Militainment and Masculinities
Between armed violence and fascism within the United States and the US government’s support for genocide abroad, manufacturers of weapons are profiting wildly. Within the US, arms producers are responsible for fueling war crimes in Gaza and mass shootings across the United States. The profit models of these companies are the same: more violence means more customers. Stoke the fear, fury, and legitimacy of conflict to sell more of your product. Generate a public culture receptive to the idea of weapons as the answer to insecurity, including through the construction and entrenchment of gender and racial power dynamics.
Profitmaking requires marketing. Enter the so-called militainment industry—the marketing of guns and militarism through films, television, video games, and now social media influencers. Gun manufacturers and military agencies, especially in the United States, have long had an outsized influence on the entertainment industry, and they use gendered and racialized tropes to promote gun sales along with a wider culture of militarism, war, and armed violence. But over the last two decades, the methods by which gun manufacturers and other military contractors have been able to influence people across many geographies—in particular young, white, cisgendered, heteronormative men—have become increasingly insidious. And the ramifications for violence are profound.
The many machinations of militainment
The topic of militainment was the focus of a three-day meeting hosted in July 2024 by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Small Arms Survey, the Gender Equality Network for Small Arms Control, and Pathfinders for Peace, Just, and Inclusive Societies. The meeting gathered activists and researchers working on gun violence prevention in the United States, South Africa, Brazil, Cameroon, Serbia, Trinidad and Tobago, and more, together with those working at national and international levels to establish norms and laws around the global arms trade and civilian possession and use of firearms.
Some of the discussions looked at the film and gaming industries, which package war as a consumable product for leisure time. The US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have formal business arrangements with video game and movie companies. The DoD has prevented films for being made, scrubbed war crimes from films, rehabbed failed military operations, set up recruiting stations outside film screenings, and consistently makes the military look like heroes. Weapon companies often market their guns and warplanes directly through films; infamous examples include Heckler & Koch showcasing its guns in the John Wick films or the merged logos of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to represent Stark Industries in the Iron Man films.
The gun industry also engages in traditional advertising. In one of the few cases of a weapon producer being held accountable for its marketing strategy, the families of some of the people killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting successfully sued Remington over its explicit advertising about the militaristic qualities of the AR-15 rifle used by the shooter, which they argued violated a Connecticut law that prevents deceptive marketing practices.
In addition, the use of social media influencers to “test” products for gun companies, or to demonstrate how to use weapons, is now so prevalent that it has its own term: gunfluencer. These accounts, which often have millions of subscribers, operate across many different social media platforms, but also have their own: GunTube. Participants in the meeting studying this phenomenon explained that many gunfluencers have ties with the industry, receiving financing or commissions for sales; they post training videos demonstrating tactics for use or gun modifications, along with posts espousing conspiracy theories about gun restrictions or mocking those who have suffered from gun violence. Several mass shooters in the United States are known to have used gunfluencer videos as a library to inform their tactics and choice of weapons.
Marketing masculinities
Without exception, gunfluencers operating in many different countries market a particular form of masculinity along with the guns. So do the films, television programs, and video games that relate to war or involve armed violence. This is a kind of masculinity that celebrates heteronormativity, independence, aggression, and suppression of emotions. In each country represented at the meeting on militainment, the construction of a militarized and violent notion of “manhood” was central to gun-related advertisements. Whether guns are being marketed to white men in the United States, appealing to their perceived political and social disenfranchisement; or to young women in Brazil, suggesting that they will be sexy and empowered or safe and secure if they know how to use a gun, gendered tropes are at the heart of the militainment industry’s advertising.
The military has played a primary role in constructing and shaping images of masculinity within larger society, to the point where “the dominant adult male role model could largely be the product of the military.” These conceptions of masculinity are the backbone of the culture of militarism that purports that nuclear weapons are essential for “strategic stability” and that war is the only way to resolve conflicts or tensions. Militarized masculinities are used by many industries to capture or reinforce support for their products or their world view. They are related, for example, to the way that the fossil fuel industry uses a rugged, heteronormative ideal of masculinity to deny climate change, ridicule environmentalism, and promote coal, gas, and nuclear energy.
Images and ideas of militarized masculinities are embedded within films, television, video games, and other forms of popular culture and media. Boys and men are socialized into militarized gender identities—boys come to learn, through parenting, media, and schooling, to define strength as violence. People of other genders are socialized to support this kind of masculinity. Girls are tought that this is the kind of man who is appealing, and that they need this kind of man for “protection”—even though in reality, these violent masculine tropes frequently lead to domestic violence. Gunfluencers and other advertising venues reinforce this when marketing guns to women: they almost always depict normatively “attractive” cisgendered women wielding weapons, which appeals both to the male gaze (this is the kind of woman who will like you if you have a gun), and to women who seek validation through products for their sense of beauty, worth, or identity. The binary notion of gender and sexuality within this marketing is rigid; there is no room for queer people who do not fit into or conform to these norms.
