Gender and Feminist Discourses in the Women's Web Press in Argentina. OHLALÁ and the New Norms for its Women's Community

Abstract

The article addresses the insertion of feminist discourses in current women's press in Argentina. In order to do this, it explores the discursive constructions around the categories of gender and feminism on the website of the OHLALÁ magazine, between 2018 and 2020; years marked by the mediatization of the debate by Law No. 27,610 on the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy. With the general objective of identifying the interference of topics and slogans of the current feminist movement in the country, in a communication medium historically destined to the construction of the feminine, it analyzes the uses of the notions of gender and feminism in the discursive production of femininities in OHLALÁ. With the intention of inquiring about the semiotic modalities and discursive strategies from which feminism sneaks into the women's press and discusses what seemed fixed, immutable and natural, it questions what new exclusions these discourses install. Among the results, we have found that in OHLALÁ, feminist discourses are articulated to a conception of contemporary femininity associated with new norms: sorority, entrepreneurship, mobilization, criticism, training, difference and diversity, on the background of a white, cisgender, middle class, metropolitan and heteronormative feminism. Feminism is presented, on the one hand, in a spectacular way, embodied in celebrities, which makes it more visible, accessible and desirable. It is associated with practices and values ​​of neoliberalism, producing discourses where personal and innovative initiatives are understood as feminist practices. On the other hand, it produces a discourse that speaks on the popularization of the feminist movement, spreads its history, informs and advocates for laws on sexual rights, urges to participate in marches. In this way, the incorporation of notions of feminism presents a turning point in which feminism(s) and femininity(ies) are not opposing alternatives but are intertwined.