Hegemonic masculinity reinforces the alienation of feminine-labeled traits and rationality, which inevitably produces endless structural violence and conflict.

Rationality in Interaction This skew is particularly evident in the assumption of rationality." The rationality assumption implies that the knower/actor can separate himself/herself from the “other” in interactions with that other. Feminists have argued that knowledge is always perspectival and political; therefore, states and their leaders’ decisions about how to interact with others are not rational, but informed by their situational and political biases. In this view, the rationality assumption may be seen as at once itself a political bias and obscuring other political biases. As Naomi Scheman argues, perceived rational cost-benefit analysis about war-making and war-fighting should “always be seen as especially problematical when... constructed only by those in positions of privilege... [which provide] only distorted views about the world.”78 In this view, rational calculation is not an objective, attainable, and desirable end, but a partial representation of both interest and actors’ representation of those interests. In this way, through gender lenses, rationality has been seen as importantly incomplete, leaving out significant (if not the most significant) factors that go into decision-making.79 In addition to understanding the rationality assumption as partial (and therefore unrepresentative), feminist research has pointed out links between rationality and mascuIinism.8° As Karen Jones notes, advocates of rationality as a guide for interstate interactions“ assume: 1. Available... conceptions of rationality and reason represent genuinely human norms and ideals; 2. The list of norms and ideals contained within available conceptions of rationality and reason are sufficiently complete; and 3. The external normative functions assigned to reason and rationality are unproblematic.82 Looking through gender lenses shows problems with each of these assumptions. Feminists have argued that “the identity of the modern subject-in models of human nature, citizenship, the rational actor, the knowing subject, economic man, and political agency-is not gender-neutral but masculine (and typically European and heterosexua|).”83 This impacts not only how we see the rational subject, but how we predict and understand his decisions, at the state level as well as at the individual level. According to Margaret Atherton, the possibility of rationality has “been used in a disturbing fashion to mark a gender distinction. We have, for example, on the one hand, the man of reason, and, on the other, the woman of passion.”84 In rationality assumptions, traits associated with masculinity are normalized and traits associated with femininity are excluded. The impact is compounded because (masculinized) rationality and its (feminized) alternatives are not on equal playing fields. As a result, Karen Jones notes that “women’s assumed deficiency in rationality” has been used to exclude both women and knowledge associated with femininity from accepted views of the world.85 The alleged gender neutrality of rationality, then, “is often a covert form of privileging maleness”85 and omission of “what has traditionally counted as ‘feminine.’”87 Still, adding women and values associated with femininity to current concepts of rationality is unlikely to create a gender-neutral concept of rationality.88 This is because, epistemologically, the sovereign rational subject constructs artificial gendered boundaries between rationality and emotion, male and female, and knower and known.89 Among states, those boundaries are not benign. Instead, they breed competition and domination that inspire and foster war(s) and conflict(s).90 This competition frequently relies on contrasting the state’s own masculinity to the enemy’s (actual or perceived) femininity. This cycle of genderings is not a series of events but a social continuum. In these gendered relationships, as Zillah Eisenstein argues, “gender differentiation will be mobilized for war and peace,” especially moving forward into the age of an American empire focused on manliness.9‘ Feminists have long argued that competitions between hegemonic masculinities and subordinate masculinities play a role in causing war(s).92 Hidden beneath the assumed independence, rationality, and unity of state interaction leading to war are gendered interstate interactions that cause, constitute, and relate to war and wars. Feminist scholars have recognized the extent to which the preeminence of masculine values dominates (particularly conflictual) accounts of interstate interactions, wherein “rational” interactions often become “a self-reproducing discourse of fear, suspicion, anticipated violence, and violence” in which “force is used to checkmate force.”93 Interstate interactions leading to wars often show the gendered nature of war narratives, war logics, and war languages, which produce (and reproduce) gendered cycles of violence.