Ethiopian International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research

2014; 2(1): 30-33.

www.eijmr.org

ISSN: 2349- 5715 (Online)

ISSN: 2349- 5707 (Print)

Gender as a cultural construction in Democratic Republic of Congo:

(De)Constructing the militarized masculine identity
Joo Pedro Pisco Mingote
DepartmentofAnthropology.Faculdade de Cincias Sociais e Humanas Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.
Av de Berna, 26-C / 1069-061 Lisboa
ABSTRACT:How was constructed, or better, reconstructed the masculinity in Democratic Republic of Congo? The goal of
this theoretical work is to explore questions related with gender, being them connected with other elements, thus we can say
that gender could be seen as a total social fact, which parts that will be analyzed here contribute to a whole, because we cant
use a reductionist approach to understand a holistic reality. The proposal is to deconstruct a specific kind of masculinity (not
forgetting the other kinds) that can be seen as hegemonic, this is the militarized masculine identity. What could be said is
that this particular kind of masculinity is built thanks to the ritual process, by which the bodies become docile and automats.
We can see the military institutions as factories, being endowed with coercive forms to (re)construct masculinities,
becoming consequently militarized.
Keywords: gender, identity, militarized masculinity, docility,hegemony
Contextualization: a brief history
In a country with several languages: french (due to colonialism), lingali, quicongo, kituba, swahili, tshiluba, among other
local dialects, with a 2344858 km2 area, this region, which is inserted in the heart of Africa, was marked by several
conflicts.
Looking back in history: betweenthe XV XVII centuries, the Kongo kingdom had a lot of military power and the
struggles for power led to civil wars. Duringthe XVI century, the kingdom suffered attacks from Imbangala and from other
people who came from the east1. In the XVIII century there were more strikes, in this case, with the goal to obtain the
control of slave trade and ivory. It was due to this raise of slave trade that occurred instabilities on political regions, namely
between those who lived in the adjacent forests. However there was a kingdom and there were innumerous societies that
were relatively apart from the center where the power was located. In the case of these populations, communitarian
villages constituted the primary form of political organization by opposition to the other forms, as the kingdom 1. Already in
1881 Sir Henry Morton Stanley established an European center trade, in the current Kinshasa, under the name
Leopoldville (Gates & Kwame, 2010). Later, the king Leopold II demanded that area as a part of his colony and
established it under the name Congo Free State, in 1885 2. In 1908 Congo Free State was annexed by Belgium.
During the 1950s began to emerge political parties (composed by members of Congolese elites and revolutionaries)
andthis emergency and development of political parties its due to, in part, to the decrease of territorial control from colonial
administration. In 1960 theindependency from Belgium 2was conquered and the name Republic of Congo was instituted.
After Mobutus overthrow, in 1997 Democratic Republic of Congo was instituted and began a civil war
extending until 2003, although the war ended later in the oriental part of the country1. All of these conflicts left marks in the
societies that live in this country and those marks contributed to significant changes in their lives.Some of these changes
could be seen today.

INTRODUCTION
Gender and sex are side by side, however, sex is determined at birth and gender is not. When we refer to gender, we
refer to the perceptions of roles that both (men and women) should have and how Mead (2001 [1935]) showed, these
constructions and perceptions vary depending on the ethnographic context. The temperament of men and women is
culturally standardized and it isnt a biological factor, whereby these behaviors are culturally acquired, refuting biological
determinisms (Mead, 2001 [1935]).Masculinity and femininity cant be understoodas a natural trait (Meger, 2010), gender
needs to be perceived as a cultural elaboration of a sex and it is obtained by the social construction of nature, which initially
nature splits humans beings in male and female (Vale de Almeida, 2005), not defining habitus(Bourdieu, 1989 [1985]), in
other words, sex doesnt define the practices and the knowledge of what defines men and women. So, personality is
constructed by socialization (Mead, 2001 [1935]) and gender is a process where social relations are objectified and are
1

Democratic Republic of Congo History(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/132363/Democratic-Republic-of-the-Congo-DRC/284127/Media-and-

publishing#toc129482).
2

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Democratic Republic of Congo profile(http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13286306).

