22 Analysis – Understanding How Women’s Bodies are Turned into Battlefields
Context & Institutions
As stated by Bowell & Spade, “rape culture is a set of values and beliefs that provide an environment conducive to rape… [and the] specific settings also are important in defining relationships between men and women” (Boswell and Spade 1996: 133). Through this, we can see male-dominated institutions like fraternities and militarized spaces “contribute to the maintenance of a rape culture on college campuses” and in the contexts of war (Boswell and Spade 1996). The parallel to both can lead to a deeper look into why both of these spaces are prevalent to strong patriarchal norms and incidents of rape.
Government systems dismiss the stories of these women labeling the “reports as ‘Fake Rape’ [as seen when] Colonel Phone Tint, Rakhine’s minister for border affairs, told journalists: ‘These women were claiming they were raped, but look at their appearances—do you think they are attractive enough to be raped?’” reflecting the typical mentality to question the validity of the women’s claims of experiencing sexual violence during war and conflict (Lamb 2020: 71). In Fraternities, interactions like “one man attending a party at a high-risk fraternity said to another, ‘Did you know that this week is Women’s Awareness Week? I guess that means we get to abuse them more this week’” (Boswell and Spade 1996: 137). The harmful comments about women express interactions between men and women in similar social contexts like fraternities and wartime, which enforce rape culture. These situations and environments have “rape [as] a social basis, one in which both men and women create and recreate masculine and feminine identities relations” (Boswell and Spade 1996: 134). Militaristic and fraternity norms may strengthen patriarchal social practices that support rape and other forms of sexual violence.
Furthermore another instance of the view of rape in conflict, “decision-making positions are often held by male prosecutors or judges who do not see sexual violence as a high priority compared to mass killings” thus not seeing the need to process the cases through the court system rapidly and discrediting the testimonies of the women (Lamb 2020). In college campus rape culture, “both men and women said that fraternities [dominated] campus social life… [and one senior described it as] ‘segregated and male-dominated… [a place where] men can feel superior in their domain’” (Boswell and Spade 1996: 140).
Normative masculine values held within male-dominated institutions and social spaces uphold rape culture and provide environments conducive to rape. As pointed out by Brownmiller, “war provides men with the perfect psychological backdrop to give vent to their contempt for women. The maleness of the military—the brute power of weaponry exclusive to their hands, the spiritual bonding of men at arms, the manly discipline of orders given and orders obeyed, the simple logic of the hierarchical command—confirms for men what they long [suspected]—that women are peripheral to the world that counts” (Brownmiller 1993: 22).
Sexual Violence: a Tool of War
As women experience rape trauma and sexual violence from war, it is often not addressed or recognized like men who are usually labeled as brave and heroic, but women were shamed and often not accepted back in their communities. During the Bangladesh Liberation War, women systematically raped and tortured were given the title ‘Birangona’ by the new Bangladeshi government as a way “to recognize [Bangladeshi women] as war heroines and bestow respect” (Lamb 2020: 79). However, when speaking to the Bangladeshi women, Lamb shares how “‘[they] don’t like the term birangona–to [them] it meant distress and disrespect,” because the term’s meaning had gone from empowerment and heroism to being associated with negative connotations of the dishonor and torment that the women brought to the communities (Lamb 2020: 90). The term quickly became corrupted as the communities reaction was to shame and exclude the women with “‘some of the villagers [saying they were] an impure woman so should not live in the village… [and] should have killed [themselves] rather than enduring this dishonor’” (Lamb 2020: 87). This resulted in women being ostracized from their own communities, living through their trauma silently without support. The Bangladeshi women expressed how “‘it’s not money [they] ask for but recognition that [they] are the people wronged’… [they] have given [their] most precious thing but you won’t find [their] names engraved anywhere” as they have been outcast from and silenced by their own communities (Lamb 2020: 89, 90).
