“Look What He Has Done To Our Lads”: How Mid-Range Trollish Behavior Legitimates Hegemonic Masculinity in Digital Spaces

Feminist research focuses on how cisgender men use extreme trolling to reinforce patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity. Less is known, however, about milder forms of trolling and how a range of users participate in this process. This paper analyzes user comments on news coverage of a high-profile case of a man who raped other men to examine how trollish behaviors contribute to the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity in digital spaces. We reconceptualize trolling as a continuum, emphasizing what we call mid-range trollish behavior: posts containing racist, homophobic, or aggressive content, authored across diverse online gender identities, that may be recognized as trolling but also invite interpersonal dialogue. We define online gender identities as the gender that users signal through symbolic cues—such as self-selected pronouns and avatar images—that convey how they wish to be perceived within a specific digital context. We find that mid-range trolling fosters discursive engagement, allowing users to identify perceived threats to the gender order and propose responses that reaffirm its legitimacy. These interactions legitimize hegemonic masculinity by naturalizing rape culture, marginalizing effeminacy, and invoking homophobia, especially when users perceive themselves as closer to the threat. These findings enhance our understanding of how dominant and subordinate groups’ trolling contribute to the circulation of hegemonic masculinity and the maintenance of patriarchy in digital spaces.