Gender Is a Weapon: Liberalism, Difference, and US Counterinsurgency           

Following the end of the draft in 1973, the US military offered women the opportunity to transform their lives—to obtain an education, receive healthcare, and prove their worth to the nation. By the time the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan at the turn of the twenty-first century, the all-volunteer force was heavily reliant on women—particularly Black women and women of color. In the midst of these imperial occupations, the military weaponized gender difference itself, developing all-women counterinsurgency teams to gain greater access to civilian populations while framing the teams as humanitarian, benevolent—even feminist.

This talk will introduce Elizabeth Mesok’s new book, a sobering account of violent paradoxes of women’s military service. Offering powerful commentary on the project of military liberal inclusion at the precise historical moment in which it is unraveling, Mesok forces us to reckon with liberalism’s impossible promises and its cunning work to erase the harms and injuries it leaves in its wake.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Elizabeth Mesok is Visiting Scholar at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Bern.

A critical theorist of war, security, and militarism, Elizabeth’s research bridges cultural studies and political science. Most recently, she held a Swiss National Science Foundation PRIMA grant at the University of Basel, directing research across Kenya on global counter terrorism policy and practice. She received her PhD in American Studies from New York University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Global American Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of Gender Is a Weapon (University of Michigan Press, 2026) and working on her next book on the rise of far-right movements inside military and security institutions.