Cynthia Enloe

Essays about international politics and patriarchy. Ignoring women means preserving and sometimes worsening the conditions that bring war. In Bosnia, the use of a constitution that recognized and reified ethnic identities made things worse from women peace activists’ perspective. When male politicians let women into UN negotiations over Syria, they required women from all groups to come up with a shared list of demands, even though they represented the same, contending political constituencies as the men. Both processes left women out, or at most on the fringes; Enloe argues that this is part of a model for sustaining patriarchy that also includes “make such demands on those allegedly fortunate women allowed on to the fringes of serious decision-making that their own fragile alliances are frayed.” There’s also a sad anecdote about how the UN, apparently unable to find any actual women to use as role models, chose to use Wonder Woman instead, over the protests of many women who actually worked there. After only two months, she was unceremoniously retired, but without acknowledging the protests: “part of patriarchal people’s learning ritual seems to be learning how to deny that they have ever learned anything from anyone but themselves.”… (más)

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.… (más)