Description
What is your clearly stated position on is the feminisms approach to national security is fundamentally different from non -feminism?
POSITION PAPER FORMAT REQUIREMENTS ETC F 21
Position paper requirements:
POSITION PAPER1 2
FORMAT: Please label each part clearly: TWO PARTS: (COVER PAGE, OF COURSE)
PART I. INTRODUCTION: tell the reader what your paper is about, what it will do, and
why this topic important.
State your position CLEARLY as in C L E A R L Y in the Part I
Part I is about one third of a page, this is about three or four sentences. ( Short, crisp, and
succinct)
Part II ARGUMENT:3
Explain the basis for your position, clearly. THIS IS YOUR CLEAR ARGUMENT?
This part of your our paper will be at least four full pages.
Virtually all the paragraphs in Part II of your paper need to connect your narrative
clearly, succinctly, and parsimoniously to your stated position in Part I consistent with the
actual topic of this paper in this class.
The only research cites go in Part II – only.
The research sources are cited as footnotes, not endnotes, not contextual, and no table of
contents and no works cited page. Total paper length will be between five and seven pages,
excluding cover page and statement of academic integrity.
Your source attribution must include sufficient information to verify your source.
You will have at least four footnotes4- at least four including one of each of the following:
(1) Scholarly journal
(LABELED AS JOURNAL)
(2) Newspaper
(LABELED AS NEWSPAPER)
(3) Book
(LABELED AS BOOK)
1
POSITION PAPER FORMAT REQUIREMENTS ETC F 21
(4) Web source
( LABELED AS WEB SOURCE)
PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND THIS CLEARLY – CRYSTAL CLEAR.
COMMENT: READY AIM FIRE
NSS
POSITION PAPER DUE DATE: all papers submitted via Turnitin on Black Board
Due Date Are: POSITION PAPER Wednesday December 1, (no class) (Turnitin)
by 1159h or 11:59 pm
Bonus Due Date
Sunday, Nov 28 – [20 points added to paper points ]
No papers accepted after – Dec 4. Saturday,
LATE PAPER PENALTY – 10 points per day or portion of a day
2
FEMINISMS
women –
Introduction
When feminist scholars and activists first began to engage with both the academic
and policy practitioners of global politics, the idea that feminist thought might contri-
bute to thinking about international security was sometimes met with hostility or
ridicule. What could feminist theory – which surely concerned only the activities of
tell us about the workings of global politics, national militaries, nuclear
deterrence or the decision-making of great powers? That kind of reaction was very
revealing, since it illustrated well part of the point that feminism sought to make.
For most feminists, whatever their particular theoretical orientation within feminism,
the workings of security have long been presented as though they are gender-neutral
when in fact international security is infused with gendered assumptions and represe-
ntations. The effects of presenting international security as though it is gender-neutral
are numerous, and not least that it makes invisible the gender-differentiated under-
standings and impacts of security on women and men and the ways in which
security is constituted in part through gender – the prevailing ideas and meanings
associated with masculinity and femininity rather than the facts of biological
differences between men and women.
The early ridicule that greeted feminist interventions in global politics is now
far more difficult to sustain. For one, more traditional theoretical orientations
within international relations (IR) have been critiqued for a variety of exclusions,
as numerous chapters in this collection have highlighted. Within this context, raising
issues of gender no longer seems out of step with the rest of the literature on global
politics. Explicit attention to the gendered dimensions of security is now also more
widespread within some of the more mainstream sites of global politics. The UN
Security Council, for example, adopted Resolution 1325 in October 2000 on
‘Women, Peace and Security’ (WPS) – the first resolution that noted both that
women and girls are affected by armed conflict in ways that differ from the impact
on men and boys, and the importance of incorporating a ‘gender perspective’
into peace operations (see Chapter 21). This kind of acknowledgement and the
WPS UN Security Council Resolutions that followed underscore the feminist
observation that gender permeates all aspects of international peace and security
(see Chapter 34).
One question that continues to surface, however, is how does gender permeate
international security? Even sympathetic observers of feminist thought and global
politics do not always find a simple or straightforward answer to this question. The
reason for this is that there is no single or straightforward answer to be given, because
the answer is in part dependent on the particular feminist perspective one adopts in
exploring questions of security. As with the study of IR itself, feminists are not agreed
on one theoretical perspective, rather feminist thinking approaches political questions
using a variety of theoretical lenses. How to understand the gendered nature of
questions of peace and security is thus dependent on the theoretical perspective one
adopts. This chapter outlines some of those perspectives and illustrates the kinds of
questions about international security that result from them. The argument here is
that whichever perspective one adopts
, greater attention to gender enriches our
understanding and expectations associated with international security.
