‘I mean, in my opinion, I have it the worst, because I am white. I am male. I am heterosexual’: questioning the inclusivity of reconfigured hegemonic masculinities in a UK student online culture

This paper critically examines how gendered hierarchies and relations, particularly those between hegemonic masculinities and non-hegemonic gendered identities, manifest between students at a university in North West England in and through forms of online harassment, using data collected from a large-scale study (N= 810) conducted in this institutional context. Key findings indicate that some young masculinities subordinate non-hegemonic gendered identities, namely those who identify as female and transgender, in and through gendered and sexualised forms of online harassment or are complicit in these practices. Male research participants are more likely than any other gendered group to use ‘free speech' discourses to legitimate online harassment directed at transgendered and cis-female subjects. Some white, heterosexual males, who occupy a dominant position in Britain's gendered and racial social order, appropriate discursive practices associated with identity politics, which have historically been used by non-hegemonic gendered identities to challenge social inequities, to claim they are ‘victims’ of this society. We argue that these new emerging forms of hybridised hegemonic masculinity, which appropriate and reconfigure the discursive practices of non-hegemonic gendered identities, reproduce and conceal patriarchal systems of power in digitised spaces. We suggest more research is needed to better understand these practices, their relationship to alt-right influencers and men's rights activists, and their implications for digital hegemonic masculinities at the local level of UK university campuses.