Social media platforms and hetero-cis-normative biases: How online attitudes can shape transgender rights and protections

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

To date, there are limited qualitative studies examining the integration of transgender athletes within professional, amateur, and elite sports. Utilizing a qualitative content analysis of social media user’s responses to five transgender Olympic athletes, this study explores public perceptions shared across two major social media platforms. Six themes emerged from our data: transphobia, transmisogyny, mental illness claims, science claims, confusion, and support. Most social media users expressed transphobic and transmisogynistic concerns of fairness and shared negative perceptions of transgender athletes as dangerous, deviant, and in need of mental health services. This study suggests that social media users have negative perceptions of transgender and non-binary athletes that may be due to hetero-cis-normative biases and the media framing of transgender people. Research has shown that incivility and hateful language online can impact attitudes and impede prosocial behavior, we believe this to be the case with transgender athletes. Ultimately, we find that these hetero-cis-normative biases reify anti-transgender sentiments and contribute to the opposition of transgender rights and protections.

Authors

• Susana Avalos, Old Dominion University

• MacKenzie Kibler, Old Dominion University

• Elizabeth Monk-Turner, Old Dominion University