. The ‘war on terrorism’

Abstract

Although the ‘malestream’ discipline of international relations continues to examine the war on terror as if gender does not matter, when we look at it using gendered lenses (Peterson and Runyan 1999), we see that gender fi gures prominently in this confl ict. Yet in order to examine gender, we must also look through the lenses of race, class, nationality, sexuality, and religion. In ‘making feminist sense’ (Enloe 1989) of the war on terror, this chapter will examine some of the gendered war stories that have been constructed and deconstructed since 9/11, the ways that gender has been reinforced and refi gured in the ensuing war on terror, and how gender is used to camoufl age the patriarchal and imperialist politics of war. As you will see, feminists who study the war on terror detail the centrality of gender to this confl ict and argue that we cannot separate our understanding of the war from an understanding of how it is gendered. Through the seminar exercises, you will actively investigate the signifi cance of gender to the way you understand this war, as well as have the opportunity to challenge offi cial war stories by crafting ‘letters to the editor’ and deconstructing images of war.

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