In today’s world, meeting participants noted, this kind of marketing competes with other messages that youth receive. Girls are taught about empowerment and equality, but are also subjected to relentless images how about they need to look and act. Violence interruption programs are important mechanisms countering masculine norms, but boys are simultaneously told they need to be violent to be strong. There is much more acceptance of the reality of gender and sexual fluidity among youth in many countries, yet the cutural reinforcement of gender essentialism and binaries remain strong, especially as the blacklash against minimal LGBTQ+ rights and visibility is now in full force globally.
Expanding markets
Gun manufacturers are tapping into these contradictions and anxieties. Some of the participants at the meeting noted that gun culture in the United States has changed over the past 30 years to become much more extreme. In large part, this is because
gun manufacturers saw declining sales and decided to market guns in new ways. Guns last a long time, so they need new customers. Insidiously, as was shown through some of the documentation collected from the Remington lawsuit, gun companies are explicitly targeting kids so that they can have a loyal consumer base for years to come. Some have even financed “kidfluncers” to market their guns through social media.
Another marketing strategy shift in the last few decades was the intentional rebranding of guns to reduce the perception of risk. In this narrative, guns aren’t scary, they are important tools for safety. In Brazil and South Africa, for example, gunfluencers promote guns as tools of freedom, urging viewers not to be foolish victims, or to see a gun as a tool for advancing gender equality. In this context, gun companies have also sought out new markets including women, people of colour, and LGBTQ+ people.
This is an excellent example of what feminist scholar Cynthia Enloe describes as adaptive patriarchy: rebranding or weaponizing intersectional feminism in order to co-opt people into a violent agenda. Whether it’s a Latinx women identifying herself as intersectional recruiting for the CIA or Lockheed Martin celebrating its queer employees during Pride month, adaptive patriarchy always tries to conscript progressive politics and diverse identities into its service.
Gun companies operate much the same way, marketing to oppressed communities such as Black, Asian-American, and LGBTQ+ folks—even as gun ownership by these groups is criminalized. In a violent catch-22, the CEOs and shareholders of the companies that market guns to these communities simultaneously support the politicians and laws that harm these same communities and create the insecurity that lead them to seek out guns for “protection”. Thus, gun manufacturers are actively driving demand and offering supply.
Marketing oppression and victimhood
Simultaneously, these same companies use gunfluencers to build up a victim narrative of white heteronormative men that puts racial diversity and feminism in the crosshairs. The victim narrative constructed by and within the so-called manosphere—social media platforms and other online forums dominated by white men that promote misogyny and “men’s rights”—blame feminists and people of colour for the problems these men feel they are facing in a “new world order” in which their dominance is no longer taken as inherent or acceptable.
“After centuries of domination,” notes activist and writer Joshua P. Hill, “some men are liable to take women demanding equal footing as oppression, or to deliberately mistake it for that as an excuse to build power using grievance politics.” In many cases, this is leading men to violence. Believing that the system is rigged against them and seeking comradery from others experiencing this same perceived loss of status, discussions about guns and militarism is common in the manosphere.
In the United States, white Christian nationalists in particular are using these forums spread messages of patriarchal protection of their families from leftist ideology and “groomers” as much as from household intruders. Many are reconstructions that want to reconfigure the United States. They frame the “right” to bear arms in terms of nationalism and national identity. The Second Amendment, which originally was about the right of militias to possess weapons to defend against potential governmental tyranny, is now—thanks to deliberate work from the gun industry—widely viewed as confirming an individual’s right to bear arms. The gun lobby also codes tyranny as a government that protects Black and Brown people or LGBTQ+ people and that does not exclusively service white men.
But this phenomenon is not limited to the United States. Interestingly, as those at the meeting from Brazil, South Africa, Serbia, and other countries noted, Second Amendment-type arguments are used by gun rights organizations and by gun industries, even though there is nothing even remotely similar in their constitutions. Having helped create the entwinement of racial and national identity with gun ownership, weapon manufacturers then amplify narratives and myths about guns being taken away from people by the state, which helps drive their profits even further. These companies actively spread conspiracy theories about gun control and support politicians who construct these narratives. The gun industry often collaborates with gunfluencers that explicitly appeal to extremists through increasingly militarized weapons and stories about cabals coopting the country’s democratic institutions and demonizing white men.
This victim narrative, and the idea that white men are entitled to have power over everyone else, meshes importantly with the concept of the right to bear arms. This inevitably leads to the legitimization and even normalization of political violence when men perceive these rights as being challenged. Analysis of those arrested for the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US capital has focused on race, highlighting that most participants, about 93%, were white. But also, 86% of those arrested were men. Their identity as men was mobilized to defend “white culture” and the “homeland” through violence. And, analogous to domestic violence where men use force to control or punish their partners, the January 6 riots came in response to the loss of an election.
