Relevance of Masculinity to War and Conflict - Essay Example

Explain the Relevance of either Masculinity OR Femininity to War and Conflict War and conflict is commonly associated with Masculinity: indeed, it isa man’s game, both defined by and defining the males who take part. War is the male foil, perfect in its lack of female aspects: “Belief in the masculinity of war was created …by leaving that which was…feminine behind…men in war moved into the universal and truly ethical because they transcended ‘womanhood’” (Davidoff, page 98). The “Universal Soldier” is masculine: “War is presented as Male Business. The people behind the stage planning it are men. The Soldiers fighting it are men” (Gindt, 2003, Page 5). The arena of war is also an arena of idealized masculinity: “Standing conscript armies with permanent officer corps. Such corps…became repositories of gentry codes of masculinity” (Connell, 1999 p 192). Despite this apparent harmony, the field of battle is also a field of conflict, where Masculinity is created, protected, and threatened. Part of the reasons for this may be due to the sexual focus of militarized masculinity. Male sexual organs are associated with weapons; war memorials depict semi-naked males with prominent weapons; where women are depicted as war heroes, it is without arms. The history of masculinity or manhood revolves around the idea of the penis as a weapon, and sexual success as a ‘conquest’: “Women’s vaginas are ‘cities’ or ‘forts’ to be ‘assailed’, ‘besieged’, ‘breached’, and ‘occupied’ by penises which are ‘darts’, ‘lances’, ‘stakes’ and ‘swords’ (Foyster, 1999, p 73). This essay shall consider the complex interaction between war, masculinity, and sexuality, virility and the phallus. By understanding how historically masculinity has been linked both to war, and to the male gender, and how descriptions of the phallic organs are centered upon weapons and analogies of war, this essay will show how masculinity is conflicted and defined by concepts of war and conflict. The male image of the warrior has been closely associated with sex for hundreds of years. Medieval literature produces the idea of the phallus as directly linked to male power and authority: “Castration is the universal punishment for crimes against authority…the bishop does not know how to describe a Greek eunuch appointed to be leader of an army”…a man without functioning genitalia is not a man” (Cohen, 1995). Castration is a reoccurring theme when discussing masculinity and wars: “If a soldier in a modern nation-state goes to war, he fights for his country, his sovereign and his family... Fearing castration, the soldier has to construct, test and enhance his masculinity in the battlefield” (Gindt, page 9). The soldier is a phallic ideal, but he also fights to defend the phallus, here extended to all branches of patriarchy, including the state, the family, and the nation. This connection between masculinity and war also relays back to other notions of masculinity, including patriotism, paternity and rulers (usually male). As Myrttinen makes clear, “The connection between men and weapons often takes on highly sexualized characteristics” (page 39). The US Marine Core has a song which particularly emphasizes this: “ This is my rifle [holding up gun]/this is my gun [pointing at penis]/ One’s for killing/ the other’s for fun” (Myrttinen, page 39). The song does not make clear which weapon is for which (killing or fun), and this is surely because the phallus is represented by both weapons; no distinction exists between the rifle and the penis – both are for killing, both are for fun. The masculinity of the rifle is also the manhood of the male soldier: “The use of the body as a weapon seeks to strengthen the social position of the male…by gaining…sexual satisfaction, and – above all – power by directly and violently subjugating others.” (Myrttinen, page 40). As Myrttinen also points out, if the weapon is a sexual symbol, then the use of the weapon is a symbol of the sexual act. This masculine role is also linked to a change in image during the Reagan years: “The previous James-Bond style action hero with a small gun and relatively refined manners is replaced by John Rambo-style hyper-masculine heroes with ludicrously oversized weapons and muscles” (Myrttinen, page 42). Military maneuvers where the soldier is supposed to be peacekeeping features the idolization of the masculine role: “They are portrayed as western protector-warriors in the streets of Kabul or Pristinia, a ‘Robust’ manly but benevolent force” (Myrttinen, page 39). War re-enforces masculinity, and conceptions of the male, by associating the tools of war or conflict with the penis, and therefore making any battles sexual in nature. Cities are often feminized, and so any consequent image of ‘storming’ that city gains sexual connotations. By linking the individual soldier with wider images of patriarchy, this sexuality then re-enforces the notions of conquest, and of macho-like warriors portrayed in war memorials: “War memorials depict muscular men clutching their guns or hurling grenades with flexed, oversized pectoral muscles bulging out of the opened shirts of their uniforms.” (Myrttinen, 2003) The male image of warrior also has a negative connotation, which concerns those who do not conform to the ideals. “Effeminate” was not used as a term for homosexuality until the mid-eighteenth century; before that, it had been a term used to describe males who had lost power. Love was generally seen as the prime method of loosing power, and in particular, of losing military ability: “Men who love forget their military duty. Othello is concerned that if Desdemona accompanies him….he may be seen to neglect his military command” (Foyster, page 57). Men who loose their military power, particularly by falling in love, become effeminate, and lose masculinity and potency: “Heartfree is so ‘wounded’ by the love he has for Bellinda that he doubts whether he will ‘have enough courage to draw my sword’, a sword being a well-known euphemism for a penis” (Foyster, 57). Love is the cause of loss to both military prowess and sexual prowess, confirming again that war and the male phallus are closely connected. This effeminacy issue has been grasped by anti-war protestors since the Vietnam war, when protestors used the slogan “Girls say Yes to Boys who say NO!” (Reed, date unknown). This is a particularly clear example of the linkage between war and sexuality – soldiers previously being depicted as sexually attractive to women. Protestors against the recent war in Iraq also contrasted war with masculinity, this time depicting the supporters of war as homosexual: “The protests against Bush and Blair…During the past months, they have been represented as lovers in pop videos, manipulated photos, but also in real pictures, almost always with Blair taking the passive, female identified position, and – strikingly – almost always with a homophobic message!” (Gindlt, page 8). Gindlt surely misses the importance of the homophobic images here – those who support Bush in going to war have lost power, and become effeminate; love and effeminacy and the loss of military power have been linked since the Early Modern period – it should therefore come as no surprise that Bush and Blair’s opponents have chosen to depict them as homosexual. The male whose position is weakened through military decisions is emasculated – he looses his phallic role and therefore becomes a eunuch, leaving him open to associations with homosexuality and effeminacy. The negative consequences of making the wrong choices in war includes loss of phallic power, and symbolic castration. The role of the woman warrior provides a continually conflicted ground between masculinity and phallic ideas of war. The concept of the woman engaging in battle, even being a military leader, demonstrates how the patriarchy struggles with the militarized female. The London statue of Boudicca, the Iceni warrior and general who fought the Romans, depicts her as clothed in diaphanous material, and her daughters, also warriors, crouched semi-naked at her feet. As with many depictions of the female as soldier, she does not hold her weapon as though charging – instead it is held upright, her arm curved around the column. The female warrior does not manage her weapon as a threat, or even defense, rather, she holds it as though it were the phallus which she lacks. Nineteenth and twentieth century pictures of Joan of Arc, for example, frequently depict her in armor – however, her sword is not always present (Pernoud and Clin, 1998). Joan represents a very problematic image of the masculinized military; her armor is sexualized, sometimes combined with a long skirt. Typically, her sword is held to her body, or even hidden behind a leg (See La Galerie des femmes fortes by Le Moyne, for example). Even while she is being depicted as a heroine, acknowledged as a military leader and warrior, and being used to inspire nationalist feelings, therefore, Joan is still separated from the masculine ‘weapon’ through its impotence. Heroines who disguise themselves as knights also undergo a change in gender: “In the Roman de Silence, the female protagonist is described at birth with female pronouns…she is raised as a boy, and when she departs from home “To become a knight a gender shift occurs”” (Cohen, 1995). Other women also alter their status from females to males while dressed as warriors: “Ide wears armor and performs deeds of prowess that earn her knighthood…the hero(ine) is transformed into “A perfect man as all others be with out any difference”” (Ibid 1995) - Ide receives a penis; probably she has become a man through her military prowess and assumption of male skills. The militarized woman stands at a crossroads between masculinity and becoming a gendered male, complete with sexual organs. A woman who engages in war is taken into the masculine fold, but only under certain conditions: she must not actually use the weapon, which is a symbolic penis – because to use the penis implies sexual penetration, and she would be therefore ‘penetrating’, and maybe symbolically raping, any man she fought. Secondly, she must become phallic – in literature, she does this by loosing her identity as a woman and becoming, perhaps literally, a man. Her female masculinity may involve sexual relationships with women, or frigidity. The connection between masculinity, sexuality and conflict has a long history, but there are many conflicts still to be resolved. Weapons are associated with the phallic male, but this is challenged both by associations with effeminacy, and also by female warriors. Although women have been successful military leaders, they are generally not acknowledged as such, and statues and images of them may deny them phallic weapons or even appropriate armor. Women who perform such tasks are usually depicted as virginal (repressed or hysterical), while males are seen as sexually potent and virile. Men who inappropriately opt for war also lose potency. By limiting the ways in which both females and inappropriate males are associated with war and conflict, patriarchy preserves the ideal of the phallic soldier, and the connection between masculinity and war. Bibliography Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome (1995) “Medieval Masculinities: Heroism, Sanctity, and Gender” http://www6.georgetown.edu/departments/medieval/labyrinth/e-center/interscripta/mm.html Connell. R W (1999) Masculinities Polity Press, United Kingdom Davidoff, Leonore (1990) “Adam Spoke first and named the orders of the world: Masculine and feminine domains in history and sociology” in Gender and History in Western Europe Robert Shoemaker and Mary Vincent (eds) Oxford University Press, New York 1998. Foyster, Elizabeth A. (1999) Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage Addison Wesley Longman, New York Gindt, Dirk (2003) ““He’s the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame”: Men and Masculinities during the peace demonstration in Stockholm in February 15th 2003” Stockholm University. Myrttinen, Henri ( 2003) “Disarming Masculinities” Disarmament Forum Number four. 2003. Nagel, Joane (1998) “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and sexuality in the making of Nations” Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 21 Number 2 March 1998 Pernoud, Regine and Clin, Marie-Veronique, (1998) Joan of Arc: Her Story (translated Jeremy duQuesnay Adams) St Martins Press, New York. Reed, T V (Date unknown) “Online Chapter: Peace symbols: Posters in Movements against the Wars in Vietnam and Iraq” http://www.upress.umn.edu/artofprotest/onlinechpart1d.html Roe, Andrew (2003) “How the Battlefield shaped ideas of what it is to be a man” San Francisco Chronicle October 26, 2003 Workman, Thom (1996) “Pandora’s Sons: The Nominal Paradox of Patriarchy and War” YCISS Occasional Paper number 31, January 1996 Read More