16 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 2 2013 ‘Making Friends with the Beast?’ Reflections on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda

BY ROBIN MAY SCHOTT

At a recent reception, UN Res. 1325 is a revolutionary a friend at the Danish Institute for Human transformation of rhetoric Rights was taking leave of her colleagues to regarding issues of women, peace, start a new position at the Danish Ministry and security. In the last dozen years, of Foreign Affairs. She spoke of her feelings about moving to the Ministry from the there has been a proliferation of Institute, where she had worked for fifteen debates about its successes and its years as an expert on human rights, and failures. Should its limitations be recalled an experience from her girlhood. understood as failures in implemen - As any girl who rides horses knows, she related, there was always the big beast tation? Or should the concepts of which only the riding instructor had women, gender, and violence which permission to ride. Then the day came frame the resolution be critically when she too was allowed to take out the big horse. She found that he liked her challenged? carrots and was actually a nice guy. In fact, she could even begin to make friends with the beast – a useful image for her as she was taking up her new position at the Ministry. It struck me that this image is also useful in conveying some of the dilemmas faced by feminists, both NGO activists and aca-demic feminists, in assessing advances made within the United Nations system ‘MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE BEAST’ 17 with regard to the agenda known as women held peace talks, would it make a Women, Peace and Security. Is it friend or difference if the global arms trade con- foe? On the one hand, Security Council tinued to expand, with 80% of the profits Resolution 1325, adopted on October 31, going to the five permanent members of 2000, represents a revolutionary trans- the Security Council, if international finan - formation of rhetoric that is the result of cial institutions foreclose the possibility of relentless labor by the NGOs responsible creating a citizenry free enough from want for the groundwork. It is remarkable to that they can become democratically imagine the men of the Security Council empowered, if security continues to be putting into their mouths the language understood in terms of state security with underscoring the importance of main - huge standing armies, and if the role of streaming a gender perspective and the gender regimes in relation to these factors importance of the representation, participa - remains invisible (Cohn 2004: 18)? tion, and protection of women from rape From this brief summary, it appears that and other forms of sexual abuse (Resolu - NGO activists have been better at making tion 1325 of 2000), language noting friends with the beast than many academic women’s empowerment in peacemaking feminists. (However, the former also pay a processes (Resolution 1889 of 2009) and price for this friendship, as NGO activists in language reaffirming the need to end the Working Group on Women, Peace and impunity and to implement a policy of zero Security have changed their ways of speak - tolerance of sexual exploitation and abuse ing and thinking to make their activities (Resolution 1820 of 2008) (Kuehnast, de and political agenda more attractive to UN Jonge Oudraat, and Hernes 2011: 131- policy-shaping processes (Cohn 2004:8).) 155). 1 With this language ringing in our But when academic feminists challenge the ears, it seems that the limitations of the epistemological and political frameworks of Women, Peace, and Security agenda should the Women, Peace and Security agenda, be understood as lying not with its con - one can argue that they also are making cepts but with its implementation, despite friends with the beast by carrying out the the assiduous efforts of NGOs around the role of the gadfly. 3 In pointing out pro- world to translate Resolution 1325 out of blematic assumptions, gaps and blind spots ‘UN language’ into more than a hundred, in knowledge, and local variations, more accessible languages 2 (Cohn 2004: 7). academic feminists contest what counts as On the other hand, many academic femi - knowledge about gender and violence. nists have claimed that the resolutions are After providing some background to the organized around concepts of gender and Women, Peace and Security agenda, I will violence that falsely fix bodies into biologi - examine some key assumptions about the cally determined sexual differences concepts of women, gender, and violence (Shepherd 2008: 106). With the focus on embedded in Resolution 1325, which is a ‘women as peacemakers’, the Women, centerpiece of this agenda. In doing so, I Peace and Security agenda leaves the draw on debates in international relations, dominant political and epistemological gender mainstreaming, 4 and philosophical frameworks about gender and security discussions of violence. As debates amongst untouched, despite its appearance of academic feminists illustrate, there is a serving more progressive goals. Moreover, ‘theory gap’ between researchers’ under - the dynamics of gender in security relations standing of gender and violence and the cannot be separated from the workings of way these terms are used in this security economic, political or military institutions. agenda. Many academic feminists are highly As Carol Cohn argues, even if peaceable critical of the way in which gender is 18 