Image: Scott Reeder. "American Dick," 2007. Courtesy of Adbusters
Using gender as a tool to interpret and explain ideological issues in contemporary society can be very effective to discover patterns, archetypes and power relationships.
In Iris Marion Young’s article “The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State,” she uses the lens of gender to help interpret and critique the principles of war and security in a post-9/11 era. Exposing the “patriarchal logic” of protectionism, which is constructed by the rhetoric of popular culture and war propaganda as inherently masculine, Young argues that under this system, women, children, and (by extension) citizens are “paradigmatically in a position of dependence and obedience.” (1) The construction of a masculine protector creates a binary of power and subordination between men and others. In this system, women, children, and (by extension) citizens are understood as vulnerable and thus requiring the security of men or government bodies.
By explaining how democratic citizens permit their leaders to protect them using the same practices that a patriarch would use to protect his family, Young discusses a “particular logic of masculinism” that associates the two. (7) The rhetoric of war and security mobilizes fear to gain support from the masses for a male government. Naturalized by pop-cultural construction of the male body as heroic, tough, or chivalric, these patterns suggest something important about the gendered relationship between the government and its citizens.
In discussing the events of 9/11 in the United States, Young exemplifies how “states often justify their expectations of obedience and loyalty, as well as their establishment of surveillance, police, intimidation, detention and the repression of criticism and dissent, by appeal to their role as protectors and the presumption of a threat.” (7) This can certainly be seen in the multitude of ways that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was packaged and sold to Americans. If you turned on the television in the last ten years you could tell how many mass media outlets had very clear ideas about who was a ‘terrorist’ and who was a ‘hero.’ This media angle focused on protecting the United States, spinning and selling the war as a positive and necessary humanitarian effort, even though we know now (and knew then) that it was unwarranted. The United States bargained with people’s fear and branded an unnecessary war with this language; it is in this example we can interpret a deep connection between the constructs of protection and the obedience of a nation. (They called it 'The Patriots Law,' for goodness sakes.)
Young also argues how, very often obedience within a country legitimizes its aggression and violence abroad. We have discussed in class how “loyalty at home legitimizes a governing body’s power over citizens internally and justifies it externally.” In the same authoritarian and paternalistic manner that a patriarch would run 'his' household, government war bodies are able to accomplish and normalize the subordination abroad.
There is something that happens when people think about women and war. Often, there is an assumption that women are inherently peaceful, and obviously this idea is contentious.
It's hard for me to discuss how women are associated with the peace movement without feeling frustrated with a professor I once had. I raised a point about the dangers of associating women and peace, and was immediately accused of 'not accepting that inequality exists' for some reason. The bottom line is (and was) that I am with bell hooks on this argument:
"Dualistic thinking is dangerous; it is a basic and ideological component of the logic that informs and promotes domination in Western society... it reinforces the cultural basis of sexism and other forms of group oppression. Suggesting, as it does, that women and men are inherently different in some fixed and absolute way, it implies that women by virtue of our sex have played no crucial role in supporting and upholding imperialism or other systems of domination."
photocredit: http://www.mrdowling.com/images/706unclesam.jpg
http://www.womenaustralia.info/exhib/war/gifs/ARTV00332.jpg
Nevertheless, the deconstruction of war and security with a gendered lens help broaden the issue using theoretical context. The connection is deep, and it suggests how patterns within a patriarchal home have manifested.
