postponing the alt is another link & reinforces global system of violence -questioning gender hierarchies is key

To conclude, I review how gender identities, ideologies, and institutionalized practices interact to normalize domination and mobilize violent practices. No one escapes gender socialization and its historically sedimented norms of heterosexism. We cannot help but be invested in identities that our culture deems appropriate, necessary, and worthy of esteem. While we are not locked into unchanging or monological scripts, following paths of least resistance is easier than not conforming—much less actively criticizing “the way things are.” Because the naturalized “given” of binary sex difference is coded into gender identities and ideologies, it gives the status quo inordinate power to obstruct critique and transformation. Females are cast as, and socialized into, subjectivities and roles that feature dependence, accommodation, lack of personal autonomy and power, and implied consent to male domination. The effects of conformity seem to invite ideologies of protection, if not contempt. Women who defy the stereotypes are deemed suspect, social problems, and unnatural (African American “matriarchs,” “anti-family” career women, “man-hating” feminists, “depraved” torturers). Males are no less—and in important respects, more abusively—socialized into subjectivities and roles that feature aggression, being in control (emotionally, physically, politically, economically), and denying anxiety, ambivalence, and vulnerability. Conforming to gender expectations costs men—and women and societies—dearly. As “compensation,” men are accorded a sense of entitlement: to autonomy, power, and sexual access. Objectified and subordinate “others” may require protection but are also “at the disposal” of their superiors. This is the central dilemma constituted by gendering: the specific qualities of (weak, agentless) femininity are seen to demand a corollary exercise of (powerful, entitled) masculinity. Not surprisingly, most men attempt to comply, often at high personal cost. Because the edifice of masculinity is a mythic construction, the pressure to “prove” one’s manhood is relentless. However much individual males struggle to sustain their identification as sufficiently masculine, it is perpetually subject to challenge. One can be “unmanned” (feminized) by any evidence, or worse yet, simply the accusation of “gayness,” weak- ness, or lack of control. Potential failure, and the despised vulnerability it invokes, is ever present. This is true for all masculinities, no matter race or class. This relentless pressure is particularly acute on the stage of political and military power. The stakes are high, especially in the context of impending or ongoing war. Leaders and soldiers respond accordingly, with displays of hypermasculinism: President Bush “must” prove himself and U.S. invincibility, civilized nations “must” assert cultural superiority, soldiers “must” torture to secure intelligence, suspect others “must” be detained, civilians “must” be patriotic, critics “must” be silenced, deeper questions “must” be postponed. Official war stories not only camouflage the agenda of power wielders during war; they also obscure the reproduction of hierarchies in everyday life. Their tacit (and sometimes explicit) manipulation of gender coding does the political work of normalizing, hence, depoliticizing how gender operates to perpetuate inequalities and the violence that attends them. The core dilemma of gender plays throughout: constructing women and feminized others in ways that demand masculinized identities and action. This is so taken for granted that alternative—to say nothing of structurally “equal”—arrangements are rendered unthinkable. In the “war on terror,” gender coding reproduces feminized others who must be protected, con- trolled, detained, or eliminated by masculinized agents of ruling states. Like advocates of neoliberal capitalism are forever telling us: there is no alternative. The systemic effects constitute a tragic drama of global pro- portions: hypermasculinized identity investments, arrogant ideological claims, and excessive—arguably depraved—military practices. Critics of imperialism have exposed how the idealization of Western femininity has been manipulated to justify Western wars to “save” “other” women. Understanding feminization as devalorization affords an additional insight: that marginalized men more generally are subject to this crusading and protectionist logic—in colonial wars to “modernize” gender relations, nationalist wars to promote idealized families, invasions to “liberate” oppressed groups, wars on terror to eliminate the (perceived) irrational religious, wars on poverty that demoralize the (racialized) underclass, and battles against HIV/AIDS that demonize gay men. In sum, official war stories not only camouflage political agendas but also suppress critical thinking about institutionalized racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. By obscuring the reciprocal constitution of valorized masculinity and vilified femininity, these stories avoid critique of gender itself, with the effect of reproducing multiple forms of subjection and violence. My thinking through intersectionality tells a different story. It too is limited by its perspective, commitments, erasures, and excessive generalizations. My story casts emotional commitments, cultural productions, and material practices as mutually constitutive. It foregrounds investments in gendered identities and gender ideologies not to privilege them but to explore how militarism and war making depend on them. I do not claim that mine is the superior story, though I believe it is an urgent one. I do claim that gender matters, and especially for “thinking through” militarism and war. More pointedly, I am arguing that we can neither adequately analyze violence, nor effectively advance intersectional analyses, if we ignore how feminization devalorizes.