Download Masculinity, Citizenship, and the Making of War Author(s): Nancy

Masculinity, Citizenship, and the Making of War
Author(s): Nancy C. M. Hartsock
Source: PS, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Spring, 1984), pp. 198-202
Published by: American Political Science Association
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Masculinity, Citizenship, and the Making of War
Nancy C. M. Hartsock*
Universityof Washington
Citizenshipis not one of the issues politicalscientists hotly contest.1 Yet perhaps we
have failed to recognize the profoundlycontroversial issues involved in citizenship.
One of the most difficult for the modern citizen is, of course, whether the classical
ideal of "high citizenship" remainsa possibility. But the ideal of rulingand being ruled
will not be my concern here.2 Rather, my concern will focus on the fact that citizenship has historicallybeen a very exclusive social category. Many groups have struggled to attain the status of citizen. In the United States to be poor, black, or female,
has for the most part meant automatic disenfranchisement. Citizenship, then, concerns the question of one's position in the community of which one is a part. It is, of
course, not the only determinantby far and is itself dependent on other factors. Yet
given these considerations, teaching about citizenship must raise the ethical issues
which, if made as prominentas they deserve to be, would indeed make citizenshipthe
subject of controversy.
Inthis short essay, I can address only one aspect of these issues-that which centers
on the relationof gender to citizenship. Although today many of us attempt to speak
about citizenship in gender-neutrallanguage, the connections of citizenshipwith manliness, established so long ago, still influence both thinkingabout citizenship and the
conduct of rulers and ruled. Thus, the familiargender gap on issues of peace and
war should be seen as a symptom of deeper issues about politics, problems with a
historytraceable over several thousand years of Western history, problemsdefined by
the overlay of citizenship, manliness, and militarycapacity.
The events of the fall of 1983 in Lebanonand Grenadamarkeda recent context in
which these connections were evident. As I followed the accounts of both military
situations, I was particularlystruck by Vice PresidentGeorge Bush's statement as he
appeared on the evening news standing in the rubble of the marine barracks in
Lebanon: "We're not going to let a bunch of insidious terrorists shake the foreign
policy of the United States."3 It recalls a statement about LyndonJohnson attributed
to BillMoyers: "It was as if . . he were saying, 'By God, I'm not going to let those
4 The sentiments sound strikinglymore
puny brown people push me around. . .,
* Nancy C. M. Hartsockis associate professor of politicalscience at the Universityof Washington. She is the authorof Money, Sex, and Power: Towarda FeministHistoricalMaterialism,and
is working on a book tentatively titled, The BarracksCommunityin Western Political Thought.
'Nannerl Keohane quite correctly made this point in "The Status of a Citizen," News for
Teachers of PoliticalScience, No. 30 (Summer, 1981), 19.
2For a useful discussion of this issue, see RichardFlathman, "Citizenship and Authority: A
Chastened View of Citizenship," News for Teachers of Political Science, No. 30 (Summer,
1981), 9-10, 16-18. See for a discussion of the ways other aspects of social life were used
in redefiningcitizenshipJ. G. A. Pocock's remarksto the Workshopon Citizenshipof the Russell
Sage Foundation(February23-24, 1978).
3October27, 1983.
4See MarcFeigen Fasteau, "Vietnam and the Cult of Toughness in ForeignPolicy," in Deborah
S. David and Robert Brannon, eds., The Forty-nine Percent Majority: The Male Sex Role
(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1976), p. 192.
198 PS Spring 1984
appropriateto a street corner confrontationthan to a reasoned discussion of foreign
policy.
Athough today many of us attempt to speak about
citizenship in gender-neutral language, the connections of citizenship with manliness, established so long
ago, still influence both thinking about citizenship and
the conduct of rulers and ruled.
One may ascribe such statements to the heat of the moment, but the connections between masculinityand militaryvalor have also been spelled out by GeneralRobertBarrow, the man who was until recently the commanderof the U.S. Marines.He states:
War is a man's work. Biological convergence on the battlefield [by which he
means women in combat] would not only be dissatisfying in terms of what
women could do, but it would be an enormous psychological distractionfor the
male, who wants to thinkthat he's fighting for that woman somewhere behind,
not up there in the same foxhole with him. It tramples the male ego. When you
get right down to it, you have to protect the manliness of war.5
These connections are not simply idiosyncratic to the men cited but have received
support from many contemporary sources. David Halberstamhas documented the
several ways LyndonJohnson's concern about his manliness influenced his conduct
of the Vietnam War.6 And masculinity named as such is still important in war.7
I contend that these statements represent an important strand of thinking about
citizenship. This strand of argument, moreover, has managed to survive both the
challenges presented by Christianityin the West and the transformationof the content of public life broughtabout by the rise of capitalism. War, and the masculine role
of warrior-hero,have been central to the conceptualization of politics for the last
2500 years. Moreover, the politicalcommunity constructed by the ancient warriorheroes and carrieddown to us in the writing of political philosophers bears uncomfortable resemblance to a particulartype of male community-one whose most extreme form is represented by the militarybarracksof Sparta, where the male citizens
lived until well into adulthood. Inthis community, militarycapacity, civic personality,
"As interviewed by MichaelWright, "The New Marines:Life in the Pits," The San Francisco
Chronicle,June 27, 1982.
eDavid Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972), pp,
531-532, cited in Fasteau, p. 191.
