Training soldiers to kill requires dehumanization that extends to women and ethnic others

Evidence

Researchers have shown that one of the most difficult challenges militaries face is that of teaching human beings to kill other human beings, and that doing so requires dehumanizing others by promoting the belief that another human is somehow a “lesser” creature. As we will see, one of the central forms of dehumanization promoted by military training and the culture of daily life in the military has been the supposed inferiority of women—that women are less than men. Institutionalized military prostitution provides one important source for this dehumanization of women and the militarized masculinity that helps perpetuate it. In places where there is an ethnic difference between GIs and sex workers, military prostitution can also reinforce societal beliefs about supposed racial and ethnic superiority, and the naturalness of some people serving and others being served. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 557

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s work on killing and the psychology of dehumanization in military training. — connects to: Enemies are dehumanized into vermin before military force can be unleashed — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1451