Social Networking Sites as Platforms for Transgression: Two Case Studies of Russian Women Involved in Bisexual and Transgender Rights Activism

The current research explores the ways in which social networking sites are used as online activism platforms by bisexual and transgender Russian women and focuses on case studies of two activists. The paper draws on the data obtained from the in-depth semistructured interviews with the activists and during a two-month monitoring of their Facebook and VKontakte pages. This qualitative research aims to reveal how the access to digital technologies and the use of own ICT skills allows the bisexual and transgender women to challenge and transgress the state-imposed conservative Russian discourse on ‘traditional’
sexuality and gender, as well as the discourses on gender and sexuality promoted within the Russian feminist and LGBTQ communities. Through a critical discourse analysis of the retrieved media data I investigate the discursive strategies of self-mediation applied by the activists and demonstrate how the women’s own cultural capital of intelligence and creativity informs their online activism.