Abstract
Reviewed by: Leeat Granek, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
First, a disclaimer: I agreed to review Tom Digby’s book Love & War: How Militarism Shapes Sexuality and Romance because I happened to be dating someone in the military when the call for reviewers arrived in my inbox. It was two months into the relationship, and I found myself increasingly confused (and appalled) by the unspoken social contract that was beginning to manifest in our relationship. In addition, three years ago I moved from peace-loving Canada to conflict-ridden Israel when I took a faculty position at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. I thus read Digby’s book with a kaleidoscopic view, peering into the text from the multiple perspectives of a bi-cultural citizen in a highly militarized society, a psychologist, a feminist academic, and a woman in a heterosexual relationship trying to figure out a new dynamic.
Digby’s thesis is clear and feminist friendly. He argues that “heterosexual adversariality” (p. 7) is more common in militaristic or war reliant societies. Digby defines militarism as societies in which group violence is used to resolve problems with other societies. Wiist et al. (2014) have provided a more thorough definition: The deliberate extension of military objectives and rationale into shaping the culture, politics, and economics of civilian life so that war and the preparation for war is normalized, and the development and maintenance of strong military institutions is prioritized. … Militarism instigates civilian society’s adoption of military concepts, behaviors, myths, and language of its own. … Militarism subordinates other societal interests, including health to the interests of the military. (p. e37)
Put more simply, a military society is one where military values dominate all areas of civilian life to the extent that the boundaries between them are almost indistinguishable. A military society is thus a patriarchal society, and it is all-encompassing (Cockburn, 2013). Taking this as a starting point, Digby argues that militarism socializes boys to be emotionally restricted and in control in order to make them effective warriors, and this socialization, in turn, negatively impacts heterosexual relationships. He notes that the warrior “must be able to manage the capacity to care about suffering. He must be able to selectively focus, and sometimes suspend altogether, the capacity to care about not only his own suffering and potential suffering but also the suffering of others. Thus, in militaristic cultures, the cultural programming of men, who are assigned the warrior role, diminishes their capacity for empathy, while the cultural programming of women amplifies their capacity for empathy” (p. 22).
The remainder of the book in one way or another provides examples of how this cultural programming is put into practice, producing an adversarial relationship between the sexes that leaves both men and women disadvantaged and frustrated, albeit in different ways.
The book excels at linking militarism and patriarchy and showing the reader how military politics influences the private sphere of intimate relationships, in concrete ways. Digby provides many examples in the political, social, technological, and popular realms that illustrate this point. These examples are expansive and include the rise of gonzo porn (men getting together in groups to watch extremely degrading, brutalizing, and violent pornography), increasing suicides in the military, and cyberbullying of many types of women, from female computer coders, to Lena Dunham, the star of the TV show Girls. For this reason, the book is an especially good teaching resource for students who might be exposed to feminist ideas for the first time. Digby drives his critical points home by using examples that are relevant, modern, and relatable. Moreover, the book is written in lay language, making it reader friendly for those who are not academics or philosophers.
While the book is certainly a good read and the examples excellent, the arguments are not entirely new, and at times lack nuance. Enloe (2000, 2010), Yuval-Davis (1997), and Cockburn (2010, 2013) have made similar claims about the intricate relationship between military societies and troubled interpersonal relationships between men and women. Eva Illouz (2012) recently wrote a brilliant cultural sociology of gendered emotions and their relationship to “why love hurts” that makes many of these points persuasively.
What is most puzzling, though, is that a book that is so feminist, anti-racist and anti-homophobic is oddly ethnocentric. To be fair, Digby applies his theory mainly to American culture, where he links between the values of the military (i.e., tough, macho, emotionally dissociated men) to the misogynistic, patriarchal ethos in romantic relationships. He argues that these “warrior values” may be good for war, but are bad for relationships, leading to, for example, a violent culture that tolerates, and even encourages, rape and domestic violence. This is a compelling argument, and intuitively makes sense, but it is incomplete.
