by Ziad El Asmar
September 11, 2001, was a pivotal day in history. It marked the beginning of the longest war in the United States’ decades of existence: The War on Terror. Being the first war of the 21st century, this conflict coincided with a time characterized by gender activism. As such, the War on Terror was animated by gendered ideologies. Not only were they central to the discourse that promoted the war but also dictated some of the practices and tactics used by both combatting sides. In fact, the Bush administration weaponized gender to make the public acquiescent to the war. An analysis will be done by studying and delineating the concept of sovereign masculinity along with the idea that the West is a bastion of gender tolerance. In addition, how gender ideologies manifested themselves by influencing the actions of combatants on the ground will be explored all throughout.
As discussed extensively by Susan Sontag in her book, On Photography, ideologies are a crucial prerequisite to cause reactions to the news, especially in their pictorial form (Sontag, 2005). The US administration understood this and successfully capitalized on gendered norms and social constructs to promote its war. One prominent tactic that President Bush relied on to push a pro-war narrative was what Bonnie Mann characterized as “Sovereign Masculinity” (Mann, 2014). To understand this concept, we should begin by unpacking what is gender for Mann. She argues that gender extends beyond being a social construct to carry an ontological weight in itself. It is a “lived reality” that can be known through experiences. As such, gender is not a fixed notion but a fluid reality whose ontological weight is not rigid. Indeed, Mann claims that gender’s importance for someone could vary depending on the situation or context surrounding an event. However, changing gender is not a simple transitional phase. It is a painful process that usually comes through violent actions. This is because gender is a core structure of a person’s self thus, it affects all aspects of life. It is what gives someone a sense of belonging to a place, to a community, and, “undoing” or changing it could destroy an individual (Mann, 2014).
After explaining what Bonnie ascribes gender as, we now move on to understanding the notion of Sovereign Masculinity and analyzing its role in promoting the War on Terror. This concept is a description of the manifestation of gender on a national scale through its relation to culture and practices. Thus, we can say that gender has personal and national realms that are intertwined and closely related. Bonnie Mann explains that nations thrive towards considering themselves sovereign (Mann, 2014). Social norms usually associate this attribute with masculine traits similar to strength and violence. Consequently, feminine traits are perceived negatively, and the name “National Manhood” is used interchangeably with Sovereign Masculinity. However, since nations are not human beings, this desire to be manly is more of a figurative notion that refers to exercising authority in a gendered manner – specifically through violent masculinity. As such, Sovereign Masculinity requires foundations in the realm of reality. Mann explains that these foundations are provided through borrowing meaning or legitimacy from actual concrete manifestations of gender on the individual level. These manifestations mostly relied on breaking the manhood of other males (or sovereign beings in a sense) and asserting dominance. (Mann, 2014).
Moving onto our case study, the War on Terror, we can notice how sovereign masculinity was at play. Being a world superpower, the United States perceives itself as a strong and manly nation. The attacks of 9/11 came to shake the foundations of such perceptions. The whole nation felt as if it was castrated, feminized, and powerless. Bonnie Mann goes as far as discussing the graphic rhetoric that was circulating in the media: the US has been raped and the planes smashing into the twin towers were compared to acts of penetration. Washington’s consensus was that the country needed to man up and show its power. As a result, Bush adopted the personality of the teenage cowboy: a strong, fearless, and sometimes reckless figure that only acts firmly and powerfully. This was deemed necessary in hopes of erasing the shame and humiliation brought to the country by the events of 9/11. Sovereign Masculinity needed to be restored. Such focus on the gendered and emotional aspects of the events distracted the public from the root causes and helped promote a pro-war sentiment. Mann confirms this in her writings as she claims that through national manhood, young recruits had the opportunity to earn wages and defend the manliness of their country. Moreover, this concept made it easier for families of wounded or killed soldiers to accept the situation as this occurred while defending the nation’s honor and identity (Mann, 2014). In a nutshell, sovereign masculinity played an important role as a justificatory tool of the war by shifting society’s focus to the identity of the country and in turn, the identity of the citizen.
In addition to the national manhood concept, other gender-related ideologies helped keep the war ongoing by allowing the US public to self-validate its leaders’ foreign policy. Among these beliefs is the idea that Western countries are bastions of gender tolerance that are morally required to promote their cultural model and liberate the suffering Eastern women from their oppressive societies. This was exhibited in various forms. First of all, the tolerance culture surfaced through the videos of U.S. soldiers performing parodies of well-known songs. In these videos, deployed service members, often in their full combat gear, were dancing and singing in a feminine way. On the surface, these acts seemed to contradict the fact that armies are considered to be hyper-masculine environment. Thus, they constituted proof of the enlightenment of Western society compared to the barbaric Arab and Muslim worlds and emphasized the need to continue with this war in the eyes of the average citizen. This was confirmed and thoroughly discussed by Maria Pramaggiore in her book “Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness.” She argues that these seemingly funny, gendered, and sexualized videos align perfectly with the U.S. propaganda machine justifying the War on Terror by, as I mentioned previously, pointing out the stark difference between the egalitarian West and the oppressive Middle East. After all, muscular soldiers on combat duty are defying the traditional gender norms of soldiering and are dancing like feminine cheerleaders without shame or hesitation. The positive perception of these videos was a result of the presence of an ideological context of superiority within the U.S. society. However, it is worth noting that such acts did not contradict the concept of sovereign masculinity as they were orchestrated by the enlisted soldier without any orders from higher-ups. Thus, the army maintained its manly status while also being portrayed in a cute and tolerant manner (Pramaggiore, 2016).
