Cynthia Enloe, that superb analyst of gender and international conflict, constantly reminds us of the importance of using a feminist curiosity. She defines this as a kind of curiosity that refuses to be lazy about the uncritical acceptance of ‘naturalised’ expressions – ‘peace activists’, ‘child soldiers’, or ‘occupation authorities’, for instance – and instead insists on taking them to pieces to examine how they work. By this she means examining the work they do in concealing hegemonic power relations.
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A feminist curiosity can further be of use in examining and unpacking the power system enshrined in that political category termed ‘gender’, in which male/female symbolises an intrinsic relationship of inequality. Here, I want to move the discussion beyond personal relationships to the issue of masculinism – that is, to a way of doing/thinking/conceptualising/articulating infused with an outlook resulting from a hegemonic view of the world deriving from privileging traits associated with middle-class white masculinity, while those associated with femininity are correspondingly devalued.
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Masculinism has long been used to devalue men of the global south, portrayed as effeminate or hypermasculine, both negative terms used in comparison with the ideal white middle-class European male, as well as lower-class white men.
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Masculinism is further intrinsically involved in the language of militarism, with phrases that practically cry out for dissection, such as ‘collateral damage’, ‘friendly fire’ and ‘failed states’. Thus, the effects of the binary divisions discussed above go far beyond the meanings ascribed to male and female bodies and the resulting power inequalities, to the way gender ‘functions as a symbolic system: our ideas about gender permeate and shape our ideas about … politics, weapons, and warfare’.
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More here.