Militarism, Masculinity, and Empathy

Abstract

In recent years, the gendered dimension of US imperialism has received increasing attention. Certainly, the dominant organizations supporting the empire are gendered, and it behooves us to incorporate an understanding of the masculinization of these institutional subcultures into our analysis of empathy. Professor Robert Jensen has noted the close overlap between how men are socialized and the mission of the US military’s killing machine, referring to its “Dominance and conquest through aggression and violence, in the service of deepening and extending elite control over the resources and markets of the world.”1 Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Blood Politics, depicts this perverse construction of masculinity, coupled with warfare, as “mutually reinforcing enterprises.”