Gäris and ickebinäris: Exploring a Swedish Gender-Separatist Group on Facebook

Sammanfattning: This thesis explores the experience of participating in a ‘hidden’ gender separatist forum for women and nonbinary persons on Facebook. It does so through a case study of a group called Växtgäris, which constitutes one link in a chain of gender separatist forums established on Swedish Facebook in recent years, whose names all end with -gäris. The aim of the research was to investigate what motivates people to participate in such groups, how members understand the separatist framework with regards to their experience of the forum, and how such online practices might relate to notions of ‘safe space’ and ‘mundane citizenship’. The study combines two (digital) ethnographic methods for collecting data: participant observations of the group’s discussion thread and in-depth interviews with eight members. In analysing the empirical material, the Roestone Collective’s re-conceptualisation of ‘safe space’ was combined with Bakardijeva’s theorisation of ‘mundane citizenship’ (and the related notion of ‘subactivism’) to address different segments of the data.Results show that participants in Växtgäris hold a variety of motivations for participating in the group, such as exchanging knowledge, connecting with other people interested in plants and to escape oppressive behaviour. Interviewees further described a variety of attitudes towards the group’s separatist element, ranging from very positive to more questioning standpoints. The study concludes that Växtgäris might provide a ‘safe space’ for sharing information, expressing feminist views, and ‘geeky’ expressions of love for plants. Finally, inconspicuous individual actions, such as referring to wider societal and political discourses and planting certain linguistic codes, might be viewed as expressions of ‘mundane citizenship’ and ‘subactivism’. The thesis adds to research investigating contemporary feminist expression, community formation and identity construction in online environments and further reveals how marginalised identities in Sweden might deal with oppression in today’s increasingly digital society.