La fem ir shell

Nuclearism

Nuclearism is an extrapolation of the patriarchal frame: proliferation is a machisimo competition, and Hiroshima was the defiling of the pure virgin subject

Warren and Cady 94, Karen J. and Duane L., “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 4–20, May 1994

The adoption of sexist-naturist language in military and nuclear parlance carries the inequity to new heights (Warren N.d.). Nuclear missiles are on “farms,” “in silos.” That part of the submarine where twenty-four multiple warhead nuclear missiles are lined up, ready for launching, is called “the Christmas tree farm”; BAMBI is the acronym developed for an early version of an antiballistic missile system (for Ballistic Missile Boost Intercept). In her article “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” Carol Cohn describes her one-year immersion in a university’s center on defense technology and arms control. She relates a professor’s explanation of why the Karen J. Warren and Duane L. Cady 13 MX missile is to be placed in the silos of the new Minuteman missiles, instead of replacing the older, less accurate ones “because they’re in the nicest hole-you’re not going to take the nicest missile you have and put it in a crummy hole.” Cohn describes a linguistic world of vertical erector launchers, thrust-to-weight ratios, soft lay downs, deep penetration, penetration aids (also known as “penaids”, devices that help bombers of missiles get past the “enemy’s” defensive system), “the comparative advantages ofprotracted versus spasm attacks”- or what one military advisor to the National Security Council has called “releasing 70 to 80 percent of our megatonnage in one orgasmic whump”-where India’s explosion of a nuclear bomb is spoken of as “losing her virginity” and New Zealand’s refusal to allow nuclear-arms or nuclear-pow- ered warships into its ports is described as “nuclear virginity” (Cohn 1989, 133-37). Such language and imagery creates, reinforces, and justifies nuclear weapons as a kind of male sexual dominance of females. There are other examples of how sexist-naturist language in military con- texts is both self-deceptive and symbolic of male-gendered dominance. Ronald Reagan dubbed the MX missile “the Peacekeeper.” ‘Clean bombs” are those which announce that “radioactivity is the only ‘dirty’ part of killing people” (Cohn 1989, 132). Human deaths are only “collateral damage” (since bombs are targeted at buildings, not people). While a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Senator Gary Hart recalled that during military lobbying efforts under the Carter administration, the central image was that of a “size race” which became “a macho issue.” The American decision to drop the first atomic bomb into the centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instead of rural areas, was based on the military’s designation of those cities as “virgin targets,” not to be subjected to conventional bombing (Spretnak 1989,55). As the Tailhook scandal reminded many, traditional military training rein- forces sexist-naturist language and behaviors, with the attendant values of considering women a foul and lowly class (Cook and Woollacott; Ruddick 1993). Recruits and soldiers who fail to perform are addressed as faggot, girl, sissy, cunt, prissy, lays. The ultimate insult of being woman-like has been used throughout history against the vanquished (Spretnak 1989, 57). Even refer- ences to stereotypically female-gender-identified traits of childbearing and mothering are not free from patriarchal co-opting. In December 1942, Ernest Lawrence’s telegram to the physicists at Chicago concerning the new “baby,” the atom bomb, read, “Congratulations to the new parents. Can hardly wait to see the new arrival” (Cohn 1989, 140). As Carol Cohn shows, the idea of male birth with its accompanying belittling of maternity, gets incorporated into the nuclear mentality. The “motherhood role” becomes that of “telemetry, tracking, and control” (Cohn 1989, 141). Once the sexism of the co-opted imagery is revealed, the naming of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki-“Little Boy” and “Fat Man”-seems only logical (even if perverse). As Carol Cohn claims, “These ultimate destroyers were . . . not just any 14 Hypatia progeny but male progeny. In early tests, before they were certain that the bombs would work, the scientists expressed their concern by saying that they hoped the baby was a boy, not a girl-that is, not a dud” (Cohn 1989, 141). Cohn concludes: “The entire history of the bomb project, in fact, seems permeated with imagery that confounds man’s overwhelming technological power to destroy nature with the power to create-imagery that inverts men’s destruction and asserts in its place the power to create new life and a new world. It converts men’s destruction into their rebirth” (Cohn 1989, 142).

Alt

Block Solvency

Feminism is able to interrogate international relations and arrive at preferable, non-gendered solutions

Thorburn (lecturer in International Relations in the Department of Government at the University of the West Indies, Mona) 2k, Diana, “Feminism Meets International Relations”, SAIS Review, Volume 20, Number 2, Summer-Fall 2000, pp. 1-10 (Article)

In just over a decade, gender and international relations, or, as it is also called, feminist international relations, has situated itself in the discipline of international relations at many different levels: from reassessing mainstream theoretical approaches to international relations, to advocating alternative perspectives and conceptuali- zations of international relations, to inserting women into the international relations discourse. Given the recent exponential growth in the theories of feminist international relations, and what appears to be increased interest in the field, one might venture to say that it is in the process of becoming fully established as an accepted and legitimate sub-field of international relations throughout the academy. The term gender, as defined within contemporary discourse, refers to the complex social construction of men’s and women’s identities. One’s gender reflects not simply or necessarily even one’s biological characteristics, but rather culturally specific notions of men’s and women’s behaviors, particularly in relation to each other. Fundamental in the discourse on gender is the notion of power and the power dynamics between genders. A feminist approach, then, aims to reveal the gendered dimensions of theories, structures, and actions; in the context of international relations, this amounts to an epistemological approach of interrogating international relations theory and, in so doing, placing and/or bringing to light women’s and gender issues in foreign policy and in the broader international arena. As Marysia Zalewski put it quite simply, this approach asks two main questions: “What work is gender doing?” and “Where are the women?”4 The ultimate result—or at least the objective—is to bring to the study and practice of international relations a more critical and grounded understanding of the world and the way it works, as well and particularly to better understand the gender dynamics that create inequities of power between men and women.