Sexuality

Citation:

Park, You-Me. 2000. “Comforting The Nation: ‘Comfort Women,’ the Politics of Apology and the Workings of Gender.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 2 (2): 199–211. doi:10.1080/136980100427315.

Author: You-Me Park

Abstract:

International politics always operates and is imagined in a gendered manner, especially in matters related to symbolic gestures and spectacles such as the declaration of war, the ritual of surrender, the signing of treaties, or the offer and acceptance of apologies. Therefore, our reading of these events has to be performed with a sustained and rigorous interest in gender: we need to ask how a masculine national image is constructed and guarded in these rituals; how the conflicts among various forms of masculinity are negotiated; how the 'common sense' derived from these gendered rituals affects the real lives of real people on a daily basis. In this essay, [Park] examine[s] the issues of masculine national identity and gendered violence in the context of the controversy around the apologies offered (or not offered) to former 'comfort women,' women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army during the Pacific War. By investigating the 'common sense' and underlying assumptions that shape the language around the issues of apologies and compensation for former comfort women, [Park] explore[s] how 'male sexual needs' are imagined; who is rendered deserving of the state protection and who is not; who is dispensable and who is not. [Park] argue[s] that, unless we rigorously examine the language representing and interpreting this particular part of history, we end up reinscribing violent patriarchal assumptions, which made possible the practice of comfort women in the first place. In those instances, the apology can be the biggest insult to those women who silently bore the burden of their sexuality and their female bodies, which are by definition guilty according to Confucian thoughts, for half a century.

Keywords: comfort women, apology, Japanese imperialism, international politics, Asian women's fund, violence, expendability

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Nationalism, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, Sexuality Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Japan

Year: 2000

Citation:

Zawati, Hilmi M. 2007. “Impunity or Immunity: Wartime Male Rape and Sexual Torture as a Crime against Humanity.” Torture: Quarterly Journal on Rehabilitation of Torture Victims and Prevention of Torture 17 (1): 27–47.

Author: Hilmi M. Zawati

Abstract:

This paper seeks to analyze the phenomenon of wartime rape and sexual torture of Croatian and Iraqi men and to explore the avenues for its prosecution under international humanitarian and human rights law. Male rape, in time of war, is predominantly an assertion of power and aggression rather than an attempt on the part of the perpetrator to satisfy sexual desire. The effect of such a horrible attack is to damage the victim's psyche, rob him of his pride, and intimidate him. In Bosnia- Herzegovina, Croatia, and Iraq, therefore, male rape and sexual torture has been used as a weapon of war with dire consequences for the victim's mental, physical, and sexual health. Testimonies collected at the Medical Centre for Human Rights in Zagreb and reports received from Iraq make it clear that prisoners in these conflicts have been exposed to sexual humiliation, as well as to systematic and systemic sexual torture. This paper calls upon the international community to combat the culture of impunity in both dictator-ruled and democratic countries by bringing the crime of wartime rape into the international arena, and by removing all barriers to justice facing the victims. Moreover, it emphasizes the fact that wartime rape is the ultimate humiliation that can be inflicted on a human being, and it must be regarded as one of the most grievous crimes against humanity. The international community has to consider wartime rape a crime of war and a threat to peace and security. It is in this respect that civilian community associations can fulfill their duties by encouraging victims of male rape to break their silence and address their socio-medical needs, including reparations and rehabilitation.

Keywords: sexual torture, male rape, wartime rape, gender crimes, Croatia, Iraq

Annotation:

Quotes:

"Male rape in times of war is predominantly an assertion of power and aggression rather than an expression of satisfying the perpetrator’s sexual desire." (33)

"When war finally came to an end in the former Yugoslavia, the medical records of health care centres provided evidence of male rape and sexual torture of Croatian and Bosnian Muslim men including castration, genital beatings, and electroshock." (34)

"This paper provides three kinds of potential remedies available for addressing the needs of Croatian and Iraqi wartime male rape victims: legal remedies, remedies within the United Nations system, and psycho-social remedies within civil community associations." (34)

