‘Politicising Masculinities: Beyond the Personal’
An international symposium linking lessons from HIV, sexuality and reproductive health
with other areas for rethinking AIDS, gender and development; 15-18th October, 2007, Dakar
MILITARISED AND RELIGIOUS: THE DOUBLE-BIND CONFRONTING
UGANDAN MEN
Chris Dolan
Refugee Law Project, Kampala, Uganda
It seems to me that while most people now recognise that gender is not a biological given
but rather a social construct, far fewer acknowledge that it is also a political construct and
weapon in whose fabrication and manipulation political actors play a major role.
Furthermore, the majority of gender work, even that which has expanded to include men
under the heading of ‘masculinities’, still rests on the view that gender is about
addressing women’s problems – of whom the biggest is men. This in turn can be seen to
be underpinned by an essentialist and unreconstructed view of men and women.
As such, while the gender debate has shifted somewhat towards a discussion of how the
social construction of masculinity can be influenced by particular interventions that work
directly with (young) men, the emphasis is still on changing individual behaviours rather
than challenging the political forces which shape those behaviours.
While this emphasis is morally admirable insofar as it validates the role of the individual
in social change, it also risks being naïve and ultimately ineffective insofar as it
underestimates the importance of political actors and forces in shaping individual and
social behaviour.
The political forces which should be of concern to us are embodied by not just the state
and organised religion, but also, in an era of expanding global governance, by multilateral institutions and their implementing partners, the NGOs of the west/north. Little
has been said - let alone done - about changing the behaviours of these major political
actors. They should be of concern because they are actively engaged in the construction
of particular models of masculinity and the marginalisation and exclusion of others,
which inevitably consolidates associated models of (patriarchal) gender relations.
In an earlier paper under the title ‘Collapsing Masculinities and Weak States’ (Dolan,
2002) I attempted to demonstrate the extent to which in a context of ongoing conflict
such as that which until recently was to be found in northern Uganda, the possibility of
multiple, parallel and equi-valent masculinities collapses. A hegemonic masculinity is
established, with a hierarchy of lesser masculinities below it, and it is to this that men are
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taught to aspire, despite the impossibility of most of them ever actually realising it in
their personal lives in a context of widespread violence, displacement and
impoverishment. Because masculinity is defined both relative to femininity and to youth,
the consolidation of an unattainable hegemonic norm affects not just adult men, but also
women and youth, and contributes substantially to a number of dysfunctional social
dynamics such as domestic violence and suicide.
I also argued that the Ugandan state both precipitated this collapse in masculinities
through its simultaneous practice of militarization and forcible internal displacement, and
benefited from it insofar as the male civilian population was effectively emasculated and
therefore more disposed to joining the military in a desperate attempt to recover its lost
masculinity. In this regard it should be noted that by 2004 Uganda had the third largest
IDP population in the world, at over 2 million people, and was pursuing an extra-ordinary
level of militarization, with over 25,000 men brought under arms in the period mid-2003
to early 2004 alone. The fact that the Ugandan state had to resort to such measures and to
such an excessive show of force, could in turn be linked to its own weakness (lack of
‘masculinity’?) as a state in the broader international ‘community’.
In this presentation I want to demonstrate what I mean by the argument that political
actors play a key role in the fabrication and deployment of particular models of
masculinity. I want to do this by first highlighting and discussing two recent instances
drawn directly from the Ugandan daily press, and then by considering how these relate to
the mainstream international discourse and practice on gender.
State and Church: An Unholy Alliance
The two incidents which I wish to discuss occurred within a matter of weeks of one
another. The first was in July 2007, when some 252 Members of Parliament from
Uganda’s ruling party, the National Resistance Movement, went on a ‘retreat’ at
Kyankwanzi National Leadership Institute for some days. Members of Parliament,
including the President’s own wife, were all obliged to wear military fatigues and engage
in early morning physical exercises and shooting practice. This very stereotypically
‘masculine’ model of behaviour, as promoted by the State, was widely publicised in the
print media and on various radio talk shows (see press clippings). It was even suggested
that NRM MPs should wear military fatigues when visiting their constituencies as this
would guarantee their free movement.
