In July, our international meeting on the gender exploitative marketing of war and weapons by the gun, arms, militaries in collusion with producers of film, television and video games shone a light on the ways in which these industries manipulate ideas about manhood to sell their weapons and normalise war. It laid the foundations for a global network of organisations who can work together to challenge the gun and arms industries. It left us with a sense of optimism about the possibility of addressing this as an important conflict and violence prevention strategy.
Introduction:
Between 15- 17 July, WILPF co-convened a meeting with Pathfinders for Peace, the Gender Equality Network for Small Arms Control (GENSAC), and the Small Arms Survey in Geneva. The meeting focused on understanding and developing strategies to counter practices used by militaries and the gun industry to promote militarisation, war and the sale of weapons. In particular those practices that exploit gender stereotypes and weaponise ideas about manhood and masculinities through gendered marketing tactics that glamorise men using weapons and getting involved in armed violence.
The meeting focused on five overlapping forms of gender exploitative marketing:
- Militainment (an abbreviation for the “Military-Entertainment Complex or the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network);
- Advertising of weapons;
- Video games designed by militaries and feature product placement by the gun and arms industries;
- Online platforms and social media as an enabler for the global marketing of weapons;
- The US gun lobby’s transnational activism to limit international treaties on guns and arms and its use of fear to market and sell weapons.
With a better understanding of these forces, participants then discussed opportunities for advocacy and action and identified reasons for optimism about the possibility of change.
The meeting brought critical civil society voices such as Nicole Hockley, the Co-Founder of Sandy Hook Promise whose son, Dylan, was killed, in the Sandy Hook school shooting in the US in 2012.
Dragan Bozanic, an expert on gender and small arms and light weapons (SALW) in the Balkans;
Folade Mutota, Executive Director and co-founder of the Women’s Institute for Alternative Development in the Trinidad and Tobago
Guy Feugap; a teacher and activist and the Africa Organizer for World BEYOND War
Natalia Pollachi an expert from Sou da Paz in Brazil
Jackson Katz, a gender activist, author and filmmaker who has produced pioneering films on the marketing of militarised masculinities such as “Tough Guise” and “Man Card”
Ray Acheson, Programme Director for WILPF’s disarmament programme,
Susan Lavington, the Chief Operation Officer at Brady and many more.
Gender Norms and Small Arms Proliferation in the Balkans, West and Southern Africa and the Americas
Dragan Bozanic, shared key insights about small arms in the Southeast Europe region.
Ownership and use of firearms in the Balkans is almost exclusively in the hand of men as 97.2% of firearms in the Balkans are owned by men and 98% of perpetrators of firearm related incidents are men. Moreover, 81% of firearm victims are men while the rest are women and this is largely related to domestic violence cases. Bozanic also spoke about the marketing of weapons in the Balkans and how influencers on social media use their platforms to encourage the use of weapons.
Guy Feugap highlighted the spread of SALW in West Africa with a focus on his native, Cameroon.
He noted that in 2004, the Small Arms Survey reported that there were 7,000 illicit SALW in Cameroon at that time. However, in the last decade, the spread of illicit arms in Cameroon has increased due to the spread of Boko Haram and the conflict between the government and the Anglophone separatists.
This has led to “more violence, insecurity and displacement, a collapse of economic productivity and the militarisation of society. This also sustains the perpetration of other forms of organised crimes such as drugs, human trafficking and violent extremism,” he added.
New figures by the African Union Commission’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council estimates at there are least 120 000 SALW in illegal circulation in Cameroon and this highlights Feugap’s analysis on the impact of conflict and social tension in the country.
From her point of view, Natália Pollachi spoke about the gendered rhetoric driving the rise of firearms in Brazil, in general, and in the hands of women, to be specific.
She said that the rhetoric champions a natural right to have a gun from a religious and civil rights point of view and links having a gun to asserting your freedom as a man as well as being desirable and not being a loser. She asserted that this rhetoric has been exported to Brazil by the US gun lobby who have worked closely with gun rights groups in Brazil.
When it comes to how the gun industry frames women and weapons, she argued that there is more emphasis on family and religion and the idea that, as a woman, you have the right to protect your family, and you also must protect yourself from everyday violence. In doing so, she said, the gun lobby is equating a gun with having a tool for gender equality.
Gender Exploitative Marketing of Guns and Arms
This session examined the role of gendered marketing in manufacturing and propagating harmful stereotypes and contributing to small arms proliferation, with a focus on the policy implications for addressing gender-based violence and promoting gender equality.
In this session, we learned that there are 400 million guns in America, more than the size of the population. Guns have become the leading cause of child mortality in the US.
In attendance was Brady, a gun violence prevention organisation established after the 1981 assassination attempt on US President Ronald Reagan during which White House Press Secretary James Brady was fatally wounded. A Brady representative noted that a lot of the advertising on weapons focuses on making men feel responsible for protecting their family. To address this, Brady has initiated the End Family Fire Campaign which focuses on encouraging practices such as safe gun storage.
