Technology of Patriarchy: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Egypt’s 2018 Anti-Cybercrime Law and the Case of the ‘TikTok Women’

Gender and sexuality play a crucial role in the patriarchal project of nationalism and the construction of national identities. In the era of internet use, a complex intersection emerges between the domains of technology and the social within a particular nation, as cyberspace increasingly functions as a tool for regimes to spread nationalist propaganda and reproduce national and sexual identities. This thesis focuses on article 25 of Egypt’s Anti-Cyber and Information Technology Crime Law (No. 175) that came into force in 2018. This legal article criminalizes the violation of Egyptian family values and has been used by the regime to imprison Egyptian female social media influencers. A critical discourse analysis was conducted in order to examine the formation and enactment of this legal article and to investigate how connections between the nation and sexuality are expressed in and by the law. The analysis shows how the cybercrime law functions as a tool for the repression of Egyptian citizens and concurrently as a tool for the reproduction of patriarchy. Drawing on the concept of sexual nationalism, I demonstrate how nationalism and patriarchy are interrelated technologies of domination.