rights has been examined as a prominent example of framing contests in which each side is continuously adjusting its own forms of organization, tactics and discourses to the choices, successes and failures of the opponent (Staggenborg 1991; Meyer and Staggenborg 1996). Not only, as Ayoub and Chetaille have noticed, “while movements and countermovements thus make framing shifts in relation to each other, they also do in response to the discursive opportunity provided by various settings in which they are embedded – namely ones at local, national and transnational levels” (2017: 2).

Through frame analysis, I therefore intend to investigate the public narratives and collective action frames on gender and sexuality that have been strategically constructed and conveyed by movements’ leaders and activists. An increasing number of works have focused on the analysis of the discursive field in the context of the anti-gender campaigns, paying particular attention to the arguments advanced by anti-gender players (see Paternotte and Kuhar 2018 for a review across international cases; Garbagnoli and Prearo 2017 for the Italian case). It is now established that many of the tropes used by the traditionalist movement have traveled across borders, to then be declined to specific national contexts. As mentioned, many of the frames discussed in the Italian context are common in most states, and have been carefully theorized by other scholars too. My aim is therefore to present a dialogical analysis of the frames of protest highlighting the ways in which the LGBTIQ movement and its opponents have produced their strategies in interaction with one another, and particularly the co-creation of a discursive field on gender and sexuality in Italy within the time frame of the contention under analysis.

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