We also heard about Brady’s ongoing efforts to engage with Hollywood to get production houses to decrease the use of guns on screen. This campaign draws on the success of other similar efforts to decrease exposure to harmful products like tobacco or alcohol in the entertainment sector.
Nicole Hockley noted that the gender exploitative marketing of the gun and arms industry doesn’t only play on masculinity, but also tried to reach and groom children as future customers.
“You have kid influencers. These are kids, well under the age of 18, that have millions of viewers on their YouTube and other channels promoting how to shoot guns, trying out different weapons. It’s usually with safety gear, it’s at a shooting range, there’s usually some sort of parent is present, but seeing kids with guns normalises it and makes it seem okay,” she said.
She added that we need to follow the money by learning how gun influencers are getting paid and added that there are marketing agencies whose sole existence is to help you get around the loopholes on social media for firearms even though influencers must disclose if they are getting any financial or in-kind compensation.
Understanding Militainment and the Marketing of Militarised Masculinities in film and television.
This session provided an overview of militainment and masculinities with insights from some of the major voices on militainment, Jackson Katz and Roger Stahl Stahl.
Stahl noted that in the period after the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, “war was being pre-packaged constantly as a kind of consumable object that we consume in our leisure time.” He explained that the Pentagon-Hollywood liaison office has been operational since the 1940s and formalised through positions such as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs who deals with Hollywood, video games and even influencers. Each division of the US military and the CIA has offices in Hollywood.
Stahl explained that the Pentagon offers its otherwise prohibitively expensive military equipment, bases and even personnel as extras in exchange for editorial influence. In this way, they gain significant leverage over how Hollywood shows weapons, wars and US interests and foreign policy.
Stahl added that “this is a contractual relationship, so they have a contract called the production assistance agreement that’s signed by both parties.”
Through his research, Stahl and a group of scholars unearthed about 60,000 pages of internal documents from the Department of Defense and were able to confirm that about 2,500 films and television shows have been subject to a contractual relationship with it.
Meanwhile Katz noted that every time a mass shooting happens in the United States, a lot of the public discussions focus on mental health and the availability of guns but few focus on another critical issue—the relation between masculinity and mens’ orientation to guns and violence.
Katz spoke about the shooter involved in the assassination attempt against Donald Trump that had occurred prior to the meeting. He said that research on shooters indicates that they are all too often young men who decided to use violence to change the narrative of their lives.
“From being the kid who is bullied and picked on to being the one who’s in control, who’s using violence to establish his manhood and to change the narrative so that he’s no longer the bullied, he’s now the one in control. He’s using violence to get something. And to me, this is so basic, and yet, it won’t be talked about in the mainstream…..many people are reluctant to state the obvious about the relationship between gender, especially masculinity or masculinities and violence, and militarized violence as well,” said Katz.
Katz concluded that “in the US, the ideological system and the media play a role in creating a narrative of manly achievement through the use of violence or the contained use of violence or the rogue use of violence. But certainly, in the military, it’s more systematized use of violence. That’s a means to achieve an end, which is validation of manhood.”
Watch the complete session below
Gunfluencers and the Marketing of Militarised Manhood
A representative from Everytown for Gun Safety gave a presentation about how guns are marketed. In it, he spoke about social media as a very important space for gun advertising as gun manufacturers circumvent restrictions by working with gunfluencers.
Gunfluencers are influencers who market guns to their audiences through their social media platforms. He noted that many shooters have used YouTube videos to learn how to increase the lethality of their attacks and evade police action.
In this same regard, Caroline Hayes of Equimundo said, “some media outlets are writing about a ‘crisis in manhood’ linking it to the breakdown of face-to-face socialisation, increased online presence, worsening economic prospects, and fear of losing social status. While some online spaces can help men feel seen, heard and validated, they can also be places where violence is marketed and promoted.”
Recently, Youtube implemented updates to its policy on firearms videos in attempts to restrict the content from children and also prohibiting videos showing acts such as removing safety devices from firearms.
The updates follow years of advocacy by organisations such as Brady and Everytown on gun-related content on youtube which has been identified as a popular platform with shooters.
Online Platforms, Gendered Marketing of Guns and Governance
In this session, we learned how users turn to Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, X and Instagram to promote the sale of guns and weapons.
Anna Antonakis, a political scientist exploring the intersections of gender, digital media and securities and a board member of Netzforma -an NGO working on strengthening feminist perspectives on national and international internet politics noted that online platforms do not have to disclose how their algorithms work and this gives them the opportunity to adapt them any time they want.
She added that “they can generate and have access to very interesting data that can be used for advertisement, and that is not under public and democratic scrutiny.”
Antonakis commented on the EU’s Digital Services Act which distinguishes between hosting services, intermediary services and online platforms and includes specific rules for very large online platforms and search engines (VLOPS and VLOSE).
