2007/09/18 by Daniel Conway · 45 citations
Social Sciences · #Compromise #Cowardice #Gender Roles and Identity Studies #Gender studies #Gender, Security, and Conflict #Law #Military service #Nationalism #Political science #Politics #Realm #Sociology #South African History and Culture #State (computer science) #White (mutation) #White supremacy
paper · doi:10.1177/1097184x07306742
published in Men and Masculinities 10(4), 422-439 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2007/09/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
External and internal forces threatened the apartheid state in the 1980s. The refusal to perform compulsory military service by individual white men and the increasing number of white South Africans who criticized the role of the military and apartheid governance had the potential to destabilize the gendered binaries on which white social order and Nationalist rule rested. The state constituted itself as a heterosexual, masculine entity in crisis and deployed a number of gendered discourses in an effort to isolate and negate objectors to military service. The state articulated a nationalist discourse that defined the white community in virile, masculine, and heroic terms. Conversely, “feminine” weakness, cowardice, and compromise were scorned. Objectors, as “strangers” in the public realm, were most vulnerable to homophobic stigmatization from the state and its supporters.