Helpful heroes and the political utility of militarized masculinities

This article was named the winner of the 2019 Enloe Award. The committee commented: This article, which draws upon Enloe’s central ideas on militarized masculinities and enriches/refines the literature by focusing on the “helpful hero” trope utilized to justify the Canadian military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001–2014, is innovative in its framing and methods. The author’s discourse analysis of “helpful heroes” and her broader analysis of “helpfulness” opens up new pathways for thinking about militarized masculinities in less binary terms, and for theorizing the deeply embedded, intertwined experiences of militarization and humanitarianism, particularly the white, Eurocentric savior complex in international conflicts. It is a very interesting article for thinking about how justificatory tropes of heroism obscure the practice of violence.ABSTRACTThis article discusses how models of militarized masculinity can be mobilized to justify the use of violence internationally. I first trace a model of militarized masculinity – the “helpful hero” – that emerged during the Canadian military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001–2014. I demonstrate that this ideal type emerged from competing preferences for “warrior” or “peacekeeper” identities of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). The helpful hero model functioned to legitimize participation by the CAF in the Afghanistan War due to the positioning of soldiers as helpful, rather than as overtly aggressive or militaristic. I argue that the helpful hero ideal was not simply another ideal type of militarized masculinity, but also a symbolic trope that functioned politically to erase and obscure actual military violence. The article concludes by problematizing this model of militarized masculinity and noting the violent and imperial effects of war that cannot be seen when we imagine the military according to gendered mythologies.