Transgender Identities and Online Hate In Post-Assad Syria: A Critical Discourse Analysis.

Abstract

This study examines how transgender identities are discursively formed in post-Assad Syria by conducting a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of 550 purposively selected Facebook comments that respond to a viral video showing the assault of a transgender individual by the Syrian army. The findings show that transgender individuals are predominantly depicted as moral deviants, political threats, and religious transgressors, with their exclusion rationalized through dehumanization, religious condemnation, and securitized language. Key linguistic strategies encompass disease metaphors, Quranic narratives of devastation, and nationalist rhetoric depicting gender nonconformity as a Western intellectual incursion. Although counter-discourses promoting rights and medicalization exist, they remain systemically suppressed. The study illustrates how language functions as a social control tool, legitimizing exclusion and violence. This research elucidates discursive patterns, thus contributing to the discourse on digital moral policing, ideological naturalization, and the language reinforcement of gender hierarchies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).