This valuable collection examines closely the construction of male and female identity around the theme of collective violence. Why did such violence get "moralized" for men in the case of warfare-but not for women? Women, Militarism and War presents alternatives to both "business as usual" thinking and excessively utopian or naive feminist accounts. Contributors: Jane Bethke Elshtain, Sheila Tobias, Amy Swerdlow, Carol Cohn, Mary C. Segers, Linda K. Kerber, D'Ann Campbell, Kathleen Jones, Joyce Berkman, Cynthia Enloe, Janet Radcliffe Richards and Sara Ruddick

Jean Elshtain examines how the myths of Man as "Just Warrior" and Woman as "Beautiful Soul" serve to recreate and secure women's social position as noncombatants and men's identity as warriors. Elshtain demonstrates how these myths are undermined by the reality of female bellicosity and sacrificial male love, as well as the moral imperatives of just wars.

Maneuvers takes readers on a global tour of the sprawling process called "militarization." With her incisive verve and moxie, eminent feminist Cynthia Enloe shows that the people who become militarized are not just the obvious ones—executives and factory floor workers who make fighter planes, land mines, and intercontinental missiles. They are also the employees of food companies, toy companies, clothing companies, film studios, stock brokerages, and advertising agencies. Militarization is never gender-neutral, Enloe claims: It is a personal and political transformation that relies on ideas about femininity and masculinity. Films that equate action with war, condoms that are designed with a camouflage pattern, fashions that celebrate brass buttons and epaulettes, tomato soup that contains pasta shaped like Star Wars weapons—all of these contribute to militaristic values that mold our culture in both war and peace. Presenting new and groundbreaking material that builds on Enloe's acclaimed work in Does Khaki Become You? and Bananas, Beaches, and Bases, Maneuvers takes an international look at the politics of masculinity, nationalism, and globalization. Enloe ranges widely from Japan to Korea, Serbia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Britain, Israel, the United States, and many points in between. She covers a broad variety of subjects: gays in the military, the history of "camp followers," the politics of women who have sexually serviced male soldiers, married life in the military, military nurses, and the recruitment of women into the military. One chapter titled "When Soldiers Rape" explores the many facets of the issue in countries such as Chile, the Philippines, Okinawa, Rwanda, and the United States. Enloe outlines the dilemmas feminists around the globe face in trying to craft theories and strategies that support militarized women, locally and internationally, without unwittingly being militarized themselves. She explores the complicated militarized experiences of women as prostitutes, as rape victims, as mothers, as wives, as nurses, and as feminist activists, and she uncovers the "maneuvers" that military officials and their civilian supporters have made in order to ensure that each of these groups of women feel special and separate.

Ideas of masculinity and femininity become sharply defined in war-reliant societies, resulting in a presumed enmity between men and women. This so-called "battle of the sexes" is intensified by the use of misogyny to encourage men and boys to conform to the demands of masculinity. These are among Tom Digby's fascinating insights shared in Love and War, which describes the making and manipulation of gender in militaristic societies and the sweeping consequences for men and women in their personal, romantic, sexual, and professional lives. Drawing on cross-cultural comparisons and examples from popular media, including sports culture, the rise of "gonzo" and "bangbus" pornography, and "internet trolls," Digby describes how the hatred of women and the suppression of empathy are used to define masculinity, thereby undermining relations between women and men—sometimes even to the extent of violence. Employing diverse philosophical methodologies, he identifies the cultural elements that contribute to heterosexual antagonism, such as an enduring faith in male force to solve problems, the glorification of violent men who suppress caring emotions, the devaluation of men's physical and emotional lives, an imaginary gender binary, male privilege premised on the subordination of women, and the use of misogyny to encourage masculine behavior. Digby tracks the "collateral damage" of this disabling misogyny in the lives of both men and women, but ends on a hopeful note. He ultimately finds the link between war and gender to be dissolving in many societies: war is becoming slowly de-gendered, and gender is becoming slowly de-militarized.

Making Gender, Making War is a unique interdisciplinary edited collection which explores the social construction of gender, war-making and peacekeeping. It highlights the institutions and processes involved in the making of gender in terms of both men and women, masculinity and femininity. The "war question for feminism" marks a thematic red thread throughout; it is a call to students and scholars of feminism to take seriously and engage with the task of analyzing war. Contributors analyze how war-making is intertwined with the making of gender in a diversity of empirical case studies, organized around four themes: gender, violence and militarism; how the making of gender is connected to a (re)making of the nation through military practices; UN SCR 1325 and gender mainstreaming in institutional practices; and gender subjectivities in the organization of violence, exploring the notion of violent women and non-violent men.

