Misogynistic abuse on Twitter against female politicians in Chile: A case study on the depenalization of abortion.

The depenalization of abortion in certain cases generated conflicting reactions on the widely conservative Chilean population. This achievement set the benchmark for various feminist collectives and politicians to push more bills aimed towards the end of gender inequality. However, women who openly supported the bill in the public sphere were subject to constant misogynistic abuse in various social media outlets. While online abuse seemed to be particularly targeted against feminist leaders and left-wing female politicians, it also led to the stabbing of three women who were participating in a march for the complete depenalization of abortion in July 2018. This paper explores the misogynistic abuse on Twitter against female politicians in Chile who have openly supported the bill which allows the depenalization of abortion under three circumstances: risk to the woman's life, rape, and foetal viability. We explore the discursive and linguistic strategies used against these social actors in relation to their identities as feminist women and politicians. We collected tweets from the legislation period of the abortion law, namely, including the day the bill is introduced in Parliament (January 2015) to the first times the law was implemented (Decemeber 2017). We took a corpus-assisted approach to the analysis of the data (Baker, 2006), carefully analysing (de)legitimation strategies (van Leeuwen, 2000, 2008) used against these politicians for their open support to the law. Results show that the decisions of these politicians are condemned in terms of criminality as opposed to a trasngression of women into the public space. There are not (sexual) threats against them but a moral condemnation which draws on religious and ideological discourses.