Chapter 6 Middle-earth

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• Chapter 6Middle-earth Feminist Analysis of
  Conflict

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What do gender-sensitive lenses tell us about war?
War depends on telling gendered war stories
based in a logic of protection, and on
silencing or deligitimizing stories that
challenge them
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Where are the women?
If women are present in the LOTR, their roles
tend to be minor
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What work is masculinity doing?
Strategies and relationships among the Fellowship
are highly masculinized
Members are all unmarried, and the group is
hierarchically structured
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How can the hero story be challenged?
The story of the LOTR is told from Frodos
perspective, but what about other narratives
which might be messier than Frodos view?
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Hobbits illustrate how gendered and hierarchical
relationships can perpetuate insecurity and
inequality for feminized dependents
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Eowyn and Merry emerge as unexpected heroes in
the Battle of Pelennor Fields
People who are not recognized as important
actually do influence key events in significant
ways
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Private politics are critical to the practice
and understanding of public politics
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Non-dominant perspectives have important and
underrecognized sources of wisdom
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World War 1 through a Gender-Sensitive Lens
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Gendered perceptions/assumptions influence how
war is conducted and how decisions about going to
war are made
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Aircraft battles were more chivalrous than
dropping bombs but the German squadron-style
combat was seen as cowardly
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Military leaders valued boldness, bravery,
strength and chivalry over defensive positioning,
balancing, patience and calculation
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Dehumanizing or feminizing enemies allows for
projecting of dominating relationships onto the
international relations between groups
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World War 1 was seen as a cure for societys ills
and a way to promote positive masculine values
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Masculinized, militarized nationalism promoted
beliefs that war would be quick and easy because
our men were superior
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Just warriors were called on to defend
defenseless women and children (beautiful
souls) from bad guys (barbaric Germans)
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The decision of potential recruits whether or not
to enlist was determined by their manliness
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The War in Iraq through a Gender-Sensitive Lens
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Marriage, sexual assault, prostitution, ethnic
politics, sexist economies more accurately and
clearly illuminate the causes, costs,
consequences and meanings of war
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Gendered militarization has an enormous impact on
society
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because beauty was subverting civic order
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Moral criteria identify when a just war may be
undertaken and how it may be fought
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Jus ad bellum(just reasons)
Jus in bello(just conduct)
Requires that war be fought only for reasons
characterized by right intention, just cause,
right authority, proportionality of ends, and for
last resort
Requires that war be conducted only when
noncombatants are insured immunity, and when wars
do more good than harm
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A redefinition of reasonable chance of success
should include Justice in the longer term during
and after war
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The political context that constructed and
sustained Iraq was gendered and unjust
Sanctions imposed before the war were
unjustly aimed at civilian targets
Post-war civil strife was the opposite of
a feminist understanding of what
success in Iraq would look like
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Gender-sensitive analysis recognizes the costs of
war that are often ignored