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 2 2013 treated in Resolution 1325 as if it were a relating to the protection of children (also characterization of pre-existing, natural in armed conflict), as well as the security differences belonging to the sexes (or more needs of women, children and the elderly accurately, belonging to the one sex that is in refugee camps (Shepherd 2008: 108). treated as having a sex). Instead of treating The resolution is the result of the bold concepts of gender and violence as if they work of NGOs concerned with women and were static properties for possession or use, war and their determination to influence it is crucial to understand them as dynamic ‘the most powerful global governance processes. Doing so enables one to move institution in the area of international peace away from a framework of interpretation and security’ (Cohn 2004: 3). Its genesis that treats violence as acts committed can be traced back to the 1995 Beijing against individuals because of their sexuality Platform for Action’s chapter on women and gender, and towards a broader under - and armed conflict, and its review in standing of how violence is productive of Beijing +5 . In March 2000, the NGO gendered subjectivities and bodies, as well Working Group on Women, Peace, and as how violence is immanent in gendered Security was formed to press for a resolu - norms. In doing so, one challenges the tion. Its founding members were the asymmetry in understandings of gender Women’s International League for Peace and violence in the Women, Peace and and Freedom, Amnesty International, Security agenda, while developing the International Alert, the Hague Appeal for ambiguity implicit in these relations, which Peace, the Women’s Commission for allows for more complex understandings of Refugee Women and Children and the the dynamics of gender and violence. Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice. The NGOs prepared the entire groundwork for the resolution, including reviewing every BACKGROUND TO THE WOMEN , UN document for relevance to the WPS PEACE AND SECURITY AGENDA agenda, providing a compendium of Resolution 1325 marks the first time that ‘agreed language’ and bringing women the Security Council directly addressed the from conflict zones to address the Security issue of women in armed conflict. It was Council. The working group self- also the first time that gender has been consciously positioned themselves as mainstreamed in relation to armed conflict helpers rather as adversaries of the Council. and security, rather than in terms of devel - NGOs have continued to make Resolution opment and human rights issues (Cohn 1325 a living document by making it 2004: 2). It has been supplemented by known to grassroots women’s organiza - subsequent Resolutions 1820, 1888, 1889 tions in conflict zones, by translating it and 1960. Resolution 1325 calls on the widely and by providing national and inter - UN and member states to address abuses national actors with timely information, so against women during conflicts, including they could no longer say ‘We had no way sexual and gender-based violence; to of knowing.’ In this way, although the protect displaced women; to train peace - Resolution addresses actors within the UN keepers and security forces in gender system and its member states, the NGOs awareness; to rebuild institutions that have successfully used it ‘on the ground’ provide essential services to women; and to for consciousness-raising, for gaining support women’s organizational efforts in political influence and for pressing for conflict prevention and peacemaking accountability (Cohn 2004: 4-6). (Willet 2010: 142). Its documentary As Carol Cohn notes, the Working heritage includes previous resolutions Group’s members defined themselves ‘MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE BEAST’ 19 neither as ‘anti-war’ nor as feminist. They distinctively are deprived of human rights as a shared divergent conceptual frameworks, deprivation of humanity. (MacKinnon 2006: but were generally cautious of falling into 41-43) the ‘too political’ category. In this way, they narrowed the realm of analysis of war, MacKinnon’s powerful rhetoric also under - militarism, and armed violence to focus on lines one of the paradoxes of the Women, two issues: 1) prising women from the Peace and Security agenda. On the one victim category that Cynthia Enloe has hand, women’s human rights should be dubbed ‘womenandchildren’; and 2) protected by all UN documents. On the focusing on women’s ‘agency’, which other hand, Resolution 1325 recognizes quickly became translated into ‘women as the need to protect ‘the special needs and peacemakers’ (Cohn 2004: 12-13). Despite human rights of women and children in the achievements of the NGOs in getting conflict situations’ and to take account of the issues on the agenda of international ‘gender considerations and the rights of security, their framing remains mired in the women…’ (Kuehnast 2011: 132, 134). imagined polarities of masculine/feminine, Many feminists recognize the paradox that, aggressive/peaceful, protector/protected as Linda Zerilli formulates it, the universal that feminists working in war studies, inter - is always attached ‘to some particular body national relations, and other related fields which cannot be fully divested of its have persistently challenged. particularity,’ hence can never be ‘sexually indifferent.’ And yet the claims ‘to sexual difference cannot be made in the absence THE CONCEPT OF WOMEN IN of a universal reference…’ (Zerilli 1998: THE WOMEN , P EACE , AND SECURITY 16). Echoing this theoretical understand - AGENDA ing, feminist scholars acknowledge that the In a 1999 essay, the feminist legal theorist particular situations, threats, and insecuri - Catharine A. MacKinnon asks, “Are ties generated by the sexual differentiation Women Human?” And she answers, of human lives are central to peace and security. But they object to the ways in If women were human, would we be a cash which Resolution 1325 identifies sexual crop shipped from Thailand in containers difference with women, vulnerability, into New York’s brothels? Would we be maternalism, and peacemaking. In doing sexual and reproductive slaves? ...Would our so, the document does not merely mirror genitals be sliced out to ‘cleanse’ us (our qualities perceived as feminine and mas- body parts are dirt?), to control us, to mark culine, but rather produces certain types of us and define our cultures? ...Would we be femininities and masculinities (Väyrynen beaten nearly to death, and to death, by men 2004: 140). In portraying these categories with whom we are close? Would we be as if they were representations of pre- sexually molested in our families? Would we existing qualities, this approach naturalizes be raped in genocide to terrorize and eject them. When gender attributions appear as and destroy our ethnic communities, and necessary rather than contingent, as raped again in that undeclared war that goes unchanging rather than fluid, there are also on every day in every country in the world in political effects. As Cynthia Cockburn has what is called peacetime?... Being a woman is noted more generally about essentialism, ‘not yet a name for a way of being human’… ‘It is a dangerous political force, designed Women need full human status in social to shore up differences and inequalities, to reality. For this, the Universal Declaration of sustain dominations’ (Cockburn 1998: Human Rights must see the ways women 13). 5 20 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 2 2013

One of the weaknesses of Resolution done to men as civilians under armed 1325 is that, although it acknowledges that conflict. For example, Resolution 1325 sexual difference is significant for war, it expresses a concern that civilians, ‘particu - implies that only women are vulnerable as larly women and children’, account for the sexed beings in war. In this way, it reiterates vast majority of those adversely affected by the asymmetry between the sexes that armed conflict (Kuehnast 2011: 131). But, Simone de Beauvoir diagnosed in The as with the massacre in Srebrenica in July Second Sex in 1949, the year after the 1995, when between 7000-8000 men and Universal Declaration of Human Rights: boys were murdered, there are many cases ‘The term masculine and feminine are used in which ‘the most systematic and severe symmetrically only as a matter of form, as atrocities and abuse were inflicted dis- on legal papers. In actuality the relation of proportionately or overwhelmingly upon the two sexes is not quite like that of two noncombatant men’ (Jones 2004: 1). electrical poles, for man represents both the Whereas men are the absent present that positive and the neutral … whereas woman frames the logic of security, women are represents only the negative, defined by posited as fully identified with the phrase limiting criteria, without reciprocity’ ‘women and children’. When Cynthia (Beauvoir 1952/1974: xvii-xviii). The Enloe began writing this phrase as ‘women- Resolution fails to note that men too are andchildren’, she highlighted the way in vulnerable as sexed beings in war, and in which the binary of protector/protected fact nowhere does the resolution explicitly positions women as vulnerable. This iden- refer to men. As Shepherd notes, ‘‘man’ is tification of vulnerability with women’s role very much the absent presence. ‘He’, how - as mothers is apparent in the language of ever, is represented, embodying the subject the Security Council. As Charli Carpenter of the United Nations Secretary-General’ has noted, in the four years from 1999 to (Shepherd 2008: 121). 2003, the Security Council used the phrase Although men are never specifically ‘women and children’ 163 times, ‘women mentioned in the Resolution, the emphasis as combatants’ six times, and ‘men as on training peacekeeping personnel on the vulnerable’ once (cited in Puechguirbal ‘special needs and human rights of women 2010: 172). And indeed, women are and children’ indicates an assumption in vulnerable as mothers when they see their the Resolution that peacekeepers are men children murdered in front of their eyes, or who require such special training. Assum - their daughters raped, or when they them - ing that peacekeepers are men is part of the selves are forcibly raped by their sons, or logic of masculine protection in which when they are raped by neighbours or those who protect (police, military, peace - enemy combatants, or when they are raped keepers, or more generally the protectionist and forcibly impregnated. In fact, the state) provide protection ‘in exchange for relational violence done to families is loyalty and submission’ (Young 2007: 303- central to genocide (Joeden-Forgey 2010: 4). This silent assumption about peace - 13). However, women also are harmed in keepers bypasses a major discussion other ways during conflict, including in amongst researchers about multiple mascu- relation to their access to property and linities, the role of hegemonic forms of other economic resources. Violent up - masculinity, and the implications of heavals often involve relocation, resulting patterns of masculinity for training demo- in dramatic losses economically for women. cratic gender relations for peace (Connell Margaret Urban Walker notes that there is 2003: 35-39). The logic of masculine the possibility that ‘women’s loss of liveli - protection also makes invisible the harm hood, land, and wealth may be eclipsed by ‘MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE BEAST’ 21 the more shocking facts of mass rape, enough to satisfy donors, but not enough sexualized torture and mutilation, and to be taken seriously in the peacemaking sexual enslavement.’ And she argues for the process. 6 need to understand “the bidirectional However, identifying women’s agency relationships between sexual abuse and with the role of peacemakers is problematic, material dispossession of women” (Walker as it conceptually maintains the polarity of 2009: 40-41). ‘men-as-naturally aggressive, women-as- Thus, Resolution 1325 fails really to naturally peaceful’ (Cohn 2004, 14). 7 As prise women from the ‘womenandchildren’ feminist theorists have exhaustively shown, unit, and it fails to prise children from this not only does this binary erase differences unit as well. In doing so, it risks identifying between women and men, and separate children’s rights with the rights of their gender from class, ethnicity, race, religion, mothers. With respect to the mass rapes, and sexuality, it is also empirically false to enforced impregnation, and enforced suggest that women’s role as mothers has maternity in Bosnia during the wars in the endowed them with a special peacekeeping 1990s, this identification resulted in an power. Maternal ideologies have often been occlusion of children’s rights. Carpenter highly militarized, as was the case histori - argues that, when children who are born of cally under Nazism (Mosse 1985). And in rape (‘birth-by-forced-maternity’) are feminist discussions of just war theory, forcibly adopted out of their mother’s maternal thinking has not proved to be community, they themselves are victims of identical to anti-militarism. Jean Bethke genocide committed by the victim commu - Elshtain, an early feminist working in the nity itself (Carpenter 2000: 444). field of international relations, has drawn One of the achievements of the Women, on maternal thinking in her criticism of the Peace, and Security agenda is the focus on first Gulf War (cited in Sylvester 2013: 42). women’s agency, in contrast to the earlier But her interest in assessing political actions exclusive focus on women as the vulnerable and policies on the basis of ‘what effect victims of armed conflict. This new focus these policies have on our most vital and on agency is stressed in Resolution 1325 fragile human relationships… (from) the through the emphasis on women’s role as standpoint of the child and the child’s peace makers . After expressing concern for needs’ (Elshtain 1992: 55) did not prevent women and children as adversely affected her from arguing for pro-militaristic politics by armed conflict, the Resolution reaffirms post 9-11 (Elshtain 2003). ‘the important role of women in the pre - Thus, although Resolution 1325 vention and resolution of conflicts and in purportedly supports women’s agency, in peace-building…’ (Kuehnast 2011: 131). reproducing the binary identities of Because of women’s role as peace makers , masculine/feminine, aggressive/peaceful, the Resolution emphasizes the importance and protector/protected embedded in of the representation of women at all patriarchal thinking about war, in defining decision-making levels and the participation women’s agency in terms of their role as of women in conflict resolution and peace maternal peacemakers, and in treating them processes (ibid.: 132). Although feminist as an untapped resource for someone else’s critics certainly support women sitting at design (Cohn 2004: 17), the Resolution the peace table, as Cynthia Enloe has noted unreflectively reiterates the very injuries to it is important to know which women are women’s freedom that it seeks to repair. sitting at the peace table. Often they are the wives or daughters of the male leaders of the warring parties, whose presence is 22 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 2 2013

GENDER AND VIOLENCE : T HREE processes that create the boundaries of FRAMEWORKS OF INTERPRETATION subjectivity and lived embodiment. For The treatment of the concept of women in example, it is only through recognizing Resolution 1325 sets the stage for the way that values are gendered that researchers it addresses gender and violence, including can study how such values interact with the notion of gender-based violence. As the poverty, war, and alcohol in understanding resolution treats only women as vulnerable soldiers who rape. Maria Eriksson Baaz and in war by virtue of their sex, phrases like Maria Stern argue that hegemonic models ‘gender perspective’, ‘gender component’, of masculinity are central to the sexual and ‘gender considerations’ become synony- violence committed by solders in the mous with women. Since these phrases in Democratic Republic of Congo (Eriksson the document are followed by references to and Baaz 2010: 50). It is the ‘idea and ideal ‘the special needs of women and girls,’ a of militarized masculinity’ that a soldier gender perspective becomes equivalent to expresses when he tells his interviewers, ‘If having a perspective on those who