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The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire
In this collection of lively essays Cynthia Enloe makes better sense of globalization and international politics by taking a deep and personal look into the daily realities in a range of women's lives. She proposes a distinctively feminist curiosity that begins with taking women seriously, especially during this era of unprecedented American influence.
This means listening carefully, digging deeply, challenging assumptions, and welcoming surprises. Listening to women in Asian sneaker factories, Enloe reveals, enables us to bring down to earth the often abstract discussions of the global economy. Paying close attention to Iraqi women's organizing efforts under military occupation exposes the false global promises made by officials.
Enloe also turns the beam of her inquiry inward. In a series of four candid interviews and a set of autobiographical pieces, she reflects on the gradual development of her own feminist curiosity. Describing her wartime suburban girlhood and her years at Berkeley, she maps the everyday obstacles placed on the path to feminist consciousness―and suggests how those obstacles can be identified and overcome.
The Curious Feminist shows how taking women seriously also challenges the common assumption that masculinities are trivial factors in today's international affairs. Enloe explores the workings of masculinity inside organizations as diverse as the American military, a Serbian militia, the United Nations, and Oxfam. A feminist curiosity finds all women worth thinking about, Enloe claims. She suggests we pay thoughtful attention to women who appear complicit in violence or in the oppression of others, or too cozily wrapped in their relative privilege to inspire praise or compassion. Enloe's vitality, passion, and incisive wit illuminate each essay. The Curious Feminist is an original and timely invitation to look at global politics in an entirely different way.
This means listening carefully, digging deeply, challenging assumptions, and welcoming surprises. Listening to women in Asian sneaker factories, Enloe reveals, enables us to bring down to earth the often abstract discussions of the global economy. Paying close attention to Iraqi women's organizing efforts under military occupation exposes the false global promises made by officials.
Enloe also turns the beam of her inquiry inward. In a series of four candid interviews and a set of autobiographical pieces, she reflects on the gradual development of her own feminist curiosity. Describing her wartime suburban girlhood and her years at Berkeley, she maps the everyday obstacles placed on the path to feminist consciousness―and suggests how those obstacles can be identified and overcome.
The Curious Feminist shows how taking women seriously also challenges the common assumption that masculinities are trivial factors in today's international affairs. Enloe explores the workings of masculinity inside organizations as diverse as the American military, a Serbian militia, the United Nations, and Oxfam. A feminist curiosity finds all women worth thinking about, Enloe claims. She suggests we pay thoughtful attention to women who appear complicit in violence or in the oppression of others, or too cozily wrapped in their relative privilege to inspire praise or compassion. Enloe's vitality, passion, and incisive wit illuminate each essay. The Curious Feminist is an original and timely invitation to look at global politics in an entirely different way.
367 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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549 people want to read
About the author
Cynthia Enloe
43 books114 followersCynthia Holden Enloe is a feminist writer, theorist, and professor.
She is best known for her work on gender and militarism and for her contributions to the field of feminist international relations. She has done pioneering feminist research into international politics and political economy, and has considerable contribution to building a more inclusive feminist scholarly community.
Cynthia Enloe was born in New York, New York and grew up in Manhasset, Long Island, a New York suburb. Her father was from Missouri and went to medical school in Germany from 1933 to 1936. Her mother went to Mills College and married Cynthia's father upon graduation.
After completing her undergraduate education at Connecticut College in 1960, she went on to earn an M.A. in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1967 in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkely, Enloe was the first woman ever to be a Head TA for Aaron Wildavsky, then an up-and-coming star in the field of American Politics.
Enloe states that she has been influenced by many other feminists who use an ethnographic approach, specifically, Seung-Kyung Kim’s (1997) work on South Korean women factory workers during the pro-democracy campaign and Anne Allison’s (1994) work on observing corporate businessmen’s interactions with hostesses in a Tokyo drinking club. Enloe has also listed Diane Singerman, Purnima Mankekar, and Cathy Lutz as people who have inspired and influenced her work.
She is best known for her work on gender and militarism and for her contributions to the field of feminist international relations. She has done pioneering feminist research into international politics and political economy, and has considerable contribution to building a more inclusive feminist scholarly community.
Cynthia Enloe was born in New York, New York and grew up in Manhasset, Long Island, a New York suburb. Her father was from Missouri and went to medical school in Germany from 1933 to 1936. Her mother went to Mills College and married Cynthia's father upon graduation.