Sexual violence during conflict is intended to weaken the social fabric of families and communities, which is why it’s such an impactful and strategic tool of war. Due to the disproportionate dispersion of power, rape is a notable social act marked by gendered power. The competitive state of conflict that exists between a dominant social group and a disadvantaged social group, or “oppressor and oppressed, [that stand] in constant opposition to one another” (Marx & Engels 1967: 9). This struggle for dominance was used by Mills’ concept of the power elite, which explains the ‘power elite’ are dominant individuals and groups within institutions at the top of the power hierarchy that controls society and works for its own interests (Mills 2006 [1959]). Military conflict changes the nature and extent of mass rapes as a weapon of war as it puts into perspective rape as a gendered consequence. The social, political, and economic complexity and wider systemic factors construct sexual violence as an effective and strategic weapon of war.
According to Huber’s historical explanation of gendering of production and reproduction, the prevalence of male-dominated institutions has led to the historical exclusion of women from systems of power leading to systemic oppression (Huber 2008). The composition of political, economic, and military power has facilitated existing social structures predating conflict that create conditions where women are “treated as property and rape [being] used with the intent to intimidate, humiliate, and degrade” (Lamb 2020: 139).
Marx used conflict theory as a way to exemplify the struggle for dominance and power within structures of power. Conflict theory can help us understand the context of how sexual violence can be weaponized where the male control of systems of power/institutions and resources leads to such contexts of women become targets to rape, sexual violence, and forced female genital mutilation. Lamb addresses how “when war breaks out, women are the easiest victims” and are “‘always soft targets in conflict,’” which highlights the vulnerability to patriarchal patterns of gender inequality and exclusion to social, political, and economic power (Lamb 2020: 92, 79).
While women face the effects of misogyny and the patriarchal state, there are different intersections for rape etiology that result in the widespread use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The intersections include racial, ethnic, and religious minorities that during war results in the direct targeting of women as “individuals [who] have individual identities that intersect in ways that impact how they are viewed, understood, and treated” (Coaston 2019). In the persecutions of the Muslim Rohingya people by the Myanmar military, the reasoning behind the genocide of the Rohingya was because “‘they [thought the] Rohingya are not humans [and wanted] to wipe [them] out’” (Lamb 2020: 62). A commander of the Bangladesh genocide “told officers to ‘let loose their soldiers on the women of [in this case] East Pakistan till the ethnicity of the Bengalis has changed’… just as I had seen with the Yazidis, the girls in Nigeria taken by Boko Haram, and the Rohingya, this was rape as a systematic weapon of war” (Lamb 2020: 81). Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality “operates as both the observance and analysis of power imbalances,” but she also views it as a “tool by which those power imbalances could be eliminated altogether” (Coaston 2019).
The Rwanda tribunal, an international court established by the UN Security Council, “created the precedent that rape could be prosecuted as part of genocide, [but] the precedent for Yugoslavia went further, ruling that the systematic rape and enslavement could be treated as torture and a weapon to destroy lives—and therefore as a war crime” (Lamb 2020: 135). With this came the acknowledgment that rape could be weaponized because it “‘[served] a strategic purpose in itself… usually perpetrated with the conscious intention of demoralizing and terrorizing communities, driving them from their home regions and demonstrating the power of the invading forces,’” which made it more impactful (Lamb 2020: 131). The patriarchal power dynamics and inequalities in contemporary social structures affect the contexts of military institutions that put perspective on how “sexual violence [be used] as a war tactic and a political tool to dehumanize, destabilize and forcibly displace populations across the globe” (United Nations 2020). The body is ‘designed’ as a weapon by political and military authorities, therefore sexual violence can be embodied and rape can be a weapon, tool, or instrument of warfare.
Healing Journey and Resilience
Sharing “the multiplicity of women’s voices and perspectives in different contexts” of war, peace, and conflict would not only “recover silenced and marginalized voices and validate individual identities, but also [expose] structured inequalities and power differentials” (Boundless 2016). This is the intent and goal that Lamb has in publishing this book, being asked by a Congolese woman she was interviewing to “please be [their] voice” as these women recognize that their stories are being forgotten and ignored from the colonial presence (Lamb 2020: 274). Conversations are not complete without the voices of marginalized communities being included, especially the voices of women who have experienced rape. In bringing these issues to light, Lamb highlights the importance of storytelling in reframing history to bring attention to the plight of women as “’there are not many records of this hidden suffering’” (Lamb 2020: 78).
