IR feminists seek to correct disciplinary myopia through forcing scholars to situate their studies deeper into the messy complexity of war, substituting Audi’s abstraction of violence for more abstract, conceptual understandings. Whether this makes feminists better equipped to study war and the origins of this competency will be examined in this essay, with the main argument asserting feminists are not better equipped, they are equipped differently. This stems from the paradigm’s approach to war being more considered rather than gender’s intimacy with conflict. To demonstrate this, the intimacy between gender and war revealed by feminism will firstly be detailed, followed by why intimacy is not indicative of the extent in which one is equipped and a discussion of variables that better demonstrate this quality. To clarify, the phrases ‘traditional’ and ‘mainstream’ used throughout relate to positivist theories, such as realism and liberalism, where the levels of analysis are systemic, and the ‘West’ will be used metonymously in reference to audiences outside the Global South.
The intimate relationship between war and gender can firstly be illustrated through Paul Kirby’s three abstractions of wartime sexual violence; unreason, instrumentality, and mythology, as they discuss conceptions of a gendered violence that appear less visible to state-centric, traditional paradigms. Despite the somewhat rigidity and crudeness of these distinctions that render them “decoy(s) of feminist concerns” to some, these modes of critical explanation operate as interpretations of rape in conflict and should thus be perceived as a set of tangible illustrative tools, as opposed to definitive analyses. The unreason mode, part of the opportunistic school of thought, asserts actors are irrational, emotional beings who respond compulsively when “private desires, such as lust, and ‘public’ events (the systematic destruction wrought by war)” combine. Rape thus serves as a by-product of war, lending itself to performances of hypermasculinity and amorphous homosociality predicated on urges operating outside of the realm of self-consciousness. This behaviour has been evidenced in studies of sexual violence in the Yugoslav Wars, where it is argued the saturation of soldiers with pornography prior to war meant “a whole population of men were primed to dehumanize women and to enjoy inflicting assault sexually”, suggesting a psychological mimesis occurred. It thus appears war knows gender intimately as feminist orientations reveal violence does not always occur during battle between male battalions under strategic military command, but instead often assumes a more spontaneous role driven by cognitive inhibition at the individual level. This being said, cases of means-ends reason can also be gendered; Kirby defines this mode of critical explanation as instrumentality. Whilst it posits on the mainstream belief that individuals are maximising calculators and Machiavelli’s argument that sides in opposition will seize every opportunity to gain advantage over the other through exploitation, gendering this rationality diversifies and enriches existing understandings of violence. Economic materialism and individualism serve as the driving force behind rape as, in the unconstrained ethical boundaries of war, actors seek to extort wealth and maintain material power through enforcing unbalanced economic relationships over women, understood as a productive source. Evidence of deliberative sexual assault can be taken from conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where campaigner Eve Ensler stated “rape is a very cheap method of warfare. You don’t have to buy scud missiles or hand grenades”, further supporting notions that rape is utilised as a strategy of resource accumulation. Therefore, the intimacy between war and gender is reflected in feminisms enhanced understanding of sexual violence as an economic mechanism disproportionately impacting female civilians. Kirby’s final mode of critical explanation, mythology, mediates unreason and instrumentality through its socio-cultural orientation; “Women may be raped because they are the objects of a fundamental hatred that characterizes the cultural unconscious and is actualized in times of crisis. Rape therefore becomes a dispersed, more collective extension of political power whereby a habitus of hypermasculinity and institutionalized misogyny reflect culturally specific tropes in line with the socio-symbolic order of a community. Investigations carried into the ‘rape differential’ support mythology assumptions as it was found that, whilst the rate of violent crimes carried out by the military were lower than civilians in peacetime, soldier’s propensity to rape in wartime increased to 260% of the civilian rate. These findings were attributed to masculinist practices institutionalized in the US military, generated through camaraderie and reflected in impunity, as opposed to resource pressures or emotional volatility. Kirby’s three modes of critical explanation therefore demonstrate a distinct intimacy between war and gender, where feminists have reconceptualized violence beyond the parameters of binary, male oriented, physical combat to that of structural violence waged on bodily terrain. This indicates feminists are not necessarily better equipped to study war, but are equipped in ways mainstream scholars are not.
War and gender’s intimacy also stems from feminist understandings of the contradictory nature of peacetime. Feminism offers a corrective foundation to the assumption of traditional paradigms that peace must exist as international relations cannot be characterized by everlasting conflict, thus dichotomously positioning this timeframe to war. Instead, a more nuanced approach is adopted that builds on Galtung’s structural violence thesis to position the individual, not the state, at the core of security and that seeks to rectify the hierarchy of atrocity inherent in conventional abstractions of conflict. Through assuming this approach, the “infanticide, maternal mortality, intimate killings and lethal female genital mutilation” that persist, and sometimes intensify, when war ends are accounted for as the paradigm widens the scope of violence deemed worthy of study. In turn, the political nature of the personal renders it international, suggesting not only are feminists well equipped to study war, but they are of great value in doing so. Enloe stresses this sentiment as she advocates for a departure from “the government-centred, militarized version of national security” towards an approach where the physical and temporal space between war and peace are accounted for. It is thus further evident war knows gender intimately, as feminism illustrates how traditional paradigms have failed to advance from their antithetical boundaries towards an understanding that facilitates the multifaceted reality of war.