After completing her undergraduate education at Connecticut College in 1960, she went on to earn an M.A. in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1967 in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkely, Enloe was the first woman ever to be a Head TA for Aaron Wildavsky, then an up-and-coming star in the field of American Politics.
Enloe states that she has been influenced by many other feminists who use an ethnographic approach, specifically, Seung-Kyung Kim’s (1997) work on South Korean women factory workers during the pro-democracy campaign and Anne Allison’s (1994) work on observing corporate businessmen’s interactions with hostesses in a Tokyo drinking club. Enloe has also listed Diane Singerman, Purnima Mankekar, and Cathy Lutz as people who have inspired and influenced her work.
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December 21, 2009
Instinctively I'm a feminist, but I really know very little about feminist theory, which is not a good thing. Unexamined and deeply-held are not a good combination when it comes to beliefs, and the same goes for instincts - just because they feel right doesn't mean they are right. For instance, I think (with little to no scientific basis) that it's instinctive and normal to be racist, because back in the day it would have been to one's evolutionary advantage to be suspicious of people who looked different to one because they might try to kill one. Natural selection would occur, yada yada. But these days we know (theoretically, anyway) that the threat posed to us by people should not be dependent on the colour of their skin (there may be correlation, but causation does not necessarily follow). Hence we examine our instincts, and in this particular case are often forced to actively suppress them.
However, I never really bothered to deeply examine my feminist instincts, because it seemed obvious to me that they were right. Racism bad, feminism good, ergo racist instincts get suppressed, feminist instincts get left alone.
This is really the first book I've read about feminism, and after reading it I still think my instincts are right, but damn, they could benefit from some examination. Enloe would call my unquestioning acceptance of my instincts a lack of 'feminist curiosity', and after reading this collection of essays, articles and interviews, I have to agree. Enloe asks the reader to cultivate a feminist curiosity - to look at a situation and ask "where are the women?" This book focuses on applying a feminist curiosity to situations to which one would not automatically (or instinctively) think to apply it ( at least if one is not an expert on international politics). Specifically, she looks at three main situations: sweatshops, wars, and post-war reconstruction.
Her principle argument seems to be that the maintenance of masculinised systems of power relies on the perpetuation of certain ideas of femininity, and that women be confined to the roles determined by these ideas. To take a relatively well-known example, when a large number of male soldiers are mobilised for war, many more women than usual are called to start working, filling the vacancies that have been created. Governments appeal to nationalistic sentiments, asking women to 'do their bit for the war effort' and so on. Once the war is over, however, the soldiers return, wanting their jobs back. Governments want to avoid having large numbers of disgruntled, out-of-work, often PTS-suffering veterans hanging around, because this can cause civil unrest. Something has to give, and it's usually the women. After years of independence, of bringing up children alone, of running a household and holding down a job, women are expected to just return to the way things were before the war. They are expected to love, honour and obey the men who they may not have seen for years, men who may be suffering from severe trauma due to their experiences in the war, men who may have changed completely. In other words, both a country's ability to participate in a war and that country's ability to reconstruct its society after the end of the war rely heavily on women. Enloe argues convincingly that this reasoning applies equally in the other situations she looks at, showing that asking the question "where are the women?" is a vital step in understanding the workings of international politics and globalisation.
Reading about this has shown me how limited my feminist instincts really are. In my mind I instinctively apply feminist thinking to a certain group of things, and then there is everything else, to which it has never occurred to me to apply it. What Enloe says is that feminist analysis needs to be applied consistently to analysis of international politics and economics (and by extension, to everything else...?), not just to make sure that things are fair for women (though this is important), but even to understand why things are as they are.
Another aspect of this point confronted my feminist instincts in a slightly different way. I've always assumed that making things fair for women should come second when it comes to things like post-conflict reconstruction, combat of poverty, etc. It seems logical that the first priority has to be to establish a certain base level of decent living conditions before the 'added luxuries' of things like equal rights for women can be addressed. This made sense to me, it makes sense to policy makers, and Enloe had to work a bit harder than usual to get me to understand that it isn't necessarily true (it's harder to combat existing prejudices, I guess). Maybe it would be true, in an unrealistic world where women's rights can stay constant while other variables are changed. But in reality, and Enloe proves this quite convincingly, conducting post-conflict reconstruction (this being the example she uses) without keeping women and their specific needs at the forefront of policy planning can set back women's rights for decades.
