Week 6-Masculinities and Militarism

Week 6-Masculinities and Militarism 

This week's texts cover masculinity as it relates to disaster, and how efforts to revive a city after a disaster are often masculine in nature, which can lead to problems down the road. 

These readings really resonated me, particularly Gloria Miller's text about women in the oil industry. My mother and sister both work in male-dominated fields (in fact, my sister is an engineer, similar to Miller's research), and they both talk about how they sometimes feel isolated by the workplace culture, and have even faced some sexual harassment over the years.

Racialized Disaster Patriarchy: An Intersectional Model for Understanding Disaster Ten Years after Hurricane Katrina by Rachel E. Luft explores the factors of race and gender and studies the role they played during the recovery of Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005. Luft explains that patriarchal and racial structures which influenced life before Katrina continued into post-Katrina efforts--the relief efforts themselves were often gendered, and left out women of color. Luft asserts that disaster efforts need to be drastically reconsidered before disaster strikes next.

Frontier Masculinity in the Oil Industry: The Experience of Women Engineers by Gloria E. Miller discusses the experience of female engineers, specifically in the oil industry, which is heavily male dominated. Miller argues that the oil industry is intensely masculine, including gendered training and expectations of employees. This either forces women to adapt to their masculine surroundings or isolate themselves from the masculine culture at work. Luft writes that "Many  of  the  women  participants  in  this  study  reported  that  they  could not  be  friends  with  the  men  they  worked  with,  or  who  they  reported  to,because  of  women’s  family  responsibilities,  or  because  of  social  barriers  to the  mixing  of  men  and  women." In some ways, women in male-dominated workplaces are always on the defense--there is always a sense of minority in a workplace whose culture is heavily influenced by the male majority of its employees. \1`While it is important to recognize that women are not a homogenous group, it is certainly interesting to study how women and men interact with the same work environment in different ways. 

Enarson and Pease discuss men's emotional lives in Men, Masculinity, and Disaster. This text focuses on  Hurricane Andrew in Miami in 1992, and argues that in repairing Miami after Hurricane Andrew, men's emotional needs were neglected. During a disaster, men experience trauma which is just as valid as anyone else's, and it should be dealt with fairly and without judgement. It discusses how leaving trauma to settle can cause it to manifest in negative ways, such as anger, domestic abuse, substance abuse,  and further mental health problems which are often ignored by society.

Key Terms:

Racialized  disaster  patriarchy- "the  intersectional  production  of  gendered experiences during and after disaster that are rooted in pre-disaster patriarchal  structures  and  cultures (Luft)"

Hegemonic Masculinity- culturally dominant form of masculinity, typically heterosexual, aggressive, authoritative, courageous.

“Hero”-product of hegemonic masculinity, brave, damsel in distress, risk taking, knight in shining armor