2
This picture below (The Daily Monitor, Thursday July 19, 2007) shows President
Museveni and his wife, Janet Museveni, both sporting military attire – though by the
looks of his pot belly he is hardly a ‘lean, mean, fighting machine’…
3
The second incident, some three weeks later, was when a fledgling LGBT rights
organisation known as SMUG (Sexual Minorities Uganda, a coalition of four Ugandan
LGBTI groups) gained considerable attention by calling a first-ever press conference on
16 August 2007, to launch a media campaign to advocate for their rights.
This courageous move provoked an outraged response from some sectors of the Church,
as well as from the Minister for Ethics and Integrity, Nsaba Buturo.
4
Taken together, these two incidents effectively demarcate the officially sanctioned
parameters of masculinity in Uganda. The NRM MPs adoption of military fatigues and
boot-camp style exercises, asserted the excellence and desirability of a highly militarised
masculinity. In fact it is seen as so desirable that it could even be extended from its
military origins to also include Members of Parliament and biological women.
The message to ordinary civilians is pretty clear. It should also be added that, just as the
hegemonic masculinity aspired to in northern Uganda is largely unattainable, so the
militarised masculinity paraded by NRM MPs is also strictly out of bounds to ordinary
civilians – as the Daily Monitor pointed out the assertion that ‘it was legal for civilian
legislators to wear military uniform’… ‘sharply contradicts the crackdown last year on
civilians with military fatigues. Many were arrested and court-martialled’ (Daily Monitor,
19 July 2007.
Not only was military uniform used to associate women and parliamentarians to a
particular model of masculinity, but by association certain Christian groups arguably also
gave their support – after all, the so-called ‘first lady’ is an unabashed born-again
Christian with impeccable credentials as a promoter of the ‘A’ (Abstinence) in Uganda’s
ABC strategy to combat HIV.
While the NRM’s well publicised ‘retreat’ established the acceptable end of the spectrum
of masculinities, the Churches’ outraged protest against homosexuality, as supported by
the Minister for Ethics and Integrity, equally strongly demarcated the other 5
unacceptable - end. It is quite evident that other points on the potentially broad spectrum
of masculinities will never gain any official support, at least not from the current regime.
The Churches’ pro-active stance on this issue contrasted dramatically with their
deplorable passivity regarding the politically challenging task of contesting state-led
militarization and its accompanying abuses.
Two incidents on their own do not constitute an argument. However, my other work, both
with war affected communities in northern Uganda, and as an expert witness for lesbian
and gay Ugandans seeking asylum in the UK, suggests that, to borrow from the language
of statistical analysis, these two incidents are not outliers, but rather represent the mode.
Certainly state-sponsored homophobia has a strong track-record in Uganda. In 1998 The
Monitor newspaper reported that
‘A no-nonsense President Yoweri Museveni has promised to let loose
the full force of the law upon any public demonstration by a
homosexual association in the country. Speaking to the press (he stated
that) “If you have a rally of 20 homosexuals here, I would disperse it”’1
The President’s most notorious homophobic statement was made a year later when he
reported that he had ‘told CID (Criminal Investigations Department) to look for
homosexuals, lock them up and charge them’.2 In March 2002, having been given an
award in recognition of his campaigns against AIDS, President Museveni declared at an
international conference in Australia, that his country ‘has no homosexuals’3 In the same
year one of the present Minister for Ethics and Integrity’s predecessors is reported to
have ‘ordered the police to arrest and prosecute homosexuals’.4
Similarly, the Churches have a long history of denunciation of homosexuality. The antigay position of the Anglican Church of Uganda (COU) was made clear in 1998 at the
Lambeth Conference, where they (along with bishops from Chile, America and Australia)
voted against a presentation on the issue of homosexuality and the church.5
With regards to the Muslim position, as Charles Onyango-Obbo noted in an article
following Museveni’s attack in September 1999,
‘on this one (gay bashing), unlike the DR Congo military adventure, no
opposition politician will dare criticise the president. On Friday,
Muslims who have been at odds with Museveni in recent years … found
1
The Monitor, 22 July 1998 President tells off Homosexuals
New Vision, 27 September 1999. At an international conference held in Gulu, northern Uganda, only a
day or two later, I personally witnessed the Prime Minister, Professor Apollo Nsibambi, echoing the
President’s sentiments, despite the fact they had nothing to do with the topic of the conference.
