Abstract
There is a lacuna on how gender informs the talks concerning the pre-emptive ban on lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs). This study does a critical discourse analysis on texts produced by participants of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) on LAWs, in an attempt to unearth the gendered language within these debates. Propositions against the ban do a gender stereotyping on LAWs, and also try to imprint a ‘male-protector’ imagery to the nation willing to use them. Discourses in favour of the ban have merely indirectly critiqued such hyper-masculinised approach. To unpack deeper concerns regarding the usage of LAWs, this piece suggests a direct exposition of the masculinised layers of arguments against the ban.