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2014; 2(1): 30-33.

exploited unconsciously to mold identity. This is acquired by education (formal or informal) as well, since a young age
(Lwambo, 2013), and it can be seen by:
()the intricate, elaborate, and unfailing fashion in which a culture is able to shape each new-born child to the
cultural image. (Mead, 2001 [1935]: 289).
This form of learning is:
()permanent, not focused, not verbal and not reflected. (Vale de Almeida, 1996: 163,mytranslation)
Thus, society molds attitudes and behaviors of their members, because the bodies of the members of a
certainsocietyareinadialectic between the sum of historical and cultural processes.Gender is built by interactions, which
could be: engendered (Strathern, 1988), so there is a construction of gender by interaction:
Gender as a process and practice could be understood () at the level of quotidian negotiations, the interactions
loaded of power. (Vale de Almeida, 1996: 162, my translation).
It is built also by impingement(Strathern, 1988) which there are effects of people over other people (as we could see
in education), and at least by replication (Strathern, 1988), where subsists the replication by the collective and the
interactions, this could be seen in homo-sociability interactions.
Now, I will focus my analysis in one particular ethnographic context, Democratic Republic of Congo. Here, being a
man passes for being the family provider and having a high sexual drive(Mechanic, 2004;Higate, 2007; Lwambo, 2013), to
obtain multiple female partners, paying for having sexual intercourse (Mechanic, 2004;Baaz& Stern, 2009), buying 3 one
or more women, protect them from other men and have the right to beat them and rape 4 them (Mechanic, 2004), one
paradox is denoted in this masculinity: protector and aggressor. Wealth is one pre-requisition to be a real man, but the
meaning of wealth is not the same for every contexts, even inside the same country (Lwambo, 2013). This is the common
masculinity, or the one that was. Regardless, it continues to understand that politics is a men issue and domesticity is a
women issue (Mechanic, 2004), which remits us to:
The man is the outside lamp, the woman is the inside lamp.(Bourdieu, 2002 [1972]: 89, my translation).
Women are seen as the societys factories, peaceful, needing protection, by opposition of men who are seen as
protectors and aggressors (Baaz& Stern, 2009). This construction of masculinity will be reinforced during the military
period (Meger, 2010), as well as shaped and reconstructed. As stated above this is anunconscious process, whose identities
arent static neither crystalized, they are () fluid and change with time. (Mechanic, 2004: 5), as we will see for
masculinity.
At the end, both women and men:
()becomes simultaneously the product of a learned social role() (Kirby, 2013: 106).
Rape as a subjugation form?Practices around bodies
Reductionists thesis shows rape as a war weapon, this is a valid argument, notwithstanding there is more behind
and to understand rape there is a need to see the history andthe constructions of masculinity. One of Leopold administrators
tactics to keep populations over is domain was by raping entire villages (Mechanic, 2004: 7), whereby this is not new in
recent conflicts. After all, what is rape? Its a gendered violence act, an expression of power and domination,
representing submission and restoring masculine powers (Trenholm et al., 2012), therefore:
()men turned towards entrenched gender norms to restore feelings of control. (Mechanic, 2004: 4).
Rape is used to gain territory, to obtain power and control populations, terrorize and restrain freedom(Mechanic,
2004; Meger, 2010; Trenholm et al., 2012). Rape splits in two branches: lust rape and evil rape (Baaz& Stern, 2009),
both are considered as acceptable by militaries, yet the first could be explained by the elevated sexual drive and the
second as an expression of rage and anger (Baaz& Stern, 2009), it is with evil rape that we found the most brutal and violent
forms of rape acts that could result in death (ibid.: 511). The use of violation, besides being used as a war weapon, its also
seen as a sexual manifestation related with violence, an extension of traditional man-woman relations(Mechanic, 2004).
It is recurrent to think that women are the vast majority of rape victims, which is wrong (Grey & Shepherd,
2012), since man (aside being perpetrators) are victims as well (Mechanic, 2004; Trenholmet al., 2012). Then, why do
soldiers rape women and other men?Raping women is due to perceptions of women asspoils of war, a reward (Meger, 2010;
Grey & Shepherd, 2012;Trenholm et al., 2012), reaching the mans honor and the shame and sexuality of the woman
(Olujic, 1998) and by attacking them, military men attack the whole womans community (Meger, 2010), this could be
perceived as a genocide or social death(Card, 2010), which in this case happens when women are ostracized from their
villages by being considered guilty for the rape. When a wifes man is raped, that act emasculate/castrates symbolically
that man (Grey & Shepherd, 2012), its not just against women, its also against other men and other forms of masculinity
which are seen as enemies, constituting an attack to their masculinity. In the case of men who are raped, they are submitted
to the failed masculinity reversing the masculine hero pattern (Mechanic, 2004) and in this way()a man can lose
his masculinity. (Lwambo, 2013: 54). This sense of fail and lost, sometimes, can lead to forms to restore their masculinity
(Lwambo, 2013) and rape functions as a vehicle to restore masculinity. For those reasons some men join the armies after
their wives were raped, by sensing that this is the only way to restore it (Mechanic, 2004).
3
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Means matrimonial compensation and not buying in a merchandise sense.

