Discrimination and hate speech among transgender individuals in a online community: between passing and trans-normativity

The first part of the paper will present the theoretical framework. It will address the main theories concerning hate speech, with a particular focus on marginalised categories within the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Additionally, it will introduce the concept of sexual normativity and, more specifically, that of transnormativity, which is the dominant and elective identity construction among transgender individuals (Johnsonn, 2016; Coppola, 2023). Finally, to address the research questions, we will present and discuss the results of a netnographic study involving one of the main Italian Transgender communities on the social network Facebook. The study was conducted between Discrimination and hate speech among transgender individuals in an online community and it aimed to investigate the discrimination experienced by transgender individuals within the community through the analysis of posts and interactions among users.