First, only a very small minority of people serve in the American army. Today 0.5% of the American population are in active army service (Pew Research Center, 2012). While Digby’s argument is that the cultural programming of men is necessary in order to create potential warriors, regardless of whether they literally serve in the army, it is problematic to make the case that such a tiny fraction of America’s cultural landscape is responsible for the extreme levels of misogyny and patriarchy present in the US today. If his theory is correct, we would expect to see more violence against women in societies that are more militarized, and less violence and adversarial relations between the sexes in societies that are not militarized at all. This is not the case.
In Israel, for example, for nearly all men and women there is compulsory army service in a high conflict, violent area of the world. (women serve for two years and men serve for three). The rates of domestic violence, however, are less than, or equal to, the rates in other parts of the world (Ministry of Public Security, 2014). In Iceland, on the other hand, a country with no standing army and a deep commitment to feminism, 42% of women have reported experiencing some type of physical, sexual, or psychological violence over their lifetimes. Overall, 13% percent of women have reported rape or attempted rape, 30% physical violence, and 24% sexual abuse; 22% of the women surveyed have reported experiencing some form of domestic violence in intimate relationships from age 16 onwards (Karlsdóttir & Arnalds, 2010; Women Against Violence Europe, 2012). Finally, and shockingly, 20% of homicides in Finland were murders committed by a current or former romantic partner (Granath et al., 2011). These statistics indicate that militarism is not the only factor responsible for gender relations that encourage violence against women.
On the other hand, although Digby does not address these points extensively in his book, his argument about militarism and increased violence against women is supported by other evidence. For example, incidences of domestic violence against women including battering and murder increase during times of war and conflict (Delargy, 2013; Usta, Farver, & Zein, 2008). In the most recent war in Israel during July 2014, the support center for victims of sexual violence in Beer Sheva reported that nearly 1500 people approached them during the first month of the war – a staggering 60% increase in the number of calls from June 2014, before the war began (Kashti, 2014). Another Israeli NGO reported a 20% increase in the number of women calling the hotline for the first time and a 30% increase in the number of women seeking shelter during the last war (Kashti, 2014). Yet another study found that as political violence escalated in Israel, Palestinian women experienced an increase in battering by their spouses (Clark et al., 2010). It is important to understand the variations and complexity around violence against women in order to get a full picture of how militarism affects intimate heterosexual relationships.
A second issue is trickier to deal with. Digby concludes that the cultural programming of the military is good for making warriors, but bad for heterosexual relationships. In the American context, where attack by other countries is unlikely, there may be a need for cultural deprogramming of the military ethos in order to equalize the relations between the genders. This makes good sense and I would like to live in that kind of world. What should be done, however, in the Israeli context where I do live, surrounded by countries that are openly hostile to its existence? Are there instances where the military and thus military cultures are necessary for survival, even if they are bad for romantic relationships? These are provocative questions that do not sit well with my Canadian feminist identity. Indeed, in agreement with Digby, I have written about the need to demilitarize society in order to promote diplomatic leadership towards the goals of peace and improvements in the health and well-being of Arab and Jewish women in Israel (Granek, forthcoming). However, as a newly minted citizen who has experienced three major conflicts, including a war, in the last three years, I am left with more questions and less certainty about these issues than I had when I sat in my peaceful, quiet apartment in downtown Toronto. I am certain that if I were writing this review from the desk in that apartment instead of the desk I currently sit at in Beer Sheva, my view on this matter would be clearer and less nuanced. This is a juncture where critical feminist theorists (myself included) often fail to recognize the reality of people’s lives. The reality on the ground often looks (and feels) very differently than it does from the philosopher’s chair.
Digby concludes his book with a compelling case for challenging “warrior masculinity.” He notes: … changes in how we program boys would have broadly sweeping implications. It means, in the long run, fewer men killing and beating and raping and harassing women and other men. It means less misogynistic harassment and discrimination that keeps girls and women from reaching their full potential, which is debilitating both to them and to the entire economy. And, finally, it means less acrimony in heterosexual relationships. To say it in more positive terms: getting beyond the cultural programming of warrior masculinity opens whole new possibilities for men and women to love each other – as partners and spouses, as friends, as colleagues and coworkers, as neighbors. (p. 189)