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Masculinities, IR and the 'Gender Variable': a Cost-Benefit Analysis For Review of International Studies (1999), 25, 475–491 Copyright © British International Studies Association Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’: a cost-benefit analysis for (sympathetic) gender sceptics CHARLOTTE HOOPER1 Abstract. While it is commonplace to argue that international relations reflects a ‘masculinist’ world of men, this article reverses the argument and asks whether international relations might also discipline men and help produce masculinities. In thinking through this question, the article provides an alternative route to understanding the feminist argument that the ‘gender variable’ cannot simply be added to mainstream analysis. By drawing attention to the epistemological and methodological problems which would arise even with empirically oriented research on the subject, the limitations of mainstream approaches to this hitherto largely neglected area of research are highlighted, and alternatives suggested. Introduction One point feminist contributors to IR have made on numerous occasions, and which even sympathetic mainstream academics seem particularly resistant to, is the idea that gender cannot just be grafted onto existing explanatory approaches which are profoundly ‘masculinist’. An adequate analysis of gender requires more radical changes, including an ontological and epistemological revolution.2 In arguing this, feminists have tried to counter the naive approach to gender which argues along the following lines: if international relations marginalises both women and the feminine, then why can’t women and the feminine be brought in to mainstream approaches in the same way that other previously neglected variables have been incorporated?3 For that matter, in the interests of ‘balance’, why can’t a gender focused analysis of men and masculinity also be incorporated into mainstream approaches? 4 This article would like to argue that while in some limited way, it might be possible to add the 1 The author would like to thank the Economic and Social Science research Council for financial help during the research for this article, and also members of the International Politics Research Group at the University of Bristol for their helpful comments. 2 For example: Rebecca Grant, ‘The Sources of Gender Bias in International Relations Theory’, in Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland (eds.), Gender and International Relations (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), pp. 8–26; J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations (Oxford, 1992); V. Spike Peterson, ‘Introduction’, in V. Spike Peterson (ed.) Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 1–64; Christine Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 3 See Robert O. Keohane, ‘International Relations Theory: Contributions of a Feminist Standpoint’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 18:2 (1989) pp. 245–50; on incorporating feminine qualities into IR, and the critical reply by Cynthia Weber, ‘Good Girls, Little Girls and Bad Girls: Male Paranoia in Robert Keohane’s Critique of Feminist International Relations’, Millennium, 23:1 (1994), pp. 377–49. 4 See Adam Jones, ‘Does Gender Make the World go Round? Feminist Critiques of International Relations’, in Review of International Studies, 22:4 (1996), pp. 405–30. 475 476 Charlotte Hooper ‘gender variable’ to the long list of variables which are variously deemed to inform the practices of international relations, to do so would be to exclude analysis of the most salient ingredients of the relationship between gender and international relations. Such ingredients should be of interest to mainstream IR scholars because they are bound up with power politics—albeit power politics of a different sort from the ones usually focused on in the discipline. While, as indicated above, this is hardly a novel argument in feminist circles, it has not been readily understood or accepted by others, beyond a few post-positivist sym- pathisers. Mainstream critics of feminist approaches, who might consider themselves open to persuasion with regard to the ‘gender variable’, have been baffled by both the language and concerns of feminists, and have accused them—particularly post- structuralist feminists—of failing to produce a relevant research agenda.5 Feminist discussions of the epistemological limitations and inherent masculinism of main- stream IR have on the whole started from the premise that international relations reflects men and ‘masculinity’ and excludes women and ‘femininity’. Their sub- sequent explanations that one cannot merely add women and the feminine because gender constructions are relationally defined, that they are linked to a whole series of gendered dichotomies in which masculine traits are valued and feminine ones devalued (forming a residual ‘other’); and that scientific methodologies reflect valued masculine traits rather than devalued feminine ones, appear to fall on deaf, or at least sceptical ears. But the argument that mainstream approaches are ontologically and epistemo- logically inadequate to deal with gender can also be approached from a different angle, one which would perhaps provide another opportunity for sceptics to reconsider their dismissal of the relevance of feminist claims, and to think through the possible range of consequences of acknowledging gender in their work. Rather than focusing on what is excluded from the discipline as conventionally defined, one can focus on what is included: that is the activities of men in the international arena. While it is commonplace to argue that international relations reflects a world of men and masculinity, it is also worth examining the possibility of a current of influence running in the other direction. One could ask whether international relations plays any role in the shaping, defining and legitimating of such masculinity or mascu- linities? Might causality, or at least the interplay of complex influences, run in both directions, in mutually reinforcing patterns? Might international relations discipline men as much as men shape international relations? 6 In order to investigate the intersections between gender identities and inter- national relations, one cannot rely on approaches which would take gender identities 5 Keohane, ‘International Relations Theory’; J. Ann Tickner ‘You Just Don’t Understand: Troubled Engagements Between Feminists and IR Theorists’, unpublished paper given at the School of International Relations, University of Southern California, August 1996. 6 This question has occasionally been asked by feminists before, most often specifically in relation to soldiering and war. See for example Barbara Ehrenreich ‘Foreword’, in Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 1. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. ix–xvii; Cynthia Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993); and Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London, 1996). In more general terms the question remains relatively neglected, although it was raised recently by Marysia Zalewski and Cynthia Enloe in ‘Questions about Identity in International Relations’ in Ken Booth and Steve Smith (eds.), International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’ 477 as ‘givens’, or as independent, externally derived variables.7 Instead one would need to move towards those which could examine the (international) politics of identity construction. As this article will argue, such a move, even if it is primarily concerned with the generation of an empirical research agenda with regard to the production of masculine identities through practices which form the so-called ‘core’ of the discipline (such as war, foreign policy, and the globalisation of the world economy) will almost certainly reveal some of the ontological, methodological, and ultimately, the epistemological limitations of mainstream approaches. This is because such approaches attempt to restrict the relevant field to the ‘public’ if not the ‘inter- national’ levels of analysis, and also treat theory as entirely separate from the subject matter being investigated—whether the purpose of such theory is scientific ‘explanation’ or more historically oriented ‘interpretation’.8 International Relations and the production of masculinities In asking whether international relations might influence masculinity or masculini- ties, there is an assumption that masculinity is not a fixed, biologically based set of personality characteristics, but is in some way malleable to social influences. While lack of space precludes a long discussion on the construction of gender identities, it is worth briefly noting that historical and anthropological research suggests that there is no single ‘masculinity’ or ‘femininity’ and that both are subject to numerous and fairly fast-changing historical and cultural variations.9 For example, dominant forms of Anglo-Saxon masculinity have drawn on an eclectic mix of competing and partially overlapping and historical archetypes. The main ones include, firstly, a Greek citizen/warrior model which combined militarism with rationalism and equated manliness with citizenship in a masculine arena of free speech and politics. This was joined by a patriarchal Judaeo/Christian model with a domesticated ideal of manly responsibility, ownership and the authority of the father of fathers. Later came
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