MASCULINITIES, GENDER AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Terrell Carver and Laura Lyddon First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 374 6645 e: [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2022 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-5292-1228-0 hardcover ISBN 987-1-5292-1229-7 paperback ISBN 978-1-5292-1230-3 ePub ISBN 978-1-5292-1231-0 ePdf The right of Terrell Carver and Laura Lyddon to be identifi ed as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 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Cover design: Liam Roberts Design Front cover image: ivanastar/iStock Bristol University Press uses environmentally responsible print partners. Printed in Great Britain by CMP, Poole To my parents, Mary and Dave. LL To the curious feminist, seriously! TC Contents Detailed Contents vii Acknowledgements ix Preface xi 1 Wasn’t It Always Just About Men Anyway? 1 2 Sovereign States, Warring States, Queer States 17 3 Arms and the Men 55 4 Gender at Work! ‘Get Pissed and Buy Guns’ 89 5 Looking Back/Pushing Ahead 127 Notes 171 Index 195 v Detailed Contents 1 Wasn’t It Always Just About Men Anyway? 1 Gender asymmetry 3 Founding fathers 5 The ‘m-word’ 6 Legitimacy as a noun/legitimizing as a verb 7 Hegemony and masculinities: power and domination 9 Domination by consent 11 Moving on and reaching out 11 Further reading 15 2 Sovereign States, Warring States, Queer States 17 War and peace, arms and the man 21 How does the queer contain the normal? 23 States and nations 25 How sexuality queers gender 29 Queering penetration and state rape 30 GWOT – a ‘probable queer’ war 32 Torture and taboo 37 Visibly queered heterosexual masculinity 40 Overt queerness and hypervisible masculinity 43 Costa Rica – a ‘probable queer’ state 47 Is Costa Rica actually faking it? 50 Conclusions 52 Further reading 54 3 Arms and the Men 55 ‘Blessed are the deal-makers’ 58 The legitimate/illegitimate dichotomy 60 Focusing down with the gender lens 62 CITS-UGA briefing paper 66 vii MASCULINITIES, GENDER AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS The UK – bourgeois-rational warrior-protector 73 Mutual legitimation: state and industry 76 Masculinity and legitimation 79 Conclusions 85 Further reading 87 4 Gender at Work! ‘Get Pissed and Buy Guns’ 89 All the fun of the fair 92 Warrior-protector man meets bourgeois-rational man 93 Dressing to impress 95 Warrior masculinity and the erasure of violence 102 and death Bourgeois-rational masculinity and the erasure 105 of violence and death Summing up/moving on 108 Corporate players in the weapons game 109 Race–gender–class 110 Legitimation 1: Armed force as inevitable, 112 normalized and glorified Legitimation 2: The erasure of violence and death 114 Legitimation 3: BAE Systems as a multinational 117 symbol Legitimation 4: BAE Systems as a diverse, 120 progressive, ethical, equal opportunities employer Looking ahead 125 Further reading 125 5 Looking Back/Pushing Ahead 127 Bottom-up/grass roots 128 Consent/complicity 134 Big boys/small toys 139 Visible/invisible/hypervisible 143 How they get away with it 147 The Wallström narrative 150 And how they fight back 154 Stand together/divide and rule 160 ‘We can’t even march straight’ 162 Wrapping up/moving on 164 Further reading 169 viii Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Bristol University Press, and in particular Stephen Wenham, who looked back on his undergraduate years at Bristol and thought there might be some exciting updates to his experiences. They would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and a number of very helpful colleagues who very kindly read drafts and commented. Terrell Carver is grateful to the School of Sociology, Politics & International Studies, University of Bristol, for a period of study leave during the academic year 2019–20, which was instrumental in developing this joint project. He would also like to acknowledge his affiliation as Research Associate, SA-UK Bilateral Chair in Political Theory, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, with particular thanks to Critical South (www.criticalsouth.blog), which posted ‘The m-word’, revised here for Chapter 1. Laura Lyddon would like to give thanks to everyone who assisted and supported her with, and during, her PhD, many of whom were duly acknowledged in her thesis. In particular, she would like to thank the University of Bristol for the research scholarship that enabled her to undertake the PhD, her PhD supervisors, Terrell Carver and Paul Higate, and her PhD peers and friends: Terri-Anne Teo, Oscar Berglund, Sabine Qian, Audrey Reeves, Rupert Alcock and Natasha Carver (no relation to Terrell Carver). Special thanks and recognition also go to Olly, Sol, Zephyr and Allison. ix