75
S. WHITWORTH
Feminist approaches in international security
over
A theoretical lens, as V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan (2010: 38) have
make sense of the world around us. These lenses draw our attention to specific
features of our world, ways of looking at the world and usually offer prescriptions
for ways of acting in the world. In focusing our attention on certain areas or concerns,
our attention is simultaneously drawn away from other areas or concerns – in order
emphasized
to simplify the world that we are observing, some elements are
others. This has been true of the study of IR and international security, which
traditionally focused our attention towards states and away from people’. But it is
true also within feminist thinking. Most feminists may share an interest in focusing
attention on (gender-differentiated) people, but beyond this, there is no single
feminist lens or perspective that directs us to the single best way to study international
peace and security. Each feminist perspective draws our attention to different ways
of thinking about gender, different ways of conceptualizing the gendered nature of
international security and different ways of responding to the problems of global
politics. This does not mean there will not be overlap between these perspectives;
and indeed, as theoretical perspectives are adapted and modified, they may
incorporate the insights of one or another perspective. Nonetheless, it is useful to
map out some the basic differences between the most important approaches
to feminist theory in order to understand their different emphases and insights.
Liberal feminists privilege notions of equality and have tended to focus on ques-
tions of women’s representation within the public sphere (see Whitworth 2008).
Feminists who work from this perspective collect empirical information about
women’s roles are women present as decision makers in areas of international
security? If not, why not? Are they present in national militaries? When they are
present, what is the impact of their presence, and, if they are not present, what are
the barriers to their participation? Many liberal feminists focus on the ways in which,
within governments and international institutions, women remain highly under-
represented. Where women are present, they are still largely relegated to clerical and
support work and do not figure as prominently in the middle and upper management
levels of institutions. As of 31 December 2013, for example, women in the United
Nations comprised some 64 per cent of general service employees but only 41 per
cent of the professional categories (and only 30 per cent or less in the highest
professional categories of the UN) (UN Secretary-General 2014). For liberal feminists,
the barriers to women’s participation need to be identified so that they can be
removed, in this way permitting those women who are interested an equal oppor-
tunity to take on the challenges of political and public life.
Radical feminists, by contrast (sometimes called essentialist feminists or difference
feminists), focus less on notions of numerical equality and more on notions of
difference. For radical feminists, women and men are essentially quite different from
one another and essentially quite similar to one another. Whether as a result of
biology or socialization, radical feminists tend to agree that men as a group are less
able to express emotion, are more aggressive and more competitive while women
as a group are more nurturing, more holistic and less abstract. By this view, much
76
FEMINISMS
of the way in which society is organized supports the power of men over women
and their bodies – what is called patriarchy – and the privileging of masculine norms.
This impacts both the ways in which the world actually operates, and also the ways
in which we think about the world. Radical feminists differ from liberal feminists
in that they view the political as existing everywhere – it includes, but is not limited
to, the public spheres of life. Indeed, many of the most pernicious ways in which
patriarchy impacts women’s lives is effected through control of the private
through domestic violence, control over women’s reproductive freedoms and control
of women’s sexuality. On questions of representation, radical feminists might agree
with liberals that women ought to be represented in positions of public power, but
not for the equality rights reasons that the liberals give, rather because women bring
a different point of view to politics, one that is more focused on cooperation and
peace.
Whereas liberal and radical feminists tend to focus on ‘women’ and ‘men’, some
of their insights hint at an emphasis that is seen most clearly in some other approaches
to feminist thought, those that examine prevailing assumptions around ‘gender’.
Focusing on gender draws our attention to the prevailing ideas and meanings asso-
ciated with masculinity and femininity, how they differ across time, place and
culture, and the ways in which power operates through gender. It is these kinds of
observations that have informed a variety of what are called ‘post-positivist
approaches to feminist theory. Feminist critical theory, for example, examines pre-
vailing assumptions about both women and men: what it is to be a man or woman,
what is appropriately feminine or masculine behaviour, the appropriate roles of
women and men within society, within the workforce, within the family and so on
(Whitworth 1994: 24). Critical feminist theorists often argue that prevailing norms
associated with masculinity, as much as with femininity, must be examined, and
likewise that these norms can have an enormous impact on men, particularly mar-
ginalized men (Connell 1995, Hooper 2001). Critical feminists insist also not just
that the assumptions that exist around women and men/masculinity and femininity
take place at the level of discourse but that gender depends also on the real, material,
lived conditions of women and men in particular times and places, which include
but is not limited to the lived conditions of race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, culture
and religion (among other factors).