Furthermore, violence against women "must be accorded urgent political attention if women are to gain the status of genuinely autonomous citizens." Unfortunately this doesn't happen nearly often enough; when in Iraq American occupation officials hand pick an all-male Iraqi police force and all-male Iraqi policy advisers, is it really surprising that nothing is done to halt the soaring rates of violence against women that typically occur in a post-war society?(incidentally, there's another assumption I had: that first world countries knew better. So much for that).
I'm a bit wary to say this because I don't think I know enough about either issue, but it seems to me to be a bit like the situation with climate change and developing countries. It seems clear to me that it's not fair to let developing countries languish in poverty when industrialisation could improve living standards, but at the same time climate change is a huge problem and so it's kind of imperative that developing countries don't build up economies based on fossil fuels, even though this is potentially cheaper and easier. Development is important and necessary, but it must be done in direct conjunction with efforts to minimise climate change. Similarly, development is important and necessary, but it must be done while keeping women at the forefront of political debate, and with women themselves involved in the discussion.
Refreshingly, this book was written extremely clearly - so clearly that I, with no background in political science, international studies or feminism, could understand it without effort. This has not been the case with many (any?) of my other brushes with the social sciences. Only one thing really annoyed me about it, and it interests me quite a lot because it forces me to use a feminist curiosity: her tendency to use alliteration, and also certain similes and metaphors, struck me as being a bit too cute. "Bananas, beaches and bases", "sneakers, silences and surprises", "hierarchies do not sit on the social landscape like tuna, egg, and cheese sandwiches sitting on an icy cafeteria counter". It seemed unnecessary, even a bit distracting. I think maybe it annoyed me because it seems like the stereotypical thing a woman might do - embellish perfectly good arguments with pretty little linguistic decorations. It seems like playing into the hands of *those awful men* who just want to use any excuse to dismiss feminist theory. But then I think, no one should have to care about what other people think of their prose. One should write how one wants to, and if other people don't like it, too bad. Or something like that?
Ok, I promise I'm almost done here. The great and positive, even uplifting, thing about this book was that it showed so many instances of women who were no longer willing to be confined. Masculinised power structures can only be maintained if women stay in the roles that have been determined for them, but there are a few incredibly courageous women out there who challenge the status quo. Women organising unions in Korean sweatshops, women making sure equal rights are written into the new Iraqi constitution, women teaching girls to read in rural Afghanistan. Positive change doesn't necessarily have a linear relationship with time, but it is happening, and sometimes I can believe that things are gradually getting better.
I originally gave this four stars, simply because I haven't read anything else that's related so I have nothing to compare it to and I generally can't give books on academic subjects five stars because it's generally hard to get passionate about them. However, I'm bumping my rating up to five stars because my thinking has definitely changed since I read this, and I don't think any single other book has ever done that.
However, I never really bothered to deeply examine my feminist instincts, because it seemed obvious to me that they were right. Racism bad, feminism good, ergo racist instincts get suppressed, feminist instincts get left alone.
This is really the first book I've read about feminism, and after reading it I still think my instincts are right, but damn, they could benefit from some examination. Enloe would call my unquestioning acceptance of my instincts a lack of 'feminist curiosity', and after reading this collection of essays, articles and interviews, I have to agree. Enloe asks the reader to cultivate a feminist curiosity - to look at a situation and ask "where are the women?" This book focuses on applying a feminist curiosity to situations to which one would not automatically (or instinctively) think to apply it ( at least if one is not an expert on international politics). Specifically, she looks at three main situations: sweatshops, wars, and post-war reconstruction.
Her principle argument seems to be that the maintenance of masculinised systems of power relies on the perpetuation of certain ideas of femininity, and that women be confined to the roles determined by these ideas. To take a relatively well-known example, when a large number of male soldiers are mobilised for war, many more women than usual are called to start working, filling the vacancies that have been created. Governments appeal to nationalistic sentiments, asking women to 'do their bit for the war effort' and so on. Once the war is over, however, the soldiers return, wanting their jobs back. Governments want to avoid having large numbers of disgruntled, out-of-work, often PTS-suffering veterans hanging around, because this can cause civil unrest. Something has to give, and it's usually the women. After years of independence, of bringing up children alone, of running a household and holding down a job, women are expected to just return to the way things were before the war. They are expected to love, honour and obey the men who they may not have seen for years, men who may be suffering from severe trauma due to their experiences in the war, men who may have changed completely. In other words, both a country's ability to participate in a war and that country's ability to reconstruct its society after the end of the war rely heavily on women. Enloe argues convincingly that this reasoning applies equally in the other situations she looks at, showing that asking the question "where are the women?" is a vital step in understanding the workings of international politics and globalisation.
