Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

The Sexual Politics of Abu Ghraib: Hegemony, Spectacle, and the Global War on Terror

Citation:

Tétreault, Mary Ann. 2006. “The Sexual Politics of Abu Ghraib: Hegemony, Spectacle, and the Global War on Terror.” NWSA Journal 18 (3): 33–50.

Author: Mary Ann Tétreault

Abstract:

Revelations of the torture, murder, and maltreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came with sensational photographs of U.S. military personnel torturing Iraqi prisoners and forcing them to perform sexualized acts. Evidence of gross violations of international law, the photographs have been used by U.S. elites to construct a discourse not about war crimes but "prisoner abuse, " some referring to the activities recorded as analogous to fraternity hazing. In this essay, I argue that the photos reflect complex reactions to the attacks of September 11, 2001, including a need to assert U.S. global dominance by punishing those who are, in American eyes, an inferior oriental enemy. The photographs are analyzed in the context of orientalism in the U.S. chain of command, a phenomenon linked to what feminists call "the politics of the gaze" - the vulnerability of women and other subalterns to virtual as well as actual violation by those in positions of domination. They are compared to evidence of other rituals of violence, such as lynching, orchestrated by elites and imitated by popular-culture entrepreneurs. The sexual politics of Abu Ghraib includes the deployment of female figures to brand, scapegoat, and repair the damage from discovery of the photographs, thereby trivializing the policies and behaviors of U.S. officials and eliding the American public's responsibility for the continued U.S. failure to condemn, much less to halt, the torture carried out in their name.

Keywords: hegemony, Torture, war crimes, orientalism, pornography, rituals of violence

Topics: Combatants, Gender, Justice, War Crimes, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Torture, Sexual Torture Regions: MENA, Americas, North America, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq, United States of America

Year: 2006

Front and Center: Sexual Violence in U.S. Military Law

Citation:

Hillman, Elizabeth L. 2009. “Front and Center: Sexual Violence in U.S. Military Law.” Politics & Society 37 (1): 101–29. doi:10.1177/0032329208329753.

Author: Elizabeth L. Hillman

Abstract:

Military-on-military sexual violence—the type of sexual violence that most directly disrupts operations, harms personnel, and undermines recruiting—occurs with astonishing frequency. The U.S. military has responded with a campaign to prevent and punish military-on-military sex crimes. This campaign, however, has made little progress, partly because of U.S. military law, a special realm of criminal justice dominated by legal precedents involving sexual violence and racialized images. By promulgating images and narratives of sexual exploitation, violent sexuality, and female subordination, the military justice system has helped to sustain a legal culture that reifies the connection between sexual violence and authentic soldiering.

Keywords: sexual violence, military justice, legal culture, reform

Topics: Combatants, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Justice, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Security Sector Reform, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Sexuality Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2009

The Effects of Armed Conflict on Girls and Women

Citation:

McKay, Susan. 1998. “The Effects of Armed Conflict on Girls and Women.” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 4 (4): 381–92.

Author: Susan McKay

Abstract:

This article discusses the gender-specific effects of armed conflict on girls and women that are addressed by the Machel Study. Among the most traumatic of these effects is sexual exploitation and gender-based violence, each having profound psychosocial consequences. Other gendered effects occur when girls are recruited as child soldiers, girls and women become internally and externally displaced refugees, and public health services, such as reproductive health care, are inadequate or unavailable. The Machel Study emphasizes women's proactive roles as peacebuilders and challenges governmental and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to focus greater attention upon building women's capacities in order to better protect children's physical and psychosocial well-being.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Child Soldiers, Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Gender, Women, Girls, Gender-Based Violence, Governance, Health, Mental Health, Reproductive Health, Trauma, NGOs, Peacebuilding, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Year: 1998

Reporting of Mass Rape in the Balkans: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose? From Bosnia to Kosovo

Citation:

Stanley, Penny. 1999. “Reporting of Mass Rape in the Balkans: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose? From Bosnia to Kosovo.” Civil Wars 2 (2): 74–110. 

