FASHION, GENDER AND TERRORISM
Laqueur referred to terrorism as the “propaganda of the deed” later, Weinberg and Eubank called the same act “propaganda by deed. It is important to note that rebels view terrorism as the favored choice among the many available options of showing both political and religious disagreements. Henne argues that final decision to resort to terrorism and abandon other available options like an uprising, deposition and guerrilla war is deliberate.These rebel groups choose this form of rebellion because of its expected psychological effects on the victims and the general public. The global society should be more concerned about the pleas that the terrorism and terrorist groups appear to offer to the youths regardless of their nationality, religious affiliations, and gender. There are widespread reports in scientific journals, research papers and all over the media of young men and women recruited daily or seeking to join the terrorist organizations specifically from Europe, America Australia and very recently Africa. What is still not clear to the world is the number of young, middle-aged or old men and women joining these terror groups without raising eyebrows to the rest of the world. This essay will review the involvement of gender and fashion in terror.
Gender and Terrorism
Initially, gender definitions focused on differentiating between the societal and the biological disparities of men and women. A study done by Renzetti conceptualized gender as more than just the biological differences in men and women and connoted it to power. In this paper, we view gender as a social concept upon which the supposed power and position held by an individual in the society is tied. Power is defined by Renzetti as the Individual capability to make critical decisions and conduct themselves as they deem right. By power, they imply the individual ability to make decisions and to behave as they please. Gender, therefore, can comprehensively denote the social and societal construct of responsibilities and duties allotted to women and men, partial to environmental, socioeconomics, dogmatic, cultural and spiritual factors.
In contrast to its practice and insinuation, the society cannot use sex and gender interchangeably. While phenotypical masculine and feminine define an individual’s sex, gender denotes the traits that one; biologically categorized as either man or woman should have with regards to their sex. This definition points out that gender is more associated with the behavioral expectation from a person than their biological being male or female. Therefore, all that gender does is to describe the socially constituted behavioral expectations, stereotypes and rules that construct masculinity and femininity. Therefore, looking through gender lenses to study terrorism, the idea of ‘women’ or “man” must not be considered gender-neutral. The world should view them as individual gendered-actors aggressively committed to terrorism activities and residing in this gendered world.
Fashion and Terrorism
Despite the potential the fashion industry has, scientists have done little studies to precisely determine the level of its involvement in propagation or condemnation of terrorism. The society has linked certain clothing styles to terrorism, for example, the Islamic Hijab. This kind of stereotype thinking is not necessarily factual. Terrorism accusations should not be attached to certain cultures or given choice of style; rather it should be based on individuality. It is important to understand that when certain fashion choices may still raise suspicion, researchers, advocates and fashion creators must continue to fight the dress code shames that the mass media purports to have possible terrorist targets and mistrusts.
The fashion industry has never probably will never be home for the weak and cowardice actions like terrorism. In fact, the world should take advantage of the Right to choose what style is best for an individual together with the print media to shun cowardice. This concept worked out well when the Belgian designer, Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck commenced his fashion show with a model putting on a PVC shirt written “Stop Terrorising Our World.”
In conclusion, the world should not victimize individuals who are innocent of terror activities mainly because they are women or men. Instead, the global terrorism investigations should go beyond the cultural beliefs, the way of dressing or the religion affiliations. The world should focus their attention on individual behaviors that may lead to substantial information about individual involvement in terrorism.
