How is rape a weapon of war? Feminist International Relations, modes of critical explanation and the study of wartime sexual violence

Abstract

Rape is a weapon of war. Establishing this now common claim has been an achievement of feminist scholarship and activism and reveals wartime sexual violence as a social act marked by gendered power. But the consensus that rape is a weapon of war obscures important, and frequently unacknowledged, differences in ways of understanding and explaining it. This article opens these differences to analysis. Drawing on recent debates regarding the philosophy of social science in IR and social theory, it interprets feminist accounts of wartime sexual violence in terms of modes of critical explanation -expansive styles of reasoning that foreground particular actors, mechanisms, reasons and stories in the formulation of research. The idea of a mode of critical explanation is expanded upon through a discussion of the role of three elements (analytical wagers, narrative scripts and normative orientations) which accomplish the theoretical work of modes. Substantive feminist accounts of wartime sexual violence are then differentiated in terms of three modes -of instrumentality, unreason and mythology -which implicitly structure different understandings of how rape might be a weapon of war. These modes shape political and ethical projects and so impact not only on questions of scholarly content but also on the ways in which we attempt to mitigate and abolish war rape. Thinking in terms of feminist modes of critical explanation consequently encourages further work in an unfolding research agenda. It clarifes the ways in which an apparently commonality of position can conceal meaningful disagreements about human action. Exposing these disagreements opens up new possibilities for the analysis of war rape.

Curious erasures: the sexual in wartime sexual violence

“…Those who are subject to such violence are used as tools in a larger ploy to defeat the (collective) enemy, and those who perform rape serve as weapons in the wider arsenal of masculinized military violence. While the notion of rape as a weapon of war has become the subject of critique for being both reductionist and universalizing (Bos 2006;Wood 2009;Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2013;Kirby 2013;Hoover Green 2016), the question of the sexual still emerges as one of those questions that "we cannot ask" (Glick 2000, 19).…”

Security, peace and development: Unpacking discursive constructions of wartime rape and sexual violence in Syria

“…Wartime rape, in cases of ethnic cleansing and genocide, can be used as an ethnomarker and may serve as an attack on the nations" culture of women (Cohn, 2013;Lentin, 1999). And whilst some writers have provided a more critical review of this narrative (Crawford, 2013;Kirby, 2012;Skjelsbaek, 2001), ultimately this rape-as-a-weapon of war paradigmutilized in large part by both media and policy documentsresults in all incidents and types of sexual violence being dealt with under the same security measure (Meger, 2016a). This homogenized view of sexual violenceand its securitizationleads to its fetishisation (Meger, 2016a).…”

What Do We Know About Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts? Recent Empirical Progress and Remaining Gaps in Peace and Conflict Research

“…This form of sexual violence is commonly ascribed the goal of demoralizing and emasculating men who belong to antagonized groups or who are disobedient civilians (Sivakumaran 2007;Christian et al 2011;Carpenter 2006;Dolan 2010;Cohen 2013a is not yet evidence that such rapes are systematic, but that the survivors feel that commanding officers were responsible." Buss (2009) and Kirby (2013), too, take a critical stance towards the widespread notion of rape as a strategic weapon of war. They are concerned about the reflexive use of the notion in all wartime contexts where sexual violence is prevalent, simply because it leads to reductionism and erases important empirical complexities.…”