have a he has nothing in his pocket, he cannot eat gender, that is, on women and girls. or drink his coke, he has nothing to give to This identification of gender with the a woman – he will take her by force’ (Baaz concept of women is problematic in policy and Stern 2010: 31-2), and when he discourses that embrace the language of distinguishes these ‘lust’ rapes from ‘evil’ mainstreaming. The UN recognizes that rapes driven by a wish to humiliate and the category of gender is broader than the degrade victims. The dynamics of gender category of women and defines gender positions can also be actively used by mainstreaming as ‘a strategy for making individuals in navigating war zones. Mats women’s as well as men’s concerns and Utas has coined the term victimcy to catch experiences an integral dimension of the sight of the dynamics in which a woman design, implementation, monitoring and presents herself as a victim of sexual evaluation of policies and programmes in violence as a strategy of social navigation in all political, economic, and societal spheres war zones to gain access to health care that so that women and men benefit equally and is otherwise not accessible (Utas 2005). inequality is not perpetuated’ (Hudson Here I will identify three conceptual 2010: 261). Although many institutions frameworks for analyzing the relationship have renamed projects by changing the between gender and violence. The first word ‘women’ to ‘gender’, the substitution framework treats violence as acts that are in language has had little impact on policy committed against individuals because of (Shepherd 2008: 120). This reduction of their sexuality and gender , and is the frame - gender to women overlooks how a ‘gender work that can be traced in Resolution perspective’ should include a study of the 1325. This is also the approach subsumed masculinities of war, a topic that has been under the concept of ‘ sexual and gender- central to feminist war studies. based violence’, widely referred to by the Moreover, identifying gender with acronym SGBV, which includes ‘rape… women implies that gender is an attribute sexual threats, exploitation, humiliation, of a subject (even though the resolution assaults, molestation, domestic violence, recognizes that these attributes are incest, involuntary prostitution (sexual influenced by social and cultural factors), bartering), torture, insertion of objects into rather than recognizing the complex and genital openings and attempted rape. multiple ways in which gender operates Female genital mutilation and other harm - through power relations, symbolic ful traditional practices (including early meanings, discursive practices, and dynamic marriage which substantially increases ‘MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE BEAST’ 23 maternal morbidity and mortality) are individuals. It provides an easily opera - forms of sexual and gender-based violence tionalized approach, suitable for a quantita - against women….’ 8 The harms referred to tive focus on counting and recording of the under SGBV include a wide range of acts, number of incidents. And it makes a clear and it is crucial for women’s health and distinction between physical violence and safety that such acts be prevented and, other forms of violence, such as symbolic when not prevented, punished. Resolution violence embodied in language or systemic 1325 treats g ender violence in war as ‘rape violence within economic and political and other forms of sexual abuse’ and ‘sexual systems, which appears as part of the nor - and other violence against women and mal state of affairs and is thereby invisible 9 girls’ (Kuehnast 2011: 133-4). Under the (Zizek 2008: 1-2). But instead of thinking Women, Peace and Security agenda, these of violence in terms of specific incidents, it have become issues of international peace is crucial to understand that violence is an and security. event and that its occurrence and re-occur - Although the international recognition rence become part of the expectations of of sexual violence committed against individuals who suffer it. Bruce Lawrence women and girls is long overdue, there are and Aisha Karim argue in writing about also limitations with this framework for violence, ‘ Whether individual or group- understanding the relationship between specific, whether erupting in the private or violence and gender. Violence is treated as in the public domain, violence is always and an aberration from normal relations, a sick - everywhere process. As process, violence is ness which is attributed to armed conflict as cumulative and boundless. It always spills opposed to peacetime relations. It is over. It creates and recreates new norms of assumed to be wielded by combatants and collective self-understanding’ (Lawrence can only be remedied by peace operations and Karim 2007: 11–12). (Väyrynen 2004: 130). In this approach, Taking a non-instrumental, process- one precludes the possibility that violence oriented approach to violence leads one can be wielded by states under normal beyond the first framework to a second conditions or by non-combatants before, framework, which views violence as during, or after periods of armed conflict, productive of gendered subjectivities and or that gender violence can be wielded bodies. Shepherd argues, ‘Instances of against men and boys. Violence is treated violence are one of the sites in which as actions committed by armed male perpe - gender identities are reproduced. Thus trators against female victims in conflict, gendered violence