Due to the socio-economic positioning of Rohingya women, “the slaughter of their husbands had left the women as sole providers and protectors of their children, not easy anywhere but particularly in [their] conservative Muslim society” (Lamb 2020: 63). Rehabilitation and women’s centers gave the Rohingya women an opportunity to rebuild and start healing after fleeing persecution and rape. Support took the form of giving them an economic push by offering them jobs in tailoring. The solidarity fostered a community where “‘[they] supported each other. But then it closed, which [they recall seeming like] the end of hope” (Lamb 2020: 88).
Speaking out in hopes to see change, the women of Srebrenica who survived the Bosnian genocide saw how the systems worked and reflected by saying “‘we’ve always had wars and will again but if those who have lived through them can get out and speak about it, maybe we will learn’” to challenge the cycles in systems of power and mainstream narratives that silence and exclude the voices of women (Lamb 2020: 154). In addition, the women of Srebrenica voiced how “it was extremely difficult for [them] to share [their] story the first time but each time one of [them] appeared on TV more women would join” because they saw the display of courage, more women started coming forward in solidarity and wanting to share their experiences (Lamb 2020: 140). For Cuban Black women, compassion, and empowerment in these newly formed communities brought about a “revolutionary matrix [residing] in the blog’s networking: a cyberfeminist agenda to connect Cuban black women’s voices with other voices around the world” (Sierra-Rivera 2018). For women who experienced wartime sexual violence, this meant collective healing to meet their own “‘needs… to help feed, clothe, house, educate, heal and rebuild’” (Lamb 2020: 124).
This is seen particularly through the City of Joy, which became a leadership community assisting and empowering survivors of sexual violence, located in Bukavu, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Christine Schuler Deschryver is the director and founder of the City of Joy along with the direct support from V-Day and UNICEF created because Congolese women expressed wanting “power, [wanting] to be leaders” (Lamb 2020: 267). The city of Joy started when “‘the [Congolese] women had asked for a house for them to be independent so [they] built a center [with] the women [choosing] the name’” (Lamb 2020). The six-month program in the City of Joy was “adapted… to meet individual needs [with] around half the time spent in therapy, using art, music, meditation, and yoga… also self-defense and fitness classes… [and] how to take care of themselves as well as their hair and makeup” (Lamb 2020: 269). Through the program and the center, Christine explains how “‘it’s all about giving respect and them owning their stories… [turning their] pain into power and [giving] victims strength to be leaders in their communities’” (Lamb 2020: 269). Lorde’s notion of mothering described “ [as] the way to see eye to eye, and this mothering must be an act of love both for the self and for the others we see in the mirror of suffering… It is by seeing eye to eye that black women can ‘establish authority over our own definition’ and grow a new (renewed) self” (Sierra-Rivera 2018). Essentially, turning a sense of love and empowerment into a collective force that generates new groups and forms of resistance. Many of the women shunned from their communities were left to create or find their own support systems with other survivors in solidarity through the rehabilitation centers.
The program saw success with “one thousand, two hundred and ninety-four women [doing] the course in the eight years since City of Joy opened in 2011” (Lamb 2020: 270). After graduating, “each was given a phone programmed with a contact number to keep in touch” with most of the Congolese women “‘[going] back to the community and [sharing] what they’ve learnt with others, [and working] with local NGOs or create their own’” (Lamb 2020: 270). The solidarity and healing spaces formed within the centers empowered Congolese women to become activists working to end the atrocities and change perceptions about gender and sexual violence. In order to challenge the existing and widely accepted patriarchal narrative and norms that contribute to militarized masculinity, “‘we should unearth our own history so we can learn from it’’ meaning that we should continue to be critical of the social systems in place and try to actively deconstruct and reframe these narratives (Lamb 2020: 90). This was the aim of the support networks formed in rehabilitation centers that led to the empowerment of these communities through collective healing as survivors of not only war but also sexual violence and rape trauma.