ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes as a starting point that, when depicting terrorists in cinema, there is a pattern of representation that reveals a division on what can arguably be said to be on gendered lines. Those who maintain a commitment to terrorism in a film can be regarded as “masculinised”, that is, they maintain a position usually held by dominant masculinity—the world of the law, of principle, of rational thought. This pertains even when the terrorist concerned is not actually male. The renunciation of terrorism is perceived in terms of the feminine, with reasons for their renunciation based on nurture and caring: romance, childcare or female bonding. They oppose what is for them a dominant paradigm and thus what they are doing is perverse. What I propose here, using the theory of deviation of Jonathan Dollimore, is not a binary; rather, these two positions are very close to each other, and it is the proximity of the two that causes this gendering, since “deviation originates from that which it perverts” and must therefore be disavowed. Ironically, this implies terrorist violence as some sort of norm. Using cinema about the Basque conflict as a case study, this chapter examines the complexities of the relationship between women and terrorist violence and argues that, despite the problematisation of the masculine position, feminised opposition remains perverse and itself punishable by violence.
