FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

State-centricity causes violent exclusion of other viewpoints

Bleiker 2k

(Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt, Tampere, Yonsei and Pusan National University

as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague,(Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global
Politics, Cambridge University Press)

To expand the scope of international theory and to bring transversal

struggles into focus is not to declare the state obsolete. States
remain central actors in international politics and they have to be recognised and theorised as such. In
fact, my analysis will examine various ways in which states and the boundaries between them have mediated the formation, functioning and impact of dissent. However, my reading of

dissent and agency makes the state neither its main focus nor its
starting point. There are compelling reasons for such a strategy, and they go beyond a mere recognition that a statecentric approach to international theory engenders a form of representation that privileges
the authority of the state and thus precludes an adequate
understanding of the radical transformations that are currently
unfolding in global life. Michael Shapiro is among an increasing number of theorists who convincingly portray the state not
only as an institution, but also, and primarily, as a set of 'stories' of which the state-centric approach to international theory is a perfect example. It is
part of a legitimisation process that highlights, promotes and naturalises certain political practices and the territorial context within which they take place.
Taken together, these stories provide the state with a sense of identity, coherence and unity. They create boundaries between an inside and an outside,

state-stories also exclude, for they seek 'to

repress or delegitimize other stories and the practices of identity and space they reflect.'
And it is these processes of exclusion that impose a certain political
order and provide the state with a legitimate rationale for violent
encounters.
between a people and its others. Shapiro stresses that such

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Patriarchal hierarchies are the root cause of international violence

Runyan 94

(Professor and former Head, Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Cincinnati Anne Sisson Women,

Gender, and World Politics: Perspectives, Policies, and Prospects Page 202 203)

hierarchies of men over women and officers over recruits, Radical feminists insist, lay the basis
for hierarchies in the international system. For example, Strange argues that "international politics closely
These

resembles gang fights in the playground. The leader is the one acknowledged to have superior force: his power is then augmented by his position--in
effect, the power of his underlings is added to his own. They give this power to him and get certain benefits--protection, enhanced prestige from the

the international system of unequal and

competitive states can be seen as one big male-protection racket wherein
the strong extort the weak to enter into various military and economic
alliances or relationships that mostly benefit the strong . Radical feminists argue that this
male-protection racket has its origins in patriarchal thinking that assumes that "man" should
have dominion over natural resources. In particular, Western patriarchal thinking, which Radical feminists
claim is reflective of the worldview of largely white men in power in the West, considers not only the natural
world but also white women and Third World peoples as raw materials that
can be exploited for political and economic gain. This constant extraction
of resources--which increasingly impoverishes women, [and] Third World
peoples and states dependent on "aid" from elite men and First World states--is what makes the maleprotection racket possible. This racket undermines any attempts to develop self-reliance that might release dominated
relationship to the leader." 3 Thus, from the Radical feminist view,

peoples and states from the contemporary international hierarchy. Thus, for Radical feminists, the struggles of "weak" states against "strong" are related
to the struggles of women against patriarchal domination. "The aim of self-reliance is paralleled by the struggle of many women who refuse to be victims
any longer, yet also refuse to become oppressors. What is being struggled against is at root the same thing--a hierarchy grounded in and
perpetuated by sexual dominance."

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Dehumanization is the root cause of nuclear war and genocidewhen

humans are reduced to means or objects, any atrocity becomes justified
Berube, 1997 (Berube, David. Professor. English. University of South Carolina. Nanotechnological Prolongevity: The Down Side.
1997. http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/faculty/berube/prolong.htm.)
Assuming we are able to predict who or what are optimized humans, this entire resultant worldview smacks of eugenics and Nazi racial science. This would
involve valuing people as means. Moreover, there would always be a superhuman more super than the current ones, humans would never be able to

the
dehumanization of humanity. They warn: "its destructive toll is already greater
than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record -- and
its potential danger to the quality of life and the fabric of civilized society
is beyond calculation. For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.... Behind
escape their treatment as means to an always further and distant end. This means-ends dispute is at the core of Montagu and Matson's treatise on

the genocide of the holocaust lay a dehumanized thought; beneath the menticide of deviants and dissidents... in the cuckoo's next of America, lies a
dehumanized image of man... (Montagu & Matson, 1983, p. xi-xii). While it may never be possible to quantify the impact dehumanizing ethics may have
had on humanity, it is safe to conclude the foundations of humanness offer great opportunities which would be foregone. When we calculate the actual
losses and the virtual benefits, we approach a nearly inestimable value greater than any tools which we can currently use to measure it.

