In discourses about wartime (sexual) violence, gender-based violence, trauma and vulnerability are feminized, paradoxically resulting in a heightened vulnerability of women, and in a reluctance on the part of male survivors to seek physical and mental health help. Such representations also affect our capacity to see and include survivors of sexual violence who do not fit the stereotype of the helpless woman victim. Yet if, as argued by Detraz (2012, 11), “feminist security studies concentrate on the ways world politics can contribute to the insecurity of individuals, especially individuals who are marginalized and disempowered”, then specific attention should also be paid to wartime sexual violence against men. Failing to do so results in a dearth of information, and in incomplete data and analyses on wartime sexual violence, which reinforce its impact on survivors, the community and the wider social order. In brief, our politics of analysis and intervention with regard to wartime sexual violence seem imbued with the very gendered ideology that makes it a widespread phenomenon in conflicts and wars.
Further, these myopic representations of wartime sexual violence impede our understanding of the phenomenon itself, in particular with regard to its articulation with wider societal power relations. As advocated by Vojdik (2014, 924), “the growing recognition of the sexual violation of men during war provides the opportunity to broaden our understanding of the relationship between sexual violence, constructions of gender, and the negotiation of power during armed conflict”. Overlooking male sexual victimization leads to analyses of sexual violence as directed against women because of their gender, inadvertently masking other dimensions of power that might also come into play, such as social, economic, ethnic, caste or political positioning, to quote but a few. If (wartime) sexual violence is indeed, as generations of feminists have argued, first and foremost about power, it is not only the gender positioning of the victim that explains that s/he is targeted, but also the intersection of various structures of super/subordination, such as ethnicity, race, socioeconomic relations, and so on. That women are more likely than men to be located at the intersection of several of these structures of subordination undoubtedly plays a role in the fact that they are also much more likely to be victims of sexual violence.
, therefore, broadening the analysis by accounting for wartime sexual violence against men is a way to unveil the underlying structures of power that play a key role in conflict and violence patterns—as well as in societal relations during peace time, for instance, it is likely to help us to shed light on endogamic types of structural and physical violence, as well as on internal power struggles, which are often obscured by broader divisions between conflict factions. Temporarily shifting the gaze away from female sexual victimization paradoxically allows us to better understand not only wartime sexual violence as a whole, but also other types of violence perpetrated during conflicts, and to which it is tightly connected. It also enhances our understanding of how the specific social, gender, political, economic and so on positioning of individuals has an impact on the types of violence that they are more likely to be victims of, and what resources they might convey to cope with it. In short, paying more attention to conflict-related male sexual victimization dramatically increases our awareness of conflict patterns, and our ability to come up with appropriate responses.
The analysis of wartime sexual violence against men developed in this book is located at the intersection of feminist and masculinity studies, and attempts to “bridge the gap” (Beasley 2013) between postmodern and poststructuralist feminism, and modern and structuralist masculinities studies. Building on Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity and on the debate around masculinities and especially around Raewyn Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, I show that wartime sexual violence against men can be understood as a phenomenon embedded in the gendered ideology of conflict and the wider social order. According to Butler, gender is a performative dimension of social differences based on established and socially recognized norms of super/subordination (Butler 1990). Gender is not a quality of the female body, as many approaches to sexual violence in conflict seem to suggest. Instead, bodies become gendered through the repetition of acts and practices that relate to known social norms. In Butler’s words, “Gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts” (Butler 1990, 140–41).
If gender has often been conflated with women, so have masculinity and men. Yet, Connell and Messerschmidt state that “masculinities are configurations of practice that are accomplished in social action and, therefore, can differ according to the gender relations in a particular social setting” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 837). Thus, masculinities are not attached to the male body but are played out in the process of configuring the social positioning of individuals and groups in the ensuing power structure. This fluidity allows models of masculinity to adapt to social tensions, stabilizing patriarchal power or reconstituting it in new conditions. Gender has its own historicity so that forms of masculinity and femininity are negotiated in the tensions over relations of power in society. They are subject to change and to constant adaptation, in connection to the structuring of the social hierarchy. Thus, gender differentiations reflect a relation of masculinity/femininity whereby “feminizing processes simultaneously produce and justify profound inequalities” as they are grounded on naturalized hierarchies of dominance and subordination (Hawkesworth 2006, 132). This means that men as well as communities can be feminized by attacking the foundations of their masculinity.
Within this frame of analysis, this book proposes to explore how wartime sexual violence, and in particular wartime sexual violence against men, impacts on gender identities, and on power relations, between individuals, but also between and within the groups they belong to. Because of the association that is usually made between masculinity and power, and between femininity and vulnerability, sexual violence, as a way to subjugate and feminize the victim while empowering the perpetrator, has a strong impact on intersecting gender, ethnic, racial, political and socio-economic hierarchies. Through sexual violence, the victim is simultaneously feminized and subjugated; in parallel, the perpetrator’s masculinization and domination are enforced. And because gendered hierarchies play a central ordering and disciplining function in societies, sexual violence against both men and women has notable consequences for the relative positioning of individuals, but also of groups, be they defined in ethnic, cultural, religious, socio-economic or political terms. In other words, the perpetration of wartime sexual violence entails both individual and collective consequences, and is thereby likely to heavily influence, and be influenced by, power relations between conflict actors.
Analyzing the relation between wartime sexual violence, gender identity, and social positioning, therefore, demands to deconstruct common understandings of masculinity, which associate it to strength and physical invulnerability, and which displace that vulnerability into the feminine (Thomas 2002, 62–63). It requires to explore how male survivors try to cope with sexual victimization, how it affects their gender identity as well as the perpetrator’s and how communities to which survivors belong react to this attack on those who are traditionally supposed to embody collective strength. The meanings attached to male sexual victimization, be it by survivors, by perpetrators or by the wider community, are paramount for understanding its impact on societal relations of power, and on conflict patterns. In particular, examining the motivations of perpetrators, and the role played by militarized models of masculinity, sheds light on how some individuals can use sexual violence, among other types of violence and coercion, in order to increase their own power over other individuals, armed groups or communities. What is at stake in the perpetration of wartime sexual violence (against men) is, therefore, not just the enactment of powerful and highly violent models of masculinity but also the enforcement or maintenance of a control over economic, social, sexual and political resources.