7Excerptfrom the Americas Watch Reporton Guatemala, May, 1983," New YorkReview of
Books, June 2, 1983 with several letters and replies March 1, 1984 note that at the unconfirmed but detailed report of the massacre at Parraxtut, members of a civil patrol from a
neighboringtown were gathered together and told they must be preparedto demonstrate their
masculinity by killingall the men in the community. The women were then divided into two
groups-young and old, the latter to be killedand the formerto be raped. See also on this point
R. Eisenhart,"You Can't Hack It LittleGirl:PsychologicalAgenda of ModernCombatTraining,"
Journal of Social Issues 3:13-23; R. Lifton, Home From the War (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1973), pp. 15, 244; Judith Stiehm, BringMe Men and Women(Berkeley:University
of CaliforniaPress, 1981); Walter Ong, Fighting for Life (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1981); J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors(New York: Harperand Row, 1970); Susan Danziger
Borchert, "Masculinity and the Vietnam War," MichiganAcademician (Spring, 1983); Alice
DuerMiller,"Why We Oppose Votes for Men," Poster, 1915, reprintedin RadicalAmerica,XV,
1 and 2 (Spring, 1981), 147.
199
Masculinity, Citizenshlp, and the Making of War
and manhood were coterminous. Women were excluded from this community, yet
deeply shaped its theoretical construction through their presence in mythic or symbolic form. Thus, the political community came to be defined in opposition to dangerous, disorderly, and irrational forces, forces significantly often characterized as or
associated with the female.
War,and the masculine role of warrior-hero,have been
central to the conceptualization of politics for the last
2500 years.
The ancient Greeks developed the fundamental theoretical features of the barracks
community inhabited by warrior-heroes. The hero emerges most quintessentially in
the Iliad in the person of Achilles, "the best of the Achaeans," a man whose purpose
is the achievement of undying fame whether through glorious victory or glorious
death. The problem of dangerous and disorderly female forces emerges in the reworking of ancient (archaic) materials in fifth century Athens. From this perspective, both
the Oresteia of Aeschylus and the Republic of Plato can be read as efforts to accomplish a reconciliation with female forces. In the former case, the Furies, avengers of
matricide from the darkness beneath the earth, are persuaded to accept a subordinate
role in the polis. In the latter, Plato attempts to subordinate the private (and generically
female) world completely to the public world, to dissolve the household into the
polls.8
Aristotle in the Politics attempts to resolve the tension between the gendered public
and private spheres by putting households in a properly subordinate place to the public
sphere. Thus, the realm of freedom and leisure in which citizens pursue political
activity and war depends on a realm of necessity and work populated by women,
slaves and laborers. Aristotle's thought codifies an additional transition: the warriorhero whose power depended on his valor in battle gives way to the citizen whose
power depends on his valor in the rhetorical battle of politics.
As the Roman empire replaced the Greek city states, the Roman concept of virtus
took over many of the connotations of the Greek arete, the moral excellence essential
to the good citizen. And with it came the image of the goodness of the citizen as a
capacity for heroic (especially military) action. The change from Roman Republic to
empire, the increasing importance of Christianity, and the eventual breakdown of the
classical world led to important changes in the understanding of the political community. Yet despite the ways the distinctions between public and private, male and
female worlds, shifted ground and were overlaid with new understandings, some of
the most fundamental aspects of the warrior-hero operating in a barracks community
remained in place. One encounters the warrior-hero in some surprising places:
Augustine, for example, argues that the martyr plays the role of the Christian hero in
the City of God.
The breakdown of the classical world created the theoretical problem of how to understand change; it led to a deification of the female figure of Fortuna. It was she who
8Inthis case, I would argue, the female forces which threaten the politicalcommunitytake the
covert form of bodilyappetites, with the body being systematically associated with the female
in the Platonicdialogues. See, on this point, E. V. Spelman, "Womanas Body:Ancient and ContemporaryViews," Feminist Studies VIII,1 (Spring, 1982). I should note that I do not believe
Plato really meant to include women in the guardianclass in a serious way, but rather was
forced into an inclusionbecause of his aristocraticloyalties. See on this point MaryO'Brien,The
Politics of Reproduction(Boston: Routledge, and Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 124. For an opposed
view see the appendixon this topic in Susan Okin, Womenin WesternPoliticalThought(Princeton: PrincetonUniversityPress, 1978).
