ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses feminist discourse analysis of women's involvement in brutal acts of torture. It then discusses how particular gendered racial-sexual logics and practices articulations of the hegemonic post-9/11 US security discourse, the save-civilization-itself fantasy. The chapter focuses on a discussion of prominent feminist scholarly interventions on women's participation in the acts of torture against Abu Ghraib prisoners, and with the help of a decolonial feminist lens. It reflects on the prospects and limits of feminist methods, ethics, and politics for enhance explanatory capacity and political praxis. Supporters and critics of the military agree that being a soldier is, in short, about violence and about preparing people to destroy other human beings by force. At the heart of this process of becoming and being a soldier is what feminist scholarship calls military masculinity. The chapter questions feminist analysis explanations that a priori cast the Abu Ghraib (cis) women torturers as victims or puppets in the service of cismen.