Reading about this has shown me how limited my feminist instincts really are. In my mind I instinctively apply feminist thinking to a certain group of things, and then there is everything else, to which it has never occurred to me to apply it. What Enloe says is that feminist analysis needs to be applied consistently to analysis of international politics and economics (and by extension, to everything else...?), not just to make sure that things are fair for women (though this is important), but even to understand why things are as they are.
Another aspect of this point confronted my feminist instincts in a slightly different way. I've always assumed that making things fair for women should come second when it comes to things like post-conflict reconstruction, combat of poverty, etc. It seems logical that the first priority has to be to establish a certain base level of decent living conditions before the 'added luxuries' of things like equal rights for women can be addressed. This made sense to me, it makes sense to policy makers, and Enloe had to work a bit harder than usual to get me to understand that it isn't necessarily true (it's harder to combat existing prejudices, I guess). Maybe it would be true, in an unrealistic world where women's rights can stay constant while other variables are changed. But in reality, and Enloe proves this quite convincingly, conducting post-conflict reconstruction (this being the example she uses) without keeping women and their specific needs at the forefront of policy planning can set back women's rights for decades.
Furthermore, violence against women "must be accorded urgent political attention if women are to gain the status of genuinely autonomous citizens." Unfortunately this doesn't happen nearly often enough; when in Iraq American occupation officials hand pick an all-male Iraqi police force and all-male Iraqi policy advisers, is it really surprising that nothing is done to halt the soaring rates of violence against women that typically occur in a post-war society?(incidentally, there's another assumption I had: that first world countries knew better. So much for that).
I'm a bit wary to say this because I don't think I know enough about either issue, but it seems to me to be a bit like the situation with climate change and developing countries. It seems clear to me that it's not fair to let developing countries languish in poverty when industrialisation could improve living standards, but at the same time climate change is a huge problem and so it's kind of imperative that developing countries don't build up economies based on fossil fuels, even though this is potentially cheaper and easier. Development is important and necessary, but it must be done in direct conjunction with efforts to minimise climate change. Similarly, development is important and necessary, but it must be done while keeping women at the forefront of political debate, and with women themselves involved in the discussion.
Refreshingly, this book was written extremely clearly - so clearly that I, with no background in political science, international studies or feminism, could understand it without effort. This has not been the case with many (any?) of my other brushes with the social sciences. Only one thing really annoyed me about it, and it interests me quite a lot because it forces me to use a feminist curiosity: her tendency to use alliteration, and also certain similes and metaphors, struck me as being a bit too cute. "Bananas, beaches and bases", "sneakers, silences and surprises", "hierarchies do not sit on the social landscape like tuna, egg, and cheese sandwiches sitting on an icy cafeteria counter". It seemed unnecessary, even a bit distracting. I think maybe it annoyed me because it seems like the stereotypical thing a woman might do - embellish perfectly good arguments with pretty little linguistic decorations. It seems like playing into the hands of *those awful men* who just want to use any excuse to dismiss feminist theory. But then I think, no one should have to care about what other people think of their prose. One should write how one wants to, and if other people don't like it, too bad. Or something like that?
Ok, I promise I'm almost done here. The great and positive, even uplifting, thing about this book was that it showed so many instances of women who were no longer willing to be confined. Masculinised power structures can only be maintained if women stay in the roles that have been determined for them, but there are a few incredibly courageous women out there who challenge the status quo. Women organising unions in Korean sweatshops, women making sure equal rights are written into the new Iraqi constitution, women teaching girls to read in rural Afghanistan. Positive change doesn't necessarily have a linear relationship with time, but it is happening, and sometimes I can believe that things are gradually getting better.
I originally gave this four stars, simply because I haven't read anything else that's related so I have nothing to compare it to and I generally can't give books on academic subjects five stars because it's generally hard to get passionate about them. However, I'm bumping my rating up to five stars because my thinking has definitely changed since I read this, and I don't think any single other book has ever done that.