This rape is not the same that is perpetrated by military men, i.e., its not considered rape under those terms.

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2014; 2(1): 30-33.

In some cases women turn to survival sex in order to save their life by having sex with the aggressor (Mechanic,
2004). When a military man pays a woman it is perceived as normal, because paying is a behavior that is found in other
forms of non-militarized masculinities (Higate, 2007), and this finding reveals the extension of origin quotidian to the
military scenario, thus the man consider his self as the provider of the woman (Baaz& Stern, 2009). In sum, what is
found on the military masculinities concerning to rape is that:
Rape here serves as a performative act that functions to reconstitute their masculinity() (Baaz& Stern, 2009:
516).

Responsibility for rape: individual, collective or subsumed?

There is a paradox regarding responsibility and that depends on the analysistype and theoretical frame that is used.
Responsibility is a concept that could be deconstructed, we might think that:
()men are responsible as individuals for rape where they are persons who engage in the act itself() (Kirby,
2013: 99).
Responsibility needs to be seen in a relational perspective (Grey & Shepherd, 2012). Groups, collectivities and
crowds enable different behaviors, seeing that individuals change their behaviors to adapt to the behaviors of the group in
which they are inserted (May, 1987). Kirby (2013) argues that individuals could have free will but if we adopt a
durkheimian approach we conclude that this isnt entirely precise, because there are constraints and society exerts power
over the individual (Durkheim, 2007 [1894]). Thus, we can exclude responsibility as an individualistic factor, in other
words, exclude it as individual responsibility, because Durkheim shows us that collective consciousness is diffuse and there
are ways and manners to think external to the individuals. If we think about ideologies regarding the acts of rape (as it was
stated above) as a social fact we notice that it exerts a coercive power over individuals, so in this way it becomes impossible
to act in other ways since there is a collective representation and as the others act in one way, the other will do the same,
hence Durkheim (2007 [1894]) refers that there is supremacy of society over the individual, which leads to counter the
concept of responsibility as a subsumed element and we cant attribute it to just one element, this concept will vary according
the theoretical frame which is used.
Masculinities: hegemonic, subordinated, deviants
Masculinity is organized in tense systems (Vale de Almeida, 2005), between hegemony and subordination (Vale de
Almeida, 1996), and we still can add deviants (Mead, 2001 [1935]). Mechanic shows that:
In every society() only certain forms of masculinity() are dominant. (2004: 24).
This quote leads us to a hegemonic masculinity. Subordinated masculinities are contained in the hegemonic one
(Vale de Almeida, 1996) and are denied, or:
Other men and other forms of masculinities are marginalized, oppressed, or even persecuted. (Mechanic, 2004:
24).
Deviants dont possess a hegemonic masculinity neither a subordinated one, however, they deviate from the cultural
patterns by having different behaviors(Mead, 2001 [1935]). The hegemonic form may not be the most common one (Higate,
2007), yet it is the militarized masculinity which can obtain more consensus through coercion (Grasmci, 1998), exercising
power over others. What happens in military institutions is enlightening of this hegemony:
()constructions of hegemonic masculinity are created and reinforced in military institutions () (Meger,
2010: 124).
Hegemonies are obtained through consensus and when they cant be obtained, its necessary to create them, and
they could be created by:
The apparatus of()coercive power which() enforces discipline on those who do not consent()
(Grasmci, 1998: 214).
In short, there are several kinds of masculinities that are obscured by the hegemonic one, in this case, the
militarized masculinity.
From child to adult: (de)constructing the militarized masculine identity 5
As we know so far, militarized masculine identity is acquired in the armies. Going to armies aschildrenis due,in
part, to poverty and for survival (Trenholm et al., 2012). The way of subsistence is the agriculture, though it doesnt gener ate
profits andthe boys search for other subsistence strategies (Trenholm et al., 2012; Lwambo, 2013). Being patrilineal
societies and the men being the providers of their lineage, poverty is seen as castrating of their masculinity (Trenholm et
al., 2012), since a real man (Lwambo, 2013) has to have wealth and seeing that in the future they wont have possibilities
to provide them, they end up joining the armies.Regarding to adults they can join the army after their wives were raped
and/or to regain their masculinity (Mechanic, 2004; Lwambo, 2013).
There are ways to inculcate obedience to child soldiers, by physical coercion and threats, these treats:
()served as invisible shackles that kept the boys subservient to the hierarchy() (Trenholmet al., 2012: 10).
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This concept is fromEnloe (2000).

