'Gender' Includes Men Too! Recognizing Masculinity in Security Studies and International Relations
'Gender' Includes Men Too! Recognizing Masculinity in Security Studies and International Relations

Summary/Abstract: Realism has been a long-standing theory of international relations (IR), but the idea that its views reflect the changing reality of the international system is not widely accepted. This article presents the argument that while feminist literature has heavily engaged the realist conception of security, which advocates a multi-dimensional and multi-level re-definiton of security, the solutions put forward to achieve the idea of a more encompassing security inadvertently risks reifying gender as innate rather than an artificial construct. As a result feminist scholars addressing the security paradigm have yet to achieve their desired ends. An alternative is proposed within this article, which advocates for the scholarly community's shift in efforts to include more male participants in the discourse, and to further emphasize male insecurities as well as female insecurities. This shift in focus would arguably result in 'denaturalized and dismantled' gendered hierarchies in a manner that would contribute to greather security for all.

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