Weaponising Gender and Sexuality

Written by Janis Blackburne

Today is International Women's Day. The theme for 2025 is Accelerate Action - at the current rate of progress it will take until 2158 to reach full gender parity.

But here today I’m turning my thoughts towards whats happening In Palestine and how gender and sexuality is being weaponised.

There is no turning away from the harrowing images and videos coming out of Palestine each day. In one such video, not explicitly ‘brutal’ like the rest of them, an Israeli soldier shows a pair of high heels belonging to a Palestinian woman. He records himself saying how pretty they are, and that it is going to be a gift for his engagement party. A souvenir from a ruined, desolate home.

Added to the spectacle of conquest images, we have also seen image after image of Israeli soldiers gleefully holding lingerie found in the homes they have destroyed or pushed out Palestinians from. Clothing belonging to women who may have been killed or displaced. In the ruined homes, in the debris of what was once some family’s personal space, finding and displaying intimate objects as a performance of military masculinity is beyond obscene.

On the other side of the coin - The woman in the IDF are being presented as “symbols of progress and equality,” and “pushing new boundaries”. In many ways, it becomes a way to bolster the army’s image as the presence of women seeks to make the army appear more humane – after all, women are ostensibly kind, caring and nurturing and so, the institution they represent is a projection of the same benevolent nature.

It is also a way to appeal to gender equality claims – that women are equal participants, given equal opportunities and equally invested in the “righteous” fight against the “terrorist” other. This speaks to a weaponising of gender and sexuality where these “courageous” women fighting for their right of ownership over Palestinian land are shown to represent the perfect form of female subjectivity, as against the otherised Palestinian women.

On International Women’s Day (8 March), as activists gather on every platform hard fought and won by women’s rights advocates following decades of struggles, we must see it as an urgent responsibility to raise our voices against military occupation and its unimaginable violence. Otherwise, the deafening screams and silences from Palestine will forever haunt us.

I feel I must mark this day by remarking how much I admire Francesca Albenese. The efforts to silence her are enormous. On her recent trip to Germany despite police intimidation and last minute venue changes she delivered an historic speech in Berlin which you can hear via Jewish Voice for Labour.