Dehumanization is nuclear war, environmental apocalypse, and

international genocide. When people become things, they become
dispensable. When people are dispensable, any and every atrocity can be
justified. Once justified, they seem to be inevitable for every epoch has
evil and dehumanization is evil's most powerful weapon.
****Colloquial explanation- L0L guise so lyke itz okay to wage this war and kill all
these ppl bc itll help the U.S. and realism is g00d!!!11!!! Except this treats people
as irrelevant which is excessively dehumanizing. Dehumanizing sentiment is a
slippery slope, and will snowball into mass catastrophe which will be justified as a
necessary evil because it helps us.
Case in point:

An estimated 40,000 people in Chad were killed and as many as 200,000

tortured by a government, headed by Hissen Habre who was brought to
power in June, 1982 with the help of CIA money and arms. He remained in power for eight
years. (Human Rights Watch claimed that Habre was responsible for thousands of killings. In 2001, while living in Senegal, he was almost tried for crimes

human rights people decided to

pursue the case in Belgium, because some of Habres torture victims lived
there. The U.S., in June 2003, told Belgium that it risked losing its status
as host to NATOs headquarters if it allowed such a legal proceeding to
happen. So the result was that the law that allowed victims to file complaints in Belgium for atrocities committed abroad was repealed. However,
committed by him in Chad. However, a court there blocked these proceedings. Then

two months later a new law was passed which made special provision for the continuation of the case against Habre.

In 1962, Juan Bosch became president of the Dominican Republic. He

advocated such programs as land reform and public works programs. This
did not bode well for his future relationship with the U.S., and after only 7
months in office, he was deposed by a CIA coup. In 1965 when a group was trying to reinstall
him to his office President Johnson said, This Bosch is no good. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann replied Hes no good at

Two
days later a U.S. invasion started and 22,000 soldiers and marines entered
all. If we dont get a decent government in there, Mr. President, we get another Bosch. Its just going to be another sinkhole.

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS
the Dominican Republic and about 3,000 Dominicans died during the
fighting. The cover excuse for doing this was that this was done to protect foreigners there. (1,2,3,4)

Patriarchy promotes environmental destruction and war.

Warren & Cady 94

(Karen & Duane, Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections, Hypatia Volume: 9. Issue: 2, pp 4, DJ

Operationalized, the evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which it gives rise, (c), and the unmanageability (d), which results. For example, in the
United States, current estimates are that one out of every three or four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally, rape, sexual harassment, spouse-beating, and sado-

In the realm of environmentally

destructive behaviors, strip-mining, factory farming, and pollution of the
air, water, and soil are instances of behaviors maintained and sanctioned
within patriarchy. They, too, rest on the faulty belief that is okay to rape the earth, that it is
mans God-given right to have dominion (that is, domination) over the earth, that nature has only
instrumental value, that environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay
for progress. And the presumption of warism, that war is a natural,
righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people or nation,
goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors of
nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. Much of the current unmanageability of
masochistic pornography are examples of behaviors practiced, sanctioned, or tolerated within patriarchy.

contemporary life in patriarchal societies, is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that reflect historically male-gender-

among these real-life consequences are precisely

those concerns with nuclear proliferation, war, environmental destruction,
and violence towards women, which many feminist see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often
identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions. Included

only though observing these dysfunctional behaviorsthe symptoms of dysfunctionalitythat one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to
maintain and perpetuate them.