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There are ways as well to make the boys fearless and inhibit them to think, by giving remedies and drugs that
reduces anxiety, as an informant of Trenholm et al., said:
()when they have taken this drug() they couldnt think of anything. (Boy 10) (2012: 11).
Drugs consume leads to an absence of self-reflection and it is a way to control childrens bodies, so it dissociatesthe
power from the body (Foucault 1999 [1975]), thus being confined to survival. In this period, child soldiers tend to develop a
mask-culinity, this metaphorical mask denies feelings of fear, assuming a bravo faade, giving place to a catatonic
state as a survival strategy (Trenholm et al., 2012: 12). The gun is charged with two powers: symbolic and coercive. The gun
produces reaction over others, its provided with a symbolic power so strong that blinds soldiers from recognizing their
own relatives(Trenholm et al., 2012).
Its a valuable approach to understand how this kind of masculinity is built by recurring to Turner (1969) and
Foucault (1999 [1975]). By which processthe militarized masculinity identity is achieved? We could look to this
(re)construction as a ritual process(Turner, 1969) both to adults and children although the emphasis will be given to
child soldiers due to being in a process where their identities are under negotiation 6 (Trenholm et al., 2012).
Passage/transition rites are marked by three phases: separation, margin/limen and aggregation.7. The separation could be
seen when boys leave their villages (during puberty8 or before), revealing a symbolic disconnection from their society with
the entrance inarmies, but they also split from their original values and ideas. The liminal period is associated with being
in the limbo in which they suffer a categorical emptiness and they have to do what is asked, as well as being subjected to
punishments (Turner, 1969). In the last phase, it is reintegrated under a new status and the passage is consumed, from
children they became soldiers, in other words, was expelled the child and it was given the physiognomy of a soldier
(Foucault, 1999 [1975]) acquiring the militarized masculine identity, where there is an automatic docility in which the
power is dissociated from the body.
The hegemonic form of masculinity is obtained and there is no place for deviants. Puberty is a bridge between the
childhood and the adulthood which involves passage rites and it is here that tends to occur the (re)construction of
masculinities. This militarized masculine identity it is an extreme expression of masculine sexuality (Treholm et al., 2012).
Through ritual process, rapes, war and docility, there is a reconstruction of their origin masculinities to a militarized one.
The body as an object and target of power becomes manipulable, its a submissive body, appropriated and dominated
(Foucault, 1999 [1975]), although they think they have power over themselves, the reality is:
()the switch metaphor tends to cast peacekeepers as unthinking automatons. (Higate, 2007: 102).
CONCLUSION
It was already mentioned that identities are fluid, for example, what was womens role before colonialism, after
colonialism it radically changed (hence the brief presentation about the countryin order to have a diachronic approach).
Before colonialism women roles were constituted by total participation, these roles passed to a marginal position during
