USAID.gov: "Masculinity and Violence in Conflict"

Submitted by Minuteman on Sun, 2014-01-12 06:33

Link here. Excerpt:

'Posted by Daniel Sheehy, Office of the Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, USAID on Monday, December 9th 2013
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Why does masculinity devolve into madness in the face of violence? Why is it that we time and time again see a marked increase in the horrific misdeeds committed by men toward women when conflict arises? Throughout history, including up to this very day, a consequence of large-scale violence and war is a significant increase in the rate of gender-based violence that women experience in the form of rape and specific targeting by combatants. During widespread conflict, the breakdown of society and normalization of violence that extends from war into broader society is a commonly used explanation for rampant gender-based violence. Hypermasculinity, a term used to describe an increase in aggressive and misogynistic masculine traits, is also used in explaining why gender-based violence is practically treated as a given component of war. Even after a conflict has been politically resolved, the impact that widespread violence and societal conflict has on the people that experience it and live through it is profound, traumatizing, and proves difficult to overcome.
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We need to help, but how? How do we recover from war and the cycle of violence that it fuels? How do we help women who experience violence during war, for that matter? Trauma from violence exposes everybody to the after-effects of war, but providing support through empowering and providing social services to both men and women can help with moving away from a violent society and contribute toward peacebuilding and maintaining stability. Politically empowering women and other marginalized populations, spreading awareness of the specific kinds of violence women experience while holding those responsible accountable for their crimes, and bringing women to the negotiation table needs to happen if we hope to distance ourselves from the ugliness of history. We also need to focus on a positive form of masculinity to contribute toward a peaceful and prosperous society, and move away from the hypermasculinity that pushes men and boys towards violence during times of conflict and disaster. While we have a long way to go, these steps will help us move towards gender equality and a more prosperous society.'

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Comments

... as this blog moderates user submissions (predictably). Here was my commentary:

The issue isn't "hyper-masculinity", it's post-traumatic stress paired with the moral desensitization that comes from exposure to combat conditions. Once a man is desensitized to his own sufferings and taught he is an expendable means-to-an-end and charged with meeting the goal of victory at any price, he will, not surprisingly, begin to behave in the exactly amoral and violent way that is expected (in fact, required) of him. War is large-scale organized violence with little discernment around who are the victims. Men are much more often as not pressed into military "service" either due to governmental coercion or force of circumstance. Once exposed to combat (modern combat, especially), the moral compass of any human being (and don't forget, men are indeed human beings; people often seem to forget this when discussing "the evil that men do" as well as the matter of what sort of rights they ought to have) can become damaged in the sense that where the line stops for "acceptably violent behavior" and against who it can be directed gets at least blurred and at most obliterated.

If societies all over the world do not want men being exploited and used as soldiers to not turn into rapists/sociopaths, then said societies (and by "societies" I mean governments) need to stop sending them into battle. It really is that simple. "But," you say, "sometimes it's necessary to use military force in the face of such insanity as the Nazis, etc." Yes, agreed. But the world isn't a black and white place. You have to accept the bad with the good. I don't like it any more than anyone else, nor do I condone for a moment a person of any gender committing an atrocity or crime against another in the guise of furthering a military or any other goal. I'm simply saying: these are part of the inevitable consequences of men being used as instruments of a violent foreign policy, even if that policy seems justifiable if not unavoidable. Would that the world were perfect, but it isn't.

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Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2014-01-13 06:00