***U.S Hegemony And Realist Lines Of Thinking Encroach Upon These Principles Of Domination.
Because Its In Our Best Interest Excuses Just About Every Act Of Domination Which Inevitably
Leads To The Impacts Of Environmental Destruction, War, And Proliferation. Rather Than
Justifying These Acts, And Thus Dehumanizing The Issue And Implications, We Ought To
Recognize That This Hegemonic Overflow, Though It May Benefit Us Now, Will Not Benefit Us In
The Long Run. Just Because We Can Doesnt Mean We Should.

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Realism relies on a masculine politics, making the harms of the aff

inevitable
Cohn & Ruddick 03

Carol & Sara, Director of the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, & Ruddick, taught philosophy,

peace studies, and feminist theory at the New School University, 03, A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons of Mass Destruction, Boston Consortium
on Gender, Security, and Human Rights, www.genderandsecurity.umb.edu/director.htm DJ

A so-called realist response to this judgement(sic) might well pay lip-service

to the moral niceties it embodies, but then argue that deterrence is
worth those costs. Or, perhaps to be more accurate, it might argue that the results of a nuclear attack would be so catastrophic that the rest of these
considerations are really an irrelevant distraction; deterring a WMD attack on our homeland is the precondition on which political freedom and social life depend, and so it must be

in the culture of nuclear defense

intellectuals, even raising the issue of costs is delegitimized, in large part
through its association with the feminine. It is the kind of thing that
hysterical housewives do; something done by people not tough and
hard enough to look harsh reality in the eye, unsentimentally; not
strong enough to separate their feelings from theorizing mass death;
people who dont have the stones for war. Feminist analysis rejects the cultural division of meaning
which devalues anything associated with women or femininity. It sees in that same cultural valuing of the
so-called masculine over the so-called feminine an explanation of why
it appears so self-evident to many that what is called military necessity
should appropriately be prioritized over all other human necessities. And
it questions the assumptions that bestow the mantle of realism on such
a constrained focus on weapons and state power. Rather than simply being an objective reflection of
thought about in a class by itself. We make two rejoinders to this claim. First, we note that

political reality, we understand this thought system as 1) a partial and distorted picture of reality, and 2) a major contributor to creating the very
circumstances it purports to describe and protect against.

***Realism talks the talk but doesnt walk the walk. Human life is disregarded in the
masculine politics that inevitably flare up when realism is employed.

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Masculinity uses abstract, detached language in order to justify nuclear

weapons and ignore their impact
Cohn & Ruddick 03

Carol & Sara, Director of the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, & Ruddick, taught philosophy,

peace studies, and feminist theory at the New School University, 03, A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons of Mass Destruction, Boston Consortium
on Gender, Security, and Human Rights, www.genderandsecurity.umb.edu/director.htm DJ
It should become apparent then, that our concern about abstract language is not only relevant to the framing of Question Two, but to its content the

It is easier to contemplate and justify the use of

nuclear weapons in the abstract language of defense intellectuals than in
the descriptive, emotionally resonant language of the victim; from the
perspective of the user rather than the victim. Anti- war feminists note
that detailed, focal attention to the human impact of weapons use is not
only considered out of bounds in security professionals discourse; it is
also delegitimated by its association with the feminine, with insufficient
masculinity, as is evident in this excerpt of an interview with a physicist: Several colleagues and I were working on modeling counterforce
justifiability of nuclear weapons use as well.

nuclear attacks, trying to get realistic estimates of the number of immediate fatalities that would result from different deployments. At one point, we remodeled a particular attack, using slightly different assumptions, and found that instead of there being 36 million immediate fatalities, there would only be
30 million. And everybody was sitting around nodding, saying, Oh yeh, thats great, only 30 million, when all of a sudden, I heard what we were saying.
And I blurted out, Wait, Ive just heard how were talking -- Only 30 million! Only 30 million human beings killed instantly? Silence fell upon the room.
Nobody said a word. They didnt even look at me. It was awful. I felt like a woman. After telling this story to one of the authors, the physicist added that

