Justina Berškytė

Misogyny online is not simply offensive speech at scale—it is a coordinated, systemic practice of silencing. Drawing on feminist analyses of misogyny as the “law enforcement branch” of patriarchy Manne (Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. Oxford: Oxford University, 2018), and extending work in speech act theory (Langton 22 (4): 293–330, 1993; McGowan 29 (2): 458–473, 2014; Caponetto 40 (1): 191–202, 2021), this paper argues that the sheer volume of online misogyny silences women. Platform affordances, especially algorithmic amplification and the rapid formation of ad hoc hostile groups (Barnes 25 (2): 251–281, 2023), transform misogynistic hostility into an environment where women’s speech is not merely contested but actively erased. We identify three systematic modes of silencing: locutionary silencing (women are deterred from speaking at all), illocutionary silencing (women’s speech is not recognised as what it is), and sincerity silencing (women’s speech is recognised but discredited as inauthentic). We argue that far from being side-effects of individual prejudice, these forms of silencing are built into the architecture of digital discourse. We proceed by showing how online hostility is made frictionless and rewarding for misogynists, producing predictable patterns of silencing. This phenomenon raises urgent normative concerns: when half the population is structurally constrained from full participation, public discourse itself becomes an echo chamber for patriarchal norms. We conclude that counter-speech, though important, is insufficient without structural reforms to platform design.

Derogatory language is studied by philosophers of language, linguists, and social and political philosophers. Paradigmatic forms of derogatory language include pejoratives and slurs. These are conventionally used to refer to and evaluate individuals, with the evaluative component being derogatory. Both pejoratives and slurs are expressive devices. They differ from each other in scope, function, and social impact. A unified analysis of pejoratives and slurs is challenging because they do not fit into a single linguistic category. In discussing some difficulties in classifying pejoratives and slurs, we highlight their linguistic properties and existing theoretical frameworks. We also devote space to the harms and effects on the social world carried over by slurs.

Indexical contextualism (IC) is an account of predicates of personal taste (PPTs) which views the semantic content of PPTs as sensitive to the context in which they are uttered, by virtue of their containing an implicit indexical element. Should the context of utterance change, the semantic content carried by the PPT will also change. The main aim of this paper is to show that IC is unable to provide a satisfactory account of PPTs. I look at what I call “pure” IC accounts and show that because they fail to respect empirical data regarding disagreements where neither person is at fault, known as “faultless disagreements”, they must be rejected. I then go on to consider what I call IC “plus” (IC+) accounts. Such accounts attempt to account for the faultlessness of such disagreements using a simple indexical semantics, whilst introducing some extra ingredient to account for the disagreement part. I focus on two main versions of IC+: Gutzmann’s (in: Meier, van Wijnberger-Huitink (eds) Subjective meaning: alternatives to relativism, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2016) expressivist account, and López de Sa’s (in: García-Carpintero, Kölbel (eds) Relative truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008; Erkenntnis 80(Supp 1):153–165, 2015) presuppositional account. I discuss some internal worries with these accounts before going on to some final remarks about IC/ic+ in general. I conclude that neither IC nor IC+ can provide a satisfactory semantics for PPTs.

This paper argues that debates concerning gender terms and context sensitivity should take into account retraction, i.e., the ability to take back a previously true assertion of one’s gender identity. We begin by rejecting the intuition that gender terms should vary in truth value based on the “medical” and “bathroom” scenarios, where a trans woman (or man) should be classed as a woman (or man) in the latter, but not the former because she (or he) lacks certain organs (e.g. cervix or testicles). Assigning authority to self-identification, we hold that if someone identifies as a woman in bathroom scenarios she should also be classed as a woman in medical scenarios. Instead, we draw support for context sensitivity of gender terms from retraction data. We take gender retraction to be supported by the testimonies of trans people. Specifically, we explore the less discussed Later in Life narrative where individuals come to realise their true gender identities later in life. After demonstrating the shortfalls of existing contextualist accounts of retraction, we present a novel version of semantic relativism - Gender Relativism - that is faithful to gender testimonies. Our view accounts for retraction, takes into consideration self-identification and explains why transphobic denials of an individual’s gender testimony are false.