April 14, 2016
Cynthia Enloe's book is a very interesting one, with lots of clues and ideas that will fascinate the reader and make her or him think about many aspects of the world we live in and the way international and national relations play out.
Enloe is trying here (as the title of the book says) to bring curiosity and feminism to the study of different aspects of the modern world (the reasons behind sneaker brands to do their products in Asia, for example). The topics are very interesting (with a heavy focus on the masculine militarism that shapes the world nowadays) and includes conversations and personal moments. Enloe is a good writer (even if the level of her style fluctuates from one article to the other) and most of the chapters are very easy to read, over before you even notice. Enloe's point is to make us think about why women are put where they are, what images we get of them, and why for example there may be no women in a public demonstration. It all will make the reader think about some aspects that are left outside of the focus in the mainstream narrative.
On the down side, it is a little bit repetitive (the title is repeated at least a hundred times), it is very Western centered (little obvious critic of America or Europe, much more of other places) and for some of the aspects that the book brings to the fore, feminism shouldn't be needed, just curiosity. But these are minor quibbles. Every curious person should read this book for one obvious reason: we should all try to think outside of the box, and we all should think about where women (and men) are.
6,5/10
Enloe is trying here (as the title of the book says) to bring curiosity and feminism to the study of different aspects of the modern world (the reasons behind sneaker brands to do their products in Asia, for example). The topics are very interesting (with a heavy focus on the masculine militarism that shapes the world nowadays) and includes conversations and personal moments. Enloe is a good writer (even if the level of her style fluctuates from one article to the other) and most of the chapters are very easy to read, over before you even notice. Enloe's point is to make us think about why women are put where they are, what images we get of them, and why for example there may be no women in a public demonstration. It all will make the reader think about some aspects that are left outside of the focus in the mainstream narrative.
On the down side, it is a little bit repetitive (the title is repeated at least a hundred times), it is very Western centered (little obvious critic of America or Europe, much more of other places) and for some of the aspects that the book brings to the fore, feminism shouldn't be needed, just curiosity. But these are minor quibbles. Every curious person should read this book for one obvious reason: we should all try to think outside of the box, and we all should think about where women (and men) are.
6,5/10
February 8, 2017
4.5 stars. Not quite a full 5 only for reasons of discontinuity.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in a theoretical framework for thinking about global politics. Even just the first chapter, on curiosity and surprise, could change your outlook. Enloe reminds us that a willingness to be surprised is essential not only to feminism, but to any genuine intellectual curiosity and to any system of ethics that seeks to decentralize one's own privileged perspective.
As a side note, I met Enloe at a lecture in October 2016. She is every bit as awesome as she sounds.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in a theoretical framework for thinking about global politics. Even just the first chapter, on curiosity and surprise, could change your outlook. Enloe reminds us that a willingness to be surprised is essential not only to feminism, but to any genuine intellectual curiosity and to any system of ethics that seeks to decentralize one's own privileged perspective.
As a side note, I met Enloe at a lecture in October 2016. She is every bit as awesome as she sounds.
September 23, 2013
If I were to create a canonical list of feminist reads about politics, war, and power, this book would be at the top. Cynthia Enloe makes me want to think smarter and kinder.
April 6, 2011
Enloe's voice in this collection of articles is amazing. She moves her audience to seriously consider what it means to be curious and to take a second (or third) look at the world around it. Here are some of my responses to some of the articles:
Cynthia Enloe describes feminist curiosity, or curiosity as a whole, as a practice in letting go of imagined conceptions of what is said to be the natural way, and understanding both the origins and the implications of assuming something to be natural. For the curious feminist, this means refuting the essentialist ideologies that have historically dictated gender roles across the globe. Furthermore, being a curious feminist means understanding that because there is a historical pattern of dictating gender roles, it is considered tradition and therefore more difficult to discount. When we say the word tradition we are referring to something that people are encouraged not to question. We encourage people to respect and uphold their traditions and values. As curious feminists we must find the line between what is tradition for the sake of tradition and what is for the sake of oppression, or at the very least, which traditions yield oppression. These are the tasks of the curious feminist: she is to understand her surroundings and the events of the world in a way that allows her to refute the surface explanations for those events and search for the deeper, overarching ideologies.