This draws on an insight made by feminist postmodernists, who argue that any
definition or standpoint will necessarily be partial and any attempt to posit a single
or universal truth needs to be deconstructed (Steans 1998: 25). Deconstruction entails
exploring, unravelling and rejecting the assumed naturalness of particular under-
standings and relationships, and examining the impact that otherwise ‘taken for
granted’ assumptions and understandings have on our ability to act in the world.
For feminist postmodernists, as Zalewski (2000: 26) explains, any truth claim is an
assertion of power that silences or makes invisible possibilities that do not fit easily
into prevailing discursive practices.
Postcolonial feminist theorists also draw on these insights and argue further that,
of the partial truths in circulation around gender, imperialism constitutes one of the
or processes, through which modern identities in all of their guises
become established. For postcolonial theorists, although some feminists acknowledge
crucial moment
77
FEMINISMS
women –
Introduction
When feminist scholars and activists first began to engage with both the academic
and policy practitioners of global politics, the idea that feminist thought might contri-
bute to thinking about international security was sometimes met with hostility or
ridicule. What could feminist theory – which surely concerned only the activities of
tell us about the workings of global politics, national militaries, nuclear
deterrence or the decision-making of great powers? That kind of reaction was very
revealing, since it illustrated well part of the point that feminism sought to make.
For most feminists, whatever their particular theoretical orientation within feminism,
the workings of security have long been presented as though they are gender-neutral
when in fact international security is infused with gendered assumptions and represe-
ntations. The effects of presenting international security as though it is gender-neutral
are numerous, and not least that it makes invisible the gender-differentiated under-
standings and impacts of security on women and men and the ways in which
security is constituted in part through gender – the prevailing ideas and meanings
associated with masculinity and femininity rather than the facts of biological
differences between men and women.
The early ridicule that greeted feminist interventions in global politics is now
far more difficult to sustain. For one, more traditional theoretical orientations
within international relations (IR) have been critiqued for a variety of exclusions,
as numerous chapters in this collection have highlighted. Within this context, raising
issues of gender no longer seems out of step with the rest of the literature on global
politics. Explicit attention to the gendered dimensions of security is now also more
widespread within some of the more mainstream sites of global politics. The UN
Security Council, for example, adopted Resolution 1325 in October 2000 on
‘Women, Peace and Security’ (WPS) – the first resolution that noted both that
women and girls are affected by armed conflict in ways that differ from the impact
on men and boys, and the importance of incorporating a ‘gender perspective’
into peace operations (see Chapter 21). This kind of acknowledgement and the
WPS UN Security Council Resolutions that followed underscore the feminist
observation that gender permeates all aspects of international peace and security
(see Chapter 34).
One question that continues to surface, however, is how does gender permeate
international security? Even sympathetic observers of feminist thought and global
politics do not always find a simple or straightforward answer to this question. The
reason for this is that there is no single or straightforward answer to be given, because
the answer is in part dependent on the particular feminist perspective one adopts in
exploring questions of security. As with the study of IR itself, feminists are not agreed
on one theoretical perspective, rather feminist thinking approaches political questions
using a variety of theoretical lenses. How to understand the gendered nature of
questions of peace and security is thus dependent on the theoretical perspective one
adopts. This chapter outlines some of those perspectives and illustrates the kinds of
questions about international security that result from them. The argument here is
that whichever perspective one adopts
, greater attention to gender enriches our
understanding and expectations associated with international security.
75
S. WHITWORTH
Feminist approaches in international security
over
A theoretical lens, as V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan (2010: 38) have
make sense of the world around us. These lenses draw our attention to specific
features of our world, ways of looking at the world and usually offer prescriptions
for ways of acting in the world. In focusing our attention on certain areas or concerns,
our attention is simultaneously drawn away from other areas or concerns – in order
emphasized
to simplify the world that we are observing, some elements are
others. This has been true of the study of IR and international security, which
traditionally focused our attention towards states and away from people’. But it is
true also within feminist thinking. Most feminists may share an interest in focusing
attention on (gender-differentiated) people, but beyond this, there is no single
feminist lens or perspective that directs us to the single best way to study international
peace and security. Each feminist perspective draws our attention to different ways
of thinking about gender, different ways of conceptualizing the gendered nature of
international security and different ways of responding to the problems of global
politics. This does not mean there will not be overlap between these perspectives;
and indeed, as theoretical perspectives are adapted and modified, they may
incorporate the insights of one or another perspective. Nonetheless, it is useful to
map out some the basic differences between the most important approaches
to feminist theory in order to understand their different emphases and insights.