Fear of feeling like a

woman (or being seen as unmanly) silently works to maintain the
boundaries of a distanced, abstract discourse, and to sustain the tone of Question Two a tone
which invites us to think abstractly, objectively about WMD use, without
pausing with human particularities, passions and suffering.
he was careful to never blurt out anything indicating that he was thinking about the victims again. 26

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Only by moving away from traditional IR can we solve patriarchy

Tickner 2001

J. Anne, prof of IR @ USC Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era, pg 2 DJ

The title of this introduction, Gendering World Politics, both reflects some of these changes and conceptualizes a worldview into which feminist approaches fit more comfortably. While

International
politics cannot be restricted to politics between states; politics is involved
in relationships between international organizations, social movements
and other nonstate actors, transnational corporations and international
finance, and human-rights organizations, to name a few. Decrying the narrowness of Cold War
IR, Ken Booth has suggested that the subject should be informed by what he calls a global moral
science that entails systematic enquiry into how humans might live
together locally and globally in ways that promote individual and
collective emancipation in harmony with nature . He goes on to suggest that the state, the traditional
international relations has never been just about relations between states, an IR statist focus seems even less justified today than in the past.

frame for IR, might be seen as the problem of world politics, not the solution. 3 Since women have been on the peripheries of power in most states, this
broad conception of world politics seems the most fitting disciplinary definition in which to frame feminist approaches. Their investigations of politics from the
micro to the global level and from the personal to the international, as well as their analyses as to how macro structures affect local groups and individuals, draw on a broad definition of

feminists have drawn attention to the injustices of

hierarchical social relations and the effects they have on human beings'
life chances. Feminists have never been satisfied with the boundary constraints of conventional IR. 4 While women(s) have
always been players in international politics, often their voices have not been heard either in policy
arenas or in the discipline that analyzes them.
the political. Using explicitly normative analysis, certain

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Only the alternative can create positive peace

Warren & Cady 94

Karen & Duane, Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections, Hypatia Volume: 9. Issue: 2, pp 3, DJ

War, the "decision by arms," the "final arbiter of disputes," "an act of force which theoretically has no limits' " (Clausewitz 1976) amounts
to domination pushed to the extreme: Imposition of will by one group onto another by means of threat, injury, and death.
Genuine peace ("positive peace"), on the other hand, involves interaction between and among
individuals and groups where such behavior is orderly from within,
cooperative, and based on agreement. Genuine peace is not a mere
absence of war ("negative peace"), where order is imposed from outside by
domination ( Cady 1989 , 1991). It is the process and reality where life-affirming,
self-determined, environmentally sustainable ends are sought and
accomplished through coalitionary, interactive, cooperative means.
Feminism and peace share an important conceptual connection: Both are
critical of, and committed to the elimination of, coercive power-over
privilege systems of domination as a basis of interaction between
individuals and groups. A feminist critique and development of any peace
politics, therefore, ultimately is a critique of systems of unjustified
domination.

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

The construction of an ever present threat, through State and Realist

discourses within International Relations are shaped through Hegemonic
masculinities.
Steans 2006
Realists

( Jill Steans, university of Birmingham, Gender and international relations, pp 35)

have not reflected on how this (inherited) conceptual baggage, specifically how the conceptions of power, autonomy, sovereignty and