Women in ancient Greece and Rome played a much more active role in battle than previously assumed. The martial virtues—courage, loyalty, cunning, and strength—were central to male identity in the ancient world, and antique literature is replete with depictions of men cultivating and exercising these virtues on the battlefield. In Women and War in Antiquity, sixteen scholars reexamine classical sources to uncover the complex but hitherto unexplored relationship between women and war in ancient Greece and Rome. They reveal that women played a much more active role in battle than previously assumed, embodying martial virtues in both real and mythological combat. The essays in the collection, taken from the first meeting of the European Research Network on Gender Studies in Antiquity, approach the topic from philological, historical, and material culture perspectives. The contributors examine discussions of women and war in works that span the ancient canon, from Homer’s epics and the major tragedies in Greece to Seneca’s stoic writings in first-century Rome. They consider a vast panorama of scenes in which women are portrayed as spectators, critics, victims, causes, and beneficiaries of war. This deft volume, which ultimately challenges the conventional scholarly opposition of standards of masculinity and femininity, will appeal to scholars and students of the classical world, European warfare, and gender studies.

How are war and militarism gendered? Feminist scholars have long contended that war and militarism are fundamentally gendered. This book provides empirical evidence, theoretical innovation, and interdisciplinary conversation on the topic, while considering the links between gender, war, and militarism.

Women across the globe are being dramatically affected by war as currently waged by the USA. But there has been little public space for dialogue about the complex relationship between feminism, women, and war. The editors of Feminism and War have brought together a diverse set of leading theorists and activists who examine the questions raised by ongoing American military initiatives, such as: What are the implications of an imperial nation/state laying claim to women's liberation? What is the relation between this claim and resulting American foreign policy and military action? Did American intervention and invasion in fact result in liberation for women in Afghanistan and Iraq? What multiple concepts are embedded in the phrase "women’s liberation"? How are these connected to the specifics of religion, culture, history, economics, and nation within current conflicts? What is the relation between the lives of Afghan and Iraqi women before and after invasion, and that of women living in the US? How do women who define themselves as feminists resist or acquiesce to this nation/state claim in current theory and organizing? Feminism and War reveals and critically analyzes the complicated ways in which America uses gender, race, class, nationalism, imperialism to justify, legitimate, and continue war. Each chapter builds on the next to develop an anti-racist, feminist politics that places imperialist power, and forms of resistance to it, central to its comprehensive analysis.

"Nimo's War, Emma's War is unique in examining the gendered dimension of the Iraq war, particularly its impact on ordinary Iraqi and American women, thereby revealing an important long-term cost of the conflict. Cynthia Enloe's approach and analysis are extremely original and innovative."--Nadje Al-Ali, author of What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq "Nimo's War, Emma's War is Cynthia Enloe's darkest and most strikingly conceived text to date. War is not 'in' Iraq and Afghanistan, where foreign militaries confront local people, rather it is everywhere, most particularly in 'peacetime' domestic spaces, 'civilian' employment, marital bedrooms and high schools."--Terrell Carver, author of Politics, Language and Metaphor "Cynthia Enloe has pioneered the subject of women, militarism, and war in a series of revelatory books, including Bananas, Beaches, and Bases, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War, and Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives. Nimo's War, Emma's War is her best one yet."--Chalmers Johnson, author of The Blowback Trilogy "Brilliantly researched, vividly written, Cynthia Enloe has gifted us with a new and different story of modern warfare. Entirely gripping and profoundly humane, every page raises new issues. To factor in Nimo and Emma--all the women and families touched by the carnage and agony of war, is to see the bitter range of tragedy community by community. To read this book is to ask: What are we doing to our children--all our children, combatants and civilians? How do women cope with post-war wounds and violence--agony, wreckage, displacement? Cynthia Enloe's book is essential reading for all students and journalists, public citizens and peace activists, who seek women's dignity, healthy societies, humane alternatives to the insanity of careless military destruction."--Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of The Declassified Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt (vols I & II, III forthcoming)

Media representations and practices that have emerged out of contemporary wars have been well documented by a wide array of books and articles. These treatments, however, have been less attentive to how cultural constructions of military personnel and war itself figure in the depiction of the incursions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Post-Feminist War, Mary Douglas Vavrus argues that all of these identity categories are integral to our understanding of those fighting, saved, or victimized by war. She considers two important questions: how the construction of gender, race, and class in media are productive of régimes of truth regarding war and military life, and how such constructions may also intensify militarism. By examining news and documentary media produced since September 11, 2001, Vavrus demonstrates that news narratives that include women use feminism selectively in gender equality narratives, which tend to reinforce historically resonant gender, race, and class identity constructions. She ultimately asserts that such reporting advances post-feminism, which, in tandem with banal militarism, subtly pushes military solutions for an array of problems women and girls face.