How is the line drawn?

This chapter presents distinction as a performance and conveys the dynamism of everyday distinction practices. Distinction takes on an explicit visual life in the Kinetic realm: humanitarian actors deploy signs and symbols, and they carry themselves in deliberate ways to show they are distinct. Everything in these practices is a matter of degree and subtle gradation. Other international actors emerge here as potential sources of contamination, including actors who would be entitled to civilian protection in IHL. Humanitarian actors embark on dogged attempts to assert distinction from these other actors, but distinction is always already compromised. While the possible futility of their distinction project leads some humanitarian actors to rally behind distinction even more strongly, other humanitarians balance distinction with other pressing priorities. In the civil–military training spaces, international military and peacekeeping actors voice incredulity at the logic of humanitarian distinction practices. From the perspective of these other actors, humanitarians are behaving erratically and prevaricating. The Intellectual realm focuses on the civilian concept, locating a continuum of ‘civilianness’ in international law. The discussion examines qualities that have historically been associated with civilianness—such as harmlessness, innocence, and non-participation in fighting—and highlights the shifting relevance of an armed/unarmed marker. Engaging with the adjudication of crimes against humanity cases in the Hague, it is shown that even in international tribunals civilianness might be a matter of degree. The chapter closes by introducing three unfamiliar figures: the ‘civilian plus’, ‘mere civilian’, and ‘civilian minus’.