is the violent reproduc - thereby delimiting violence in terms of its tion of gender’ (Shepherd 2008: 51). In space (as belonging to inter-community this framework, the violent reproduction of relations (Väyrynen 2004: 132)), time gender includes the wide variety of abuses (taking place during conflict rather than linked to the notion of SGBV. But this pre/post-conflict), subjects (with a focus second framework also focuses on the wide on men as individual perpetrators), objects range of social, symbolic, and economic (with a focus on women and girl as victims forms of violence that are also part of the of violence) and mode (with a focus on violent reproduction of gender, including sexual violence and violence against material dispossession, lack of access to women). health care, and lack of education. With This way of understanding violence is SGBV, as with other forms of bureaucra - close to an everyday understanding of tized language, one needs to be wary of violence in terms of aggressive individuals how acronym thinking may create a narrow who intentionally inflict harm on weaker or misguided focus in policy. 10 24 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 2 2013

However, catching sight of the violent THE POLITICS OF AMBIGUITY reproduction of gender in this second Feminist academics argue that Resolution framework of analysis raises what philo- 1325 displays an essentialist inheritance in sophers would call the transcendental characterizing women as maternal peace - question of the conditions for the possibi- makers, in linking women’s political roles lity of this violence. Walter Benjamin with their biological capacities, and in pursued this thought when he carried out a identifying gender with women. Feminist historico-philosophical critique of violence criticisms of essentialism can be traced back and argued that violence has a law-making to Simone de Beauvoir’s insights in The or law-preserving character (Benjamin Second Sex that one is not born a woman 1986: 283-4). Law-making is power- but rather becomes a woman, and it is to making, and as such is a manifestation of the concept of situation that one must turn violence (Benjamin 1986: 295), an insight to make concrete definitions of human that applies to norm-making as well. Here groups ‘without enslaving them to a time - one can understand the need for a third less and deterministic pattern’ (Fricker framework for understanding the relation - 2003: 209-10). Although Gayatri Spivak ship between violence and gender – that has earlier argued that a feminist ‘cannot violence is immanent in norms of gender , afford not to be essentialist’ – that is, highlighting the constitutive role of cannot afford not to affirm the bodily, violence in the second framework. The epistemological, political, and ontological soldiers in the Democratic Republic of basis of feminism (Braidotti 1994: 189, Congo who distinguish lust rapes from evil 177) – I propose instead that, in thinking rapes do not question the ideal of mascu- about gender and security, one should take linity as entitling them to access to women, the risk of ambiguity. whether by money or by force. And donor Some feminists inspired by Critical agendas that only provide health care to Security Studies refer to ‘zones of ambigu- victims of sexual violence reinforce the ity’, an acknowledgement that the binary gender stereotype of women as victims and opposition between non-combatants and deprive them of life-saving resources. The combatants holds less in post-Westphalian violence suffered in these examples lurks in wars than in traditional Clausewitzean wars the very norms and ideals that drive these (Våyrynen 2007: 135). The notion of everyday practices. zones of ambiguity is a reminder that non- One might object that widening the combatants also contribute to warfare (e.g., concept of violence to violent processes providing medical services, food, shelter), that may be systemic, symbolic, or norma - and also may be targeted in combat (e.g., tive is too broad, and implies that any form through mass rapes or gender-selective of classification is a form of violence. 11 mass murder). Shepherd refers to ‘a femi - And indeed theories of performativity nist politics of uncertainty’ (Shepherd acknowledge that marking off has norma - 2008: 50) that interrogates the reproduc - tive force and does some violence (Butler tion of differences, such as sexual, ethnic, 1993: 11). But this insight does not or religious differences, rather than assum - preclude us from distinguishing between ing given differences as a starting point for different forms or intensities of violence, or feminist political theory or practice. from acknowledging that some forms of In a philosophical key, ambiguity as used violence fundamentally undermine the way by Beauvoir is rooted in an understanding human beings make sense of the world, of human existence as finite, temporal, understand themselves as embodied beings, embodied and inter-subjective. The notion and understand others (Staudigl 2011: 202). of ambiguity stresses that human beings are ‘MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE BEAST’ 25 not defined by a pre-existing concept or receive salaries for their services (e.g., the identity, but also acknowledges that it is the case of the soldiers in the Democratic concrete situation that provides the material Republic of Congo who had nothing in parameters for our bodies and lives. their pockets). Ambiguity underscores the multiple signifi - As the concept of