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Introduction Men experience sexual violence during armed conflict situations, which affects their physical, social and psychological well-being. However, this is under-researched and under-reported ( Vojdik: 2014 : 931), and often misunderstood and mischaracterised ( Kapur and Muddell, 2016 : 4). Consequently, men who experience conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) have been severely overlooked within the humanitarian
This chapter attempts to bring into question caste-based sexual violence in India, generally understood as the violence committed by upper-caste men against lower-caste women, politically and socially identified as Dalit women. It builds on the case study of Satyabhama, 1 a Dalit victim of caste-based sexual violence, reported from the Chakur Taluka (administrative district) of the Latur district of the Indian state of Maharashtra, to highlight the moments in which Dalit women’s testimonies of sexual violence get
’n Oop hol is in die tronk soos ’n goudmyn – álmal soek ’n stukkie. (An open anus in prison is like a gold mine – everybody wants a piece of it.) (Sesant, 2020 ) Under conditions of increased visibility of sexual violence crimes and victims speaking out, such as during the #MeToo and #SayHerName campaigns, patriarchal logic tends to change tack. No longer able to either deny its reality – or extent 1 – altogether (its first strategy) or to
this is often bound up with power, with the perspectives, interests and ideas of dominant groups reflected in the mainstream of politics, culture and education, while less privileged viewpoints are marginalised or actively repressed. The examples that I give above reflect issues around childcare, sexual violence and pregnancy that reflect many women’s interests and experience, but that have not attracted the attention of the male theorists who have dominated the analysis of ideology, knowledge, language and power. To take perhaps the most notable and influential of
Introduction Sexual violence against men and boys in armed conflict has garnered increasing attention over the past decade. 1 A growing body of evidence demonstrates that sexual violence against men and boys is perpetrated in many conflicts and that men and boys are also subject to sexual violence during displacement ( Chynoweth et al. , 2020b ; Féron, 2018 ; Hossain et al. , 2014 ; Johnson et al. , 2008
What violence can we do, in the name of fighting sexual violence? This book presents a critique of #MeToo and similar Anglo-American campaigns. These campaigns are dominated by self-described ‘nasty women’, who refuse to be silent and compliant and who name and shame perpetrators in the media. These women also tend to be privileged and white. The book argues that mainstream feminism filters righteous anger about gender inequality through race and class supremacy. This turns ‘me, too’ into ‘me, not you’: an exclusive focus on white women’s pain and protection, and a desire for power and control sated through criminal punishment or institutional discipline. Punitive systems tend to disproportionately target marginalised people, who become collateral damage of the white feminist ‘war machine’. It is also a short step from sacrificing marginalised people to seeing them as enemies, which happens in campaigns against the sex industry and transgender inclusion. In this reactionary feminism, ‘me, not you’ refers to hoarding resources, policing borders and shutting doors. The book concludes that to tackle these dynamics white feminists need to reach towards a more intersectional, connected and abolition-focused politics, taking their lead from feminists of colour and other marginalised people.
a ‘women’s’ issue to take account of the ways that gender is a structuring concept which impacts all and has complex and intersectional effects. The focus on sexual violence against men in two of the pieces is a timely reminder to think about the gendered nature of violence and the gendered nature of humanitarian responses to it. Catherine Akurut reviews the current literature on conflict-related sexual violence against men, importantly calling into question the ways in which the humanitarian
international colleagues. This, we argue, is all the more striking in light of the 2018 Oxfam scandal and resurgence of interest in preventing sexual exploitation and abuse (see GADN, 2019 ), as well as the rise of #AidToo and #AidSoWhite which saw aid workers share experiences of sexual violence and racism on social media as part of wider #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter phenomena since 2013. 3 While the term ‘the field’ – and its more extreme sibling ‘the deep field
Introduction Gender-based violence (GBV) comes in many forms and is present in different contexts. It serves as the umbrella term for any harmful act perpetrated against a person’s will and is based on socially ascribed (gender) differences between men and women ( Inter-Agency Standing Committee, 2005 : 7). While it is used interchangeably with sexual violence and violence against women , GBV highlights the gender
in rural locations ( Rumble et al. , 2018 ; UNICEF, 2014 ) and communities affected by conflict and displacement ( Mazurana et al. , 2019 ; Baines, 2014 ; Schlecht et al. , 2013 ). Indeed, the relationship between conflict and child marriage is one that has resulted in considerable investment in tackling child marriages among displaced populations and in post-conflict settings by humanitarian agencies ( Oxfam, 2019 ; USAID, 2010 ). This is linked to the focus on addressing sexual violence during conflict; child marriage is often framed as resulting in sexual