colonialism, until it became excluded during the post-colonialism9 (Mechanic, 2004: 13), and this is to say that:
()the history of Africa and its people was a European responsibility. (Comaroff&Comaroff, 1991: 122).
Masculinity is a constant:
()enactment of power() a way of being that he needs to perform and assert. (Lwambo, 2013: 52).
Reconstruction of gender and the impacts from colonialism reveal the capacity of the African societies to adapt,
proving that they arent static.Masculinity and violence have been seen as being connected but this doesnt mean that all
men are violent (Mechanic, 2004). Economic factors are behind the decision to join the armies (Trenholm et al., 2012;
Lwambo, 2013),sense of failure or failed masculinity are as well behindit too (Mechanic, 2004).With the goal to recover
their masculinity:
Mens sense of failure often result in unhealthy outlets for asserting masculinity. (Lwambo, 2013: 50).
It is with the failed masculinity that masculinity is lost and men join the armies to regain it. For childrens case
they didnt lose their masculinity, what military institution does is to reconstruct their masculinity according with
militarized masculinity standards. Looking back to rape acts, those acts became normalized in the militarized masculinity
composition (Trenholm et al., 2012). This kind of masculinity has parallels with other kinds of masculinity due to the
extension of those masculinities, like the case when one man can consider himself as a provider of the woman he rapes
(Mechanic, 2004; Baaz& Stern, 2009). Militarized masculinity identity has in itself dominance and violence (Mechanic,
2004) in a way more expressive than other kinds of masculinity already discussed here.
These armies, in my point of view, could be seen as factories endowed with hegemonic and coercive forms, in
which they obtain consensus, allowing the reconstruction of masculinities, molding them to a militarized one. Militarized

For being children their identity are not entirely built.

Turner (1969)concepts.

Its more accurate to use puberty than adolescence, because adolescence is an occidental construction and not all

societies have it.

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Its noteworthy to know that some women have roles in politics, however in lower number that men has (Mechanic, 2004).

Ethiopian International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research

2014; 2(1): 30-33.

masculine identity is achieved too with the combination of ritual process (Turner, 1969) - after passing by the three phases
and being reintegrated as soldier and with the docilization of the bodies (Foucault, 1999 [1975]) due to its capacity
of manipulation and automatization, leading to actions without self-reflection.
This is a hegemonic masculinitywhich attacks the subordinated ones (Grey & Shepherd, 2012) and it is not the only
form of masculinity. To conclude, all of us being students, militaries, researchers, among so many others need to have an
identity. Its what defines us. For those reasons there is the necessity to regain what sometimes can be lost.In some cases:
A militarized masculine identity may be better than no identity at all.(Trenholm et al., 2012: 19).
Gender identities keeppeoplealive. Not having an identity is similar to being socially dead.

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