This paper analyses the ways in which militarised masculinities are being (re)negotiated at an individual level within NATO, as the alliance seeks to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and engage with the wider ‘Women, Peace and Security’ agenda. Drawing upon the accounts of two military men working in this area, this paper identifies processes of (re)negotiation undertaken in regards to perceptions of their masculinity. By choosing to work on gender issues these men actively transgress and challenge certain expectations regarding what men should ‘do’ and ‘be’ within a highly militarised organisation. I argue that this ‘transgression’ prompts both opportunity and challenge: Opportunity in the sense that it offers a ‘reflexive moment’, within which these men are transferred from a ‘universal nothing to a particular something’ (Kronsell, 2006), whereby the ubiquity of masculinity at NATO and their place within it is exposed and experienced by them. Simultaneously, this transgression prompts ‘challenges’ to their masculinity – in the form of feminisation, trivialisation and a conflation of gender with homosexuality – from resistant elements within the organisation. I argue that due to a lack of alternative discourses surrounding masculinity and masculine ideals within NATO, narratives of heteronormative, masculinist protection (Young, 2003) - facilitated by an inherent patriarchal privilege (Connell, 1995) - are deployed by these men as a counter-challenge. This serves to both ‘shore-up’ their individual masculinity and produce a palatable rationale for men doing ‘gender work’ more generally. The paper concludes by detailing how this process of challenge and counter-challenge shuts down the potential for a more extensive personal reflection on the power and privilege that masculinity affords these men within militarised organisations such as NATO.