200 PS Spring 1984
spun the wheel of fortune; her whims could make a man a prince or could destroy him.
She represented a female force who operated through the creation of random
disorder. Because theorists such as Machiavelli, who looked to the classical world for
models, held that the collapse of the Roman Empire was due to a loss of its warrior virtue, the solution to the problems of disorder presented by Fortuna was a reassertion of
manliness or virtu. (The Latin root in question is vir, i.e., man.) As Machiavelli states
the fundamental problem confronting the prince, "Fortune is a woman, and it is
necessary, if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force."9 Thus, politics and
political action for Machiavelli were fundamentally structured by this symbolic gender
struggle. Machiavelli reasserted the centrality of military power as the foundation of
civic society and, given the centrality of gender imagery to his understanding of
politics, worried about how some principalities had become "effeminate" by being insufficiently interested in military issues.10
Machiavelli's work should be understood as a treatise on ways to subordinate and
suppress the female forces of disorder at work in the human community through the
operation of a masculine virtue closely linked to military capacity. Civic leadership (if
not yet citizenship in the modern sense) requires manliness.
By the eighteenth century, the political community (as theorized in the work of Rousseau) is threatened less by the random disorder brought by Fortuna and more by the
corrupting and effeminizing influence of Commerce. For him, Commerce represented
the irrational change and degeneration which would result in one's subjection to the
chaotic appetites and passions of both oneself and others. Rousseau makes clear that
refinement of manners, civilization and culture are all enemies of virtue. His admiration
for Sparta, his argument that inequality itself grows inevitably from dependence on
others, his denunciation of the theater, and, finally, his arguments that women should
be restrained from playing a role in public life-all this should be understood as part of
an effort to recreate in eighteenth century Europe the virtue, or manliness, appropriate
to the ancient republics. The profoundly structuring influence of gender on his
thought, then, appears not so much in what he wrote about women, but in his concern for the effeminacy of the political community.
Now that the work women (and slaves and laborers)
have traditionallydone is part of the public sphere, the
barriersbetween public and private cannot be so firm,
and those previously excluded from citizenship can
make a better case for theirinclusion in both the definition and practice of citizenship.
Important shifts in the nature of public life had taken place by the nineteenth century:
the merchant, or capitalist had ceased to represent the effeminizing power of Commerce and came to be an important public figure. Indeed, the content of the public
world came to include production, which had hitherto been confined to the private
sphere. Hannah Arendt, of course, has referred to this as the rise of the social sphere
in opposition to politics.11 And there is a sense in which she is right. The public world
is no longer confined to the agonistic pursuits of those with the freedom and leisure to
9The Prince and Discourses (New York:The ModernLibrary,1950), p. 94.
l?Hanna Pitkinhas written extensively about these issues in Fortune Is a Woman (Berkeley:
Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1984).
1 The Human Condition(Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1958).
201
participate. But rather than see this as an indication of decline, I would argue that this
circumstance provides an opportunity to develop a more inclusive understanding of
citizenship: now that the work women (and slaves and laborers) have traditionally
done is part of the public sphere, the barriers between public and private cannot be so
firm, and those previously excluded from citizenship can make a better case for their
inclusion in both the definition and practice of citizenship.
Let me conclude by clarifying both what I am and am not saying. I do not maintain that
the only ethical issues involved in discussions of citizenship revolve around gender.
Moreover, throughout the history of Western political thought there has been a
number of challenges to the image I have set out. But gender issues have been one of
the important structuring factors in the development of ideas about citizenship as we
find them in many of the classic works of political philosophy. In addition, despite the
association of manhood with military valor, I recognize that women have taken part in
war. Women, like men, have fought for both their families and their beliefs. My argument, however, is that some of the reasons for which they fight differ from men. Most
obviously, of course, they have no reason to prove their manhood.12
The masculine political actor as he appears in the classics of political philosophy is
indeed most at home in agonistic and competitive settings, where he can pursue the
attainment of glory, honor, and immortality in the memory of men. The calm and rational consideration of the best actions for the community as a whole are of less concern to him than his own status within it. Rather than war being politics by other
means, political action from this perspective can be seen as war by other means, a
war by means of which the citizens attain and celebrate manhood.
For Achilles and Hector, there could be no complete manhood without war. General
Barrow's remarks make it clear that similar views are still extant. Yet today, when the
destructive power of our weapons could destroy life on earth, we should re-evaluate
understandings of citizenship which link it with masculinity and military capacity. The
admission of women to the political community as full participants-sharing both civil
and military responsibilities-would be an important step toward forging a more satisfactory practice of citizenship.
"2Foran historical example of these differences see Temma Kaplan, "Female Consciousness
and CollectiveAction: The Case of Barcelona, 1910-1918," Signs: Journalof Woman,Culture,
and Society, VII,3 (Spring, 1982).
202 PS Spring 1984