The explanations for events, circumstances, and everyday surroundings are not simple in the way people wish to think. Enloe impresses upon her audience that ignorance does not equal bliss. Rather, ignorance perpetuates pain, oppression, and violence. Therefore, explaining the happenings in our world with commonly accepted notions of “that’s just the way things are,” or “its only natural,” may seem like the easy way out of a sticky conversation, when in reality it only puts that conversation on hold. Eventually, someone must realize that the generally accepted ideologies that have become so embedded in everyday life are in fact dangerous assumptions about the nature of humanity.
Enloe explains that silence is one of the greatest weapons used against women because of its power to maintain the status quo of the hegemonic groups engaging in violence against women. She argues that women’s silence removes any hope for change or progress away from the ideologies that encourage violence against women (70). Enloe also argues that the separation of “public” and “private” in the political arena forces cases of violence against women away from political conversations (71). Therefore, women’s silence perpetuates violence against women because of the way in which political power structures believe such violence to be a part of the private space. Furthermore, what is said in the “public” space is often veiled arguments that excuse violence against women as being a negative aspect of a struggle aiming at a positive goal. For example, the U.S. Government answered the September 11th attacks by declaring a “War on Terror” for the purposes of democratizing the Middle East. Since 2001 we have watched the U.S. excuse its actions, such as the Abu Ghraib scandal, in the name of freedom. If freedom is the end result of violence, then violence becomes a positive means for achieving the U.S.’s goals. Therefore, the ideology that violence is the only way to achieve freedom becomes embedded in the American worldview and if an individual speaks out against it, they are condemned for speaking out against freedom. If a woman in the Middle East is a part of the “collateral damage” associated with America’s War on Terror and cannot speak up about her experience, then both American and Middle-Eastern women lose the opportunity to have conversations about what is really happening in this war and what needs to be done to end it. Thus, Enloe’s discussion on women’s silence shows how silence perpetuates violence against women by allowing powerful and damaging ideologies to continue influencing the minds of the general public.
Enloe’s twelfth chapter, “War Planners Rely on Women,” reveals how men and women in a militarized patriarchal culture, such as America and Japan, will fall into these roles and obey the invisible rules in order to remain a part of their society. Men and women in America today, for instance, are expected to live up to their patriotic roles and support the war in the Middle-East in the name of American Democracy and Freedom, and this position is elevated within American military communities. The American military has defined boundaries between the roles of men and women: men are to physically fight against the enemy, while women are put into supportive, nurturing, and ultimately submissive, roles within the military. These positions are deemed necessary by the state for the war to be a success and forces men and women involved with the military to feel responsible, through their gender roles, for supporting and defending the nation as a whole. When individuals break the rules and no longer fit the images Enloe describes, such as the picture of a military wife wistfully kissing her husband goodbye, their minds and bodies are violated by the state and by the individuals around them. This violation presents another way in which war and gender interact; that is, gendered violence in wartime is the direct result of specific gender rules being bent and/or broken by individuals. If women in particular are unable to fit into traditional roles of mother and wife, they are forced to either continue to support the military as prostitutes, or to appear anti-patriotic by refusing those particular roles. Women who represent the latter category are subjected to violence, such as forced prostitution and trafficking, as a direct result of their denying the roles expected of them. War, then, is not simply about guns and bombs, but is heavily dependent on the state and its citizens to maintain rigid definitions of gender that are put on a level of life and death.
Cynthia Enloe describes feminist curiosity, or curiosity as a whole, as a practice in letting go of imagined conceptions of what is said to be the natural way, and understanding both the origins and the implications of assuming something to be natural. For the curious feminist, this means refuting the essentialist ideologies that have historically dictated gender roles across the globe. Furthermore, being a curious feminist means understanding that because there is a historical pattern of dictating gender roles, it is considered tradition and therefore more difficult to discount. When we say the word tradition we are referring to something that people are encouraged not to question. We encourage people to respect and uphold their traditions and values. As curious feminists we must find the line between what is tradition for the sake of tradition and what is for the sake of oppression, or at the very least, which traditions yield oppression. These are the tasks of the curious feminist: she is to understand her surroundings and the events of the world in a way that allows her to refute the surface explanations for those events and search for the deeper, overarching ideologies.
The explanations for events, circumstances, and everyday surroundings are not simple in the way people wish to think. Enloe impresses upon her audience that ignorance does not equal bliss. Rather, ignorance perpetuates pain, oppression, and violence. Therefore, explaining the happenings in our world with commonly accepted notions of “that’s just the way things are,” or “its only natural,” may seem like the easy way out of a sticky conversation, when in reality it only puts that conversation on hold. Eventually, someone must realize that the generally accepted ideologies that have become so embedded in everyday life are in fact dangerous assumptions about the nature of humanity.