"We should combat the culture of impunity in both dictator-ruled and democratic countries by bringing the crime of wartime rape into the international arena, and by removing all barriers to justice facing the victims. Moreover, we should emphasize the fact that wartime rape is the ultimate humiliation that can be inflicted on a human being, and it must be regarded as one of the most grievous crimes against humanity. The international community has to consider wartime rape a crime of war and a threat to peace and security. It is in this respect that civilian community associations can fulfill their duties by encouraging victims of male rape to break their silence and address their socio-medical needs, including reparations and rehabilitation." (40)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Men, Gendered Power Relations, Health, Mental Health, Trauma, International Law, International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Justice, Crimes against Humanity, War Crimes, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Security, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Men, Sexuality, Sexual Torture Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Iraq

Year: 2007

Citation:

Zarkov, Dubravka. 2001. “The Body of the Other Man: Sexual Violence and the Construction of Masculinity, Sexuality and Ethnicity in Croatian Media.” In Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed  Conflict, and Political Violence, edited by Caroline Moser and Fiona Clark, 69–82. London: Zed Books.

Author: Dubravka Zarkov

Abstract:

In this chapter, I examine newspaper articles covering the wars through which former Yugoslavia disintegrated, with the intention of showing how gender, sexuality and ethnicity constitute each other in the media respresentations of sexual violence. I begin from a somewhat unusual point: men as victims of sexual violence, not as perpetrators.

It may be a surprise to many readers that men were victims of sexual violence during the wars in former Yugoslavia, which became notorious for making the rape of women one if its most effective weapons. In the gruesome reality of war, men are usually seen as rapists and not as raped. Of course, this is not only a perception. In most wars and conflicts, as well as in times of peace, the reality is that men are rapists of women. I do not wish to deny that fact. However, I do wish to show that perceiving men only and always as offenders and never as victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence is a very specific, gendered narrative of war. In that narrative, dominant notions of masculinity merge with norms of heterosexuality and definitions of ethnicity and ultimately designate who can or cannot be named a victim of sexual violence in the press.

Annotation:

The author examines male sexual victimization in the Balkans War. She argues that “perceiving men only and always as offenders and never as victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence is a very specific, gendered narrative of war.” In that narrative, dominant notions of masculinity merge with norms of heterosexuality and definitions of ethnicity and ultimately designate who can or cannot be named a victim of sexual violence in the national press. Zarkov examines how male sexual victimization was presented in Croatian and Serbian mass media, after first passing through the filter of nationalism. In the press the author examined, sexually assaulted men were all but visible. An investigation of the Croatian and Serbian Press from November 1991 to December 1993 found only six articles in the Croatian press, compared to over 100 about other forms of torture experienced by Croat men and over 60 about the rape of women. The Serbian press did not publish a single text about sexual torture of men. In the Croatian press the only visible male victim of rape and castration was a Muslim man, while the Croatian man was never mentioned as either being raped/castrated or raping other men. Serbian men, on the other hand, were mentioned as sodomists who rape (Muslim) men. The author argues that, the need of the newly emerging Croatian state to have its symbolic virility preserved through the preserved virility, power, and heterosexuality of Croatian men was crucial for the representation of the sexual violence against men.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnicity, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Media, Torture, Sexual Torture, Sexuality, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Men Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Croatia, Serbia

Year: 2001

Citation:

Van Tienhoven, Harry. 1992. “Sexual Violence, a Method of Torture Also Used against Male Victims.” Nordisk Sexologi 10 (4): 243–9.

Author: Harry Van Tienhoven

Abstract:

Among large groups of male refugees in Europe, sexual violence as an aspect of torture has been recognized. Definitions of sexual violence, ways in which it occurs, and the effects on the victim are discussed. The individual cultural context of the refugee is taken into account. Survey responses from 17 reception centers documents that 129 clients had experiences of sexual violence. It is suggested that fear, anger, and/or powerlessness (feelings evoked by the discussion of violent experiences) may restrain both client and care provider.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Gender, Men, Sexual Violence, Sexuality, Sexual Torture

Year: 1992

Citation:

Kuntsman, Adi. 2009. “The Currency of Victimhood in Uncanny Homes: Queer Immigrants’ Claims for Home and Belonging Through Anti-Homophobic Organising.” Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies 35 (1): 133–49.

Author: Adi Kuntsman

Abstract:

This paper is based on an ethnographic study of Russian-speaking queer immigrants in Israel and, in particular, on their organising against homophobia. The paper follows the queer immigrants' claims that the homophobic attacks they experience are similar to anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews by the Nazis. Engaging with Freud's notion of the double as uncanny, I trace the relations of doubleness and substitution between two figures: the humiliated homosexual and the persecuted Jew. What does it mean, I ask, that injuries of homophobia are compared to injuries of anti-Semitism? What does it mean that Jewish immigrants in Israel claim that they are persecuted 'just like the Jews'? Throughout the paper I explore questions of migration and sexuality, as well as issues of Israeli nationalism and the currency of victimhood in claims for national belonging.