ambiguity insists on a cations and indeterminacy of meaning temporal focus, in the context of peace and (Langer 2003: 90). With its focus on inter - security it draws attention to how violence pretation and situation (both the body as has a transformative impact on human lives situation and the body in situation), the and social relations well beyond the specific concept is used in certain philosophical, war zones, wartime, or sector of society ethical, and literary approaches. But as the (Sylvester 2013: 25). Hans Joas has argued notion of ambiguity provides neither a that the experience of violence leaves method nor a concrete goal – indeed, it lasting marks not only on the victims but challenges the reliance on pre-fabricated also the perpetrators. In a study of methods of analysis and the assurance that American Vietnam war veterans who had goals can certainly be achieved – it seems actively participated in maltreatment while counter-intuitive to appeal to ambiguity in in combat, the incidence of suicide, fatal discussions of gender and security. car accidents, poisonings, drug over- Nonetheless, taking the risk of ambiguity in doses and arrests for acts of violence addressing issues of gender and security distinguished combat veterans from other opens important possibilities. This concept groups. Combat, he notes ‘transforms the breaks apart the binaries that have haunted soldiers’ personality so that their relation to this discourse, allowing one to catch sight violence is changed over the long term’ of how human beings are differently (Joas 2003: 117-18). Societies that experi - vulnerable as sexed beings during war, as ence chronic conditions of war or inter - well as in pre-war and post-war moments. group conflict also experience an increase in With regard to the Women, Peace and family violence (Minow 2002: 64). Hence, Security agenda, a politics of ambiguity one cannot separate the issue of women’s would acknowledge that addressing peace security in war from women’s security in and security for women also involves domestic civilian life, both with respect to addressing peace and security for men and domestic rape (rape of civilians in ‘peace - boys, who may be the brothers, husbands, time’) and domestic violence (family violence). sons, fathers, neighbours, teachers, Moreover, as the concept of ambiguity tormenters, or friends of women. Men are focuses on situation, as opposed to pre- also vulnerable as sexed beings in war, both given categories of identity, it opens a wide in terms of how war reproduces certain lens of analysis for understanding the patterns of masculinity, and how men suffer conditions of the situation in which violence in warfare either through sexual gendered identities, meanings, and values selection (as in massacres against civilian are reproduced. Such a wide lens is men) or through sexual violence or dis - necessary to understand how violence crimination based on sexual orientation. reproduces gender identities, for example, These processes of violence are interrelated, through bureaucratic procedures or as the fear of being identified as homo- legislation regarding reproductive rights. sexual is one of the factors in the under- Finally, in drawing attention to the lived reporting of sexual violence against men experience of this situation, a politics of (Sivakumaran 2007: 271-2). Peace and ambiguity highlights the human price paid security for men should also secure access to laws and norms when trading protection to health care, as well as ensure that they for submission. 26 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 2 2013

‘M AKING FRIENDS WITH THE BEAST ?’ make friends with the beast? The role of THE ROLE OF FEMINIST CRITICS the theorist is to provide epistemological Here I have presented substantive criticisms and political interventions when they are of the concepts of women, gender, and called for, rather than provide an affirma - violence embedded in Resolution 1325, tive account of social relations. Feminist while also applauding its significance in researchers who debate with the Women, raising the issues of gender and violence to Peace and Security agenda are acting as the level of international security. I have ‘specific’ intellectuals (Foucault 1980: 126) highlighted problematic binaries, the in engaging in a contestation over concepts identification of gender with women, and that have been mainstreamed by interna - the failure to understand the dynamic tional institutions of governance. In doing processes of gender and violence. In this so, they implicitly maintain both that ideas context, I have identified three frameworks matter, and that institutions like the UN in the interpretation of gender and can instantiate progressive goals. In this violence, arguing that it is insufficient to sense, my answer to this question is a pro- understand gendered violence solely in visional ‘yes’. But as the role of the theorist terms of acts committed against individuals – here in the guise of the feminist critic – is because of their sexuality and gender. to interrogate what counts as knowledge Instead, one needs to understand how and analyze its political implications, this violence reproduces gendered bodies and answer can only ever be provisional. subjectivities, as well as how violence is immanent in the laws and norms sustaining such relationships. As an alternative to the form of essentialism embedded in Resolution 1325, I have turned to the NOTES philosophical notion of ambiguity, which 1. Resolutions 1325, 1889, 1820, and 1888 are opens up questions about the complex included as Appendices in Kuehnast 2011. My conditions for situations of violence, the references to the texts of the resolutions will be by page number to this book. multiple actors involved, their inter- 2. http://www.peacewomen.org/security_coun - relations, and the on-going impact of these cil_monitor/about-women-peace-and-security- factors over time. But as one reviewer of agenda?adhocpage=4446 accessed March 6, 2013. this article asked, ‘Which actor should use 3. Even though Socrates argued in the Apology this politics of ambiguity (national legi- (303-31c) that he was a gift to the Athenians in slators, civil servants, UN diplomats, NGO acting as a gadfly in arousing, persuading and activists)?’