With this in mind, intimacy and the extent in which one is equipped to study war are not always synonymous, which is why intimacy alone is not enough. Sara Meger’s critique of the securitisation of rape exemplifies this as she identifies decontextualization, objectification and blowback as the main contributors to the fetishization of sexual violence in security studies; an issue which has emerged in line with gender’s integration into mainstream IR. As claimed by Meger, academic ownership of victims and universalisation of actors, both of which relate to commodification, are deeply problematic. Ownership materialises, as sexual violence is defined as an existential threat and spoken by “custodians”, such as the security elite, enabling them to articulate value and relevance in accordance with their own experiences. In doing so, guardianship is exercised over the victims as those monopolising sexual violence discourse, albeit with the intention of relaying sufferer’s stories, inherently silence those they seek to empower. Western dictation of this field has also led to the homogenisation of forms of sexual violence, types of perpetrator and motivations behind its employment; something which Kirby is potentially culpable of in his three modes of critical explanation. Subsequently, the nuances of this phenomenon are overlooked in lieu of a simplified narrative of distinct categories of sexual violence, monolithic perpetrators, and circumscribed motivations. Sensationalised portrayals which graphically depict the brutality and scale of sexual violence in war further hinder attempts to alleviate the issue, as stories become “highly visual campaign(s) of testimony” employed as “an object for visual and intellectual consumption”. Though this tactic has attracted much attention from Western audiences, the underlying causes that could facilitate genuine change have gone unnoticed. The superficial response to these representations has been reflected in UN Action’s ‘Stop Rape Now’ campaign, which encouraged Western audiences to pose for photos gesturing an ‘X’ and upload them to social media with the caption “Get Cross”. Deeply problematic in this campaign is its contributions to the commodification of conflict-related sexual violence, doing little to address the phenomenon and instead increasing its consumability in line with humanitarian trends. Lastly, genders incorporation into security has also led to discrepancies in norm internalisation, thus having the unintended consequence of NGOs receiving funding for symptoms of sexual violence but not its structural underpinnings, with merely a quarter of international funding going towards sexual abuse prevention. This has encouraged perverse incentive structures within local communities, in which aid is exploited as a survival strategy by women in an attempt to access social, judicial and health care reserved solely for victims of sexual violence. This bargaining behaviour has similarly been observed in perpetrators who, with an awareness of the notoriety increased violence incites, are more inclined to initiate gang rape to boost negotiation leverage and attract media coverage. This was confirmed by a commander for the CNDP, who stated “sexual violence was our big weapon, we did it as a way of provoking the Congolese Government”. It thus appears that the intimacy implicit in gender’s growing significance in security has often forced scholars to reproduce the tropes they have sought to escape. Though feminists are less likely to be guilty of this paradox than traditional scholars, the extent in which one is equipped to study war cannot be predicated on this intimacy.
To rectify this, a considered approach, as opposed to an intimate one, should be adopted by both feminists and mainstream scholars alike, not to better equip one over the other but to ensure both are sufficiently equipped. Hannah Arendt reconciles Shepherd’s critiques through proposing the domestic and political sphere are unified, politics being inclusive of dissensus and not spatially determined, thus rendering households “sites of micro-politics that register war as ‘space-body relationships”. In doing so, war politics can be extended to households, subsequently including all realms of experience, not just those of men situated in traditional conflict realms. Furthermore, Kirby’s decontextualization critique could be alleviated if issues identified by constructivist, Karin Fierke, were to be considered. When wartime sexual violence becomes a widespread social experience, individuals are more likely to isolate themselves to reduce vulnerability and pain, prompting solipsism throughout communities in place of communal grieving and solidarity. As “community cannot be (re-)established” in these instances as the trauma goes unspoken, the custodianship held over victims by Western scholars is exacerbated as survivors find themselves de-platformed internally and externally. A considered approach would suggest these domains must be resolved, empowering victims to speak of their shared experiences and demanding security professionals articulate these experiences in a framework outside of their own. Though these solutions are in no way extensive, they evidence the degree of cross-camp amalgamation required if the genuine integration of fields is to occur.
To conclude, feminists are strongly equipped to study war, not because war knows gender intimately but because feminism lends itself to a considered approach of war’s intricacies. To assert its superiority would mean discrediting the essential deductions of traditional paradigms, suggesting feminists are no better equipped to study war, but they possess strategies mainstream scholars are devoid of. It is valid to assume the most constructive step towards rectifying these schools lies with appreciating scholarship from both sides of the divide, pulling the individual out of statist orientations and grounding the state within greater, structural analyses. Only once these security alliances are formed can we be confident that scholarship will serve, not thwart, its subjects.