have been content to take the masculinized nature of

world politics as yet another natural and immutable 'fact'. In contrast, feminists
have called for reflexivity on just such matters, pointing out that the use
of gendered imagery in realist texts is highly significant. Thus, feminists have focused not on
the 'objective facts' of an anarchic, dangerous world, but rather on how dominant discourses in IR have worked
systematically to create a conception of international politics as a realm
characterized by ever-present 'threats' and 'dangers' and, in this way, present the world as
disorderly and hostile." In realist texts, the political community (nation-state) has been
constructed as a community of men whose power and autonomy is
predicated upon the ability to control and/or dominate those 'outside'. The
realist conception of the autonomous state has been juxtapositioned
against images of anarchy or a disorderly international 'state of nature'.
The use of such imagery has to be seen in terms of a deeply rooted fear of
the 'feminine'. Thus, Ann Runyan has argued that: Whether the state has been viewed as continuous with nature, or juxtaposed to nature,
its metaphysics has read order, unity, and an intolerance of difference, into both nature and the body politic. This has led to a
suppression and exploitation of all those things defined as 'natural' (including
women) and that do not fit into the designs of the white, Western man and his
state. While Machiavelli did not explicitly personify nature, the masculine world of human agency in history and autonomy was juxtapositioned
world order, are gendered. Most

against the world of women and relations of dominance and dependence. The 'feminine' in Machiavelli represented the 'Other', that force opposed to the
masculinized world of order and discipline. The founder of the republic personified most completely the autonomous self-governing rnan.? Pitkin has
argued that the masculine world of order and virtu was haunted from behind the scenes by female forces of great power. Fortuna was a woman, a force
that threatened the overextended state or overambitious ruler and the male world of order, law and liberty.

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Policymaking Ignores Feminine Perspectives

Marshall 1997

(Catherine, professor at the University of North Carolina, Feminist Critical Policy Analysis: A perspective
from post-secondary education, pg. ix-x, HC)

Policy researchers and analysts have gained and retained legitimacy by

focusing on the problems and methods identified by powerful people. Those
with a different focus are silenced, declared irrelevant, postponed,
coopted, put on the back burner, assigned responsibilities with no training, budget, personnel or time, or otherwise
ignored. Policies, -- authoritative agreements among powerful people about how
things should be have been made without a feminist critical glance. These two
volumes focus on those areas of silence, on the policy issues at the fringe and on the kinds of policy analysis methods, findings and recommendations that
will disrupt but will also open possibilities. The two volumes identify theories and tools for dismantling and replacing the politics, theories and modes of
policy analysis that built the masters house. The individual chapters illustrate how and why to expand policy questions and policy analysis methods to
incorporate critical and feminist lenses, demonstrating the promise of politics, analysis and policymaking that thoughtfully and thoroughly works to
uncover any source of oppression, domination or marginalization and to create policies to meet the lived realities, needs, aspirations and values of women
and girls and others kept on the margin. The volumes name and develop a new field: Feminist critical Policy Analysis. The promise of this field lies in its

the feminist, critical stance, with policy

analysis that includes methods for focusing on the cultural values bases of
policies; deconstruction of policy documents; analysis of a policy intention and
its potential effects, such as affirmative Action and Title IX; studies of the micropolitical, for example, the dynamics of a school board
incorporation of perspective that write against the grain:

task force for sexual harassment, a tenure systems effect on women academics, or the role of girls access to computers in the implementation of

Policymakers
and analysts need to pause in order to recognize how issues of gender, the
needs of particular groups like the urban poor, women and non-dominant nationalities
are left out of education policy analyses. In order to connect effectively, women need to take a hard look at
computer policies; and analyses of policies, programs and political stances that do focus on neglected needs in schooling.

the structures and arenas of policy. By presenting literatures, methods and examples, these books name the field: feminist critical policy analysis leap at
the challenge.

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Norms and gender identities lead to cultural violence.

Hudson 08

(Hudson, Valerie M., Mary Caprioli, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Rose McDermott, and Chad F. Emmett.:
The Heart of the Matter: The Security of Women and the Security of States, Quarterly Journal: International
Security, Vol 33, Issue 3, 7-45 6/21/10) SK

Gender roles
lead to highly differential possibilities for personal security, development,
and prosperity, even in todays world. An example of this kind of
exploitation occurs when women naturally receive less pay than men for
equal work, or when domestic violence is considered normal. The
second component, manipulation of consciousness to ensure
acquiescence, is maintained through socialization, gender stereotyping,
and a constant threat of domestic violenceall of which insidiously
identify women as inferior. The perpetrators of female infanticide, for example, are virtually all female. The third component, fragmentation, is
The concordance between this list and the means by which gender inequality is typically maintained in human societies is clear.

