Discussion

Since the early 2010s, the feminist movements in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia have faced multiple challenges which have resulted not only in the consolidation of those movements but also in the increased visibility of feminist activists and feminist agendas in public discourses. The war in Donbas, the decriminalisation of domestic violence in Russia, the anti-Lukashenko protests in Belarus, the gendered impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing debates around legislation against domestic violence, – these challenges have brought to the forefront the issue of physical, psychological, and symbolic violence committed against women, as well as the question of how masculinities are renegotiated and reimagined in the current situation.
Through a critical discourse analysis of the media content produced by activists for women’s rights in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, the proposed paper explores how the categories of (non-)heteronormative masculinities and gendered violence are constructed within the current feminist media discourses in the three countries. The media data includes content produced by specifically feminist media outlets, by feminist authors who work for pro-feminist mainstream media, as well as by feminist social media channels and page