Gendered Perspectives on Conflict and Violence: Part A: Volume 18A

This introduction sets forth the main themes of the volume, reviews the methods employed by the contributors, and demonstrates the relationships among the chapters.

The chapters in the volume exemplify current research approaches to the subject matter: gender-based violence. The introduction identifies both trends and gaps that might be filled by future research.

Worldwide attention is being drawn to examples and forms of gender-based violence. These are currently major topics in the media, both factual and fictional. Public policies are under discussion and programs to deal with them are developing. However, because the discussions and the programs are often not research-based or intersectionally inclusive, gender-based violence persists and victims are sometimes ignored, blamed, or subjected to further violence.

The chapter serves as an overall introduction to the volume and the subject matter more generally.

Disabled women are reported to be between twice and five times more likely to experience sexual violence than non-disabled women or disabled men; when these are hate crimes they compound harms for both victims and communities.

This user-led research explores how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors most effectively resist the harm and injustice they experience after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape.

Feminist standpoint methods are employed with reciprocity as central. This small-scale peer research was undertaken with University ethics and supervision over a five year period. Subjects (n=522) consisted of disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors in North of England.

The intersectional nature of violence against disabled women unsettles constructed macro binaries of public/private space violence and the location of disabled women as inherently vulnerable. Findings demonstrate how seizing collective identity can usefully resist re-victimization, tackle the harms after disablist hate crime involving rape and resist the homogenization of both women and disabled people.

The chapter outlines inequalities in disabled people’s human rights and recommends service and policy improvements, as well as informing methods for conducting ethical research.

This is perhaps the first user-led, social model based feminist standpoint research to explore the collective resistance to harm after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape. It crossed impairment boundaries and included community living, segregated institutions and women who rely on perpetrators for personal assistance. It offers new evidence of how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors can collectively unsettle the harms of disablist hate crime and rape and achieve justice and safety on a micro level.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss disability hate crimes in the context of feminist theories of intersectionality.

A mixed-method approach is adopted, combing feminist auto-ethnography with case reviews of a number of disability hate crimes.

Disability hate crimes must be understood in the wider context of social inequality and the intersection of identities which make some people more vulnerable to criminal victimization than others.

Feminists can apply many of the lessons from third wave feminist debates about intersectionality to the topic of disability hate crimes, so that the multiplicity of inequalities which influence victimization are appropriately recognized. Policy changes are necessary to respond more appropriately to the intersectional forms of power underlying disability hate crimes.

There has not been a feminist exploration of disability hate crimes ever written before, so the chapter breaks new ground in exploring these issues.

This research explores the experiences of self-identified queer victims of intimate partner violence, their personal encounters with violence-response organizations, and the extent to which their gender/sexual identity impacted their willingness to disclose their abuse.

Eleven respondents were recruited from online queer social networking sites and were interviewed via e-mail or Skype.

All respondents identified as gender variant or had an abusive partner who identified as gender variant. All study participants reported having experienced physical abuse. Several reported sexual and emotional abuse. Respondents reported a reluctance to seek institutional support and intervention. Several respondents were unable to recognize abuse as abuse until much later. When asked about whether or not they sought intervention, most respondents in this study described a sort of isolation, where they perceived that they were facing prejudice and stigmatization, and risked being dismissed and delegitimized. Several respondents sensed that there simply were no organizations that were sensitized and available to queer-identified victims. Even if they had pursued help from existing institutions, several respondents communicated a doubt that they could truly be of service, since these institutions likely operated with heteronormative narratives and practices. Collectively, the respondents in this study describe experiences as victims of IPV that are clearly mediated by homophobia and cissism.

We emphasize the need for an “intersectional awareness” in scholarship and organizing surrounding IPV. We critique the state’s gender-based practices of violence intervention and propose alternative possibilities for more inclusive intervention and organizing on behalf of queer victims of violence.

The body of literature that exists on IPV among LGBTQ persons is small, and much of this literature is focused on how patterns of IPV differ from heterosexual violence. In exploring IPV among self-identified queer victims, we depart from most research on IPV in that our analysis is not so much concerned with the gender or sex assignment of the victim, but rather the gendered context in which the violence is playing out.

The purpose of this chapter is twofold: to explore the difficulties and potential of turning to the perpetrator of sexual violence; and to track the affective economy of engaging with perpetrator accounts.

This chapter will consider one of the earliest feminist studies of incest, Sandra Butler’s (1978) Conspiracy of Silence: The Trauma of Incest, followed by an analysis of Philippe Bourgois’ (1995, 1996, 2004) ethnographic study of Puerto Rican crack dealers. These are important studies for the fact that both Butler and Bourgois let the men speak freely of their violence, which for the Puerto Rican cracker dealers include tales of gang rape.

The chapter endorses the need to study the perpetrator, arguing that it is imperative to ensure the demythologization of perpetrators. It finds also that feminists must explore how they will teach emotionally difficult material, and how they negotiate the legacy of radical feminism. The chapter concludes that there are times when politics requires little theoretical innovation, requiring instead a willingness to repeat known insights and to fight back with words.

This chapter has implications for classroom practice.

The value of this chapter is its demand to reconsider the doing of feminism in the classroom when the split between feminist theory and activism appears greater than ever.

In this chapter, I use the issue of violence against transgender individuals to explore the (limited) meanings of gender within the context of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in the United Nations (UN).

Using constructivist grounded theory and institutional ethnography I bring together field research from two ethnographic qualitative research projects I have been pursuing from 2008 to 2012; I studied transgender communities in the US and the CSW through their annual meetings in the New York Headquarters of the UN.

I first demonstrate the severity of transphobic violence as a global public health problem. I proceed to report highlights of global LGBT activism, such as the Yogyakarta Principles and the latest developments within the Human Rights Council of the UN for the first time addressing global LGBT violence in 2011. I then examine the silencing of transgender experiences in the CSW by exploring the contested use of the term gender over the last two decades of intergovernmental negotiations.

This study highlights the need to broaden the conceptualization of violence and gender violence which has important theoretical and policy implications. Linking micro experiences of violent victimization in local trans-communities to the macro context of gender violence in global gender equality policy development is crucial to the advancement of human rights.

Through life stories and the unique lens of military combat service, this study analyzes how Israeli Jewish women construct their relationship to the Jewish nation-state.

This qualitative study establishes a theoretical relationship between gender and the nation, including concepts such as the nation-state, the public/private divide, Jewish womanhood, and militarization in Israel. It utilizes in-depth semi-structured life story interviews with 17 Israeli Jewish women, who served in combat roles in the Israeli military.

These women demonstrate ambivalent and gendered narratives of sacrifice and success and of loyalty and resistance as they transgress and comply with the idea of the national Jewish home. They reveal a strong desire for national belonging that can be seen as an attempt to challenge the gendered public/private divide and secure their status as qualified citizens.

Women’s integration in the military is a political issue in Israel where liberal and radical feminists, religious, bureaucratic, and other civil groups are pushing for contrasting demands. I engage in this debate by emphasizing the voices of women soldiers.

Instead of focusing on subjugation and marginalization owing to the unsolvable conundrum of partial military inclusion leading to (partial) political and societal exclusion, I offer an analysis of military combat service as a meaning-making practice providing a new understanding of Israeli women’s relationship to the Jewish nation-state.

This chapter discusses how private military corporations (PMCs) and their employees have been implicated in discourses and practices of sexual violence. I examine how PMCs have become seemingly permanent fixtures of international relations since the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, the purpose is to contribute to the ongoing conversations about PMCs and gender. To do this, I examine one instance of sexual violence in the context of PMCs. I argue that, since the legal case was forced into private arbitration, this maneuver reflects critical shifts in the normalizing power of law, away from a model of a social contract toward global neoliberal economics.

Utilizing postmodern feminist theory alongside a Foucauldian discourse analysis, I explore the case of one PMC contractor who alleged rape by multiple coworkers in Iraq. I examine the limitations of standpoint feminism in relation to theories and representations of sexual violence.

I claim that military outsourcing raises serious concerns for feminists theorizing issues of gender and wartime sexual violence. PMC personnel are unaccountable when they are implicated in cases of sexual violence. Feminist critique is urgent given the various ways PMCs have been implicated in reproducing gender inequality and in sexual violence.

This chapter advances feminist knowledge about wartime sexual violence in a context where PMCs now play a significant role in the reproduction of practices that normalize sexual violence in public and private militarized spaces, both “at home” and “abroad.”

I intend to provide an understanding of the possibilities that exist for the judgment of wartime rape at the international, domestic and in-between levels.