Liberal feminists privilege notions of equality and have tended to focus on ques-
tions of women’s representation within the public sphere (see Whitworth 2008).
Feminists who work from this perspective collect empirical information about
women’s roles are women present as decision makers in areas of international
security? If not, why not? Are they present in national militaries? When they are
present, what is the impact of their presence, and, if they are not present, what are
the barriers to their participation? Many liberal feminists focus on the ways in which,
within governments and international institutions, women remain highly under-
represented. Where women are present, they are still largely relegated to clerical and
support work and do not figure as prominently in the middle and upper management
levels of institutions. As of 31 December 2013, for example, women in the United
Nations comprised some 64 per cent of general service employees but only 41 per
cent of the professional categories (and only 30 per cent or less in the highest
professional categories of the UN) (UN Secretary-General 2014). For liberal feminists,
the barriers to women’s participation need to be identified so that they can be
removed, in this way permitting those women who are interested an equal oppor-
tunity to take on the challenges of political and public life.
Radical feminists, by contrast (sometimes called essentialist feminists or difference
feminists), focus less on notions of numerical equality and more on notions of
difference. For radical feminists, women and men are essentially quite different from
one another and essentially quite similar to one another. Whether as a result of
biology or socialization, radical feminists tend to agree that men as a group are less
able to express emotion, are more aggressive and more competitive while women
as a group are more nurturing, more holistic and less abstract. By this view, much
76
FEMINISMS
of the way in which society is organized supports the power of men over women
and their bodies – what is called patriarchy – and the privileging of masculine norms.
This impacts both the ways in which the world actually operates, and also the ways
in which we think about the world. Radical feminists differ from liberal feminists
in that they view the political as existing everywhere – it includes, but is not limited
to, the public spheres of life. Indeed, many of the most pernicious ways in which
patriarchy impacts women’s lives is effected through control of the private
through domestic violence, control over women’s reproductive freedoms and control
of women’s sexuality. On questions of representation, radical feminists might agree
with liberals that women ought to be represented in positions of public power, but
not for the equality rights reasons that the liberals give, rather because women bring
a different point of view to politics, one that is more focused on cooperation and
peace.
Whereas liberal and radical feminists tend to focus on ‘women’ and ‘men’, some
of their insights hint at an emphasis that is seen most clearly in some other approaches
to feminist thought, those that examine prevailing assumptions around ‘gender’.
Focusing on gender draws our attention to the prevailing ideas and meanings asso-
ciated with masculinity and femininity, how they differ across time, place and
culture, and the ways in which power operates through gender. It is these kinds of
observations that have informed a variety of what are called ‘post-positivist
approaches to feminist theory. Feminist critical theory, for example, examines pre-
vailing assumptions about both women and men: what it is to be a man or woman,
what is appropriately feminine or masculine behaviour, the appropriate roles of
women and men within society, within the workforce, within the family and so on
(Whitworth 1994: 24). Critical feminist theorists often argue that prevailing norms
associated with masculinity, as much as with femininity, must be examined, and
likewise that these norms can have an enormous impact on men, particularly mar-
ginalized men (Connell 1995, Hooper 2001). Critical feminists insist also not just
that the assumptions that exist around women and men/masculinity and femininity
take place at the level of discourse but that gender depends also on the real, material,
lived conditions of women and men in particular times and places, which include
but is not limited to the lived conditions of race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, culture
and religion (among other factors).
This draws on an insight made by feminist postmodernists, who argue that any
definition or standpoint will necessarily be partial and any attempt to posit a single
or universal truth needs to be deconstructed (Steans 1998: 25). Deconstruction entails
exploring, unravelling and rejecting the assumed naturalness of particular under-
standings and relationships, and examining the impact that otherwise ‘taken for
granted’ assumptions and understandings have on our ability to act in the world.
For feminist postmodernists, as Zalewski (2000: 26) explains, any truth claim is an
assertion of power that silences or makes invisible possibilities that do not fit easily
into prevailing discursive practices.
Postcolonial feminist theorists also draw on these insights and argue further that,
of the partial truths in circulation around gender, imperialism constitutes one of the
or processes, through which modern identities in all of their guises
become established. For postcolonial theorists, although some feminists acknowledge
crucial moment
77
S. WHITWORTH
the interrelationships between race, class and gender there is nonetheless ‘a discernible
surrounding race and representation’ (Chowdhry and Nair 2002: 10). Postcolonial
First World feminist voice’ in IR that does not sufficiently foreground the ‘erasures
feminist theory attempts to do precisely this, further unpacking the assumed uni-
versality of experience between women that earlier (and particularly liberal and
radical) feminisms relied upon.
