Patriarchal Technologies, Feminist Resistances: Lessons from Spain and Argentina

In recent years, feminist movements around the world have gained momentum both at the institutional level and within popular culture. Social media platforms have played a key role, enabling the creation of organizational networks and fostering transnational solidarities. However, by relying on infrastructures controlled by large corporations, feminist movements have seen their autonomy constrained, often reproducing or accommodating the hegemonic discourses of the economic system. This study aims to analyze how platforms shape feminist participation in the digital sphere, imposing extractivist and exclusionary logics that contradict the very principles of feminism itself. The methodology draws on over forty qualitative interviews with feminist scholars and public figures—including politicians, journalists, artists, activists, and content creators—in Spain and Argentina. The findings reveal that the material and symbolic conditions imposed by platforms not only amplify the harms perpetrated by the manosphere, but also constrain feminism’s capacity to articulate disruptive discourses that contest dominant power structures. Building on these experiences, we propose a critical analysis of neoliberal feminism and its limitations, while avoiding a technophobic stance. Although platforms shape the conditions of possibility for social movements, they also open cracks through which a radical digital feminism can emerge. The comparison between Spain and Argentina shows that in Latin America, collective and community-based practices acquire greater centrality, offering insights for imagining forms of resistance beyond neoliberal frameworks. In this sense, decolonial feminisms from the Global South point toward ways of forging alliances that challenge not only patriarchal violence but also the colonial, racial, and class hierarchies of global capitalism, thereby opening more transformative political horizons