Abstract
Just two decades in, the new century is presenting feminists with daunting challenges. Donald Trump, President of the United States, is an unapologetic misogynist, and one who bragged about grabbing women in their genitals. He has also been accused of sexual misconduct by over a dozen women. His campaign pandered shamelessly to nativism, racism (including constructing immigrants as criminals), religious intolerance, and anti-abortion sentiments. Nor is this an anomaly, as many nations are seeing a rise in rightwing populism, often with an overt appeal to white male dominance and female subservience.
Time to start talking and thinking about patriarchy? Cynthia Enloe thinks so. She confesses, though, that she did not always feel this way: “I almost broke into a run to get away from the first person I head utter the word ‘patriarchy’” (ix), thinking it “so heavy, so blunt, so ideological” (p. ix). She’s changed her mind, though. She proposes we use the concept as a “searchlight” whereby we see what we would otherwise miss: “the connective tissues between large and small, subtle and blatant forms of racialized sexism, gendered misogyny and masculine privilege” (pp. ix–x).
The Big Push is a collection of essays (some previously published) aimed at documenting how this works to explore both the “persistence” of patriarchy and the importance of feminist resistance. Importantly, Trump does not loom large in this volume. Enloe argues that we should not be diverted by the “patriarchal machinations of any outsized figure,” and instead focus on “more insidious dynamics that are perpetuating patriarchal ideas and relationships” (p. x).
The Big Push does, though, open with an anti-Trump event—an enthusiastic look at the largest single-day protest in U.S. history—the Women’s March on January 21, 2017. Enloe found the “personal spontaneity” of the Women’s March participants infectious and the “irreverent defiance of…misogyny” embodied in the pussy hats a great “collective feminist message” (p. 7). What particularly intrigued her, though, was the global scope of the protest, with the amazing number of “sister marches” (p. 673) with an estimated attendance of 4.9 million (p. 5).
Overall, the book is a voyage detailing the frustrating and subtle persistence of patriarchy while showcasing feminist resistance along the way. Voyage is not a metaphor, here. Enloe writes about her travels, not to vacuous academic meetings, though. Instead, her association with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an organization that Jane Addams helped found, has given her unique, firsthand experiences with the gritty realities and frustrations of global grassroots feminist peacemaking.
Some travel she discusses, though, is far more mundane. Reflecting on her own childhood, she recalls “modest” vacation trips to battlefields, particularly to Fort Ticonderoga and Gettysburg. Dubbing this, “militarized tourism” (p. 67), she notes it minimizes enormous suffering (in Gettysburg, over 50,000 perished in a 3-day period), while showcasing male valor and strategy (p. 63). Contrasting these memories with a later visit to Hiroshima with Japanese feminist activists, Enloe notes that in Hiroshima, there are no monuments to a soldier’s bravery; instead, there is a peace museum. Later, she visits Gallipoli, accompanying Australian and New Zealand feminists as they meet with their Turkish counterparts, all agreeing that Word War I was crucial in creating “masculinized state militarism” (p. 84) that compresses women into their marginalized roles as “bit players” (p. 81).
Enloe’s work also draws unapologetically on her own life, focusing on her own father’s role in World War II, which dominated her childhood and deeply colored her mother’s life (as the wife of a soldier). In fact, she dedicated Does Khaki Become You to her mother, who received the page proof of the dedication the day before she died (p. 129). She also recounts her own passionate enjoyment of college and graduate school, but also the dawning realization that her field, political science, was heavily masculinized and her training left her largely without the tools she would need for her classic work, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases.
One wishes for more time to summarize the many rich themes found in these chapters, including her comments on marriage “a sticky topic for feminists” (p. 87), history “not just about yesterday,” (p. 71), and in-house feminist resistance to the UN hierarchy’s choice of Wonder Woman as the “honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls” (p. 151). Ultimately, this is a book as much about women’s hard-fought, but important, victories. While patriarchy “may have succeeded in perpetuating itself…it is not invincible” (p. 106).