These latter approaches remind us that gender relations are informed by, and in
turn sustain, relations of power. As Cohn et al. (2005: 1) write:
Gender is not only about individual identity or what a society teaches us a
man or woman, boy or girl should be like. Gender is also a way of structuring
relations of power
whether that is within families where the man is often
considered the head of the household, or in societies writ large, where men
tend to be the ones in whose hands political, economic, religious and other
forms of cultural power are concentrated. These two phenomena – individual
identity and structures of power – are significantly related to each other. Hence
it is the meanings and characteristics culturally associated with masculinity that
make it appear ‘natural and just for men to have the power to govern their
families and their societies.
–
The manifestations of these relations of power will emerge in a variety of ways,
and, in the case of questions of security, can inform how we understand what security
means and how it (and insecurity) is experienced by women and men. The next
section explores these issues.
Women, gender and security: the impacts of armed conflict
What have gendered analyses of security focused on and revealed? This too requires
a multifaceted response. One common set of questions within security is to focus
on war and armed conflict, what Peterson and Runyan (2010: 144) describe as direct
violence’. Some of the work examining gender and armed conflict takes a largely
liberal feminist position and documents the differential impact of armed conflict on
women and girls as compared to men and boys. By itself this is a very large under-
taking, as the impact of armed conflict on all people is enormously complex, and
highlighting the ways in which its impact differs for women requires nuanced and
detailed analyses. ‘Gender-neutral’ analyses of armed conflict regularly do not focus
on people at all – conflict is conducted between states or armed groups, the specific
impact on people’s lives is a marginal concern and instead the focus of analysis is
on territory and resources gained (or lost) and the outcome in terms of winners
and losers) of battles and wars.
Where some analysts do focus on people affected by war, the tendency has been
to focus on the experiences of men – the central players in most war stories – whether
as combatants, prisoners of war, generals, war planners, fighter pilots, infantrymen,
war criminals and so on. Women are assumed to more rarely be combatants in armed
conflict, and so they are assumed to be impacted only indirectly by war. Their lives
may be disrupted during war, and they are sometimes injured or killed as a result
–
–
78
FEMINISMS
of “collateral or indirect damage, but women’s particular experiences were generally
not thought to be worthy of specific or sustained study, or in any way important
in determining how we might understand both ‘security’ and ‘insecurity’.
Early feminist work in IR disrupted these assumptions. Cynthia Enloe (1983,
2000b), for example, has documented the varieties of ways that militaries require
women’s work, whether or not that work was ever formally acknowledged. As Enloe
(1983: 3) writes:
thousands of women were soldiers’ wives, cooks, provisioners, laundresses,
and nurses. Sometimes they served in all of these roles simultaneously. When
they weren’t being reduced verbally or physically to the status of prostitutes,
camp followers were performing tasks that any large military force needs but
wants to keep ideologically peripheral to its combat function and often tries
to avoid paying for directly.
But women do not merely take up the invisible jobs associated with supporting
fighting forces; they are regularly and directly impacted by the violence of armed
conflict itself. This has always been true, but during the post-Cold War era it
became increasingly apparent that in the new forms of conflict that began to emerge
women were targeted specifically, and in specifically gendered ways.
Studies by scholars, human rights organizations and international institutions
began to focus on the impact of armed conflict on women. Much of this work
focuses on the ways in which, most commonly, women and girls are subjected to
heightened levels of sexual violence during wartime, including sexual torture,
enforced prostitution, sexual slavery and mutilations and sexual trafficking (UN
Secretary-General Study 2002: 17; International Alert 1999; International Committee
of the Red Cross 2001; see also Kumar 2001; Moser and Clark 2001; Turshen and
Twagiramariya 1998). In some conflicts, acts of sexual violence have been so
widespread, and so widely and clearly documented, that international protective
measures have been developed that acknowledge the systematic use of sexual violence
as a weapon of war. In both the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia
and Rwanda and the Rome Statute, which formed the basis for the newly established
International Criminal Court, there has been an acknowledgement that sexual
violence in wartime constitutes a violation of the laws of war (UN Secretary-General
Study 2002: ch.3; see also Chapter 24).