Enloe explains that silence is one of the greatest weapons used against women because of its power to maintain the status quo of the hegemonic groups engaging in violence against women. She argues that women’s silence removes any hope for change or progress away from the ideologies that encourage violence against women (70). Enloe also argues that the separation of “public” and “private” in the political arena forces cases of violence against women away from political conversations (71). Therefore, women’s silence perpetuates violence against women because of the way in which political power structures believe such violence to be a part of the private space. Furthermore, what is said in the “public” space is often veiled arguments that excuse violence against women as being a negative aspect of a struggle aiming at a positive goal. For example, the U.S. Government answered the September 11th attacks by declaring a “War on Terror” for the purposes of democratizing the Middle East. Since 2001 we have watched the U.S. excuse its actions, such as the Abu Ghraib scandal, in the name of freedom. If freedom is the end result of violence, then violence becomes a positive means for achieving the U.S.’s goals. Therefore, the ideology that violence is the only way to achieve freedom becomes embedded in the American worldview and if an individual speaks out against it, they are condemned for speaking out against freedom. If a woman in the Middle East is a part of the “collateral damage” associated with America’s War on Terror and cannot speak up about her experience, then both American and Middle-Eastern women lose the opportunity to have conversations about what is really happening in this war and what needs to be done to end it. Thus, Enloe’s discussion on women’s silence shows how silence perpetuates violence against women by allowing powerful and damaging ideologies to continue influencing the minds of the general public.
Enloe’s twelfth chapter, “War Planners Rely on Women,” reveals how men and women in a militarized patriarchal culture, such as America and Japan, will fall into these roles and obey the invisible rules in order to remain a part of their society. Men and women in America today, for instance, are expected to live up to their patriotic roles and support the war in the Middle-East in the name of American Democracy and Freedom, and this position is elevated within American military communities. The American military has defined boundaries between the roles of men and women: men are to physically fight against the enemy, while women are put into supportive, nurturing, and ultimately submissive, roles within the military. These positions are deemed necessary by the state for the war to be a success and forces men and women involved with the military to feel responsible, through their gender roles, for supporting and defending the nation as a whole. When individuals break the rules and no longer fit the images Enloe describes, such as the picture of a military wife wistfully kissing her husband goodbye, their minds and bodies are violated by the state and by the individuals around them. This violation presents another way in which war and gender interact; that is, gendered violence in wartime is the direct result of specific gender rules being bent and/or broken by individuals. If women in particular are unable to fit into traditional roles of mother and wife, they are forced to either continue to support the military as prostitutes, or to appear anti-patriotic by refusing those particular roles. Women who represent the latter category are subjected to violence, such as forced prostitution and trafficking, as a direct result of their denying the roles expected of them. War, then, is not simply about guns and bombs, but is heavily dependent on the state and its citizens to maintain rigid definitions of gender that are put on a level of life and death.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 12, 2012
Good stuff. Rigorous, unfashionable, and uncompromising.
March 3, 2015
Brilliant piece of work!
September 15, 2023
This is a collection of essays, interviews and musings, most of which had been previously published between 1995 and 2002. As such, it is a mixed bag, with repetitions occurring from text to text (as the same point was made to different audiences) and also much that is repeated in Enloe's other books (I enjoyed The Big Push and Globalization and Militarism much more). I am a huge fan of Enloe and here she displays her usual sharp intelligence, wit and acuity, and her knowledge which derives from her activism across the globe. Her utter and uncompromising commitment to the struggles of women and her central question "where are the women?" are urgent, exciting and soothing.
Fab cover.
Fab cover.
August 31, 2020
Excellent entree into feminist IR. This book was written in a superbly engaging & accessible way. I really enjoyed reading the book - a selection of essays and interviews - and had trouble putting it down/away!
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September 5, 2022Yall just gonna see me reading my graduate school’s books from now on
February 25, 2023
I wish this had gone a bit deeper into masculinization and militarization.
June 6, 2024
Fails to account for real-world emotional imbalances present in both genders.
April 10, 2025
Long read, interesting history. Tough at times to read knowing how hard women had to fight to get rights men did not have to fight for.
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