Chapter 2
Making Sense of Wartime Sexual Violence Against Men
Making sense of wartime sexual violence against men demands to solve a series of puzzles. Leaving aside cases in which sexual violence against men can be assimilated to homosexual acts—according to the data that has been collected up to now, these seem to be extremely rare—why do men in arms (and more rarely, women) rape, castrate, mutilate and sexually humiliate other men, when some of these practices could easily be interpreted as homosexual, thus potentially putting the perpetrator in an awkward position (Sivakumaran 2005)? And why do representatives of the State, such as soldiers or police officers, perpetrate such transgressive acts when so many other methods of torture have proven efficient to ensure the submission of prisoners and/or of political opponents? It also seems paramount to understand how this type of violence connects to other types of conflict-related brutalization, to the wider conflict, but also to societal relations of power, as determined by gender, class, caste, religion and so on. In this perspective, the fact that this type of violence is almost systematically silenced but seemingly frequently practiced is extremely intriguing, and calls for further investigation. What role does wartime violence against men play in the overall conflict, and in the relations of power that conflicts aim at challenging, or enforcing?
Scholarship has now well described and explained how gender constitutes a major dimension of social life and, most importantly for our purposes here, of conflicts (see, among many others, Goldstein 2004; Shepherd 2008; Sjoberg 2013; Yuval-Davis 1997). One of the most striking ways in which gender relations are played out in conflict situations relates to how conflict actors aim at affirming their own strength, defined as a masculine trait, by subordinating and disempowering feminized (male and female) “others”. Depending on what the conflict is about, the targeted “others” may be singled out by their ethnicity, class, caste, religion, ideology, sexual orientation and so on, and sometimes by several of these factors at the same time. Exercising structural, physical as well as symbolic violence on them enacts their desired subordination, while it underscores and magnifies the assumed superiority of the perpetrator(s). One of the functions of violence, whatever its type, is to use pain in order to create distance between the perpetrator and the victim, at the ontological and psychological level, signaling the subjugation of the victim (Scarry 1985). In this perspective, wartime sexual violence plays a key role in power relations lying at the core of conflicts, because while it targets individuals defined by their ethnic, class, caste, religion and/or ideological positioning, it weaves together gender roles and values with these other social dimensions. However, what is important to underscore is that who is targeted for sexual violence, and how, is not just related to the characteristics of the conflict (say, who are the main conflict actors), but also to the multiple power relations that exist between and within groups in conflict. As research has now well established (see, for instance, Watts and Zimmerman 2002; WHO 2013), victims of wartime sexual violence do not just belong to the “other” group, and most conflicts also display high rates of “endogenous” sexual brutalization (Swaine 2018), for instance, perpetrated by relatives or community leaders. In that sense, sexual violence is not just embedded in the gendered ideology of the conflict; it is an inherent mechanism of reproduction of the wider social order.
Wartime sexual violence reinforces the feminization/masculinization processes entailed through the use of violence by underscoring their gendered meaning: targeted individuals are branded as inferior not just because they are being brutalized, but also because using their bodies as recipients of sexual violence further feminizes them—and thus further signifies their subordinate status. In parallel, perpetrators are (re-)comforted in their dominant masculinity. Other mechanisms can be at play, such as the wish to “demoralize” civilian populations one wishes to subdue, or to undermine their capacity to react, by breaking the capacity of their (masculine) members to play their role of protectors vis-à-vis their mothers, wives or daughters, but also vis-à-vis themselves. Wartime sexual violence is, therefore, never just related to gender issues; it is informed by other variables, and it lies at the nexus of relations of power—including patriarchal ones—within a given social order. This is why not paying proper attention to wartime sexual violence against men, as is the case in most existing accounts of sexual violence, deprives us from a full understanding of how wartime sexual violence participates in, and results from, larger political and social struggles.
In the following sections, I propose to explore the meaning of wartime sexual violence against men within the wider conflictual situation, but also in the context of the power struggles that cut across and between groups in conflict. Building on Butler’s concept of gender performativity (1990) that highlights how bodies become gendered through the repetition of acts and practices that relate to known social norms, I show how gender, and by extension gender-based and sexual violence, and more specifically male sexual brutalization, take their meaning in relation to certain social norms. This approach allows me to understand male sexual brutalization as not only connected to sexual violence against women, but also to wider societal issues, as suggested by Vojdik (2014, 940): “Acts of sexual violence toward men and women are related and mutually reinforcing, operating within particular institutions and social systems of gender that privilege and empower masculinity as male and heterosexual”. In other words, my aim here is to explore how wartime sexual violence against men can only be understood in relation to how power is distributed within and between the concerned groups, but also to dominant masculinity models and gendered social hierarchies.
Neither masculinity nor femininity are in principle attached to, respectively, male or female bodies. Both are played out in the process of configuring the social positioning of individuals and groups. It is thus important to recall the (potential) disconnection between models of hegemonic and of dominant masculinities, and the sex of those who perform them, as underscored by Cornwall and Lindisfarne (1994, 21): “(Masculinized) power is consistently associated with those who have control over resources and who have an interest in naturalizing and perpetuating that control. This means that in gender, class and race hierarchies, men and women who are pre-eminent may be included in particular gendered constructions of power which simultaneously disempower subordinate men and women”. Nothing, in principle, prevents a man from claiming a feminine identity, or from being assigned one—just as, for instance, a female soldier can claim a masculine social role, or be assigned one. This inherent fluidity of gender, especially during conflict times as traditional gender identities and roles are put under considerable pressure (Enloe 1983), means that what makes individuals masculine, or feminine, changes over time and space, and that there are many ways to enact masculinity, or femininity.
In conflict settings, this plasticity of gender can be turned into a very powerful instrument of domination and subjugation. In particular, feminization is often used in social and political relations to produce and justify domination, not just between men and women, but also among men, and sometimes also, though this hasn’t been much studied yet, among women. Feminization as a domination strategy can thus be enforced on female or male bodies, or on individuals who identify as neither (Hooper 2001, 71). It is important here to understand that feminization does not necessarily impose a straightforward feminine identity on men (or women). Rather, feminization can produce an array of effects on individuals that were previously identified as masculine: it can entail their downgrading to a lower (subordinate) masculine status (just like masculinization strategies can “upgrade” them), it can instill doubts on their masculinity and it can also assert a feminine identity on them, for instance, in the case of the previously mentioned Berdache. Thus, feminization operates as a major ordering principle between hegemonic, dominant, and subjugated masculinities, but also between masculinities and femininities, and between femininities.