Though in very important ways the widespread use of sexual violence during
armed conflict demands our collective attention, and a focus on sexual violence
against women has received the most sustained empirical analysis from feminist
researchers, exclusive focus on sexual violence during war obscures a number of
important issues. One is that most formal acknowledgements of women’s experiences
during wartime, especially in the form of legal redress, tend to reproduce very
stereotypical assumptions about women: they are visible, valued and deemed worthy
of protection primarily in terms of the sexual and reproductive aspects of their lives
(Gardam and Jarvis 2001: 94). This means that other ways in which armed conflict
impacts women may be ignored or not receive equally necessary legal recognition
and protections.
a
79
and
S. WHITWORTH
These other impacts can include being targeted for acts of violence – women are
maimed. They can also be sexually and physically assaulted and exploited by those
not only sexually assaulted during wartime; they are also regularly killed
ostensibly sent to ‘protect them – peacekeepers, refugee and aid workers, guards
and police. Women are also affected by the economic impact of armed conflict –
they struggle with the loss of economic livelihoods and the inflation that
accompanies conflict, making the cost of basic items or foodstuffs prohibitively high.
normally
trucome cases, local sources of topel bakes bea che proper altogether
, with chilien
. Tom
same is true of sources of shelter – when home communities become part of the
battleground or combatants force civilians to flee, women and their families become
burgeoning number of global refugees. During conflict, women also struggle for con-
internally displaced persons (IDPs) or, when they cross borders, part of the
,
after these have been destroyed or are simply unavailable to internally displaced
people and refugees (Gardam and Jarvis 2001: ch.2; UN Secretary-General Study
2002: ch.2; Giles and Hyndman 2004; Whitworth 2004).
Thus, focusing strictly on the sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls
during armed conflict directs our attention away from the many other effects of
armed conflict on their lives. Importantly however, it also draws our attention away
from the sexual violence perpetrated against men and boys during armed conflict.
Whereas women are presumed to be targets of sexual violence during wartime, the
same assumption is not made of men. Yet, sexual violence – including rape, torture
and sexual mutilation – is also used against men and boys during war and conflict,
usually in an effort to attack their sense of manhood (UN Secretary-General Study
2002: 16). Female prisoners of war often find they are disbelieved if they report
they were not sexually abused or assaulted while held prisoner – this was true of
US prisoners of war Melissa Rathbun-Nealy, who was taken prisoner during the
1991 Gulf War, and Jessica Lynch, who was taken prisoner a little more than a
decade later during the US invasion of Iraq. By contrast, male prisoners are rarely
even asked whether they were sexually assaulted; their captivity is assumed to be
asexual where a woman’s captivity is highly sexualized, in both cases irrespective
of whether sexual violence actually takes place (see Nantais and Lee 1999: 183-6;
Howard and Prividera 2004: 90–91).
The United States’ own sexual torture techniques against Iraqi prisoners of war
illustrated well the ways in which men can be targets of sexual violence, with an
explicit intention to injure and humiliate. The interrogations involved smearing fake
menstrual blood on prisoners’ faces, forcing them to masturbate or simulate and/or
perform oral and anal sex on one another, to disrobe in one another’s presence, to
touch one another, to touch women and to be photographed in these and other
positions (Highman and Stephens 2004). Prisoners were also made to walk on all
on boxes,
fours with a leash around their necks, or to stand balanced precariously
or to pile on one another to form a pyramid of naked bodies. Most often, it was
female soldiers who were photographed perpetrating these and other
(2004) has written of the ways in which the male targets of this violence were
acts.
Eisenstein
depicted
80
FEMINISMS
as ‘humiliated’ precisely because they were treated like women. Male Iraqi prisoners
were the targets of a violence aimed in one instance directly at themselves but, as
Eisenstein and other feminist commentators have noted, in another instance they
were also the subjects of a violence that sent a larger message about empire and
imperialist masculinity. Manipulating racialized and gendered assumptions of appro-
priately masculine (and feminine) behaviour, the sexual torture at Abu Ghraib
prison also illustrates the gendered dimensions of contemporary imperialism and
empire-building (Eisenstein 2004; Richter-Montpetit 2007; Philipose 2007; Sjoberg
2007; Enloe 2007).
Women, gender and security: action and activism
Feminist accounts of armed conflict do not focus only on the ‘impacts of war on
women (and men); they also explore the ways in which women are actors in armed
conflict. We have seen above that women and men can both be ‘victims’ of conflict
and political violence. They can both also be active ‘agents’ in armed conflict. It is
normally men who are depicted as the primary actors in war, most often serving as
combatants in armed conflicts. But women also regularly take up arms and com-
mit acts of violence in war. In some cases it is because they are forced to do so,
but in others it is because they are committed to the goals of the conflict; they
choose to become combatants themselves. Women have also been documented as
serving as messengers for combatants, as spies, as suicide bombers and as providing
assistance through smuggling weapons and providing intelligence (Narozhna and
Knight 2016; Sjoberg and Gentry 2007; UN Secretary-General Study 2002: 3, 13;
Mansaray 2000; Moser and Clark 2001; Turshen and Twagiramariya 1998; Jacobs
et al. 2000).
