Contemporary Digitalized Gender Politics: Sociological Thinking on Gender and Sexualities in Communication

Dear Colleagues,

Contemporary societies are deeply mediatized, a process that encompasses even those who do not, or cannot, access media technologies—this is particularly evident when considering how digital media, with its supposed ability to transcode any other form of representation or communication, operates. While some theorists from the late 20th century saw networked digital media as a way to overcome, or trouble, the norms often associated with the gendering of bodies, or viewed technology as a means of creating a globalized experience of commonality and empathy, recent years have provided ample evidence to the contrary. Neofascist movements, purported “men’s rights activists”, anti-trans mobilizations, right-wing populism, reinforced border controls, hyperbolic discourses about generative language and image models, and much more are all phenomena partly fueled by the technical and social affordances of widespread digital media; that is, digital media are co-constitutive of these dynamics, not merely modes of expressing or representing them. Under platform capitalism, these processes are further entangled with profit-driven logics of extraction and engagement, as platforms commodify attention, amplify antagonism, and algorithmically shape new contours by which oppression and discrimination are enacted.

Building on this dynamic, tech fascism arises through aesthetic and emotional cues that subtly reinforce gender hierarchies. Digital platforms create spaces where feelings of intimacy, nostalgia, and hyper-feminine visual styles reframe traditional gender norms as sources of comfort and stability, while hyper-masculine styles sell the promise of strength and dominion (over one’s own body, first and foremost). What seems like harmless lifestyle imagery serves as a data-driven mechanism that upholds patriarchal expectations, optimized for visibility and engagement. Thus, gendered performances are not just personal expressions, they are algorithmically curated artefacts that replicate power relations while appearing individualized, apolitical, and visually appealing.

In all these contexts, though sometimes in less obvious ways, gender/sex and sexualities have been instrumental in shaping the surrounding political dynamics. Right-wing populists decry ‘the gay agenda’; legislators define ex cathedra, which sexes are biologically ‘real’ or not; social media platforms and generative systems collect, analyze and (re)produce certain perspectives or experiences of genders and sexualities; and queer and Global South activists push back against epistemicide, articulate strategies of survival, and continue to reinvent non-hegemonic projects of contemporary intimacies.

In Europe, in particular, celebrations of LGB(TQ+) rights sit side by side with unscientific probing and testing of professional athletes, high-tech surveillance systems intended to keep (some) migrants out, reports of ‘medical anal inspections’ for refugees seeking asylum from sexual orientation-related persecution, and profits of millions in sales of weaponry to genocidal nations. Again, we find here the promise of data (understood as objectivity and truth)—made possible at scale by digitalization—as a central political strategy and praxis.

As digital infrastructures increasingly mediate the most intimate dimensions of life—touch, desire, care, and identity—our bodies become entangled with the logics of data extraction, surveillance, and algorithmic governance. Such processes are not governed by the logics of the technologies alone, but also (or perhaps mostly) by the political economies underpinning them, and their profit-maximizing imperatives. As economic trends start to emerge in relation to those technologies, so do questions about whether we find ourselves in a state of (post-industrial) capitalism, in post-capitalism, or in technofeudalism.

This Special Issue invites contributions that examine how intimacies, bodies, and desires are shaped, commodified, and disciplined by technological systems and the global political economy that sustains them. This includes contributions that do not foreclose or minimize the role that individualized agency or feelings thereof play in the uptake and deployment of such disciplinary systems, and how homo oeconomicus might be seen as both a consequence and a cause of the current sociopolitical and technical changes. We seek critical work that interrogates how affect, embodiment, and relationality are reconfigured in an age of platforms, biometrics, and digital capital. We are particularly interested in contributions that approach these questions through intersectional frameworks, attending to how categories such as gender, race, social class, sexuality, and (dis)ability shape and are shaped by digital infrastructures.

Aim of the Special Issue and how the subject relates to the scope of the journal

This Special Issue aligns closely with the scope of Societies, which is dedicated to interdisciplinary research on contemporary social transformations, and the journal’s focus on the intersections of technology, identity, and social structures provides an ideal framework for examining how digital infrastructures mediate intimate life and sustain intersectional forms of oppression. By exploring how platform capitalism structures visibility, affect, and relationality, the Special Issue will addresses Societies’ interest in the social implications of science and technology, constructions of identity, and the dynamics of inclusion, justice, and power. By bringing together perspectives from sociology, feminist theory, transgender studies, queer studies, critical race studies, queer ecologies, intersectional theory, media studies, and critical political economy, this Special Issue contributes to the journal’s mission to illuminate emerging societal questions and foster critical, interdisciplinary dialogue on how digital systems reconfigure the most personal dimensions of social life.

Suggest themes

Contributions to this Special Issue should follow one of the three following categories of papers: 1) article, 2) conceptual paper, or 3) review. In addition to following the guidelines and thematic focus of the journal, contributions should also address the topics that are the in focus of the Special Issue.

As a suggestion for the topics that can potentially be covered (though by no means intended as an exhaustive list) please see the following:

• The technological production of gender and sexualities;
• Intersectionally framed appropriations and deployments of technology within the context of gender and in connection with other systems of structural power asymmetry (e.g., race, class, sexuality, disability, species, age, etc.);
• The political economy of the platforming of gendering, and the gendering of platforms;
• The role of platform logics play in academic work related to gender and sexualities;
• Theoretical innovation in conceptualizing gender and sexualities, and techno-facilitated cisnormativity;
• The struggles around the visibility, ownership, and deployment of signifiers around gender and sexualities (e.g., “gender ideology”, “queer”/”cuír”, and “identity politics”) within contemporary digital manifestations of culture;
• The situatedness of epistemic frameworks on gender and sexualities, and their shaping in and through platformed economics and politics;
• The materiality of gendered (digital) media systems as part of the Earth system;
• The role of non-hegemonic and counter-hegemonic epistemologies and praxeologies in challenging and maintaining gendered platform logics;
• The mediatic becoming-salient of certain fields (e.g., professional sports) as material and symbolic battlegrounds;
• Digitally manifested expressions of gender “diversity” and “empowerment” as techniques of political economy occlusion;
• The resurgence of ‘the real’, ‘the authentic’, or ‘the truth’ in (digital) populist and popular narratives around gender and sexualities;
• The deep mediatization of Global North models of gender and sexualities in the context of neocolonialism;
• The affordances and perils of digitalized understandings of analogue embodiments;
• The tensions and continuities between individualized and collectivistic forms of (digital) organizing and mobilizing within and/or against platforms;
• The politics of (automated and algorithmic) recognition, and their social and economic implications;
• The gendered politics of algorithmic fascism;
• The aesthetic infrastructures of digital patriarchy.

Dr. Daniel Cardoso
Dr. Sara De Vuyst
Dr. Inês Amaral
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• intersectionality
• deep mediatization
• affect
• embodiment
• platformization
• gender
• sexualities
• neocolonialism
• technofascism