19 Introduction – Weaponizing Sexual Violence

Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Violence, War/Conflict

In Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: War Through the Lives of Women, Christina Lamb examines the experience of women who go through sexual violence and rape during times of war with the intent to cast light on the often overlooked realities of war and to humanize the stories of sexual violence. Through direct interviews capturing personal accounts of women around the world, Lamb hoped to document sexual violence being used as humiliation and degradation tactics in the context of war to move beyond the mainstream narrative of rape being “an individual crime of passion” (Lamb 2020). The widespread weaponization has been seen globally throughout history, but “the first ever prosecution for war rape [happened recently] in 1997” showing just how overlooked these stories are from mainstream attention (Lamb 2020).

This paper aims to examine Lamb’s documentation of the overlooked effects of war on women’s bodies by connecting the contexts of gendered institutionalized power and patriarchal social structures that are complicit in militarized masculinity and rape culture in these environments. Promoting the visibility of their stories can lead to a change of perspective to how rape impacts women by challenging the narrative of it being “‘regarded as collateral damage and also something mechanical with no understanding of the effect on the women’” (Lamb 2020: 123). Through the lens of a patriarchal structure, the subjectivity of women’s bodies is conducive to sexual violence being embodied and becoming an instrument of warfare. Additionally, this paper will look at how personal accounts can lead to collectively healing in solidarity spaces and support systems through affected women reclaiming the narratives of rape.