“Luckily, I am not ‘all men’“: the contentious publicness of pro-, anti- and post-feminist discourses on violence against women in Israel

Are “all men” complicit in violence against women (VAW)? This study examines the dynamics of claim-making in online debates over this question. Analyzing a glocal Israeli case-study drawing on Facebook posts, digital op-eds, and comment sections from 2020 to 2022—a period of heightened attention to VAW—we trace discursive negotiations around the “all men” claim and its #NotAllMen backlash. Focusing on post-, anti-, and pro-feminist positions, rarely analyzed together, we apply the framework of contentious publicness to conceptualize them not as fixed “publics” or “counterpublics,” but as dynamic subject positions constituted through boundary work, distinction, and appropriation. Using critical discourse analysis, we show how these stances blur and borrow from one another’s repertoires while advancing divergent political projects. Analyzing these positions together reveals mutual entanglements and symbolic distinctions in claims about gender, violence, masculinity, and accountability. This study contributes to theorizing shifting relationships between men, feminism, and other men, and deepens our understanding of local and global iterations of these discursive stances and their interactions. It fills empirical gaps in research on men and VAW in Israel, particularly in digital spaces, and more broadly, advances digital discourse analysis by tracing how discursive positions co-construct one another across ideological lines while retaining political salience.