A discorsive study on sexism and legitimization in men

The aim of the study was to identify the discursive sources (interpretative repertoires) of the men's explanations to legitimize sexism by conducting semi-structured individual interviews with heterosexual men living in Istanbul. In this context, the discourses of the men about sexist explanations in our society which has a patriarchal social system were tried to be understood. The participants of the study consisted of 15 heterosexual men aged 25 to 51, living in Istanbul. 15 different interviews were made individually with all participants. During the interviews, the points specified by the participants were recorded with a voice recorder and transcribed. Then, the interview records were analyzed through discourse analysis. As a result of the analysis of the interview texts; five different interpretative repertoires have been reached: "emphasis on the woman's motherhood", "emphasis on the nature of woman", "emphasis on behaviors", "emphasis on the tasks attributed to women" and "emphasis on tradition-culture". When the findings were analyzed, men were found to produce many explanations aimed at legitimizing their sexist explanations towards women on the basis of different aspects of life. The repertoire of "emphasis on the woman's motherhood" was the dominant repertoire that is the source of men's sexist explanations, and in this repertoire, sexism was reconstructed on the concept of "motherhood". In the "emphasis on the nature of woman" repertoire, it was observed that the sexism was reconstructed by men over physical and psychological power phenomena, and "violence against women" and "job discrimination" were tried to be legitimized through this repertoire. In the "emphasis on behaviors" repertoire; It was observed that men built sexism based on behaviors such as "woman's style of clothing", "woman's sexual duty" and "woman behavior causing violence". In the "emphasis on the duties attributed to women" repertoire, it was found that men attribute some obligations to women over sexism. In the "tradition-culture emphasis" repertoire, it was seen that men try to legitimize their sexist explanations based on the concepts of "upbringing style" and "upbringing geography". As a result, it was observed that participants legitimized and reproduced their sexist discourses and behaviors that were hostile or ambivalent in an explicit or implicit way when talking about women. Particularly, it was determined that the cultural codes originating from the patriarchal system were internalized by the participants and that sexism could be legitimized by the participants in a natural and ordinary way.