“He is looking at bowmen like women”: gender as a frame of war

Military occupation zones are very often sites of intensified violence. In these spaces, soldiers more often than not enact militarized masculinities against enemies who are perceived as feminized and inferior. ¹ As Marilyn Strathern recognized, “relations between political enemies stand for relation between men and women”. ² Some feminist authors even argue that feminization is a war tactic, which situates feminized individuals lower on the social hierarchy. This chapter discusses the textual and iconographic evidence for the feminization of foreign enemies in ancient Egypt, although some examples from ancient Nubian texts are provided too. The cutting off of enemies’ phalli is cited as an example of mutilation with a gender background. Judith Butler’s concept of “gender as a frames of war” (Chapter 1) is useful for understanding this phenomenon. It provides a theoretical key for understanding how gender ideology shapes texts and images with violent content. The cutting off of enemies’ phalli is cited as an example of mutilation with a gender background. Before turning to ancient Egypt, I first provide examples of feminization of enemies from other cultures.