The positioning of women and men as either combatants (men) or victims (women)
has implications for both women and men (Whitworth 2004: 27). Because women
are seldom viewed as having served as combatants they may experience greater
freedom in organizing informal peace campaigns. Much feminist analysis focuses on
the varieties of peace campaigns that women are involved in, from peace marches
to silent vigils, to working across combatant groups to establish communications.
Some authors note the ways in which some women peace activists have used prevail-
ing assumptions about their roles as ‘mothers’ to protect themselves against state
and non-state authorities who would otherwise prohibit public criticisms of local
and foreign policies concerning a conflict (Samuel 2001; see also Giles et al. 2003).
However, at the same time that women have been documented as being actively
involved in informal campaigns, they are usually ignored when formal peace processes
begin, they are rarely invited to formal ‘peace tables and are normally excluded
from disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes that give
former combatants access to educational, training and employment opportunities
(UN Secretary-General Study 2002: ch.4).
Men, on the other hand, are presumed to have held power and decision-making
authority prior to the emergence of conflict and to have been combatants and insti-
gators throughout the conflict itself. This assumption can make all men (and boys)
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conflict,
travelling
or directly involved in the conflict. Some critics point out that the assumption of
targets of violence within a conflict, whether or not they are actually combatants
men as combatants – or at the very least ‘able to take care of themselves’ – has
resulted in their exposure to greater dangers and levels of violence during armed
conflict. In the former Yugoslavia
, the protection of women and children was
prioritized as the goal of UN peacekeeping forces
, resulting in a massacre of unarmed
Bosnian Muslim men and boys who were left largely unprotected (Carpenter 2005).
When the Syrian civil war resulted in a mass flow of refugees escaping the
some countries refused to accept male refugee claimants unless they were
with women and children. Men travelling alone were considered too great a security
risk (Friesen 2017).
The assumption of men as combatants also sometimes makes their motivations
suspect when they become involved in efforts to bring conflict to an end – they are
often assumed to have alternative agendas. At the same time, however, it is men
who are normally invited to the formal ‘peace table’ once it has been established,
and they are the ones who primarily receive the benefits of DDR and other post-
war activities (UN Secretary-General Study 2002: ch.4). The assumption of men’s
‘activity in conflict is what may impact their insecurity when conflict is ongoing,
but is also what ensures a ‘place at the table’ when the formal efforts to bring a
conflict to an end are under way.
Women and men can thus both be ‘active’ in wars and armed conflicts in a variety
of
ways,
either as perpetrators of violence or as participants in peace processes.
However, the prevailing understandings and assumptions about women and men in
conflict – whatever their actual experience – can significantly shape and limit those
experiences in both profoundly positive and negative ways.
I
Women, gender and security: talking and making
weapons and war
Although many feminist analyses of security focus on the impact and involvement
of women and men in war and armed conflict, as discussed in previous sections,
these are not the only forms of scholarly intervention taken by feminists who
explore questions of international security. Instead, many feminists focus on the
ways in which gender is constructed through security (and insecurity) and on
the ways in which security is constructed through gender. The previous sections
already pointed to some of these types of arguments – it is prevailing assumptions
about women and men/masculinity and femininity that position men and women
differently in conflict: as targets of violence, as targets of sexual violence, as actors
and as victims. Other feminist scholars have examined the practices of national
security think tanks, of nuclear strategy, of foreign policy decisions and even of
weapons of mass destruction, to uncover the way in which assumptions around
gender impact, and are impacted by, these processes.
One of the most important early interventions in this area was the work of Carol
Cohn (1987), who argued that the apparently gender-neutral and objective (or by
contrast highly sexualized) language of defence strategists and planners was used as
an ideological curtain’ to obfuscate and naturalize the deployment and possible use
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FEMINISMS
of nuclear weapons (see also Cohn 1993; Taylor and Hardman 2004: 3). She
showed how the language used by defence planners either drew attention away
from
the real implications of their plans and analyses (for example by describing hundreds
of thousands of civilian casualties in a nuclear confrontation with highly sanitized
terms such as collateral damage’), or how sexualizing weapons and weapons systems
made them appear more controllable by symbolically equating them with women’s
bodies (for example through such terms as ‘pat the bomb?).
