Understanding the true causes of war, colonialism, and other forms of oppression, must be done to reveal dynamics

INTERSECTIONALITY IN MILITARIZATION AND WARS In a recent volume, Hunt and Rygiel (2006b, 3) develop the concept of “(en)gendering” war to “disrupt and make visible the masculinized, militarized, racialized, sexualized, and classed dynamics through which war operates.” They argue that official war stories do political work: they camouflage interests, agendas, and politics that underpin war for the purpose of legitimating and gaining support for militarization. A crucial aspect of their effectiveness is the extent to which they depend on gendered ideologies (masculinization and feminization) that are naturalized and therefore go unnoticed (2006, 5). By going unnoticed ideologies are depoliticized, even as the identities and practices they mobilize profoundly affect politics. In the remainder of the chapter I explore how feminization accomplishes typically unnoticed political work in war stories. The most familiar theme in war stories involves constructing the enemy as “other”: to distinguish “us” from “them,” render others in some sense inferior, and thereby justify war’s violence against “them.” The specifics of othering vary by history and context but invariably involve some form of objectification so that “they” become objects to which norms of respect and non-violation need not be extended. Historical othering ranges from early Greeks characterizing Persians as effeminate to Christians casting nonbelievers as immoral to Europeans depicting “natives” as uncivilized. Thinking through how othering occurs in nationalist, colonial, and con- temporary war stories reveals gendered identity investments and ideologies in operation. Critics of European imperialism have produced a wealth of research documenting the manipulation of ideologies to justify colonial wars and obscure their racist, economic, and heteronormative dynamics.3 What surfaces repeatedly are characterizations of the colonized as feminine: weak, passive, irrational, disorderly, unpredictable, lacking self-control, and economically and politically incompetent. European power wielders (not only men or all men) could then justify military interventions by casting themselves in favorable masculinist terms: as uniquely rational, sexually and morally respectable, and more advanced economically and politically. In colonial wars and geopolitical maneuvering, “civilization” became a code word for European superiority. Through this lens, military interventions were perhaps a regrettable but nonetheless a necessary component of “enlightening” and “civilizing” primitive, unruly (feminized) “others.” As Eisenstein (2004, 75) observes, although they extolled the virtues of reason as a progressive force, Europeans positioned rationality “against savagery (natives), emotionality (women), and sexuality (racialized others).” At the same time—and complicating simplistic models of gender—the development of European nationalism and normalization of bourgeois respectability produced an idealized model of femininity: pure, dutiful, and maternal. This superficial valorization of femininity is contradicted by the practices it invoked. Romanticizing the maternal feminine did less to empower women than render them perpetual dependents. Feminine virtue and morality were best ensured by confining these qualities—and (bourgeois) women—to a private sphere of domesticity and assigning men the public-sphere responsibility of defending and protecting feminized dependents. Rather than empowering European women, the idealization of bourgeois (heteronormative) femininity became a tool for disempowering non-European men. The patronizing and protectionist logic of bourgeois norms provided imperial governments with a moral, and rational, justification for militarized colonization. In this war story, the barbarity of “other” men was proven by their (allegedly) oppressive treatment of women, and this demanded the rescue of victimized females by honorable, civilized men. In short, the protection of idealized femininity (to paraphrase Spivak’s [1987] apt analysis) justified wars by white men to save brown women from brown men. The crusading rhetoric and protectionist logic obscured colonial government agendas, and it resurfaces with particular vengeance and new complexities in contemporary militarism and war.4