2
3 AP, Coolum, Australia (10 March 2002)
4
5
Ngoma Newspaper, 30 August 2002, Arrest and Prosecute Homosexuals
All Africa News Agency, 3 August 1998
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common cause with him on homosexuality. Muslim women staged a
protest march against homosexuality and general moral decadence in the
country’.6
The position of the Catholic church was made clear when the Catholic Cardinal Wamala
told a press conference on January 22 2001 that ‘We deserve leaders who will not
condone immorality, such as corruption, abortion, homosexuality or any other forms of
behaviour which are contrary and offensive to God’s law and our own culture’. The
reporters from Behind The Mask argued that ‘with his statements Cardinal Wamala
effectively reopened the anti-gay rhetoric started by Ugandan President Museveni in
September 1999’.7
When it emerged in April 2000 that a retired Anglican Bishop, Christopher Ssenyonjo,
was supporting a Ugandan chapter of the US based organisation Integrity, he was put
under investigation by the Church of Uganda.8 He was subsequently turned down for a
lecturing post at the Uganda Christian University as a result of his ‘alleged sympathy for
gay activities’.9
Although he was widely believed to be the chairman of the Ugandan chapter of
Integrity,10 Ssenyonjo wrote that:
‘I am a counsellor of the gays, not chairman. As I stated in my previous
communication, I am heterosexual. However, in my counselling, I was
made aware, more than ever, that homosexuals are subjected to a great
deal of suffering due to recrimination, rejection, mental and spiritual
torture at the hands of the heterosexual majority’.11
A few days later the Dean of the Province of the Church of Uganda, Dr Nicodemus Okile
‘warned bishops and Christians in Africa against involving themselves in homosexuality
and “compromising with the devil”. He described homosexuality as ‘an inhuman practice
which contradicts the teaching of the holy scriptures and African social norms’.12
Ssenyonjo was later banned by Church of Uganda Archbishop, Livingstone Mpalanyi
Nkoyoyo, from preaching in any Anglican Church in Uganda,13 and in late September
2001 the Bishop of Kigezi Diocese ‘appealed to members of Parliament to unilaterally
condemn homosexuality’.14
6
The East African, Oct 4-10, 1999 Gays are Easy Targets for Macho Leaders
www.mask.co.za
8
New Vision 30 April 2001 COU Investigates Gay Rights Bishop
9
New Vision 14 May 2001, ‘Varsity shuns gay Bishop’. The same university organised a joint symposium
of philosophy students from makerere and Uganda Christian Universities which ‘condemned
homosexuality, which they said is taking root in the country’.(New Vision, 24 May 2001)
10
Integrity is an organisation representing the interests of gay and lesbian Anglicans
11
New Vision, 17 May 2001
12
New Vision, 19 May 2001
13
www.mask.co.za Uganda section Anglicans ban gay friendly reverend
14
New Vision, 28 September 2001 Condemn Homosexuality, says Bishop
7
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The messy mix of national and international
Up to this point I have focused on two incidents involving State and Churches as political
actors, and I have brought further evidence to bear to argue that these are not isolated
incidents but rather examples of systemic practice by both parties.
