gw- battle age

We place "battle-age" in quotation marks to problematize a term that rolls off the tongue too easily. The "battle-age" construction implicitly assumes that if a male is of an age that renders him liable to military conscription and combat, his entire identity should be so defined. This renders the analyst complicit with those who would subordinate the destiny of "battle age" males to this outside demand – akin to defining women by their capacity to be raped, and suggesting as well that "battle-age" men are "asking for it." With this equation of males and combatants completed, the analyst or policymaker can move to the final stage of effacing all non-combatant males from the policy and analytical equation, a phenomenon that is also commonplace.