In the plenary discussion that followed there was discussion about doing more advocacy with platforms such as YouTube and Tiktok, including to achieve both de-platforming and demonetization. Everytown has done advocacy to get YouTube to demonetize certain influencers and they did do that in 2023 with some accounts.
Opportunities for Advocacy
With a clearer understanding of the gender exploitative marketing of weapons, war and militarised masculinities, the meeting turned to existing opportunities for advocacy and activism. These included:
1. Emerging efforts to change gun and arms related portrayals in film and television;
2. Creative and effective national and transnational legal strategies;
3. Emerging international commitments at the UN, amongst Regional Bodies and in Member States; and
4. Growing attention in the US and globally to gun violence as a public health crisis and to public health strategies as key to finding solutions.
Using Litigation on Exploitative Marketing of Guns
In this panel on the use of strategic litigation to hold the gun industry accountable for the harm it causes, Jonathan Lowy, a legal pioneer from Global Action on Gun Violence (GAGV), spoke about the various international cases he and GAGV are involved in. This includes two cases brought by the government of Mexico against US gun manufacturers and the Joaquin Oliver v. USA case filed in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the US government by the Oliver family, whose son, Joaquin was killed in the Parkland massacre in 2018 . This highlights the role that litigation and transnational advocacy can play more generally to building momentum for global advocacy to rein in gender exploitative marketing of weapons and war.
In the case at the Inter-American Commission case, Lowy explained that they are arguing that United States gun policy “violates the United States human rights obligations that the US is signatory to.” Lowy added that this case could have serious impact as it could pressure the US for violating its obligations at the OAS and this could have a larger influence on its foreign policy.
Meanwhile Nicole Hockley who led the lawsuit against Remington, a gun manufacturer approached half a dozen large law firms who all argued that this case is impossible because of a law in America called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLACA) which essentially makes gun manufacturers immune to getting sued.
She added that the only way you can ever sue them is if the weapon malfunctions, but in 2014, they filed a lawsuit against Remington and used “a niche law in Connecticut on unfair trade practices….it is a very sophisticated law, and we thought, this is something that we could use..” .
Remington ended up settling and the discovery motion granted them access to many previously secret documents and marketing strategies that Remington had not made public. These have been of enormous value to gun violence prevention advocates.
Natalia Pollachi added that there was litigation in Brazil against a major firearms producer that was posting about a promotion on social media and she noted that this was against the national regulation because they targeted an indiscriminate audience space and underage users could see this advertisement which basically urged them to enjoy the discount and buy an assault rifle. After this was challenged in a collective lawsuit by her organisation, and other several consumer protection and human rights groups -the manufacturer was forced to take down those advertisements.
Commitments and Opportunities -International and Regional Bodies
In a session chaired by Hine-Wai Loose from Control Arms, discussion focused on new developments and opportunities within the United Nations. Both Patrizia Scannella who heads WILPF’s Human Rights team and Daniel Quinones Moegster from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights shared information on the new resolutions on civilian acquisition of firearms passed by the Human Rights Council in the last two years. They provided an update on Resolution 50/12 of 2022 and its subsequent report which recognizes the ways in which gun manufacturers exploit ideas about masculinities and includes potentially very useful language. The report states: protection and self-defence messaging in advertising often associates the acquisition and possession of firearms with masculinity and military themes.
Patrizia Scannella noted that the recent UN New Agenda for Peace makes recommendations to states, including several actions on preventing conflict and violence and sustaining peace and in this agenda, the role of illicit, small arms-led weapons in armed conflict and gender-based violence and the negative impact it has on sustainable development were noted. Although gendered marketing of weapons is not an issue that’s specifically addressed in the new agenda for peace, it does highlight the need to dismantle patriarchal power structures, including the need to consider the role of men which represents an opportunity for engagement.
Scannella reminded us that WILPF has noted in its reports on the UN’s Business and Human Rights processes that “unlike with other high-risk sectors, such as the extractives industry and private security military companies, hardly any discussions on the firearms industry have taken place in the business and human rights field since the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human more than ten years ago.”
Conclusion
Participants connected and formed an informal Community of Practice with the aim of continuing to coordinate research and advocacy on the five pillars of work identified above and discussed in the meeting. WILPF will continue coordinating with Small Arms Survey, GENSAC and Pathfinders for Peace to ensure ongoing follow-up.
A detailed meeting report will be made available by the end of September 2024.
Further reading
The Men and Masculinities in Gender Responsive Small Arms Control research report published in 2022 looked at the links between men, masculinities, and small arms – in particular, guns, as they are often linked to notions of manliness, and it also provides practical analysis of contemporary issues in gender responsive small arms control.
Gun Violence and the Marketing of Militarism: Militainment and Masculinities by Ray Acheson.
UnTargeting Kids: Stop Gun Marketers from Advertising to Kids
