Reforming masculinity: the politics of gender, race, militarism, and security sector reform in the Democratic Republic of Congo

ABSTRACT

Conflict-related sexual violence has become an increasingly visible issue for feminists as well as various international actors. One of the ways in which global policymakers have tried to tackle this violence is through addressing the violent masculinity of security sector forces. While such efforts have their roots in feminist analyses of militarized masculinity, this article seeks to contribute to the critical discourse on gender-sensitive security sector reform (GSSR). There are three dimensions to my critical reading of GSSR. First, I ask what gendered and racialized power relations are reproduced through effort to educate male security agents about the wrongs of sexual violence. Second, I offer a critique of how GSSR normalizes military solutions to addressing sexual violence and strengthens the global standing of military actors. Finally, I bring these themes together in an analysis of the United States-led military training mission Operation Olympic Chase in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here, I reveal the limitations of attempting to address sexual violence within the security sector without more radically confronting how gender, race, and militarism often work together to form the conditions for this violence. I conclude with some reflections on feminist complicity in upholding military power and the possibilities for developing global solidarity.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender-sensitive security sector reform
• sexual violence
• masculinity
• militarism
• colonialism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Although Operation Olympic Chase concluded in September 2010, it shares commonalities with contemporary GSSR initiatives. Having been widely documented, it is also a useful resource for analyzing the underlying assumptions behind GSSR training programs in Africa.

2 All of these documents were originally accessed through the AFRICOM website. The transcript of the press briefing (AFRICOM 2010) and research briefing (AFRICOM 2011) delivered at AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany are no longer available online, but I have physical copies of all of the documents referred to in the article.

3 Here, I am interested in how gendered, racialized, and militarized power relations are reproduced through global encounters between US and Congolese security institutions. While I acknowledge that diverse markers of ethnicity, autochthony, and gender play an important (if slippery) role in conflict in the DRC, I am interested in how Congolese soldiers are gendered and racialized through their engagements with Western institutions that tend to treat the DRC (and indeed Africa) as homogeneous.

4 In 2015, investigative journalist Nick Turse uncovered allegations of sexual assault and exploitation committed by AFRICOM military staff in Mali, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Morocco.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) [grant number: 1090389]. ESRC North West Doctoral Training Centre, UK.

Notes on contributors

Rachel Massey

Rachel Massey is a Senior Lecturer of Politics and International Relations in the Department of Social and Political Science at the University of Chester, UK. This article builds on her PhD research on gendered framings of perpetrators of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She is currently researching how legacies of colonialism and slavery continue to influence international interventions around sexual violence in postcolonial Africa.