easily effected from womens circumstances of patrilocality and greater family responsibilities (and in some cases, the practice of physical purdah), thus minimizing social access that

And nally, marginalization serves to clearly distinguish

men and women, with no doubt as to the relative status of each sex. Galtung
posits that structural violence arises from cultural violence, that is, the day-today use of overt or implicit force to obtain ones ends in social relations.
Thus, while structural violence may obviate the need for open violence in
the public sphere, it is based on open or implicit violence in the private
sphere of the home. Norms of cultural violence diffuse within religion,
ideology, language, and art, among other aspects of culture. Cultural violence makes
could otherwise be used to build networks with other women.

direct and structural violence look, even feel, rightor at least not wrong, writes Galtung.44 Violent patriarchy is the primary basis of cultural violence in
human collectives: although women have become active agents with notable success in the struggle for equality in many states, violence remains an
enduring component of relations between men and women in the private sphere the world over, providing a natural wellspring for social diffusion.45

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Patriarchy is an unending cycle of violence which is the

root of war
Clark 04

Prof. of Biopsychology at Berkeley (Mary E. Rhetoric, patriarchy & war: explaining the dangers of
"leadership" in mass culture., AD:7-6-9, September 2004) DJ

Western patriarchal world view now dominates global

dialogue

Today's
wide
among the
"leaders" of Earth's nearly two hundred nation-states. Its Machiavellian/Realpolitik assumptions about the necessity of' military power to preserve order

Founded on the belief that "evil"

is innate, it dictates that human conflict must be "controlled": global "law"
backed by coercive force. This view, when cross-culturally imposed,
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, thus "legitimating" an escalating use of
force. Western leaders (male and female) use a rhetoric couched in a
"hegemonic masculinity" to justify their ready use of military force to
coerce "those who are against us" into compliance. This translates
globally as "national leaders must never lose facet!" Changing this
dominant paradigm requires dismantling the hierarchic hegemony of
masculine militarism and its related economic institutions, through global cross-cultural dialogues, thus replacing a hegemonic world
within and between groups of humans trumps--and stifles--other potential viewpoints.

view and institutions with new, more adaptive visions, woven out of the most useful remnants of multiple past cultural stories.

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Democracy doesnt solve patriarchy

Tickner 2001

Ann J. prof of IR @ USC Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold
War Era Columbia University Press. 2001. [page 7] DJ

while democratization is being celebrated by Western

liberals, new democracies are not always friendly toward women .
Feminists have traditionally been suspicious of what they see as the
legacy of the Western liberal-democratic tradition that they claim is
patriarchal and that, historically, has favored men's over women's
interests. Additionally, since women have traditionally had less access to formal
political institutions, the focus on state institutions by scholars of
democratization may miss ways in which women are participating in
politicsoutside formal political channels at the grassroots level.
Feminists also claim that,

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Imperfect feminism is still better than the Aff- the aff links
worse.
Tickner 2001 J. Anne, prof of IR @ USC Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold
War Era, pg 2 DJ
Calls for studying men and masculinities have been accompanied by a suspicion, voiced by some feminists, of
radical feminism's celebration of female characteristics. Besides the obviously problematic slide into distinctions
such as good women/bad men, the association of women with maternal qualities and peacemaking has the effect of
disempowering both women and peace and further delegitimating women's voices in matters of international
politics. However, socialist feminists' claims about the material bases of women's subordination have been
important for explanations of the feminization of poverty, a trend that appears to be accompanying forces of

feminist IR is attempting to better understand a

variety of subordinations confronted by women worldwide, the
introduction of race and class as well as postcolonial perspectives, which
attend to issues of culture and identity, has been another welcome
development. Conventional IR has been very Western, great-power
oriented; listening to and respecting women's voices worldwide and
recovering the activities of those on the marginspeople not usually
considered significant actors in world politicsis an important
contribution to the discipline.
economic globalization. Given that

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

The aff portrays the state as a person who can deploy actions. this gives
the state human characteristic which reresent rationality, identity and
beliefs. Those characteristics create the state as a masculine actor who
controls, manipulates and feminizes other states, especially in the Middle
East.

