In the long term, the strength of hegemonic conflict narratives that are shunning and silencing male survivors’ experiences is likely to slowly fade and allow for alternative and more inclusive narratives to unfold. However, decades may need to pass before these taboo issues can be discussed openly.
The legacy of conflict-related sexual violence against men also raises issues that are strikingly similar to those pertaining to sexual violence against women: since, as we have seen in the previous chapter, many of these acts were perpetrated by members of armies or armed groups, it is likely that most survivors will have lost trust in security institutions in general, and in people carrying weapons in particular. Instead of considering post-conflict (and often reformed) armies, police and justice systems as providers of security and stabilization, both female and male survivors generally display a very high level of mistrust and defiance towards these institutions:
I don’t trust soldiers. They are the same as other brigands, here or at home [in South Kivu] they steal, they pillage, they torture, they rape all the same. (Bernard 2013, interview)
Because most cases of sexual violence are not prosecuted—also due to a lack of reporting, as we will further detail in chapter 7—trust in the justice system decreases too. And when sexual violence has been perpetrated by a traditional or community leader, as is sometimes the case, trust in authority is replaced by a general defiance and feeling of bewilderment. Survivors who have not fled and resettled elsewhere might also have to meet on an everyday basis their torturers.[10] This can be paarticularly painful, especially when these perpetrators remain unprosecuted and when they hold respectable positions in the post-conflict society, which happens, for instance, in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Karabegović 2010). As a result, social structures and links are weakened, and difficult to mend, which does not bode well in the perspective of stabilization and reconciliation.
And consequences are significant at the economic level too. Many male survivors I have met have had to give up their previous job or occupation, because of the physical suffering and sometimes incapacitation entailed by sexual violence, but also because of shame and of the ostracism they face, and sometimes for fear of encountering the perpetrators again (see also Christian et al. 2011). As a result, their families experience a great loss of revenue and of social status, which has repercussions in terms of community development too. Male survivors who are not able to resume their economic activities are likely to be abandoned by their families, forcing many of them into begging and turning them into easy prey for trafficking networks. In rural areas like in the parts of North Kivu where violence has been the most intense, many male victims of sexual violence have been killed, abducted or have fled, and the others are often too young, too old or too weak to engage in significant economic activities. Of course, impediments to economic development relate to many other factors than sexual violence, but it is clear that the multi-faceted victimization that both male and female survivors of sexual violence face constitutes a major obstacle to economic recovery. The collective consequences of wartime sexual violence thus do not just affect traditional political and cultural structures, but also social and economic ones.
At the interpersonal level, sexual violence against both men and women also induces changes in gender roles and in relations within families that might have an impact on wider communities and social relations. Some wounds are likely to never heal, like when a man has been forced to rape a member of his family and/or when members of the family were forced to watch the perpetration of sexual violence on the survivor. Trans-generational transmission of trauma is also a possibility, as is a degradation of parental authority over the next generation, leading to a further unraveling of community structures.
Finally, it is worth underscoring the long-term health impact of sexual violence, not just in terms of trauma, mental illnesses and serious physical injuries, but also in terms of spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Although I have not found any evidence of sexual violence against men being used as a deliberate tool for spreading HIV, as it has been demonstrated in cases of systematic sexual violence against women in Rwanda, for instance, (Aginam and Roupiya 2012), it is clear that many male survivors have been infected by HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. This raises serious concerns for the already weak, underfunded and understaffed health sectors in conflict as well as post-conflict societies.
Chapter 5
The Elusiveness of Narratives on Wartime Sexual Violence Against Men
When wartime sexual violence against men is evoked in the media, it is often through a discourse of exceptionality, of novelty, as if it was a new problem that had just been discovered. It also frequently builds on a narrative of endless horror, related to some places embodying war’s savagery and backwardness in Western imaginary, such as Eastern Congo, for instance: “Another growing problem: men raping men” (Gettleman 2009; see also Vandecasteele 2011). As we have seen, archaeologists, historians and anthropologists have long documented this practice, with examples from all around the world, from ancient times to contemporary warfare. So why do we seem to rediscover it each time a related story is published in a major newspaper, or broadcasted on television? A few NGOs like Médecins Sans Frontières (2009) also present some male survivors’ stories now and then, but their scattered accounts are in general based on just a few personal testimonies, which contribute to presenting the issue as dramatic, but also as sporadic. In other words, cases of sexual violence against men are most of the time featured like exceptional occurrences that do not really fit in the grand narrative on wartime sexual violence. As such, they are dismissed as anecdotal, and useless for helping us making sense of the greater picture.
Narratives on international politics are woven in such a way that gender issues, and women, are most of the time made invisible, while men’s and masculinities’ omnipresence in international scripts is normalized and almost never critically scrutinized (Sjoberg 2013; Hutchings 2008). But discourses on wartime sexual violence constitute an exception with regards to the general invisibility of women and gender in international politics. In this area of study, femininity works as a common sense, as an implicit explanation, which is mapped against models of hegemonic, dominant, hyper-violent and militarized masculinity that put the stress on power and force as masculine traits. Such a script is not, per se, in contradiction with the recognition of the existence of male perpetrators of sexual violence against men, as it is built around associations between femininity and vulnerability, and masculinity and aggression. However, this general narrative leaves no space for acknowledging male vulnerability, especially in military settings, and for recognizing the existence of male survivors and of sexual violence against men in general. This is a major shortcoming that feminist studies have a duty to engage with since, as Detraz (2012, 11) argues, “feminist security studies concentrate on the ways world politics can contribute to the insecurity of individuals, especially individuals who are marginalized and disempowered”. In that perspective, there is no doubt that more attention should be paid to male survivors of wartime sexual violence.
10
Which of course also happens for survivors of other types of violence, including after genocide. See, for instance, Hatzfeld (2010), exploring the everyday interactions between “