International relations are based on patriarchal norms – states are constructed and legitimized through masculinity making violence inevitable

Gendered Language

He/man

He/man language excludes women

Earp 12

Brian D., Yale University, Department of Cognitive Science. “The Extinction of Masculine Generics.” Journal for Communication and Culture 2, No. 1. Spring 2012. Pg 6.

What does it mean for masculine terms to make women “invisible” – and how could mere word-choice have such a dramatic-sounding effect? Simply put, there is ample psycholinguistic evidence 11 that people encountering he/man generics are more likely to think of male human beings as the referents of those terms. Thus, when a person reads or hears the word “mankind,” for example, he or she is likely to reflexively conjure up mental images of men (doing such-and-so) as opposed to either women or abstract visions “the human race.” This has the effect of minimizing women‘s importance and diverting attention away from their very existence. 12 The result is a sort of invisibility – in the language itself, in the individual‘s mind‘s eye, and in the broader social consciousness. Someone could object that metaphorical “invisibility” is too gauzy a notion to merit serious concern. But sexist language has consequences in the real world as well. For example, Sandra Bem and Daryl Bem found evidence that “sex-biased wording in job advertisements ... discourage[d] ... women from applying for ‘opposite-sex‘ jobs for which they might well be qualified.”13 And more recently, John Briere and Cheryl Lanktree found that subjects who had been exposed to various levels of sexist noun and pronoun usage rated the attractiveness of a career in psychology in “sexrole stereotypic directions as a function of degree of exposure to sexist language.”14 Far from being “gauzy” issues, job prospects and career choice are of practical concern and paramount importance. Sexist language which may have the effect of limiting a woman's options in these domains, then, is clearly harmful.

“You Guys”

“You guys” is exclusive gendered language

Anderson 6

Mia, professor emerita at Bergen Community College. “SEXIST LANGUAGE: AN OPPORTUNITY AND AN OBLIGATION.” The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education16.13 (Apr 10, 2006): 72.

I see women completely indifferent - outwardly, at least - to a male waiter's asking a group of women, "What can I get you guys?" I know he doesn't really think his female customers are males; he doesn't mean to be disrespectful. But where does his "guys" leave us women? I've heard women address their female coworkers or friends as "guys" and, when asked, say, "Oh, it doesn't bother me." It should! It's subtle propaganda, subtle mind control, suggesting that women are to be invisible, that they're to stay in their place, which in our society is still second-class. Academics should be leading the effort to eliminate the problem. One of the best efforts that I have seen by an academic body is the 1988 (yes, and we're still having to talk about this) Guidelines for Nonsexist Communication out of Youngstown State University. I must quote at length its articulation of the harm done by sexist language and its call for change: "Whether conscious or unconscious, subtle or overt, sexist communication has serious, pervasive and cumulative effects. It may devalue the ideas, work and words of particular individuals or groups (traditionally women); unfairly single out, exclude, ignore, or discount individuals on the basis of sex; establish, reinforce or perpetuate one set of accepted behaviors or expectations for women and another for men; and limit abilities (or perception of abilities), opportunities (or perception of opportunities), personal goals, and career directions, thus impeding an individual's personal, academic and/or professional development. "In short, sexist communication perpetuates social and educational injustices. Like sexism, sexual harassment and other forms of biased communication ... it must not be tolerated. We have an opportunity - and an obligation - as members of the educational community to help students and colleagues shake off unconsidered notions about the world, about other people and about themselves. We cannot do this, however, without first discarding a few of our own old habits of mind and speech, among them the sexism that is built into our culture and language."

Impacts

Framing

Magnitude Last

Focusing on large impacts, like global warming or a war with China, without a gendered lens causes serial policy failure—framings of urgency deny feminist investigation because the causes of these issues can only be tracked by exposing ideas about masculinity and femininity

Enloe 14

Cynthia, Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Clark University. Bananas, Beaches and Bases. University of California Press. 2014. Pp 357-359. MiLibrary.

Male officials who make foreign policy might prefer to think of themselves as dealing with high finance or military strategy, but in reality they have self-consciously designed immigration, tourism, labor, foreign service, cultural, and military-base policies in order to divide and control women. They rarely admit it, but they have acted as though their government’s or organization’s place in world affairs has hinged on how women behaved. Uncovering these efforts has exposed men as men. International politics have relied not only on the manipulation of femininity’s multiple meanings but also on the manipulation of ideas about masculinities. Ideas about adventure, modernity, civilization, progress, expertise, rationality, stability, growth, risk, trust, and security have been legitimized by certain kinds of masculinized values, systems, and behavior. That is one of the reasons that each of these ideas has become so potent. Frequently, male government officials and company executives seek to control women in order to optimize their influence over other men: men as husbands, voters, migrant workers, soldiers, diplomats, intelligence operatives, plantation and factory managers, editors, and bankers. Thus, understanding the international workings of masculinity is important to making feminist sense of international politics. Men’s sense of their own manhood has derived from their perceptions both of other men’s masculinity and of the femininities of women of different races and social classes. Thus a caveat: one cannot make adequate sense of the international politics of masculinity by avoiding paying close attention to women and femininity. Ideas about masculinities, the full array of masculinities, have been crafted out of ideas about, myths about, and uncertainties about femininities and about actual women. To conduct a reliable investigation of masculinity, one must take women seriously. Climate change, capitalist globalization, the new arms race, and widening gaps between rich and poor, it is tempting to plunge into the discussion of any of these contemporary issues without bothering to ask, “Where are the women?” In fact, the more urgent the issue, “New York will soon be under water!” “China’s military build-up is going to set off a world war!” the more reasonable it seems to not ask, “Where are the women?” In patriarchal hands, “urgency” is the enemy of feminist investigation. The previous chapters suggest, however, that these urgent issues demand a gendered analysis precisely because they are urgent, because they call for the fullest, most realistic understandings. As feminist environmental researchers and activists already are revealing, the causes of climate change, for example, and not just its effects, can be realistically tracked only if one exposes the workings of ideas about manliness and femininity and the relations between women and men, each fostered by the deliberate uses of political power. So too can the causes of the new arms race, exploitive globalization, and the widening gaps between rich and poor. Theresa, Chobi, Takazato, Iris, and the other workshop participants are now, we can imagine, deep into their discussions. The deeper they dig, the more candid they become with each other. They have tried to create an atmosphere of trust, one that encourages each woman to be honest about her worries and puzzles. Together, they are on a journey to understand how banana plantations work, how garment subcontractors perceive women seamstresses, whose security a military base protects, and why women and men who employ domestic workers do not see them as real workers. Every time the conversation slips into abstractions, one of the women pulls it back to women’s complex everyday realities. This is what making feminist sense of international politics sounds like.