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This article investigates the construction of gender identities of Pakistani men and women Facebook users given that Facebook has emerged as the prime social media platform through which Pakistani users interact. By employing thematic analysis and taking insights from theory of performativity and intersectionality, the findings of the interview data suggest that the formation, negotiation, and expression of gender identities on Facebook occurs through complex interplay between the discourses of religion, class, culture, and tradition. In some cases, Facebook highlighted the reproduction of the prevalent cultural models of masculinity and femininity while in other cases; there was resistance to the existing socio-religious cultural norms of the society.

This title is published in Open Access with the support of the University of Helsinki. This first in-depth study of women’s politeness examines the complex relationship individuals had with the discursive ideals of polite femininity. Contextualising women’s autobiographical writings (journals and letters) with a wide range of eighteenth-century printed didactic material, it analyses the tensions between politeness discourse which aimed to regulate acceptable feminine identities and women’s possibilities to resist this disciplinary regime. Ylivuori focuses on the central role the female body played as both the means through which individuals actively fashioned themselves as polite and feminine, and the supposedly truthful expression of their inner status of polite femininity.