What Role Does International Relations Play in the Shaping, Defining, or Legitimating of Masculinity or Masculinities?
“There may be numerous ways in which international relations are implicated in the construction of masculinities and masculine identities; through the direct disciplining of male bodies, through numerous political and institutional practices, and through broader cultural and ideological links.”
Unquestioningly, more and more people believe that “the personal becomes political” nowadays, we can see that even for subjects that suppose to be those of intimate details of private lives have become something that are constructed and structured by social relations. More obvious, lives of women are especially in the main stage, but not in a very good way. How? There are many forms of gender oppression towards women. This performance of discrimination “deprives women from equal rights, whereas men have been judge on their merits as individuals, women have tended to be judged as female or as a group.” This is to say that apparently, the world of international relations is precisely a man’s world, both in practice and theory. Be that as it may, to be success in this particular world, one must pass the criteria measured by masculine traits: power, autonomy, and independence. Also, it has been said that the privilege and power that achieve by men are not due to their physical, but because of their cultural association with masculinity. Having said that, Hooper also proposed that “it is the quality of masculinity that is closely associated with power, rather than men per se, and the term masculinism, which implies a privileging of masculinity”. Coupled the stories that I have just described with the picture of international politics which is dominated by diplomats, soldiers, and international civil servants, most of whom are men, in defining the governments’ policies, it is not exaggerate to assume that world politics is a man’s world. Regardless of the fact that international relations is one of the last social sciences to be affected by gender/feminist analysis, many
Unquestioningly, more and more people believe that “the personal becomes political” nowadays, we can see that even for subjects that suppose to be those of intimate details of private lives have become something that are constructed and structured by social relations. More obvious, lives of women are especially in the main stage, but not in a very good way. How? There are many forms of gender oppression towards women. This performance of discrimination “deprives women from equal rights, whereas men have been judge on their merits as individuals, women have tended to be judged as female or as a group.” This is to say that apparently, the world of international relations is precisely a man’s world, both in practice and theory. Be that as it may, to be success in this particular world, one must pass the criteria measured by masculine traits: power, autonomy, and independence. Also, it has been said that the privilege and power that achieve by men are not due to their physical, but because of their cultural association with masculinity. Having said that, Hooper also proposed that “it is the quality of masculinity that is closely associated with power, rather than men per se, and the term masculinism, which implies a privileging of masculinity”. Coupled the stories that I have just described with the picture of international politics which is dominated by diplomats, soldiers, and international civil servants, most of whom are men, in defining the governments’ policies, it is not exaggerate to assume that world politics is a man’s world. Regardless of the fact that international relations is one of the last social sciences to be affected by gender/feminist analysis, many