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This thesis explores the online ‘manosphere’ subculture of Involuntary Celibates (Incels). Incels have been widely discussed in contemporary media in recent years and have been cited as harmful after several mass-murders and attacks have taken place offline. Previous academic research has largely focused on individual-level explanations for Incel mass-murderers, with few studies seeking to uncover the structural determinants of the rise of Incels. This thesis attempts to fill this gap, exploring the subculture’s negotiation with the changing features of contemporary society. The study utilised internet-based qualitative research methods over a period of three-months to collect data on two Incel forums: r/Braincels and Incels.co. The data was then interpreted through thematic analysis within a constructivist grounded theory approach. The research found that Incels negotiate their anxieties of a rapidly changing globalised world with a sense of victimisation and ‘aggrieved entitlement’ through a worldview that understands society as set up to economically, socially, and sexually favour women. It was also found that through such a sense of entitlement, Incels conceive of a hetero-patriarchal racial caste-system that relies on uncritical readings of selected biological and evolutionary psychological studies. This worldview is known as the ‘Black Pill’ and is employed to ideologically condition Incels against out-groups. Through a shared mythology of victimisation, the Incel ideology of the Black Pill functions to produce a form of ‘stochastic terrorism’ in which individual users interpret the spectrum of beliefs from enacting online gender-based hate-speech to mass violence in the terrestrial world. This thesis presents understandings that could inform future educational programs in critical literacy skills that aim to dismantle the conceptual apparatus that feeds the ideologically charged hatred of groups like Incels.

The link between identity and action is a fundamental topic across the social sciences. A key site to investigate this relationship is social interaction, where identities and social relations are built and used to accomplish action. In this thesis, I used discursive psychology to analyse the relationship between identity and the action of help in recorded calls to a victim support helpline. Victim is a contentious identity, with feminists and other critical scholars pointing to the politics involved when certain people are categorised as victims and others are overlooked. The name of the organisation that was the setting for my research, ‘Victim Support,’ explicitly links a victim identity with rights to access the help the service offers. Drawing on concepts in discursive psychology and using conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis, I examined how participants oriented to the contentious questions of who victims are and how they should be helped. Drawing on contemporary interactional research which theorises the epistemic, deontic, and affective basis of human social relations, I examined how participants used self-other relations as a resource to build and interpret actions as help. The findings provide evidence for the mutually constitutive relationship between identity and action. Counter-intuitively, most callers did not explicitly categorise themselves as victims when asking for help. My analyses show how call-takers understood callers’ identities as victims even when they did not say so directly. The act of asking for help from Victim Support constituted callers’ identities as victims; and their identities rendered their requests accountable. Call-takers on the victim helpline act as gate-keepers, determining callers’ eligibility before providing help. I analysed how call-takers denied callers’ requests by implicitly or explicitly disavowing their identities as victims. Conversely, I showed that offers of help constituted callers as legi

Studying men and masculinities in Mexico through feminist sociology is necessary to tackle gender inequalities. These inequalities can be as extreme as the institutional, sexual and physical violence that occur in disproportionate numbers, or as quotidian as the micro-machismos that go unnoticed as forms of everyday gender violence. It is paramount to understand masculinity as a system of domination and differentiation as well as a gender identity that is performed by bodies that feel, are affected and recognise themselves as masculine and as men. By doing so, the road towards equality will include a strong critique of how men have learned to pursue a certain form of masculinity. To question men’s relation with masculinity and their experience of recognising themselves as such, this thesis took a narrative approach to the analysis of video diaries, generated through an affective methodology with seven Mexican men about their sexual-affective heterosexual relationships. The methodological process involved a relationship of ethics, friendship and co-production. Each of the seven men recorded themselves talking about their relationships, their partners and themselves in a uniquely vulnerable, honest and reflexive manner. The video diaries were then turned into seven narratives that were organised discursively into topics of: Emotions, Desire and Identity. The analysis centred on affective practices, emotions, social mediations of desire and masculine identity as ongoing negotiations in a particular geopolitical context. The men in this study constantly situated themselves between the hegemonic discourse of masculinity in Mexico and alternatives closer to a feminist approach. This positioning showed how their practices and ideas, while still part of the hegemonic system, were also able to challenge it. Thus, this thesis demonstrates the value of an affective methodology for working with men to analyse masculinities. The men who participated in this research revealed the

Historically, concerns have been raised about violence in pornography and the influence that such portrayals may have on levels of violence against women and children. Today, pornography is pervasively available on the internet and viewed by both men and women in ever-increasing numbers. In New Zealand, violence against women and children remains at alarmingly high levels, and concerns about pornography’s influence on gendered violence are a common refrain. Research remains inconclusive about the impacts of pornography on viewers’ sexual scripts, behaviours and attitudes, yet the voices of those most affected by pornography – viewers and their partners – are often omitted from pornography studies. Few New Zealand studies employ a gendered analysis of men’s and women’s experiences with pornography. To provide research specific to New Zealand about these experiences, this thesis explores the reported influences of mainstream pornography on the lives of a self-selecting sample of (primarily) heterosexual New Zealanders between the ages of 18 and 30. It adopts a uniquely gendered analysis and critically interrogates both men’s and women’s experiences with pornography in the digital age. The findings of this research suggest that pornography research necessitates a gendered appraisal both in terms of how pornography is experienced individually, but also within intimate relationships. For instance, whilst both men and women suggested that mainstream pornography was often aggressive, demeaning and degrading, the way that aggression was perceived and understood differed between the genders. Some women spoke of ‘rough sex’ having some sexual appeal, however, they also felt conflicted about feeling aroused by pornography in which actresses appeared potentially in pain or distress. Conversely, several men spoke of aggression in pornography as commonplace but something they might avoid rather than denounce, leaving the door open for other men to engage with as a matter of indiv

In 2003 New Zealand passed the Prostitution Reform Act, decriminalising sex work and associated activities. This thesis examines news media representations of sex work and workers from 2010 to 2016 to determine how these texts construct sex work in a post-decriminalisation environment. The key questions this thesis considers are: which sex workers are presented by journalists as acceptable, and what conditions are attached to that acceptability? Using media studies frameworks to analyse the texts, this thesis demonstrates that in a decrimininalised environment the media plays a regulatory role, with the power to dictate what modes of sex work are acceptable largely shifting away from the courts. In the absence of a debate about the il/legality of sex work, a different kind of binaristic construction emerges, frequently related to public visibility or invisibility. This thesis uses discourse analysis techniques to examine texts relating to three key media events: the repeated attempts legally restrict where street sex workers could work in South Auckland, texts about migrant sex workers around the time of the Rugby World Cup, and texts about independent or agency-based sex workers. My methodology involved examining the texts to establish who was situated as an expert through discourse representation, what words were used to describe sex workers and their jobs, and then discerning what narratives recurred in the texts about each event. My analysis indicates that in a decriminalised environment news media representations of sex work afford acceptability to those who are less affected by structural oppressions: predominantly young, white, cisgendered, middle or upper-class women who see few clients and work indoors. However, for workers who fall outside these bounds news reports continue to reproduce existing sex work stigma. I highlight how racism and transmisogyny frequently play into news representations of sex work, even under a framework of decriminalisation, in wa