Nationalized anti-feminism: A collusion between nationalism and gender-equal sexism

The COVID-19 crisis has led to a global resurgence of nationalism, which can be observed from major political events like presidential elections to everyday culture such as video games. In a recent online debate over sexualized female characters, Chinese male gamers excessively incorporated nationalist discourses to justify their anti-feminist arguments. Their discursive campaign provides an opportunity to explore the rising nationalist sentiment in the post-pandemic era and the linkage between nationalism and sexism as well. This study analyzed male players’ online posts and generalized their discursive strategies – the true gamer identity, anti-political correctness rhetoric, and the gender antagonism accusation – to incorporate nationalist discourse to make their anti-feminist arguments more persuasive and subtle. The study also explains how this anti-feminism fits in with frames of gender-equal sexism, and how the findings can help understand information interpretation tactics employed by misogynists.