There is also mounting empirical evidence suggesting a desensitization of combatants and a parallel dehumanizing of victims, which lead to the use, in many contemporary cases of conflict, of ever more extreme forms of violence (Wood 2009, 139). This is especially the case of prolonged conflicts, where the disruption of normal life seems to lead to a gradual loss of values. This is what Oloya (2013, 53) describes in the case of Uganda: “The absence of an overarching moral umbrella in times of war provides the opportunity for ‘anything goes’ because of the uncertainty over what is normal or abnormal, real and unreal, acceptable and unacceptable”. The frequent uprooting of combatants who are usually recruited extremely young, and who move from one combat site to another, entails the dissolution of preexisting social, and in particular familial links. By fully embracing militarized and aggressive masculinity models, combatants acknowledge their belonging to a new group, and their adhesion to its norms.
In parallel, it appears that the perpetration of sexual violence against men also performs internal functions for armed groups. Just like sexual violence against women has been shown to promote bonding between perpetrators (see, among many others, Alison 2007, 77; Goldstein 2004, 365; Leatherman 2011, 155; Price 2001, 16), male sexual brutalization, especially when it is perpetrated by a group, promotes cohesion and complicity. Perpetrators are bonded by horror, by the transgression of taboos, but they are also empowered by the very nature of their deeds, and by the process of bonding itself. Because they are often perpetrated collectively, these practices serve to foster group solidarity, which is always likely to falter in the tough conflict conditions. In addition, when several individuals participate in these acts, it entails a dilution of responsibility, meaning that the responsibility for this transgression is shared by the whole group of perpetrators, and not by its individual members. Nobody is innocent, but no specific individual bears the responsibility either. As I further detail in chapter 3, there is also some evidence that these episodes of sexual violence are sometimes orchestrated as bonding practices, initiation rituals and rites of passage for young and/or new combatants (Amir 1971). They can constitute a means of combatant socialization (Cohen 2013, 461), whereby new recruits are expected to enact the hyper violent and militarized models of masculinity that are valorized by the group.
It is also interesting to look at cases where sexual violence is perpetrated internally, on male members of the armed group itself. The empirical evidence I have collected in the Great Lakes region of Africa indicates, for instance, that those, men or women, who have just joined an armed group are much more likely to be targeted for sexual violence by their own colleagues. It can seem paradoxical to submit new recruits to forms of violence that are likely to break them and to undermine their capacities to fight, but Belkin and Terrell (2012, 560) suggest that sexual violence is something that a soldier has to learn to endure, a kind of test that proves that s/he is strong enough to be a soldier: “When male troops are raped, penetration can conjure up multiple meanings in military culture, including the notion that the victim is too weak to fend off attack, and hence not worthy of being a warrior (and so abjected), but also that he is strong enough to take it like a man”. In that sense, sexual violence perpetrated within armed groups can be interpreted as a masculinity performance for both the perpetrator and the victim if he is strong enough to defend himself and foil the attack or, failing that, if he manages to demonstrate his (masculine) resilience. Further, sexual violence can also be used to construct and maintain hierarchies of masculinity between combatants. More specifically, there are indications that sexual violence exerted on new (male) recruits is used as a strategy in the competition between combatants to reach leadership positions. That is, those who are unable to defend themselves when sexually attacked, and who are thereby feminized, are deemed unable to incarnate and to lead the group in the future: “The capacity to resist is also diminished by reducing the pool from which leaders are drawn; known victims, for example, are less likely to access leadership or military positions” (UN 2013, 12). Though this has to be nuanced as the perpetration of sexual violence against men often raises internal oppositions,[6] this suggests that perpetrators are also driven by their own ambition, and that the performance of an aggressive masculinity can in some cases constitute an effective tool to enhance one’s status within the group.
While many reported cases of conflict-related sexual violence against men seem to occur during internal and asymmetrical conflicts, such as in Eastern DRC or in Sri Lanka, there is also considerable empirical evidence that male sexual torture in detention has regularly been used in international conflicts or interventions, for instance, to enact prisonners’ submission, or to extract information. It has been documented in both recent and more ancient conflicts, such as by the Japanese in Manchouria, where they used various forms of sexual violence against men, including rapes, forced intercourse with family members and/or the dead (Chang 1997). Other types of conflict-related sexual violence against men, such as the sexual exploitation of local men and boys by international troops, have also attracted attention over the past few years, for instance, in the case of the Central African Republic (Deschamps et al. 2015). Admittedly, these types of violence are constantly and strongly condemned by international political and military authorities. But the fact that the sexual brutalization of men continues to occur at the level of day-to-day interactions between combatants, in spite of these condemnations, calls for attention.
As part of a broader repertoire of coercion, there are clear indications that sexual violence against men can be used as a way to secure the position of certain models of masculinity at the top of the international security order (Razack 2002). Though there certainly are relations between performances of masculinities and the distribution of power at the international level (Hooper 2001), I am not suggesting here that any international actor deliberately and systematically uses sexual violence against men as a strategy to establish its dominance at the international level, but rather that the gendered performativity of this type of violence, as described in the previous sections, holds when perpetrators and victims belong to different national and cultural universes. In other words, sexual violence against men, whether perpetrated by a few “bad apples” or endorsed by a large number of combatants, echoes and replicates wider strategies of domination. In that sense, it conveniently captures, as Razack (2005, 342) describes about the sexual torture perpetrated in Abu Ghraib, the articulation between racial, sexual and political power that is played out in so many international conflicts: “A pyramid of naked male prisoners forced to simulate sodomy conveyed graphically that the project of empire, the West’s domination of the non-West, required strong infusions of a violent heterosexuality and patriarchy”. When international combatants representing opposing sides are faced with one another, and in particular in detention settings where the body of the other is at the mercy of his (or her) enemies, sexual violence can enact domination and discipline, help with extracting confessions and bolster one’s masculinity. In other words, bodies of opponents, of political prisoners, of rebel combatants, are one of the loci where international power relations and power struggles are spelled out and waged.