Kantola in 2k7

Ohanna Kantola. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Volume 9, Issue
2, Page 270-283, May 2007, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2007.00283.x
In addition to sovereignty and the distinction between domestic and international politics, feminists have questioned the fiction of the state as person,

1996b, 4). When states are discussed as

actors or persons, they are often given human characteristics:
rationality, identity, interests and beliefs. Alexander Wendt (2004, 291) argues that states as persons
are real because they are intentional purposeful actors. In IR, states are indeed more than their
territories and institutions. The state has an identity, the defence of
which is in the national interest.Feminists argue that the state as person is a
masculine actor. The masculine identity of states is built upon the values
of rationality and aggressiveness (Steans 1998, 48). The values attached to
masculinity and femininity can be seen in the words used to describe
states: rogue states are uncontrollable masculine problem cases,
nightwatchman states are minimalist masculine states. Feminine
epithets are used to delegitimise states: nanny states are feminine
welfare states that result in problematic dependency relations and
inhibit competition and market values (Sawer 1996, 124). For example, the
fighting, active and hyper-masculine identity of the state of Israel is
argued to be constructed on the distinction from the passive feminised
Jewish diaspora (Lentin 2000, 94).
which has the most important identity in international relations (Pettman

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Deterrence theories fail because they depend upon all actors being
rational agents which fails to take into account distinct cultural,
societal, political difference between groups of people.
Cohn in 2003 Director of the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, & Ruddick, taught philosophy, peace studies, and
feminist theory at the New School University, 03 (Carol & Sara, A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons of Mass Destruction, Boston Consortium on
Gender, Security, and Human Rights, www.genderandsecurity.umb.edu/director.htm

Deterrence theory

is also a fiction in that it depends upon rational actors, for whom what counts as rational is the same,

depends on those rational actors perfectly

understanding the meaning of signals communicated by military
actions, despite dependence on technologies that sometimes
malfunction; despite cultural difference and the lack of communication
that is part of being political enemies; despite the difficulties of ensuring
mutual understanding even when best friends make direct face-to- face
statements to each other. It depends on those same rational actors
engaging in a very specific kind of calculus that includes one set of
variables (e.g., weapons size, deliverability, survivability, as well as the
credibility of their and their opponents threats), and excludes other
variables (such as domestic political pressures, economics, or individual
subjectivity). What is striking from a feminist perspective is that even while realists may worry that some opponents are so
independent of culture, history, or individual difference. It

insufficiently rational as to be undeterrable, this does not lead them to search for a more reliable form of ensuring security, or an approach that is not
so weapons-dependent.

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS

Once the feminine is devalued, all ideas associated with it are left
out. Vulnerability and human lives become irrelevant in the national
security paradigm
Cohn, Director of the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, & Ruddick, taught philosophy, peace studies, and feminist theory at the New School University, 03
(Carol & Sara, A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons of Mass Destruction, Boston Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights,
www.genderandsecurity.umb.edu/director.htm

Once the gender-coding takes place once certain ways of thinking are
marked as masculine and feminine, entwining metaphors of masculinity with judgments of legitimacy and power
then any system of thought or action comes to have gendered positions
within it. For example, we see the devaluation and exclusion of the feminine as shaping and distorting basic national security paradigms and
policies. And once the devaluation-by-association-with-the- feminine takes
place, it becomes extremely difficult for anyone, female or male, to take
the devalued position, to express concerns or ideas marked as
feminine. What then gets left out is the emotional, the concrete, the particular,
human bodies and their vulnerability, human lives and their subjectivity.

FEMINISM, YOU FEEL???

MADELEINE STEVENS