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Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores
Thinking about Women's Violence in Global Politics
Caron E. Gentry and Laura Sjoberg
Builds on and expands Gentry and Sjoberg's landmark work on violence and gender.
Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores takes the suggestion in Mothers, Monsters, Whores that it is important to see genderings in characterizations of violent women, and to use critique of those genderings to retheorize individual violence in global politics. It begins by demonstrating the interdependence of the personal and international levels of global politics in violent women's lives, but then shows that this interdependence is inaccurately depicted in gender-subordinating narratives of women's violence. Such narratives, the authors argue, are not only normatively problematic on the surface but also intersect with other identifiers, such as race, religion, and geopolitical location.
Caron E. Gentry is a lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. She is author of Offering Hospitality: Questioning Christian Approaches to War (2013) and the co-editor of Women, Gender and Terrorism (with Laura Sjoberg, 2011) and The Future of War: New Critical Essays (with Amy Eckert, 2014).
Laura Sjoberg is associate professor of political science at the University of Florida. She is author of Gender, War and Conflict (2014), Gendering Global Conflict: Towards a Feminist Theory of War (2013), Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women's Violence in Global Politics (with Caron Gentry, 2007) and Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq (2006).
1. Introduction: A Woman Did That?
2. Seeing Gender in Theories of People's Political Violence
3. Seeing Women's Extralegal Violence
4. Saving, Supporting and Supplicating: The Mother Narrative
5. Femininity Gone Awry: The Monster Narrative
6. Sex/Violence: The Whore Narrative
7. Conclusion: Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores
'A nuanced and thought-provoking feminist contribution.'
'A brilliant analysis that further complicates social fantasies that deny women's capacities to do things men have the capacity to do, and a welcome extension of the path-breaking research Gentry and Sjoberg began in their first edition. Compelling and convincing.'
Cynthia Weber, University of Sussex
'Beyond Mothers, Monsters Whores reminds us that patriarchal narratives concocted and wielded by both media and states serve to distract us from the actual gendered causes and consequences of collective violence and militaristic cultures. Gentry and Sjoberg do us a great service in exposing the past and current politics of these dangerous distractions.'
Cynthia Enloe, author of Bananas, Beaches and Bases
'In the best tradition of feminist research, the authors engage the theoretical framework of the first edition and go beyond it. Once again Gentry and Sjoberg have succeeded in giving us a thought-provoking analysis of a disturbing but important subject: women's political violence.'
J. Ann Tickner, American University
'The first edition of this exciting book was genuinely path-breaking; it quickly became required reading for anyone interested in questions of gender and violence in global politics. This fully revised and theoretically more sophisticated second edition stands to make an equally valuable contribution.'
Laura Shepherd, University of New South Wales, and author of Gender, Violence and Popular Culture: Telling Stories
Mothers, Monsters, Whores
Women's Violence in Global Politics
Laura Sjoberg and Caron E. Gentry Provides an empirical study of women's violence in global politics. This book looks at military women who engage in torture; the 'Black Widows'; suicide bombers; and the women who directed and participated in genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda. It analyses the biological, psychological and sexualized stereotypes through which women are depicted.
Histories of Violence
Post-war Critical Thought
Edited by Brad Evans and Terrell Carver An essential introduction to post-war critical thought on the problem of violence.