Secondly, the ways in which the policymakers and the media dealt with situations such as Jessica Lynch’s story support my argument that gender helped promote the war. To begin with, we should provide a bit of context about Lynch’s story. She was a private in the U.S. Army and a prisoner of war captured by Iraqi insurgents after her convoy was ambushed. Being wounded, she was transferred to a local hospital before being rescued by U.S. Special Forces. Jessica’s story was highly capitalized on by both politicians and the media alike. This was because she fit the archetype (ideal stereotype or embodiment of an actor) of the perfect American female soldier. She was a young, white woman with feminine traits from a middle-class family living in a small town (Kumar, 2004). And, given the fact that media works in conjunction with the dominant ideology i.e. through archetypes and myths (stories) (Howard & Prividera, 2008), her story was meticulously constructed to fit the propaganda narrative even if that required altering truths. Consequently, Jessica was falsely portrayed as a tough yet feminine woman who fought till the last bullet before requiring the assistance of her stronger and more capable male comrades to evade the monstrous captors that raped and assaulted her. Despite her testimony that the story is mostly fabricated and that she was treated well and never assaulted, the media continued to circulate the version deemed fitting the political agenda of the county’s leaders (Kumar, 2004). The rationale behind such a dramatized account of the events is to confirm the ideology of moral superiority and egalitarianism of Western society compared to the Muslim one. In addition to that, this framing of the events moved the story to a personal and emotional level. Lynch could’ve been the mother, daughter, or sister of any American. Moreover, the adherence to the pre-existing archetype of a female soldier allowed the story to be more easily digestible to the average citizen. It is worth noting that other prisoners of war did not receive such hyper-mediatization as their gender, race, or story as a whole did not fit the dominant narrative. One prominent example is Soshana Johnson who was also with Lynch but, due to her being black, she did not qualify for the status of “girl next door” (Kumar, 2004). Thus, it becomes clear that by reinforcing pre-existing ideologies of gender tolerance and enlightenment, the US administration managed to keep its war machine running.
After explaining some ways in which gender facilitated the justification of the war, we move on to exploring how gender dictated some of the actions and tactics of both warring factions. One manner in which it affected combat tactics is through female suicide bombers. Suicide bombing in itself is a spectacular act that draws lots of media attention and, as discussed in Stahl’s documentary “Militainment, inc.,” the spectacle aspect of a war is a key strategy to gain public support in a war (Stahl, 2015). In an attempt to take the spectacle to the next level, insurgent factions resorted to having a female perpetrator to give their cause more spotlight (Asad, 2007). This could be related to Dorit Naaman’s argument that “woman” and “terrorist” are “two ideological expectations of performance rather than actual states of being in the world” (Naaman, 2007). This is based on the previously stated fact that gendered and ideological framings affect our reaction to events around us. In the “common knowledge” of societies, a woman is perceived as the weaker side compared to her male counterpart. She is the caregiver that would sacrifice herself for the well-being of the family and society. On the contrary, the social construct of terrorism relates to the hyper-masculine traits of violence and barbarism. As such, due to them being expectations of behavior as Naaman pointed out rather than actual actions when people hear the term terrorist, they associate it with a man (masculine traits) and do not expect to see a woman performing such acts given the pre-supposed idea they have on what a woman is and what she does. Consequently, having female terrorists or even suicide bombers is an intriguing, unfamiliar, and, shocking event. The ideological perceptions are shattered. Thus, society tries to find framings or solutions to this negation of stereotypical ideas. It is exactly this shattering of ideologies that makes the employment of female suicide bombers a great strategy to bring attention to a cause, especially in instances of imbalance of power (Naaman, 2007).
All in all, gender is at the core of the War on Terror. It extends beyond being a social construct to carrying an ontological weight that affects individuals and nations alike. Its dynamic relationship with media and violence allowed the US administration to make the public more acquiescent to the idea of going to war by capitalizing on the concept of Sovereign Masculinity as well as emphasizing the pre-existing ideological narratives of gender tolerance and superiority. Moreover, gender and its ties to media and violence dictated the actions of combatants such as the resort of insurgents and terrorist organizations to female suicide bombers in an attempt to create a spectacle and gain media attention for their cause. It is worth noting that the entanglement of gender with conflict and specifically the War on Terror is far more complicated and this article only attempts to give a small insight into it.
References
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Kumar, D. (2004). War propaganda and the (ab)uses of women. Feminist Media Studies, 4(3), 297–313. https://doi.org/10.1080/1468077042000309955
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