Cynthia Enloe uses International Women’s Day to focus on feminism and militarization in The Nation’s Macho, Macho Military. It’s a fantastic piece.

A snippet:

By paying attention to the daily workings of militarization, feminists expose it as the step-by-step process by which institutions and ideas--a marriage, a sports league, the presidency, an ad agency, concepts of loyalty, responsibility, honor or security--come to depend on the military or on militaristic values and goals for respectability and credibility. Feminists, furthermore, know that militarization can happen anywhere--not just on a battlefield or behind the closed doors of an intelligence agency but in a school guidance counselor's office, a newspaper's editorial meeting, a Congressional hearing, a peace movement, a brothel or around the family dining room table. A newspaper's editorial meeting is becoming militarized every time military or war-zone events are deemed more urgent news than the government's re-imposition of an antiabortion foreign-aid gag rule.

Focusing our attention on the military-industrial complex, oil and empire isn't enough. If we dismiss the politics of femininity and masculinity, we will never get to the bottom of what fuels militarization. We will never roll it back because we won't know what propels it forward.

Read the whole thing. Seriously.

Related: Enloe is the author of many books, but my fave of hers is Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. In case you're interested.