Six Masculine Roles in International Relations and Their Interconnection

This chapter examines why many of the male scholars in international relations who are sympathetic to feminist studies of gender and international affairs, men who even lend such studies institutional support and who certainly have learned a great deal from them. It considers how the roles may relate to each other in the gendered structuring of power internationally and how the interests of men who play different roles may make them more likely or less likely to sympathize with the challenge offered by feminist understandings. The logic of masculinities is hierarchical in the sense that the masculine virtues of one of the roles—that of the good soldier—are privileged by the entire network of distinctions that define the different types of masculinity in the United States. The masculine role that military sons learn about first is of central importance, namely being the good soldier.

International relations · Masculinity · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Structuring · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology