Article written by Ella L Edwards Y12
The rape of women during wartime has occurred throughout history. This act of crime is said to be “unfortunate but inevitable”, according to Britannica. But what could have lead humanity to believing that these destructive and traumatic actions are ‘normal’? How did we let ourselves get to such a point where robberies are given more sympathy than the elephant in the room, RAPE?
History of Rape as a War Crime
The first known reports of mass rapes were only shared during the 1991 Yugoslav wars of secession and the 1994 genocidal massacres in Rwanda. While some researchers argue that the frequency and savagery of wartime rape increased in the late 20th-century conflicts, most emphasize the phenomenon’s timeless ubiquity, tracing it back to the Torah, in Homer, and the Anglo-Saxon chronicles. The lack of attention to wartime rape by scholars and international courts clearly represents a serious dereliction of moral and intellectual duty. A review of the historical evidence conveys the distinct impression that whenever and wherever men have gone to war, many of them reasoned like Nestor in the Iliad, who stated to weary Greek troops, “don’t anyone hurry to return homeward until after he has lain down alongside a wife of some Trojan” (Homer, 1999, Book 2).
The Four Theories for Mass Wartime Rape
Feminist Theory
Feminist scholars and activists deserve credit for being the first to systematically investigate and document wartime rape. The feminist orientation is to extend the hypothesis of motivating men to exert dominance over women through misogynistic natures. Feminist theorists set this theory in opposition to the “pressure cooker” theory. This idea suggests that war rapists are victims of irresistible biological imperatives, and that they are encouraged to vent their urges to terrible effect.
Cultural Pathology Theory
This theory has the character of cultural psychoanalysis. The goal is to peer back into a nation’s history and see what factors conspired to cause its habitants to descend to mass rape. Writers of this theory tend to paint plausible portraits of sociocultural factors. While this helps to understand the dynamics of wartime rape, it does not provide an understanding of the phenomena as a whole.
Strategic Rape Theory
The most influential theory of mass wartime rape is the strategic theory. It is largely taken for granted by international commissions and journalists, as it moves away from the pleasure of the deed to an action that is strategically done to intensify a conflict. Though we cannot claim that military planners instruct soldiers to rape, the implication is still clear: “Wartime rape is a coherent, coordinated, logical, and brutally effective means of prosecuting warfare”. Many often refer to the phenomena through this theory as “genocidal rape” – rape designed, whether with full consciousness or not, to annihilate a people and a culture – due to the splitting family bloodlines when women become pregnant, the grievous physical and psychological injuries formed, or the death of women from types of abuse. In many cases families disown the women who survive, out of shame for who has touched them or what kind of child they hold, degrading the ability of a culture to replenish itself. However, these consequences of wartime rape may not be the goals for which the rapes were perpetuated in the first place, meaning the results could be unintended. Unfortunately, we may never know why this phenomenon occurs, unless a perpetrator willingly talks about it.
Biosocial Theory
Lastly, possibly the least wished upon theory is based on biological genetic control. In this view, rape in war is an inevitable, genetically determined reflex. During the chaotic wartime milieu, the normally restrained male instincts of sexual aggression are released and nothing can stop them. The expectation of this theory is that virtually everywhere we find hostile soldiers in the midst of civilians that are identified with the enemy, we will also find high rates of rape. On this measure, the theory strongly uses the theory-data fit. Along these lines, it mostly accounts for the pervasiveness of these rape situations. If we imagine this theory to be true, it would undeniably mean that within every human with an X and Y chromosome and male genitalia lies a natural instinct released through hormones in the brain during wartime contexts. This pessimistic idea personally sends shivers down my spine as I imagine the dangerous nature that could hide within the male sex. T
Conclusions on the Theories
In conclusion, the authors of these theories do not view themselves as simply debating and answering an academic question, but have the goal to both bring attention to the crime and learn how to take practical measures towards diminishing its incidence.
If you would like to read the full article about these theories, you can find it at the link below:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3813647?seq=7
A possible interesting conversation to have over a meal: What is more dangerous, being a woman or a soldier in an active war zone?
What is being done to prevent this crime?
In June 2008, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1820, establishing for the first time that sexual violence during conflict and its consequences pose a threat to international peace and security. This resolution supports the UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, initiative that was agreed upon in 2007. Their three main pillars are to improve advocacy efforts, strengthen the prevention and response to sexual violence and build the accountability of perpetrators. However, even with these legal and global efforts, in its 22 years the International Criminal Court has only convicted 2 people for sexual crimes.
Within communities and families, survivors of sexual violence are often rejected when they find their way back to their homes, or are kept indoors to inhibit the shame exerted upon the family of the survivor. This social separation with survivors inhibits communication of what they went through and the help that they receive to channelize their trauma and emotions. Decades later, these women can still suffer from trauma and may not have spoken aloud of their experiences to anyone. In spite of everything, there are many brave women around the world who are spokespersons for others or their own experiences and work to normalize the communication and end of shame towards this subject. Activists, like Nadia Murad (Yazidi human rights activist), build communities to empower women and help survivors with what they have been through.
Side Note: This article was inspired by the talk that guest speaker Nadia Murad gave to a large group of students from La Châtaigneraie and La Grande Boissière on her own experience of rape during wartime conflicts. You can read more about her in the article “Nobel Peace Prize Winner Nadia Murad at the International School of Geneva” by Finlay H. Hamilton.
1 Comment