Moves against militainment
This is a lot to go up against. Between the racist misogyny of the manosphere and the millions of dollars spent on marketing weapons to violent extremists, it can feel intractable. But many people are taking many actions against the gun industry and the wider culture of militarism and masculinities. Our power, as always, is in our solidarity.
At the international level, some organizations have been working with the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights to provide information to governments about the human rights impacts of gun violence and the responsibility of companies in this regard. This work recently led to a Human Rights Council resolution in July 2024 that recognizes that “ownership and use of firearms are closely linked to specific dynamics of control, power and domination and strength,” as a clear recognition of the role of militarized masculinities in driving gun culture. The resolution also highlights the role of “business enterprises, including those involved in the manufacture, marking, sale, and transfer of weapons” in driving the availability of guns and calls on them to respect human rights and address adverse human rights impacts of their conduct.
Some activists and lawyers are focusing on the legal system. That includes lawsuits against gun companies, building support for gun control laws and restrictions on access to firearms and ammunition, and international lawsuits focused on stemming the flow of weapons from the United States to other countries.
Others are working to make it more difficult for gunfluencers and the industry to market weapons online. One outcome of these initiatives has been YouTube’s announcement in June 2024 that will prohibit videos that provide instruction on how to remove gun safety devices and impose age restrictions on accessing videos that show homemade guns, automatic weapons, and accessories such as silencers. There are also efforts to deplatform gunfluencers or to demonetize their work by prohibiting companies from financing them. Others are focused on divestment strategies more broadly, going after gun companies that run irresponsible advertisements or deliberately market to extremists.
In each of these cases, many gun violence prevention activists are looking to those who have worked to change the car and tobacco industries and to end HIV/AIDS. In these cases, activists changed social norms to change law and policy. By focusing on safety in relation to cars, for example, concepts such as seatbelts, designated drivers, and automobile safety features became the norm. The stigmatization of smoking based on its health impacts has subjected the tobacco industry to severe restrictions on advertising. Thanks to the work of direct action groups like ACT UP, funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment has been normalized, and AIDS-related deaths have been reduced by 69% from the peak in 2004.
Learning from past social movements and advocacy campaigns is essential, as is ensuring solidarity between our movements. Divestment from gun companies should be pursued in coordination with divestment from the other military-industrial complex contractors that are fueling Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and other conflicts globally, as well as the companies that are producing nuclear weapon systems.
Those working against the gun industry should also coordinate with organizations tracking the use of landmines, cluster munitions, missiles, and other explosive weapons in conflict. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch often try to identify the make and model of weapons used to bomb towns and cities. Tracking which companies make these weapons and which country they have been shipped from is important for “naming and shaming” war profiteers and to hold them accountable under international and national law. The same could be done in relation to guns used in conflict globally and in mass shootings. This would help inform direct action campaigns against weapon producing companies and their financiers, as well as international advocacy and lawsuits against the arms trade.
It’s important to pull all these strands of work together, from international advocacy, national and transnational lawsuits, direct action against companies and financiers, and divestment campaigns. And it’s equally important to be taking on gendered power dynamics in all this work, to identify and the deconstruct and abolish the militarized masculinities that facilitate gun cultures and gun violence around the world.
Abolishing militarized masculinities
As Mexican scholar and writer Sayak Valencia argues, confronting masculinity is essential to change our world from one in which people base their power on extreme violence. We need to stop seeking “security” at the expense of all else and we need to stop envisioning our well-being as being dependent on harming others. We also need to break from the idea espoused by the gun lobby that people need guns to protect themselves from other people with guns. The National Rifle Association (NRA)’s constant refrain that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun” has led to suggestions that teachers should be armed to stop school shooters, or that women should be armed to stop domestic violence, or that people of colour or trans people should be armed to prevent violence against them. But these “solutions” just mean more guns, more profits for the gun industry, and more violence and danger. Guns in the home lead to accidental deaths, more gun deaths and injuries, higher rates of death for victims of domestic violence, and suicide. More guns are not the answer to gun violence.
Countering the narrative that “more guns equal more security” means that we also need to challenge the cultural celebration of war, militarism, and masculinities, including the unreflective treating of soldiers and gun owners as heroes and the pinnacle of what it is to be a “real man”. We need to challenge binary gender identities and refuse to buy into idealized notions of strong men and passive women, of men needing to be protectors and women needing protection.
Abolishing militarized masculinities and the militarized protection racket means seeking and building security through care and equality instead of violence. “An abolitionist vision means that we must build models today that can represent how we want to live in the future,” explains Critical Resistance, a leading abolitionist organization. “It means developing practical strategies for taking small steps that move us toward making our dreams real and that lead us all to believe that things really could be different. It means living this vision in our daily lives.” Militarized masculinities and militainment must have no place in our daily lives to ensure they have no place in our future.
Source >> Counterpunch
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