I want now to bring in a third group of political actors, the international ones. The
relationship between these three groupings is a complex, and indeed at times an
adversarial one. Nonetheless, when it comes to gender issues, the end result of their
interactions is more of the same – in short, the hegemonic norms are perpetuated and
little space for alternative masculinities is achieved.
You might think, when excessive amounts of foreign-sponsored national budgets15 are
diverted to military extravagance (including dressing up MPs to play at being soldiers),
and the President himself is an unashamed homophobe, that international actors would
have something to say about it, but Human Rights Watch’s denunciation of statesponsored homophobia has been the exception rather than the norm.
In general, the mainstream, hegemonic and - dare I say it? - ‘dumbed down’ gender
discourse, as promoted by most humanitarian and developmental NGOs and multi-lateral
institutions, further reduces the prospects of multiple masculinities. There are at least two
discernible reasons for this.
Firstly, gender, or more specifically ‘gender as women’, has become part of a much
larger contestation between the former colonised and their former colonisers, a
contestation which is essentially about who controls what in a post-colonial world,
whether it be with regard to nationality, race or sexuality.
Put simply, the field of gender as practiced by such organisations in places such as
northern Uganda, has resulted in a contest between white female gender officers and
black civilian males in which the former patronise the latter, and the latter turn their
backs on whatever the former have to say. Insofar as the white women are assumed to be
the emissaries of white men, gender has thus become a proxy battleground between the
‘colonised’ and the ‘neo-coloniser’, and the assertion of a particular identity becomes
more important than the coherence or objective truth of that identity.
The question of homosexuality offers a particularly good example of this tendency.
Political actors such as Museveni and his kindred spirits President Mugabe and former
Namibian President Sam Njoma, seek to pretend that homosexuality is a cultural
imposition
of
white
people
and
therefore
fundamentally
unUgandan/Zimbabwean/Namibian. This is then taken up and reflected in the state
sponsored media, as in the following extract from an editorial in the New Vision in the
run up to the Anglican Bishops’ Lambeth Conference in 1998;
15
Donor support accounts for approximately 50% of Uganda’s budget
8
‘In many African societies, Ugandan communities inclusive, homosexuality is so
abominable that many call for acts of cleansing for those found to have this
unnatural sexual orientation. Africa finds homosexuality as abominable as
bestiality… incest… and sex with corpses’16
In the September 1999 speech in which Museveni called for the arrest of homosexuals he
was reported as saying that ‘Europeans have their values and cultures not applicable in
Africa. He cited ‘homosexuals who are allowed to demonstrate freely in Europe yet
homosexuality is abominable in Uganda’.17 In 2001 a former Education Commissioner,
Fagil Mandy, ‘has attributed numbers of lesbians and homosexuals in schools today to
‘penpals abroad’.18 In a New Vision article in which a Ugandan lesbian activist was
interviewed about her own life, the accompanying photograph was of two white women
kissing.19
Despite the objective absurdity of the claim that homosexuality is un-African, it has
considerable political leverage with a domestic audience which is tired of external actors
who do indeed impose all manner of norms and expectations. Claims, however spurious,
which assert independence from such impositions, are likely to find a receptive audience.
Given that sexual minorities are always exactly that (a minority), the claim that
homosexuality is ‘un-African’ is a very low-risk strategy for politicians such as
Museveni.
A second reason why the gender discourse has not created more space for multiple
masculinities is that it still rests largely on what by now should be recognised as an
outdated and simplistic set of assumptions, namely that the only important power
relationship which needs addressing is a uni-directional one between (powerful) men and
(vulnerable) women. These assumptions are often captured in statements such as ‘the
majority of victims are women and children’ and the view that doing gender essentially
revolves around confronting male violence towards women
In its own somewhat perverted and paradoxical way, this set of assumptions, while
ostensibly promoting the rights and interests of women, has become in practice an
extension of the patriarchal belief that men are strong while women are not just weak, but
also infantile. They have somehow managed to fuse political correctness with patriarchal
interests to the point where male vulnerability is rarely investigated, let alone publicised
or addressed. As a result, not only are women in general kept in a disempowered position
of assumed victim-hood, but men who are victims are not attended to, for we do not
really have any idea of the full extent of male vulnerability – for example to rape.
