The Palgrave International Handbook of Gender and the Military, 2017
Sasson-Levy argues for an intersectional analysis of the social architecture of the military, as ... more Sasson-Levy argues for an intersectional analysis of the social architecture of the military, as militaries are always designed by the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender, and simultaneously create ethno-gendered groups and identities. For men, the intersection with ethnicity marks their location within the military hierarchy; it determines the jobs they will be assigned and their proximity to the military core of combat. Conversely, for women the intersection with ethnicity determines whether they will be inside or outside the boundaries of the military. The chapter examines the US and Israeli militaries to demonstrate the analytic productiveness of an intersectional analysis. The chapter concludes with the call to add class, nationality and religiosity as crucial factors that intersect with gender and ethnicity in shaping militaries’ social structure.
This article examines the construction of multiple gendered and national identities in the Israel... more This article examines the construction of multiple gendered and national identities in the Israeli army. In Israel, hegemonic masculinity is identified with the masculinity of the Jewish combat soldier and is perceived as the emblem of good citizenship. This identity, I argue, assumes a central role in shaping a hierarchal order of gendered and civic identities that reflects and reproduces social stratification and reconstructs differential modes of participation in, and belonging to, the Israeli state. In-depth interviews with two marginalized groups in the Israeli army-women in "masculine" roles and male soldiers in blue-collar jobs-suggest two discernible practices of identity. While women in "masculine" roles structure their gender and national identities according to the masculinity of the combat soldier, the identity practices of male soldiers in blue-collar jobs challenge this hegemonic masculinity and its close link with citizenship in Israel. However, wh...
The military is a hyper-masculine organization designed to manage violence for the state. As such... more The military is a hyper-masculine organization designed to manage violence for the state. As such, the military and militarization processes create a tight link between gender and violence. Most often, the literature on militarization of women’s lives focuses on women as victims of military violence. As Israel is unique among Western states in that it imposes compulsory conscription on both men and women, we ask how gendered militarization in general and serving in the army in particular shapes women’s lives. Particularly, we explore how women relate to gender and to violence in their accounts of military service, by analyzing retrospective accounts of women veterans from three groups: women who served in clerical roles; women who served in “masculine” roles; and women who served in the occupied territories and gave testimonies to the anti-occupation movement. Our analysis shows that women’s accounts of military service are dominated by their gendered position as “outsiders within” ...
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2019
Tel Aviv is becoming a hotspot for gay tourism through the support of municipal and national forc... more Tel Aviv is becoming a hotspot for gay tourism through the support of municipal and national forces. The city is marketed as a Middle Eastern gay utopia, drawing tourists due to its location, LGBT nightlife, and Oriental flavor. Meanwhile, local Israeli LGBT individuals strive to produce themselves as Western, both performatively and politically. This paper discusses how the Tel Aviv Municipality, the state, commercial actors, and LGBT individuals utilize Israeli ethnicities. We argue that the dissonance between Orientalist images and Westernization processes, which are particularly noticeable in the marketing of gay tourism to Tel Aviv, maintains a twofold construction of Tel Aviv as a Middle Eastern global city, which we term the Progressive Orient. Reinforcing the differentiation from the Middle East and other Arab countries, while embracing Orientalist images and tastes under the guise of authenticity, this particular kind of pinkwashing also differentiates the city as other tha...
In this article we stress the need for specifically located understandings of the concept of homo... more In this article we stress the need for specifically located understandings of the concept of homonationalism, by introducing an analysis of spatial and political power relations dissecting disparate constructions of LGBT arenas. The article explores three spaces: Tel-Aviv-an urban space of LGBT belonging; Jerusalem-the Israeli capital where being an LGBT individual is problematic both in public and in private spaces; and Kiryat-Shmona-a conservative and peripheral underprivileged town in the north of Israel. By showing how local understandings of queer space shape power relations and translate into subjective spaces within wide-ranging power dynamics, we claim that homonationalism cannot be seen as one unitary, consolidated category or logic. Instead, we argue, homonationalism should be considered a multidirectional and multiscale political stance, manifesting cultural practices and political relationship with the state and society in distinct settings. By expanding considerations of the nuanced interplay of state power and LGBT spaces we aim to elucidate some paradoxes of homonationalism.
Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center is unique in Israel for being sponsored, managed and controlled by the muni... more Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center is unique in Israel for being sponsored, managed and controlled by the municipality. This article focuses on the Gay-Center as a material, symbolic and discursive space in order to clarify the relationship between LGBT individuals and the nation. Based on an ethnographic study, we show that since its establishment the Gay-Center has undergone centralization processes as a result of being located in central Tel Aviv and by striving for LGBT mainstreaming, thereby accelerating the achievement of sexual citizenship and urban belonging. However, the expansion of sexual citizenship, which is always based on processes of inclusion and exclusion, reveals homonational practices and homonormative discourses. Since being in the city is the easiest and, at times, the only way to earn sexual citizenship, we argue that LGBT urban citizenship is an indication, a marker and thus a prerequisite of homonationalism.
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2007
T his article examines the nature and meaning of gender integration in an officer training course... more T his article examines the nature and meaning of gender integration in an officer training course in the Israeli military, in light of the hegemonic status of combat masculinity. The above quote is taken from an interview with Lieutenant Colonel Yoav Golan, a male battalion commander in the newly gender-integrated course. The quote starts by recognizing gender differences as legitimate: women’s crying no longer frightens him. However, in the same breath, Yoav recreates the gendered
The authors suggest that social movements research should recognize more the potential of the pro... more The authors suggest that social movements research should recognize more the potential of the protesting body as an agent of social and political change. This contention is based on studying the relations among the body, gender, and knowledge in social protest by comparing two Israeli-Jewish leftist protest movements, a woman-only movement (Women in Black) and a mixed-gender one (The 21st Year), which protested against the Israeli Occupation in the early 1990s. The comparison reveals reversed patterns of body/knowledge relations, each connoting a different meaning and outcome of the social protest. In the mixed movement, the body served as an instrument in carrying out the political knowledge and thus was left unmarked. In Women in Black, on the other hand, the body was the message, as it produced and articulated political ideology, simultaneously challenging the national security legacy and the gender order in Israel.
The relationship between security and gender has long been central to the academic discourse, bot... more The relationship between security and gender has long been central to the academic discourse, both in Israel and beyond. The standard argument is that militarization processes create and reinforce dichotomous, hierarchical and essentialist perceptions of femininity and masculinity, thereby relegating women to the status of second-class citizens. 1 Given the militarist nature of Israeli society, this argument is pertinent to scholarship concentrating on Israel, which has long validated the contention. 2 However, in this chapter, we ask how Israeli women located at relatively powerful intersectional positions of ethnicity, class and nationality might, in fact, actually capitalize on their positionality to gain power in the military and political arenas.
The Palgrave International Handbook of Gender and the Military, 2017
Sasson-Levy argues for an intersectional analysis of the social architecture of the military, as ... more Sasson-Levy argues for an intersectional analysis of the social architecture of the military, as militaries are always designed by the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender, and simultaneously create ethno-gendered groups and identities. For men, the intersection with ethnicity marks their location within the military hierarchy; it determines the jobs they will be assigned and their proximity to the military core of combat. Conversely, for women the intersection with ethnicity determines whether they will be inside or outside the boundaries of the military. The chapter examines the US and Israeli militaries to demonstrate the analytic productiveness of an intersectional analysis. The chapter concludes with the call to add class, nationality and religiosity as crucial factors that intersect with gender and ethnicity in shaping militaries’ social structure.
This article examines the construction of multiple gendered and national identities in the Israel... more This article examines the construction of multiple gendered and national identities in the Israeli army. In Israel, hegemonic masculinity is identified with the masculinity of the Jewish combat soldier and is perceived as the emblem of good citizenship. This identity, I argue, assumes a central role in shaping a hierarchal order of gendered and civic identities that reflects and reproduces social stratification and reconstructs differential modes of participation in, and belonging to, the Israeli state. In-depth interviews with two marginalized groups in the Israeli army-women in "masculine" roles and male soldiers in blue-collar jobs-suggest two discernible practices of identity. While women in "masculine" roles structure their gender and national identities according to the masculinity of the combat soldier, the identity practices of male soldiers in blue-collar jobs challenge this hegemonic masculinity and its close link with citizenship in Israel. However, wh...
The military is a hyper-masculine organization designed to manage violence for the state. As such... more The military is a hyper-masculine organization designed to manage violence for the state. As such, the military and militarization processes create a tight link between gender and violence. Most often, the literature on militarization of women’s lives focuses on women as victims of military violence. As Israel is unique among Western states in that it imposes compulsory conscription on both men and women, we ask how gendered militarization in general and serving in the army in particular shapes women’s lives. Particularly, we explore how women relate to gender and to violence in their accounts of military service, by analyzing retrospective accounts of women veterans from three groups: women who served in clerical roles; women who served in “masculine” roles; and women who served in the occupied territories and gave testimonies to the anti-occupation movement. Our analysis shows that women’s accounts of military service are dominated by their gendered position as “outsiders within” ...
