militarized masculinity

Citation:

Bulmer, Sarah, and Maya Eichler. 2017. “Unmaking Militarized Masculinity: Veterans and the Project of Military-to-Civilian Transition.” Critical Military Studies 3 (2): 161-81.

Authors: Sarah Bulmer, Maya Eichler

Abstract:

Feminist scholarship on war and militarization has typically focussed on the making of militarized masculinity. However, in this article, we shed light on the process of ‘unmaking’ militarized masculinity through the experiences of veterans transitioning from military to civilian life. We argue that in the twenty-first century, veterans’ successful reintegration into civilian society is integral to the legitimacy of armed force in Western polities and is therefore a central concern of policymakers, third-sector service providers, and the media. But militarized masculinity is not easily unmade. Veterans often struggle with their transition to civilian life and the negotiation of military and civilian gender norms. They may have an ambivalent relationship with the state and the military. Furthermore, militarized masculinity is embodied and experienced, and has a long and contradictory afterlife in veterans themselves. Attempts to unmake militarized masculinity in the figure of the veteran challenge some of the key concepts currently employed by feminist scholars of war and militarization. In practice, embodied veteran identities refuse a totalizing conception of what militarized masculinity might be, and demonstrate the limits of efforts to exceptionalize the military, as opposed to the civilian, aspects of veteran identity. In turn, the very liminality of this ‘unmaking’ troubles and undoes neat categorizations of military/civilian and their implied masculine/feminine gendering. We suggest that an excessive focus on the making of militarized masculinity has limited our capacity to engage with the dynamic, co-constitutive, and contradictory processes which shape veterans’ post-military lives.

Keywords: militarized masculinity, veterans, experience, gender, military-to-civilian transitions, militarization

Topics: Combatants, Male Combatants, DDR, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Livelihoods, Militarized Livelihoods, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Peacebuilding

Year: 2017

Citation:

Richter-Montpetit, Melanie. 2007. “Empire, Desire and Violence: A Queer Transnational Feminist Reading of the Prisoner ‘Abuse’ in Abu Ghraib and the Question of ‘Gender Equality.’” International Feminist Journal of Politics 9 (1): 38-59.

Author: Melanie Richter-Montpetit

Abstract:

Dominant discourses in the United States paint the acts of prisoner 'abuse' committed by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib in 2003 as either the obscene but exceptional example of some low-ranking soldiers gone mad, or as the direct result of the suspension of the rule of law in the global 'war on terror'. Alternatively, feminist theorist Barbara Ehrenreich suggests that the pictures depicting female soldiers torturing prisoners are both horrifying and a sign of 'gender equality'. This article departs from all three of these positions. I argue that the micro-level violences shown in the Abu Ghraib pictures are neither just aberrations nor a sign of gender equality. Rather they follow a pre-constructed heterosexed, racialized and gendered script that is firmly grounded in the colonial desires and practices of the larger social order and that underpins the hegemonic 'save civilization itself'-fantasy of the 'war on terror'. I explore how the participation of some of the US Empire's internal Others, namely White western women, may disrupt some of the social processes of normalization underpinning this colonial fantasy, but nevertheless serves to re/produce the identity and hegemony of the US Empire and its heterosexed, racialized and classed World (Dis)Order.

Keywords: Abu Ghraib, civilization, colonial, desires, Ehrenreich, empire, fantasy, gender equality, militarized masculinity, orientalism, US, 'Whiteness'

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Race, Sexual Violence, Female Perpetrators, SV against Men, Violence

Year: 2007

Citation:

Kent, Lia, and Naomi Kinsella. 2015. “A Luta Kontinua (The Struggle Continues): The Marginalization of East Timorese Women Within the Veterans’ Valorization Scheme.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 17 (3): 473–94. doi:10.1080/14616742.2014.913383.

Authors: Lia Kent, Naomi Kinsella

Abstract:

This article examines how East Timorese women's contributions to the resistance against the twenty-four-year Indonesian occupation (“the Resistance”) have been marginalized within the veteran's valorization scheme (veterans' scheme) established in the post-conflict period. Drawing on interviews with politicians, veterans and members of women's organizations, we show that although women played significant roles within the Armed, Clandestine and Diplomatic fronts, for the most part they have not been recognized as veterans within the veterans' scheme. Instead, the scheme has reinforced perceptions of women's roles as wives, mothers, homemakers and widows, rather than as political actors, suggesting that the return to “peace” in Timor-Leste has been accompanied by the strengthening of patriarchal traditions and the expectation that women return to “traditional” roles. We argue that the failure to recognize women as veterans is problematic both for East Timorese women and society as a whole. It represents a lost opportunity to recognize women's agency and potentially to improve their social status in society. It also narrows the way in which the independence struggle is remembered and represented and further promotes a culture of “militarized masculinity” that elevates and rewards men who show the capacity to use violence.

Keywords: Timor-Leste, resistance, post-conflict, veterans, women's recognition, militarized masculinity

Topics: Civil Society, Combatants, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Femininity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Political Participation, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction Regions: Asia, Oceania Countries: Timor-Leste

Year: 2015

Citation:

Kaplan, Danny, and Eyal Ben-Ari. 2000. "Brothers and Others in Arms: Managing Gay Identity in Combat Units of the Israeli Army." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 29 (4): 396-432.

Authors: Danny Kaplan, Eyal Ben-Ari

Abstract:

Although policies regarding the enlistment of homosexuals in Western armies have become the subject of a heated debate, their own experiences in the military have received little systematic analysis. The authors examine the experience of gay men in combat units of the Israeli army, as derived from retrospective life stories. The authors found no common adjustment problems related to these men's sexual orientation. At the same time, variable identification strategies with hegemonic masculine military culture emerged. One is engagement and includes identification with soldiery as a test for masculinity, taking part in heterosexual discourse, and an active attempt to develop social ties. The second strategy is compartmentalization, which involves focusing on professional aspects of the military job and building walls in the interpersonal sphere. Consequently, the authors propose that the ties between behavioral adaptation to military service, processes of identification with organizational values, and the acquisition of a particular identity are loosely coupled.

Keywords: homosexuality, sexuality, Israel, hegemonic masculinity, militarized masculinity, military

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Sexuality Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel

Year: 2000

Citation:

Eichler, Maya. 2006. "Russia's Post-Communist Transformation: A Gendered Analysis of the Chechen Wars." International Feminist Journal of Politics 8 (4): 486-511.

Author: Maya Eichler

Abstract:

This article develops a gendered analysis of the Chechen wars (1994-6, 1999-present) in the context of Russia's post-communist transformation. I argue that the leadership used the first war to associate itself with a notion of militarized, ordered, patriotic Russian masculinity in juxtaposition to a notion of destabilizing, aggressive, criminal Chechen masculinity. Justification for the second war additionally relied on constructed differences between civilized, modern Russian masculinity and terrorist, fundamentalist Chechen masculinity. However, men's evasion of conscription as well as women's anti-conscription and anti-war organizing as soldiers' mothers have undermined the Russian state's ability to wage war and use it as a strategy of legitimation. While the second war initially had considerably more popular support than the first, the crisis in militarized masculinity has not been resolved and soldiers' mothers continue to challenge notions of patriotic motherhood. The article demonstrates that a gendered analysis improves our understanding of the state's decision to go to war, its justifications for war and citizens' responses to war.

Keywords: conscription, militarization, militarized masculinity, patriotic motherhood, russia, soldiers' mothers

Annotation:

Topics: Armed Conflict, Secessionist Wars, Combatants, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Analysis Regions: Asia, Europe Countries: Russian Federation

Year: 2006