Because women are assumed to be nonviolent, their participation in militant groups can humanize organizations and legitimize rebellion. But gender beliefs are deeply engrained, and consequently women’s involvement can also generate resistance. This article explores how militants navigate this tension through their political visuals, specifically analyzing images of ‘armed mothers’ across six diverse conflicts. Leveraging life-giving as the ‘natural’ role for women, these images signal violent disruption of everyday life and authorize political violence in response. But they also stress the temporariness of gender-role expansion, promising and preserving a ‘return to normal’. Militant groups contextualize, justify, and humanize violent struggle through these images even in cases where women rarely participate on the front lines.

中文翻译：

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“既需要又受到威胁”：武装母亲在激进的视觉效果中

因为女性被认为是非暴力的，她们参与激进组织可以使组织人性化并使叛乱合法化。但性别观念根深蒂固，因此女性的参与也会产生抵制。本文探讨了激进分子如何通过他们的政治视觉来驾驭这种紧张局势，特别是分析了六种不同冲突中“武装母亲”的形象。这些图像将赋予生命作为女性的“自然”角色，标志着日常生活的暴力破坏并授权政治暴力作为回应。但他们也强调性别角色扩张的暂时性，承诺并保持“回归正常”。即使在女性很少参与前线的情况下，激进组织也通过这些图像将暴力斗争置于背景下、合理化和人性化。