What is required is an examination of prosecutions and judgments of the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda), the SCSL (Special Court for Sierra Leone) and the ICC (International Criminal Court). I employ an international law and gender studies approach.

To count as a crime against humanity, war rape must have been committed as part of a widespread attack on a civilian population. This reflects the idea that war rape is not based solely in the violation of a woman’s body. The problem is that war rapes occur absent the explicit purpose to destroy a community. This chapter provides insight to the historical background of wartime rape to scholars, feminist legal theorists, sociologists, NGOs and lawyers.

By alerting us to the fact that the international community appears to elevate violations of groups or communities over the violation of individual women during conflict, the chapter suggests that the human rights of women may not be fully protected.

This chapter interrogates the practice of gender-based asylum as a window to the problem of gender-based violence (GBV) as a driver of migration, with a focus on Southeast Europe, reporting on one instance of the intersection between the more private matter of gender and the realms of “high politics.”

The research is based on qualitative methods, primarily drawn from existing (written) sources, including legal cases, government and NGO reports, and other documents, supplemented by information gathered through in-depth interviews.

This research found that the region is a source of migrants escaping GBV, and that migrants from this region have been agents in moving the practice of gender-based asylum forward in recent years. That migration is increasingly multidirectional. Further, the “West” offers gender-based asylum inconsistently.

Political and policy change on these matters across this region were transitioning rapidly when this chapter was written; there will be a need, therefore, for updates based on any new developments.

Policy progress should be based on recognition of Southeast Europe’s varied roles as receiving, transit, and destination countries as the region’s viability and visibility increase.

The chapter analyzes a legal terrain that is rarely done outside of the field of law. It offers the most recent analysis of current developments in gender-based asylum with a Southeast Europe focus. Finally, it contributes empirical research to the evolving theoretical discussions of the privatization of the public sphere, particularly for emerging democracies.

In 2001, the rape of “baby Tshepang” triggered a media frenzy in the small community of Louisvale, located in the Northern Cape of South Africa. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how gender discrimination and colonial discourse framed the way the rape of Tshepang was reported in print media.

From the newspaper archives of the Cape Town National Library, the University of Cape Town Library as well as newspaper articles found online, this chapter offers a reading of articles printed between 2001 and 2004. Patterns of troping were identified from the articles examined, and a number of themes were selected to be further examined using a gender perspective. Work already done by African feminist scholars on the grammar of rape was applied to deconstruct the ways in which the media presented this specific case. This chapter works with Sara Ahmed’s (2004) thoughts on shame, Linda Alcoff’s (1991) writing on Othering, Helen Moffett (2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2006) and Jane Bennett’s (1997) work on gender and rape, as well as Achille Mbembe’s (2001) notion of facticity within colonial discourse.

This chapter argues that the ways in which the media understood this event were through well-worn stereotypes of Africa and women. An overarching theme of shame dominated how journalists represented the event. The label “A Town of Shame” stuck onto Louisvale through the mobilization of colonial and gender discourse. Quickly the town was known for its “barbaric” and “savage” existence; a town with no future and a disgrace to the country. Essentialist thinking about women was used to condemn and blame the mother of Tshepang, concretizing the myth that rape is always the fault of women.

Through relying on palatable stereotypes that create a self and Other, we move further away from engaging in the difficult questions of understanding rape. When rape becomes a spectacle, detached from the greater global socioeconomic realities, we deny our responsibilities of difficult and multilayered engagement.

This study will look at the relationship between norms on gender equality on the one hand and the level of gender equality in the political and socioeconomic sphere, the presence or absence of armed conflict, and general peacefulness on the other.

Data on gender equality norms from the World Values Surveys, political and socioeconomic gender equality from the Global Gender Gap Index, armed conflict from the Uppsala Conflict Data Base, and general peacefulness from the Global Peace Index are analyzed in a bivariate correlation.

The results show a significant association between norms on and attitudes toward gender equality and levels of political and socioeconomic gender equality, absence or presence of armed conflict, and level of general peacefulness.

There is no data base on norms on and attitudes toward the use of violence which is why only levels of violence are included in the study.

The study shows that governments, aid agencies, NGOs and others working on conflict prevention and peace building need to focus on improving gender equality in order to achieve a sustainable decrease in conflict levels and an improvement in general levels of peacefulness.

This study is original in that it looks at norms on gender equality on the individual level on the one hand and actual levels of both gender equality and violence in the society, including armed conflict on the other.