Practices which are documented and could in principle be taken as indicators of male
vulnerability, such as abduction, are quickly reframed as confirmation of the fundamental
male proclivity to violence. Where male vulnerability is confirmed, the institutions are
16
New Vision, 29 April 1998 No! (Editorial)
New Vision, September 28 1999 Arrest Homos, Says Museveni
18
New Vision, 7 November 2001 Mandy blames Penpals for Sexual Behaviour
19
New Vision, 30 August 2002, I was born a lesbian
17
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unable to handle it; presented with a victim of male rape in need of protection, UNHCR
will tell you with an apologetic shrug that it has a programme for women at risk, but none
for men. Sorry.
Discussion and conclusions
In this brief paper I have argued that masculinity is not just a social construct but also a
political weapon. Those deploying this political weapon are doing so for different reasons
but with similar effects, namely a narrowing down of the range of socially and politically
acceptable masculinities. The resultant hegemonic masculinity, and the loss of diversity it
represents, has considerable detrimental effects on both men and women, youth and
children. These effects are felt by the individual who feels obliged to operate within
certain externally determined parameters, but also by the society which, in putting all its
eggs into one basket, creates a number of unnecessary risks for itself.
One example of the detrimental effects of a hegemonic masculinity has long been
recognised by gay activists and also by those in the field of HIV who (rightly) argue that
if they cannot access men who have sex with men, they cannot really address the
epidemic (while HIV has been creatively used as an entry point into working with sexual
minorities, there is though, something deeply depressing about only being recognised as
of importance when you are believed to constitute a public health threat!).
Another example would be the high levels of militarization found in places such as
northern Uganda. These not only have considerable implications for the spread of HIV,
they also threaten to create and entrench a number of structural and psychological
rigidities to the detriment of processes of accountability and subsequent development
projects. At its most basic militarization has resulted in excessively high levels of
militarization, with no corresponding programmes for demobilisation, disarmament and
reintegration with which to address the skills deficit which such militarization effectively
institutionalises. These in turn have created an unhealthy civilian-military division which
directly impacts on the capacity of the state to exercise its authority in a non-violent
manner.
Yet another would be high levels of suicide amongst men who cannot attain the
masculine norm of marriage, procreation and protection. A third example, as given is this
paper, is the intimate relationship between contests over masculinity and contests over
the location of post-colonial power.
In short, the question of masculinities speaks to far more than the public health
challenges attached to one particular expression of masculinity, it also speaks to the far
broader question of democracy and good governance in a globalising world.
While I do not think the question of masculinities can or should be detached from the
question of sexuality – indeed, I have drawn heavily on the question of homosexuality to
indicate one point on a spectrum of masculinities – I do believe that the question of
multiple masculinities should not be regarded as simply a question of whether you are
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gay, straight or bi-sexual. I would rather see a situation in which the value of multiple,
equi-valent masculinities for dynamic development and for sustainable peace-building, is
fully recognised.
Against this backdrop I would like to end with a question: Is it reasonable to demand
behaviour change of individuals, without giving them the political backing necessary to
remove the very high risk which such behaviour change may expose them to?
Given the power of political actors to intervene in people’s lives, whether through ‘law
enforcement’ (including harassment, arrest and torture, compulsory military service) or
through generating social pressure (e.g. through stigmatisation), interventions which
demand changes of their subjects without tackling the political forces behind their
socialisation, seem to an extent to be a case of ‘blaming the victims’ of politically driven
socialisation processes.
We thus end up in the paradoxical situation where politically correct but not particularly
critical or independent implementers demand extraordinary courage from the
‘beneficiaries’ of their gender interventions.
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