DR GABRIELLE JAMELA HOSEIN
DOES gender matter to war? As we watch Russia's invasion of Ukraine, this is a question that hardly makes it to news coverage, though its answers can offer valuable analytical insight.
So, what does the question really explore? First, whether masculinities and femininities shape how people experience war and how those with power wield violence in international politics. We've seen how militaries are dominated by men and how men in particular become conscripted into a nation's defence.
This happened a few days ago in Ukraine, when men 18-60 were banned from leaving the country and encouraged to join the army. On the other side of this are women who are left with responsibility for care for families, the aged and the ill, and for provision of food and water, which have long been responsibilities assigned to women. In this way, war relies on and reinforces stereotypical gender divisions, like most crises.
Second, the question directs us to look to leaders themselves and how they represent their power. Vladimir Putin's highly crafted 'badman' hyper-masculinity is part of his domestic gender politics and global gendered politics. This is not unusual.
Whether in relation to the Cold War confrontation between John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev over the Cuban Missile Crisis or now between Putin and Biden, it's necessary to not appear 'weak' and to talk tough. Pro-American propaganda machines are referring to the sanctions as 'potent' economic warfare exposing Putin's 'shocking weakness.'
For both countries, nuclear weapons have long generated an imagery of competitive male sexuality, literally bombs are compared to the phallus (or erect penis), referred to as 'big boy' and associated with penetration, just as the penis (though not in its usual soft and vulnerable state) is associated with a gun and semen described as bullets or blanks.
Nationally, Putin has backed a mix of positions with relation to gender and sexuality, for example, defending women's right to work but also championing motherhood as an essential part of Soviet womanhood. Feminists have faced increased repression since Pussy Riot members were imprisoned, anti-domestic violence organisations were placed on 'foreign agent' lists, and some forms of domestic violence were decriminalised in 2017.
More importantly, feminist scholars have pointed to the ways that gender is used for nation-building, through establishing state-friendly masculinised youth groups, and branding the West as gay, feminised, weak and immoral. Opposition leaders were photoshopped as transgender prostitutes, for example, and the Ukraine is represented as a 'picky girl,' a 'flighty mistress' and a western-dominated and dependent state.
Homosexuality is portrayed as European, making Russia's emphasis on heteronormative militarised manhood appear morally superior, and legitimising domination of Ukraine. Russian propaganda also compares Ukraine to a prostitute, sleeping with the EU and US for money (and weapons). In such ways, gender a