Author: Penny Stanley

Abstract:

The reporting of incidents of mass rape from the Bosnian conflict, particularly during the period 1992–94 evoked an upsurge of interest in the subject of rape during war. The broadsheet press was used as a medium through which significant voices aired their views and provoked debate over ‘rape in war’. This articles examines the reactions of the British and American broadsheet newspapers to rape in Bosnia and looks at the ways in which rape was represented in the press. It poses the question of why, given the experience of mass rape in Bosnia, have we witnessed similar sexual violence in Kosovo?

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, SV against Women Regions: Europe, Balkans Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo

Year: 1999

Health Services for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence in Northern Uganda: A Qualitative Study

Citation:

Henttonen, Mirkka, Charlotte Watts, Bayard Roberts, Felix Kaducu, and Matthias Borchert. 2008. “Health Services for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence in Northern Uganda: A Qualitative Study.” Reproductive Health Matters 16 (31): 122–31.

Authors: Mirkka Henttonen, Charlotte Watts, Bayard Roberts, Felix Kaducu, Matthias Borchert

Abstract:

The 20-year war in northern Uganda has resulted in up to 1.7 million people being internally displaced, and impoverishment and vulnerability to violence amongst the civilian population. This qualitative study examined the status of health services available for the survivors of gender-based violence in the Gulu district, northern Uganda. Semi-structured interviews were carried out in 2006 with 26 experts on gender-based violence and general health providers, and availability of medical supplies was reviewed. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) guidelines on gender-based violence interventions in humanitarian settings were used to prepare the interview guides and analyse the findings. Some legislation and programmes do exist on gender-based violence. However, health facilities lacked sufficiently qualified staff and medical supplies to adequately detect and manage survivors, and confidential treatment and counselling could not be ensured. There was inter-sectoral collaboration, but greater resources are required to increase coverage and effectiveness of services. Intimate partner violence, sexual abuse of girls aged under 18, sexual harassment and early and forced marriage may be more common than rape by strangers. As the IASC guidelines focus on sexual violence by strangers and do not address other forms of gender-based violence, we suggest the need to explore this issue further to determine whether a broader concept of gender-based violence should be incorporated into the guidelines.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, IDPs, Domestic Violence, Gender, Women, Girls, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Health, Reproductive Health, Trauma, Humanitarian Assistance, Context-Appropriate Response to Trauma, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2008

Noise Over Camouflaged Polygamy, Colonial Morality Taxation, and a Woman-Naming Crisis in Belgian Africa

Citation:

Hunt, Nancy Rose. 1991. “Noise Over Camouflaged Polygamy, Colonial Morality Taxation, and a Woman-Naming Crisis in Belgian Africa.” The Journal of African History 32 (3): 471-94.

Author: Nancy Rose Hunt

Abstract:

This essay concerns the peculiarities and contradictions of colonial morality taxation and legislation in Belgian Africa, and especially highlights analytical and historical commonalities between anti-polygamy measures and the unusual Belgian practice of taxing urban unmarried women. More generally, it is about colonialism and moral crisis, historical evidence and camouflage, popular memory and silence, colonial name-giving, and name-calling. I cannot be the first to notice that where women most often appear in the colonial record is where moral panic surfaced, settled and festered. Prostitution, polygamy, adultery, concubinage and infertility are the loci of such angst throughout the historical record of Belgian African colonial regimes, and one sometimes feels hard pressed to find women anywhere else. Yet moral crises did not always emerge due to the (perceived) customs and actions of the colonized. They also erupted from colonial policy and law itself, from the insight (or hindsight) that colonial policy was misconcerived or bred dangerous contradictory consequences. I begin in the midst of one kind of colonial noise: an historically shifting crisis in Belgian Africa over plural wives, and loud colonial debates over moral taxation and how best to preserve 'custom' while eradicating polygamy. This will serve as the context for considering another related, though temporally and geographically more confined crisis: the rebellion in the 1950s of Swahili women against the single women's tax in colonial Bujumbura. This local crisis also became noisy. Yet here the noise erupted as volatile African outrage, and its contrast betrays the embarassed silence and muted debates among colonial authorities over the contradictions and failings of moral taxation and policing measues. 

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods, Political Economies, Political Participation, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Europe, Western Europe Countries: Belgium

Year: 1991

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