Carol Cohn’s `Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’

Ananya Azad।।  As I was reading the article ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’, I wondered who the person behind it was. I found that she is Carol Cohn, the founding director of the consortium on Gender, security and Human rights and a lecturer of women’s studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

In 1984, Cohn started her research about a year of participant observation attending a summer workshop on nuclear weapons, nuclear strategy doctrine and arms control. In that workshop all defense intellectuals were men and from a total of 48 teachers, she was one. Though her reason for attending the workshop was to gain knowledge about nuclear weaponry, soon she realized that she was morbidly fascinated by ‘the way of thinking of the man in defense’. Which led her to write the article in 1987 which the journal ‘Signs’ published in the same year.

It was so fascinating when she was explaining how she became engaged as a part of defense intellectuals. She learned their specialized language. It was difficult to catch as a feminist but she realized that she was being a part of the community. She was changing over time; she can relate the words and can talk with their language. She can think like them, which she refers to as ‘technostrategic’ language. She says, technostrategic language is ‘abstract, sanitized, and full of euphemisms’. It is a form of offensive language that divorces the weapons and tactics of battles or warfare from their real-world effects.

The whole article was about how the defense intellectuals use sexualized language which is not directly related to nuclear defense weaponry. The author criticized their language & ideology and described how gender plays a critical role in language. However, she believes feminists and others who want a peaceful world are/should be taking steps to change this bad influence on the language.

According to the author, defense intellectuals are always thinking about nuclear weapons, how to use it, how to manage the arms race, how to fight a nuclear war if deterrence fails etc. Yet she was more interested in the sexual subtext and abstract language used in defense professional’s discourse. Such sexist words she mentioned in her article: ‘Phallic worship’, ‘penetration aids’, ‘nicest hole’, ‘put it in a crummy hole’, ‘vertical erector launchers’, ‘thrust-to-weight ratio’, ‘soft law downs’, ‘deep penetration’, ‘orgasmic whump’ and so on. In the process of learning this language, she started thinking like them which brought disgust in her. As an effect, she referred to it as ‘technostrategic’ language, which she described as an abstract, sanitized, form of offensive language full of euphemisms that divorces the weapons and tactics of battles from their real-world effects.

They never thought anything without nuclear weapons, war and using them as a sexual object in a language. This language totally divided men and women, power and status- which is not only a problem of defense but also of our society. This theory prefers destruction rather than peace. The author C. Wright Mills says in his article “The Sociological Imagination” as “the awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society”. At this point, we can imagine that the author Cohn was aware of the situation and was able to criticize the systems.

She described that defense intellectuals are fallouts in the sense that they are always avoiding their emotions. They are always thinking about nuclear weapons, war and using them as sexual objects in a particular language. But rarely do they think about civilian deaths. This so-called ‘techno-strategic’ language offers them the distance, feeling of control, an alternative focus for one’s energies and works as an escape from thinking of themselves as a victim of nuclear war. It gives them the power of being a planner, user and actor. It allows them to escape the guilt trip; the reality itself. This language totally divides men and women, power and status- which matters not only in defense but also in our society.

The author wrote this article when she realized this situation but we are still dealing with it in 2020. Nonetheless, there is nothing constant in the world, so there is still hope to change the system. As the defense sector is largely dominated by men it shows characteristics exactly like a patriarchal society. To change this gender biasness on language, gender equality is needed in this sector. If many women join the defense-system and start working for the system, then the system will change. The more women participate in a policy making, the more neutralize the sector will become. Feminism brings the solution to this problem regarding the defense sector as it is not only a lifestyle for women but also for men. It refers not only to gender but also class, race.

Another author bell hooks’ wrote in her article “Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom” about the process of education and teaching to address the social, political, economic system which is dominated by oppressive power. Besides, in the article hooks argues that positive change in teaching can help the students in critical thinking, raise awareness against racism, and attach them to a feminist perspective. According to her, language should be simple so that people can feel and practice it. She also experienced a similar situation as Cohn which she used to relate to other people to get a sense out of it. That experience helped her to understand gender biasness on language and how crucial it can be in a society. As a result, both of their articles are focused on language, practice and criticism of male-dominant societies and gender-biases.

Sources:

• The Sociological Imagination (New York Oxford University Press 1959)
• Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (Routledge, 1994, New York London)
• Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory (Millennium: Journal of International Studies Vol. 10, No 2, p-128)