Cohn has also examined the ways in which the ‘symbolic dimensions’ of weapons
or foreign policy decisions can impact decision makers in ways clearly tied to their
own sense of masculinity. As Cohn et al. (2005: 3) write:
When India exploded five nuclear devices in May 1998, Hindu nationalist
leader Balasaheb Thackeray explained ‘we had to prove that we are not
eunuchs.’ An Indian newspaper cartoon depicted Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee propping up his coalition government with a nuclear bomb. ‘Made
with Viagra’ the caption read. Images such as these rely on the widespread
metaphoric equation of political and military power with sexual potency and
masculinity.
When linked to notions of manliness in this way, the decision to choose nuclear
weapons, as Cohn et al. point out, is characterized as ‘natural. A symbolic asso-
ciation with strength and potency, in other words, becomes a substitute for careful
and rational analysis that would explore all of the costs and benefits associated with
acquiring nuclear weapons.
These kinds of concerns are in keeping with questions asked by Enloe (2000a: 1)
of foreign policy more generally: ‘Are any of the key actors motivated by a desire
to appear “manly” in the eyes of their own principal allies or adversaries? What
are the consequences?’ These questions have been raised in assessing the US reaction
to the events of 11 September 2001, where calls for an appropriately ‘manly’
response were made almost immediately after the attacks on New York and
Washington, DC (see Whitworth 2002). Former Defense Intelligence Agency officer
Thomas Woodrow (2001) wrote within days of the attacks that ‘To do less [than
use tactical nuclear capabilities against the bin Laden camps in the desert of
Afghanistan] would be rightly seen … as cowardice on the part of the United States’.
Journalist Steve Dunleavy (2001) commented that:
–
This should be as simple as it is swift – kill the bastards. A gunshot between
the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them if you have to. As for cities
or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts.
Not to be outdone, George W. Bush sought to establish his credentials when he
said of Osama bin Laden: ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’.
For feminists, this kind of masculinist frame can lead decision makers down paths
that could be avoided, and predisposes decision makers to naturalize highly
militarized and violent responses. In turn, it likely forecloses other policy options
precisely because they are not deemed to be ‘manly enough. Some observers
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S. WHITWORTH
suggested that the US government could make an enormously profound statement
after 11 September by:
bombarding Afghanistan with massive supplies of food instead of warheads.
Such an approach would surely earn America’s commander-in-chief the media
label of wimp
– and much worse. Obviously, it’s the sort of risk that the
president wouldn’t dare to take
(Solomon 2001)
but moreover,
The expectation that the terrorist attack on the US demanded a swift and manly
response was simultaneously linked to a sudden concern for the ‘plight of Afghan
women. Part of the justification for the intervention focused on the Taliban’s
treatment of women in Afghanistan. As Hunt (2002: 117) argues, representation of
Afghan women as passive is part and parcel of the way in which ‘we’ dehumanize
“them’, depicting the women of Afghanistan as uncivilized and in need of saving.
As Hunt points out, the United States’ and the West’s sudden interest in the plight
of Afghan women was, at best, suspicious. There had long been information available
about the systematic abuse of women in Afghanistan much of it raised by the
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
which until
11 September, 2001, went largely ignored by Western governments and the inter-
national media. For Hunt, this means not only that women’s bodies are being
‘written’ in a way that justifies particular forms of military response,
that the enormous impact on women that will result from that military response
will be rendered if not invisible, at least ‘justified’.
This is not to suggest, however, that the situation of women in Afghanistan was
not horrifying, and another set of questions which feminists raise about September
11 concerns the relationship between the deep misogyny inherent in fundamentalisms
(all fundamentalisms) and the kinds of violence which erupt from them. The group
Women Against Fundamentalisms (in Katz 1995: 42) writes that: ‘Fundamentalism
appears in different and changing forms in religions throughout the world, sometimes
as a state project, sometimes in opposition to the state. But at the heart of all funda-
mentalist agendas is the control of women’s minds and bodies’. How much does
the violence which we saw on September 11 emerge from a complex of factors, one
part of which is the offer to desperate, futureless men the psychological and practical
satisfaction of instant superiority to half the human race’ (Pollitt 2001)?
Finally, these kinds of questions also point feminists to explore the context and
conditions out of which violence emerges. As Cockburn has noted, ‘war-fighting
between two armies is only the tip of the iceberg’ (2010: 147). By this view,
militarism is a continuum that involves not only the moments in which acts of
violence or conflict erupt, but also the large machineries of war that function in a
machineries include but are not limited to the maintenance of militaries and large
constant state of readiness through periods ostensibly described as ‘peaceful’. These
defence establishments. But the preparedness for war usually goes much deeper in
any given society and involves also the ways in which militarized activities or
practices become ‘normalized in everyday life. When militaries are called in to quell
a labour dispute, a society is being militarized, as it is when war toys and war clothing
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