Gender Wars and Gendered Wars

Vladimir Putin has justified the attack on Ukraine by conjuring a threat to Russian “traditional values”. In his view, by associating itself with Europe, Ukraine embraced the “degeneracy” that comes with feminism and LGBTQ+ rights, which poses a threat to Russian values, and in particular the Russian family, imagined as heteronormative and patriarchal. There is thus a continuity between the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Putin regime’s anti-gay laws, its decriminalisation of domestic violence, and its designation of feminism as an extremist ideology. Analysts have largely dismissed Putin’s war justification as propaganda, and clearly the reasons for the invasion are many. But one should not dismiss his claims too quickly. Indeed, scholars have suggested that the war in Ukraine may be like no other in that it is explicitly motivated by concerns over gender: it is a “war on gender order”. How could the demands of women and sexual/gender minorities for equal rights have become a threat — so much so that they have motivated a country to go to war?

We should recognise that gender has long organised war. To begin with, we should recognise that gender has long organised war. The stereotype that men go to war while women stay home (to staff the home front and become war’s victims) has a long history. While empirically debatable (women have also gone to war, including in the World War II Soviet Union, and men have also stayed home and been victimised), the stereotype formulates a fundamental gender difference and seeds political motivations and justifications. These include the idea that men need to protect women, a ruse that feeds Putin’s defence of “traditional” values as much as right-wing extremists’ war on immigrants. They also include the idea that leaders need to defend the honour of the nation vis-à-vis others, which often entails displays of masculine strength. Putin’s hypermasculine PR campaign draws from this playbook, putting himself on horseback and into nature — typically bare-chested and with a rifle — to communicate renewed strength after the humiliating end of the Soviet Union. Similarly, ending equal opportunity programmes and protections for blacks and women in the Trump administration projects a revival of forceful masculinity as a sign of national “greatness”. These kinds of performances establish masculine power as national power; they also make war and violence thinkable as a heroic duty to the nation.

But there is a new element in Putin’s justification of the Ukraine invasion that goes beyond these kinds of performativities. It recognises that feminism and LGBTQ+ activism have delegitimised patriarchal gender orders and the authoritarian enlistments they permit. Thus, gender is no longer just a symbolic enactment, it has become an explicit object of domestic and foreign policies.

For the first time, an international movement is calling into question the advances achieved by equality movements

Movements demanding equal rights have encountered opposition throughout history; but for the first time today, we witness an organised and internationally networked counter-movement that seeks to reverse the rights and recognitions that women and sex/gender minorities have so desperately fought for. Authoritarians around the world have jumped on the bandwagon of “anti-gender movements” that are proliferating globally. These movements differ because they are embedded in local politics, but they also have commonalities: they reject the idea that gender constructions are social and malleable, defend the hetero-patriarchal family as natural and given, and paint the nation as homogenous and under threat. This leads them to oppose reproductive health and rights (including sex education and abortion), oppose LBGTQ+ rights, and reject policies to counteract domestic violence. It also leads them to support authoritarian leaders ready to trample the rights of minorities in the name of saving the nation, or in some formulations, human civilisation.

Gender issues incorporated into conservative foreign policies

Conversely, authoritarian governments have incorporated the ideas of anti-gender movements into their foreign policies. Thus, the Russian National Security Strategy defines as one of its goals the promotion of “traditional” values internationally, and the country has styled itself as the leader of a conservative alliance defending such values in the UN, where it spearheads anti-gender rhetoric designed to undermine the basic human right to non-discrimination. Similarly, the National Security Strategy of the United States includes as one of its goals reinvigorating “American spiritual and cultural health” through “strong, traditional families that raise healthy children”, and it declares the “primacy of nations” as a principle of its foreign policy. It entangles a patriarchal gender order with nationalism to birth a new form of state chauvinism.

Russia, but also the United States

We thus witness a gender war: a patriarchal backlash that revives forms of masculinity feminist scholarship has long associated with violence. By fostering redefinitions of national interests and identities, this backlash has literally propelled new wars. If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the iconic example, US military adventures replay the model: with an administration staffed by (accused and convicted) sexual predators, and having declared diversity and equity initiatives un-American, the country signals greatness as it wantonly metes out violence on migrants domestically, and on countries from Latin America to the Middle East internationally.

By inaugurating a war against feminism, anti-gender movements have re-valorised militarist forms of masculinity, and with them, foreign policies that are proudly nationalist, muscular and ruthless.  Gender relations and gendered messages lend passion to the foreign policy projects of these states. They appeal to vague and pre-discursive discomforts and insecurities in order to motivate forceful posturing. A seemingly un-reflected attack, such as that of the US on Iran, becomes meaningful in this context: it shows the manly agency of a power proving its superiority. Diplomacy and multilateralism together with values of cooperation and empathy stand for femininity and weakness in such an approach; soft power loses its value precisely because it is soft.

In sum, by inaugurating a war against feminism, anti-gender movements have re-valorised militarist forms of masculinity, and with them, foreign policies that are proudly nationalist, muscular and ruthless. Contemporary wars serve as a reminder that gender relations are not a sideshow of international politics: they have given birth to a chauvinism that entangles fantasies of male superiority with violent national renewal.