We admit concepts like ‘sexual harassment’ into our collective hermeneutical pool, yet hesitate to do the same with the incel notion of ‘blackpill’ or ‘monkeybranching.’ Why this disparity? Incels present themselves as marginalized, and their own efforts to create new conceptual tools as legitimate responses to such marginalization. At face value, such a standpoint aligns with anti-oppression epistemologies, according to which we should take conceptual contributions from marginalized groups seriously. This raises the question whether the ‘incel standpoint’ warrants consideration, and whether our reluctance to do so is driven by an a priori moral condemnation of their political agenda. One response is to simply reject that incels are meaningfully marginalized. This paper takes a different approach. We accept that incels suffer marginalization in some important respects, yet suggest that it is nevertheless possible to distinguish, in a non-arbitrary way, genuine attempts to overcome what Miranda Fricker calls hermeneutical injustice from conceptual innovations which merely reinforce dominant ideologies, or even constitute forms of self-deception. Thus, it is possible to accept the marginalization of incels yet have good reasons to be sceptical about their conceptual and interpretive innovations. We do so, first, by putting forward a novel understanding of what hermeneutical empowerment consists in; second, by offering three criteria to assess conceptual engineering efforts. The two proposals, combined, enable a more robust (i.e. less arbitrary and less moralized) way to assess conceptual innovations. This approach can, in principle, apply to cases beyond that of incels.

In this paper, we explore how taboos act as drivers for reproducing countercultures. We define taboo utterances as those that either constitute socially prohibited acts (e.g., slurs), express elements of a prohibited ideology (e.g., claims advocating the subjugation of women), or promote socially prohibited actions (e.g., violence against women). We show how in certain communities, taboo utterances are not only tolerated but become highly rewarded in that they function as mechanisms of resistance and identity formation. We examine this dynamic in incel communities (involuntary celibates) as a case-study. We show how by embracing taboos, incels not only signal their rejection of mainstream norms and values, but primarily seek to forge a shared ideology and a group identity. This requires an explanation of how and why taboos can be repurposed to gain value within incel counterculture. We propose that one such explanation is the driver for social status. We argue that exploiting taboos becomes a currency of status for incels: they gain acceptance and approval within the community, and this in turn creates an arms race to become more and more transgressive and extreme. We explain this via the creation of ideological roles that serve to justify and rationalise overt extreme misogyny. We conclude with brief ethical considerations about normalizing misogyny in incel communities and spilling over into mainstream culture.

This paper identifies a novel function of slurs—compensatory manhood acts (CMAs)—alongside their more widely recognised subordinating, weaponised, and insider/outsider functions. CMAs occur when men perceive their masculinity as being under threat and respond by engaging in hypermasculine behaviours, including the use of misogynistic and homophobic slurs. Drawing on sociological findings, we argue that in their compensatory function, slurs are effective tools to restore status, assert dominance, and maintain hegemonic masculinity. Using a conventionalist framework for speech acts, we argue that CMSAs are illocutionary acts in their own right, separate from but interwoven with other functions of slurs. We conclude by raising the theoretical question of how multiple illocutionary forces can coexist in a single utterance and suggest that illocutionary relativism may provide a fruitful approach to understanding these speech acts.

Incels (involuntary celibates) are part of a broader misogynistic culture known as the manosphere. Some communities within the manosphere, including incels, promote gender-based violence through misogynistic rhetoric and ideology. Incels are men who struggle to form romantic relationships and thus seek solace in online forums to find a sense of purpose and community. The community is organised around an ideology and a hierarchical classification of members. This paper presents a computational linguistic analysis of the utterances made within the community. We analyse the linguistic patterns of six different ranks of users: paragons, high-rank users, low-rank users, greycels, banned users, and self-banned/deleted users. We conducted an analysis of the sentiments expressed between ranks and of the affective attitude of posters when discussing a variety of topics. We then we analysed linguistic features, also conditioned on the rank of the poster. These analyses reveal qualitative differences between users of different ranks in how they express themselves and their sentiments. Finally, we trained models based on the linguistic features of users’ posts and show that already based on this information it is possible to predict the rank of users. Overall, our results indicate that the incel community has developed distinctive linguistic patterns to disseminate their ideology and that these linguistic patterns vary according to the rank of an incel within the community. This methodology offers a robust framework for studying similar echo chamber-like communities.

This paper provides a theory of how language is used in projects of resistance, whether this be towards actual or merely perceived oppression. The theory is based on the idea of social roles, which have previously been used to explain the offence caused by slur terms (Popa-Wyatt and Wyatt 2018). We examine two types of resistance projects. The first is a reclamation project. This consists in re-purposing existing slur words and associating them with new roles. The second project is neologism. This creates new words and uses them to create new roles. To explain both projects of resistance, we use the idea of role revision. In reclamation projects, when members of the target group use a slur term among themselves, this creates conditions to revise the subordinate role assigned by the slur into a positive role with the potential for re-empowerment. The neologism projects employ a similar mechanism of role revision with different effects. An example of neologistic resistance against perceived oppression is that occurring within incel communities (involuntary celibates). Incel communities have a sense of social stigmatization and incel individuals perceive themselves as being in subordinate roles relative to women and other men. In response, they construct an ideology which aims to provide moral comfort and a promise of future reward. Critical to this ideology are new (ideological) roles, associated with new words, which promise to improve the social status of incels. We argue that this type of neologism project has similarities to insular reclamation in that both projects aim to transform subordinated roles into positive ones.

