An international relations class is examining how gender shapes historic and modern conflict
“We think about masculinity from a global perspective, given that war itself is a global phenomenon,” Fahd Humayun said. Photo: Shutterstock
Historically, when wars happen, it’s men who are doing the fighting, and by far most leaders who start wars are men, too. But exactly how are notions of masculinity bound to politics and war?
“The 20th and 21st centuries are essentially a chronology of inflection points that advertently or inadvertently redefined social expectations around gender norms and masculinity,” said Fahd Humayun, an assistant professor of political science.
“And while much of this is related to social change ushered in by industrialization and technological advancement, developments in the international system and external threats such as war have also played a big role in stoking anxieties that have led to a renegotiation of what it means to be a breadwinner, an alpha, a protector, a security provider.”
It’s all fodder for Humayun in his class Masculinity, Politics & Modern War, which he offered this spring. “Unfortunately it’s clearer than ever that war is endemic to the international system,” he said. “By thinking about domestic politics through the prism of historical change, we can help contextualize why some of these things are happening, including who gets elected, and who makes war.”
A major theme in the class is the way behavioral expectations are constituted for political ends. “Elites in power have historically sold or subscribed to a very particular version of militarized masculinity,” Humayun said.
Origins of the Gender Divide
In the class, Humayun covers a swathe of history that includes the Spanish-American War, early 20th century immigration, the Great Depression, McCarthyism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the global war on terror, right up to the current-day America First movement. He also encourages students to think critically about historical events that disrupted traditional gender norms, like in World War II, when women filled labor gaps due to men enlisting in the war; and the emergence of the national security state at the dawn of the Cold War and its evolution through Vietnam and 9/11.
“We talk about how there are these moments of historical rupture, where a familiar social order is upended, men having to respond to situations in which their traditional claim to society is brought into question,” Humayun said.
That’s also what essentially happened with technological change and economic globalization, that among other things altered the value of a college education and patterns of mate selection, he said. “We see it in debates around the rise of automation and the offshoring of jobs and how these developments have given way to disenchantment and another crisis in masculinity, which is central to this current moment of ‘America First,’ where we talk about male disillusionment and the loneliness epidemic.”
Humayun said many men feel left behind while others get ahead, which can push them to political movements like Make America Great Again and conservatism.
“Women’s prospects have really improved in the United States,” he said. “A big achievement since the 70s has been that women now outperform men in higher education in nearly every field. Women are more likely to graduate than men are, and boys are more likely to drop out of school.”
Sophomore Leah Munoz said the class opened her eyes in ways she didn’t expect when she first decided to take it.
“I think this course is really relevant to our current political moment,” Munoz said. “Gender is always going to be a part of politics, which is now something I understand from this course, but what does this mean for us right now in America with two opposing movements? How can we understand the complexities and nuances of those dynamics through the gendered lens?”
“Elites in power have historically sold or subscribed to a very particular version of militarized masculinity.”
Topics branch off in many directions, from video games and competition dominance to debunking some common myths around testosterone and aggression. The class begins with one of the earliest gender divides—hunters and gatherers—and other early gender divisions of labor, leading to discussions about why politics and militaries have been predominately masculine domains, in many contexts and countries—including the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Latin America and South Asia.
“We think about masculinity from a global perspective, given that war itself is a global phenomenon,” Humayun said.
Shayla Dutta, a sophomore international relations major, said many discussions in her IR classes look at the actions of powerful men who are making influential decisions. It’s why a class solely focused on the topic interested her.
“We’ve learned about the incidental factors that contribute to decision-making, to emotions that inform political decisions and sentiments,” Dutta said. “We did a unit talking about sports and how that impacts sentiments of nationalism, and that was wild to see the extent to which actual interstate conflicts can be influenced by something like sporting event outcomes.”
“This class approaches the subject the best way you can do it, with relevant statistical analysis, polling, and a well-constructed assessment of how these things affect different parts of our society,” said Parker Collins, A26.
Jackson Snider, A27, said the class made him aware of the mechanisms that shape how we view gender and modern conflict. “If you want to see how American society has implicitly shaped how we view and discuss the gender dynamics that are implicit within war, and you want to sort of uncover those implicit biases, I think that you should definitely take the class.”