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2019
Tel Aviv is becoming a hotspot for gay tourism through the support of municipal and national forc... more Tel Aviv is becoming a hotspot for gay tourism through the support of municipal and national forces. The city is marketed as a Middle Eastern gay utopia, drawing tourists due to its location, LGBT nightlife, and Oriental flavor. Meanwhile, local Israeli LGBT individuals strive to produce themselves as Western, both performatively and politically. This paper discusses how the Tel Aviv Municipality, the state, commercial actors, and LGBT individuals utilize Israeli ethnicities. We argue that the dissonance between Orientalist images and Westernization processes, which are particularly noticeable in the marketing of gay tourism to Tel Aviv, maintains a twofold construction of Tel Aviv as a Middle Eastern global city, which we term the Progressive Orient. Reinforcing the differentiation from the Middle East and other Arab countries, while embracing Orientalist images and tastes under the guise of authenticity, this particular kind of pinkwashing also differentiates the city as other tha...
In this article we stress the need for specifically located understandings of the concept of homo... more In this article we stress the need for specifically located understandings of the concept of homonationalism, by introducing an analysis of spatial and political power relations dissecting disparate constructions of LGBT arenas. The article explores three spaces: Tel-Aviv-an urban space of LGBT belonging; Jerusalem-the Israeli capital where being an LGBT individual is problematic both in public and in private spaces; and Kiryat-Shmona-a conservative and peripheral underprivileged town in the north of Israel. By showing how local understandings of queer space shape power relations and translate into subjective spaces within wide-ranging power dynamics, we claim that homonationalism cannot be seen as one unitary, consolidated category or logic. Instead, we argue, homonationalism should be considered a multidirectional and multiscale political stance, manifesting cultural practices and political relationship with the state and society in distinct settings. By expanding considerations of the nuanced interplay of state power and LGBT spaces we aim to elucidate some paradoxes of homonationalism.
Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center is unique in Israel for being sponsored, managed and controlled by the muni... more Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center is unique in Israel for being sponsored, managed and controlled by the municipality. This article focuses on the Gay-Center as a material, symbolic and discursive space in order to clarify the relationship between LGBT individuals and the nation. Based on an ethnographic study, we show that since its establishment the Gay-Center has undergone centralization processes as a result of being located in central Tel Aviv and by striving for LGBT mainstreaming, thereby accelerating the achievement of sexual citizenship and urban belonging. However, the expansion of sexual citizenship, which is always based on processes of inclusion and exclusion, reveals homonational practices and homonormative discourses. Since being in the city is the easiest and, at times, the only way to earn sexual citizenship, we argue that LGBT urban citizenship is an indication, a marker and thus a prerequisite of homonationalism.
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2007
T his article examines the nature and meaning of gender integration in an officer training course... more T his article examines the nature and meaning of gender integration in an officer training course in the Israeli military, in light of the hegemonic status of combat masculinity. The above quote is taken from an interview with Lieutenant Colonel Yoav Golan, a male battalion commander in the newly gender-integrated course. The quote starts by recognizing gender differences as legitimate: women’s crying no longer frightens him. However, in the same breath, Yoav recreates the gendered
The authors suggest that social movements research should recognize more the potential of the pro... more The authors suggest that social movements research should recognize more the potential of the protesting body as an agent of social and political change. This contention is based on studying the relations among the body, gender, and knowledge in social protest by comparing two Israeli-Jewish leftist protest movements, a woman-only movement (Women in Black) and a mixed-gender one (The 21st Year), which protested against the Israeli Occupation in the early 1990s. The comparison reveals reversed patterns of body/knowledge relations, each connoting a different meaning and outcome of the social protest. In the mixed movement, the body served as an instrument in carrying out the political knowledge and thus was left unmarked. In Women in Black, on the other hand, the body was the message, as it produced and articulated political ideology, simultaneously challenging the national security legacy and the gender order in Israel.
The relationship between security and gender has long been central to the academic discourse, bot... more The relationship between security and gender has long been central to the academic discourse, both in Israel and beyond. The standard argument is that militarization processes create and reinforce dichotomous, hierarchical and essentialist perceptions of femininity and masculinity, thereby relegating women to the status of second-class citizens. 1 Given the militarist nature of Israeli society, this argument is pertinent to scholarship concentrating on Israel, which has long validated the contention. 2 However, in this chapter, we ask how Israeli women located at relatively powerful intersectional positions of ethnicity, class and nationality might, in fact, actually capitalize on their positionality to gain power in the military and political arenas.
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