Expressive terms (damn, fuck, bastard) are said to convey speakers’ attitudes and feelings. These can be positive or negative, depending on the context. In this paper, I focus on the property of expressives that I take to be of the most importance: descriptive ineffability. Descriptive ineffability is a property of expressive terms for which no suitable descriptive paraphrase can be found that captures the full meaning of the expressive. In the face of arguments that attempt to show either that descriptive terms also carry this feature or that expressives (at least in some instances) can be effable, I defend the idea that descriptive ineffability is unique to expressives. I end the paper by considering what descriptive ineffability can teach us about expressive terms.

Indexical contextualism (IC) is an account of predicates of personal taste (PPTs) which views the semantic content of PPTs as sensitive to the context in which they are uttered, by virtue of their containing an implicit indexical element. Should the context of utterance change, the semantic content carried by the PPT will also change. The main aim of this paper is to show that IC is unable to provide a satisfactory account of PPTs. I look at what I call “pure” IC accounts and show that because they fail to respect empirical data regarding disagreements where neither person is at fault, known as “faultless disagreements”, they must be rejected. I then go on to consider what I call IC “plus” (IC+) accounts. Such accounts attempt to account for the faultlessness of such disagreements using a simple indexical semantics, whilst introducing some extra ingredient to account for the disagreement part. I focus on two main versions of IC+: Gutzmann’s (in: Meier, van Wijnberger-Huitink (eds) Subjective meaning: alternatives to relativism, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2016) expressivist account, and López de Sa’s (in: García-Carpintero, Kölbel (eds) Relative truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008; Erkenntnis 80(Supp 1):153–165, 2015) presuppositional account. I discuss some internal worries with these accounts before going on to some final remarks about IC/IC+ in general. I conclude that neither IC nor IC+ can provide a satisfactory semantics for PPTs.

Semantic relativism maintains that the truth-value of some propositions is sensitive to a judge parameter, facilitating cases whereby a proposition can be true relative to one judge, but false relative to another. Most prominently, semantic relativism has been applied to predicates of personal tastes (PPTs). Recently, Lasersohn [2007. “Expressives, Perspective and Presupposition.” Theoretical Linguistics 33 (2): 223–230; 2017. Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press] has urged an extension of semantic relativism to terms traditionally construed as expressives including derogatory epithets (e.g. ‘asshole’) and, more tentatively, expressions like ‘damn’. In this paper, we challenge Lasersohn’s extension of relativism. Section 1 gives a background on semantic theories for expressives and on semantic relativism. In Section 2, we focus on Lasersohn’s [2007. “Expressives, Perspective and Presupposition.” Theoretical Linguistics 33 (2): 223–230] account where he attempts to apply relativism to a wider range of expressives. We argue that because PPTs and expressives have fundamentally different semantic functions, the prospects for a relativistic account are slim. Several problems are presented. Our focus is on the perspective sensitivity of expressive content and the phenomenon of projection failure, as both reveal a fundamental disparity between expressives and PPTs.

Expressives are words that convey speakers’ attitudes towards a particular object or situation. Consider two examples:Attributive: That f**khead Jeremy forgot the turkey.Predicative: Jeremy is a f**khead. In both examples the word f**khead communicates some expressive content - the negative attitude of the speaker. However, only in Predicative does it appear to contribute to the truth-conditional content. The task is to explain the semantics of the word f**khead when it seemingly behaves wildly differently in different syntactic positions. In this paper I consider several good candidates for dealing with f**khead occurring in Predicative position: Expressivist and Descriptive approaches that treat f**khead in Predicative as purely descriptive; and Expressive-Contextualism that treats Predicative as communicating to both expressive and descriptive dimensions. I show that none of the options fully capture the meaning of f**khead. Treating Predicative as purely descriptive leaves out the highly important expressive element, whilst Contextualist semantics does not seem as a suitable descriptive theory for expressives. I finally present a novel hybrid account that combines Expressivist semantics with Relativism. I call this view Expressive-Relativism. I show that by adopting Expressive-Relativism we can not only explain the relationship of f**khead in Attributive and Predicative, but also give a suitable descriptive theory that captures the truth-conditions of Predicative.

In this paper we motivate and develop a new approach to predicates of personal taste within the framework of semantic relativism. Our primary goal is to explain faultless disagreement—the phenomenon where two parties disagree, yet both have uttered something true—which is often thought to arise from the use of predicates of personal taste. We combine semantic relativism with an expressivist semantics to yield a novel hybrid theory which we call _Expressive-Relativism_. We motivate the theory by rehearsing a famous objection to Relativism from Frege which we interpret as severing the connection between contradiction and disagreement for relativists. Endorsing the objection, we respond by enriching relativism with an expressivist component which explains disagreement over matters of taste as a refusal to share perspectives rather than as resting on contradiction.