Topics: LGBTQ, Nationalism, Religion, Sexuality Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel

Year: 2009

Citation:

Haritaworn, Jin, Tamsila Tauqir, and Esra Erdem. 2008. “Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War on Terror.’” In Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/raciality, edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake, 71–95. York: Raw Nerve Books.

Authors: Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir, Esra Erdem

Abstract:

Our article focuses on the situation in Britain, where ‘Muslim’ and ‘homo-phobic’ are increasingly treated as interchangeable signifiers. The central figure in this process is Peter Tatchell who has successfully claimed the role of the liberator of and expert about Muslim gays and lesbians. This highlights the problems of a single-issue politics of representation, which equates ‘gay’ with white and ‘ethnic minority’ with heterosexual. At the same time, the fact that Tatchell’s group Outrage passes as the emblem of queer and hence post-identity politics in Britain shows that the problem of Islamophobia is not reducible to the critique of identity. The active participation of right- as well as left-wing, feminist as well as gay, official as well as civil powers in the Islamophobia industry proves racism more clearly than ever to be a white problem, which crosses other social and political differences.

Topics: Ethnicity, Feminisms, Gender, LGBTQ, Religion, Sexuality, Terrorism Regions: Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2008

Citation:

Argibay, Carmen M. 2003. “Sexual Slavery and the ‘Comfort Women’ of World War II.” Berkeley Journal of International Law 21 (2): 375–89.

Author: Carmen M. Argibay

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, International Law, International Criminal Law, Justice, International Tribunals & Special Courts, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Rights, Human Rights, Sexual Violence, Sexual Slavery, Sexuality Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Japan, North Korea, South Korea

Year: 2003

Citation:

Mayer, Tamar, ed. 2000. Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation. New York: Routlege.

Author: Tamar Mayer

Abstract:

This book provides a unique social science reading on the construction of nation, gender and sexuality and on the interactions among them. It includes international case studies from Indonesia, Ireland, former Yugoslavia, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Australia, the USA, Turkey, China, India and the Caribbean. The contributors offer both the masculine and feminine perspective, exposing how nations are comprised of sexed bodies, and exploring the gender ironies of nationalism and how sexuality plays a key role in nation building and in sustaining national identity.

The contributors conclude that control over access to the benefits of belonging to the nation is invariably gendered; nationalism becomes the language through which sexual control and repression is justified masculine prowess is expressed and exercised. Whilst it is men who claim the prerogatives of nation and nation building it is, for the most part, women who actually accept the obligation of nation and nation building. (Amazon)

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Nationalism, Sexuality Regions: Africa, MENA, West Africa, Caribbean countries, North America, Asia, East Asia, Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Balkans, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Oceania Countries: Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, United States of America, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2000

Citation:

Oza, Rupal. 2006. “Nuclear Tests and National Virility: Gender and Sexual Politics of Militarization.” In Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization, 103–33. New York: Routledge.

Author: Rupal Oza

Annotation:

Topics: Gender, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Militarization, Sexuality, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Year: 2006

Citation:

Tambiah, Yasmin. 2005. “Turncoat Bodies: Sexuality and Sex Work under Militarization in Sri Lanka.” Gender and Society 19 (2): 243–61.

Author: Yasmin Tambiah

Abstract:

In Sri Lanka's armed conflict, gender, sexuality, and sex work are intermeshed with militarized nationalism. Militarization entrenches gender performances and heteronormative schemes while enabling women to transgress these-whether as combatants or as sex workers. Familiarly, in this nationalist encounter, women are expected to safeguard culture, notably through proper dress and sexual conduct. Sexual activity that challenges containment arouses anxiety because loyalty to military group or communal boundary can be compromised. Drawing on three examples-a dress code call by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam women's wing, consequences for a woman alleged to be a sex worker, and the public stripping of an alleged suicide bomber at a military checkpoint-this article explores how gendered behaviors and sexualities marked as culture are constructed and controlled in the interests of militarized, nationalist projects; how women can be both agents and objects of these controls; and the implications for women who refuse to comply.

Topics: Gender, Women, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Sexuality Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Sri Lanka

Year: 2005