Fatima Kashif
In a war-torn village, a woman stands amidst the rubble, her eyes reflecting a resilience that defies the chaos around her, but also a sorrow that breaks Cynthia Enloe as she peers into them. What is her story? Enloe wants to know her story, and she wants us to want to know her story. She wants the world to be interested in the stories of women, especially women in war. She believes that when we start to realize the female mind, we will realize war. If Enloe were to describe feminism in one word, it would be curiosity.
The image of this one woman, akin to many that Cynthia Enloe vividly brings to life in “Twelve Feminist Lessons of War,” encapsulates the spirit of the book. Enloe does not just tell a story about war; she unravels the intricacies of conflicts through a distinctly feminist lens, emphasizing how women’s experiences in war are not just footnotes but central chapters in the volumes on global conflicts, chapters that have been hidden in plain view, until now.
At the crux of Enloe’s argument, it is a call towards applying feminism to understand war as well as peace. This, she argues, should be central because women’s roles in conflicts are created diversely and can be described as integral, even though they have often been marginalized in the traditional narratives, the narratives of all past millennia. She tells us that women understand war, that feminists have used this understanding to come up with new concepts in war: marital rape, intersectionality, femicide, toxic masculinity, coercive control, and survival sex. As such, each chapter is at once a lesson (that we have learned from the female experience of war) and a revelation and a call for feminist retrospective thinking, urging the reader to see beyond the conventional portrayal of war.
Every one of the twelve lessons is an analysis in rich detail and depth, with anecdotes and real stories of women to back it up. These lessons start from the mind of the woman in war, from her looking into her own self as she fights her personal crusade (with the men, and some women, fighting the strategic war), to her family and home torn apart by shells, to her neighborhood and city decimated by bombs. The lessons, all of them, then move on from her as an individual to her as part of the female collective, as one of the “women” in all the wars of the uncaring patriarchy and not just one “woman” in one war.
Enloe industriously tries to never leave out any dimension of the female experience. For instance, she exemplifies how homes, traditionally depicting realms of peace and femininity, mutate into vengeful sites of resistance and survival (even before and after conflicts, as they do during wars). This lesson aims to overturn the conventional dichotomies of public versus private spheres in conflict. Another powerful lesson is the role that women play as peace negotiators.
Enloe asserts that women provide a unique perspective in the contributions and methodologies for the creation of peace by often concentrating on the needs of the community and long-term stability, which she finds in stark contrast to what men might (and do) think in similar situations. That means that this lesson not only highlights the contributions made by women but also assesses the peace negotiation processes that are skewed towards men.
Enloe ceaselessly builds methodological strength with her constant use of personal narratives, literally bringing life to the statistics and theories that abound in much of contemporary war studies, especially animating the feminist thoughts and opinions that she herself advocates for. With her stories (most of which she recorded herself), the human face in conflict suddenly emerges, making everything real, functional, and convincing.
Admittedly, however, this dependence on specific stories of a handful of women manifests an extreme level of subjectivity. This narrative dependence can also be overdosed and potentially overlook the broader systemic analyses that the overlords (men) find central to war, which Enloe also admits being not wholly fantastical and false.
On a personal level, where Enloe’s book resonates is in being able to offer a lens from which to see all too often unseen impacts of war. Her stories of resilience, struggle, and agency in the face of conflict decidedly have one reappraising their understanding of war and peace. Societally, this book provides an essential note of how gender perspectives are necessary when discussing and negotiating issues about conflicts to find a more durable and sustainable solution to them. She finds women complicit in the crime of this not happening before, and wants the feminists of the world to unite to reverse this. Doing so, according to Enloe, will also reverse the ever-turning wheels of seeping militarism.
And yet Enloe’s approach is hardly immune to criticism, for her judicious use of anecdotal evidence may cause one to reflect on how well she has carried out empirical research, as was aforementioned. Yet the impact of her stories cannot be denied because she artfully weaves individual experiences into a persuasive overarching story about war, society, and gender.
Enloe’s work is considered high and mighty among feminist war literature for its accessibility and depth of language. It makes academic discourse available to the lay with the ease with which it uses language, hence making itself a useful resource for all audiences, even those with orthodox resistance to feminist thoughts. Indeed, such accessibility is crucial given the sharp insights that Enloe proffers and the far-sighted implications these analyses portend for policymakers, activists, and academics who engage the complexities of gender in conflict zones.
“Twelve Feminist Lessons of War” is a landmark piece of writing, giving an essential perspective to war studies, and added to feminist literature in content and particularly perspective view. Enloe’s skill to interlace real-life stories alongside academic research makes the educational part of it particularly bright. She shows the reader how violence has not only ravaged the women who have lived but tried to blot their stories out of history. She wants us all to fight the gendered history we have been taught, and to learn new feminist lessons that will replace the male-centred and patriarchal lessons that we have learned from war from this gendered history. And this, she declares, will be our steppingstone to knowing and battling war.
Feminist lessons have emerged out of years of thinking, investigating, wondering, sharing, and storytelling. The implications of these feminist lessons are far-reaching. In a world where new conflicts emerge frequently, Enloe’s insights into the gender dynamics of these conflicts are invaluable. The book challenges readers to rethink their perceptions of war and peace, advocating for a more inclusive and synthesized understanding that acknowledges the roles and experiences of women in these contexts.
Essentially, “Twelve Feminist Lessons” by War is an applauded contribution to feminist literature and war studies. Through this book, Enloe develops a highly educational yet difficult plot that depicts men’s and women’s reactions to the truth about wars, where women’s role in these atrocities becomes forgotten. Her work necessitates a re-evaluation of the conflict from a gendered point of view. We thus recommend it as an essential reading for all those who wish to gain at least some understanding about the essentially non-understandable concepts of war, gender, and peace (and a heightened proportion of these concepts through the eyes and experiences of women). By doing so, Enloe is not only telling a story about women in these wars but redefining the very process of how we discuss and understand war.
The author is a Student at School of Politics & IR, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. Ambitious research oriented candidate with a special interest in Pakistan's National Security Policy (NSP), Global Emerging Technologies, & American Foreign Policy. She can be reached at f.kashif2k23@gmail.com
