Care, in all its permutations, is the buzzword of the moment, its meanings draining away in its constant evocation. Here, we briefly expand on older and newer meanings of care in the wake of Covid-19. These include the increasingly blurred boundaries between what has been traditionally understood as "care work" versus "essential work"; desperate attempts by corporations to promote themselves as 'caring'; and the adoption of reactionary rather than progressive models of 'care' by populist leaders such as Trump, Johnson, and Bolsonaro. We then argue that we are in urgent need of a politics that recognises our mutual interdependence and vulnerability. Rejecting the extensive carelessness so evident today, our model of 'universal care' calls for inventive forms of collective care at every scale of life. We envisage a world in which genuine care is everywhere-from our most intimate ties to our relationship with the planet itself.
Within feminism, battles over pornography have become the wars without end. Despite the controversy it generates, the discourses of anti-pornography feminism have continued to make inroads into legal frameworks, most recently in Canada. This piece surveys the growth and questionable appeal of such feminist campaigning, under the theoretical leadership of Catharine MacKinnon: its rewriting of feminist theory; its parasitic relation to the authoritative, phallocentric discourses of gender and sexuality; its alliance with the most reductive, behaviouristic psychology; its disavowel of fantasy and psychic life; its provocative mirroring of both the style and content of the `pornography' it deplores; its unwavering pursuit of legal remedies which enhance the power of state regulation of sexuality; its threat to subversive expressions of women's sexual agency and repudiation of any possibilities for sexual resignifications.
The gender dynamics of militarism have traditionally been seen as straightforward, given the cultural mythologies of warfare and the disciplining of 'masculinity' that occurs in the training and use of men's capacity for violence in the armed services. However, women's relation to both war and peace has been varied and complex. It is women who have often been most prominent in working for peace, although there are no necessary links between women and opposition to militarism. In addition, more women than ever are serving in many of today's armies, with feminists rather uncertain how to relate to this phenomenon. In this article I explore some of the complexities of applying gender analyses to militarism and peace work in sites of conflict today, looking most closely at the Israeli feminist group, New Profile, and their insistence upon the costs of the militarized nature of Israeli society. They expose the very permeable boundaries between the military and the civil society, as violence seeps into the fears and practices of everyday life in Israel. I place their work in the context of broader feminist analysis offered by researchers such as Cynthia Enloe and Cynthia Cockburn, who have for decades been writing about the 'masculinist' postures and practices of warfare, as well as the situation of women caught up in them. Finally, I suggest that rethinking the gendered nature of warfare must also encompass the costs of war to men, whose fundamental vulnerability to psychological abuse and physical injury is often downplayed, whether in mainstream accounts of warfare or in more specific gender analysis. Feminists need to pay careful attention to masculinity and its fragmentations in addressing the topic of gender, war and militarism.
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