. reproaching them, he was still condemned to This question highlights the different death. 4. For a thorough discussion of the concepts and interest groups in this discussion, as well challenges of gender mainstreaming, I refer the the precarious position of academic critics reader to the FEMCIT Gender Mainstreaming engaged in the work of knowledge produc - Report, Hilda Rømer Christensen, “Mainstream - tion. Ambiguity is a concept of interpreta - ing Gender, Diversity, and Citizenship: Concepts tion that is not translatable into specific and Methodologies” 2011, methods, strategies or goals. And yet the http://www.femcit.org/files/WP7_Workingpa - concept also displays the ‘theory gap’ that perNo4Revised.pdf 5. To the historical and political arguments against exists between feminist academics working defining individuals in terms of pre-existing with issues of gender and violence, and essences, one can add the existentialist objection. legislators, civil servants, diplomats, and According to existentialists, a human being is not activists. What does this ‘theory gap’ mean defined in advance as having an essence; rather, for the question? Should feminist critics existence precedes essence. But a human being is ‘MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE BEAST’ 27 not free to be anything whatsoever, since she/he is · Cockburn, Cynthia (1998): The Space Between situated. Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in 6. Cynthia Enloe made these comments during Conflict . Zed Books, London and New York. a workshop meeting of the ‘Gender, Power, · Cohn, Carol (2004): Mainstreaming Gender in Violence’ group held at the University of Iceland UN Security Policy: A Path to Critical Transfor - on November 5, 2011. mation? Boston Consortium on Gender, Security 7. Lene Hansen draws on the methods of and Human Rights Working Paper No. 24. discourse analysis to show how the meaning of · Connell, R.W. (2002): Masculinities, the such binaries is constructed ‘through the reduction of violence and the pursuit of peace, in discursive juxtaposition between a privileged sign Cynthia Cockburn and Dubravka Zarkov (eds.): on the one hand and a devalued one on the other’ The Postwar Moment: Militaries, Masculinities and leading to ‘a conceptualization of identity in International Peacekeeping . Lawrence and Wishart, relational terms…’ (Hansen 2006: 19). Shepherd London. describes her own approach also as ‘discourse- · Elshtain, Jean Bethke (2003): Just War Against theoretical analysis’ (Shepherd 2008: 19). Terror . Basic Books, New York. 8. This is the definition provided in UNFPA · Elshtain, Jean Bethke; Hauerwas, Stanley; Reproductive Health in Refugee Situations: An Nusseibeth, Sari; Walzer, Michael; Weigel, George Inter-Agency Field Manuel , Chapter 4, (1992): But Was It Just? Reflections on the Morality http://www.unfpa.org/emergencies/manual/4.h of the Persian Gulf War . Doubleday, New York. tm accessed March 12 2013. · Enloe, Cynthia (2010): Afterword, in 9. See my discussion of violence in Schott 2013. International Peacekeeping , 2010: 17, 2: 307-8. 10. Cynthia Enloe notes the danger in acronym · Foucault, Michel (1980): Power/Knowledge: thinking: ‘Not feeling outrage, allowing oneself to Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 . slip into a bureaucratized distancing – for instance, Colin Gordon (ed.) Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, reducing acts of gang rape to ‘GPV ’ – will not John Mepham, Kate Soper (transl.) Pantheon enable one to stay focused…’ (Enloe 2010: 307). Books, New York. 11. Julie Zahle raised this question after my talk at · Fricker, Miranda (2003): Life-story in Beauvoir’s the Forum for Samfundsvidenskabernes Filosofi, Memoirs, in Claudia Card (ed.): The Cambridge University of Copenhagen, on March 13, 2013. I Companion to the Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir . would like to thank the audience for this and other Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. useful questions. · Joas, Hans (2003): War and Modernity . Polity, Cambridge and Oxford. · Joeden-Forgey, Elisa von (2010): The Devil in the Details: “Life Force Atrocities” and the Assault on the Family in Times of Conflict in: Genocide LITERATURE Studies and Prevention 2010/5, 1. · Baaz, Maria Eriksson; Stern, Maria (2010): · Jones, Adam, ed. (2004) Gendercide and The Complexity of Violence: A Critical Analysis of Genocide . Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of · Hansen, Lene (2006): Security as Practice: Congo (DRC) . Sida, Stockholm. Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War . · Beauvoir, Simone de (1952/1974): The Second Routledge, London and New York. Sex . Transl. H.M. Parshley. 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