What is Gendered in Conflict-Related Sexual Violence?

The current wars and armed conflicts, the migration movements across different territories and borders as well as the ongoing feminist debates on the category »woman« bring sexual violence into the spotlight with renewed urgency. At the same time, the understanding of and knowledge about sexual violence in armed conflict is undergoing significant changes.

During our last workshop in Hamburg 2019, we examined the question »what is sexual about sexual violence?« The discussion revealed the challenge of thinking about the complexity of gender in considering the interconnectedness of sexuality and violence and, furthermore, the problem of understanding different gendered constellations of sexual violence. This problem is also becoming increasingly visible in current scholarly debates about wartime rape where gender is often reduced to the dichotomy men versus women, and the question of who does what to whom in armed conflict.

On the one hand, the observation that men can be victims and women perpetrators seems to be increasingly used as evidence that sexual violence is directed against both sexes equally and that gender constructions and relations are not crucial to understanding the phenomenon. On the other hand, despite the increasing visibility of LGBTQI victims, there seems to be little deeper analysis of gender in these discussions. The lack of sufficient understanding of these constellations notwithstanding, the current debates have already started to change the academic, activist, legal and policy terrain about sexual violence in armed conflict.

During this workshop we aim to explore current constructions of gender in the power relations of sexual violence in conflict, engaging with recent highly public debates in media, law and the policy world that increasingly draw attention to male and LGBTQI victims, as well as female perpetrators. To do so, we propose to engage with empirical sources and case studies from four different fields: (1) law and policy; (2) media; (3) history and memory; (4) activisms. Our main questions are:

What models of gender shape the respective approaches to sexual violence in armed conflict? Which research and intervention methodologies are used to document, understand and represent this violence, and what are their models of gender? 

What is gained and what is lost in this new understanding? How does this change perceptions and approaches to the subject? Which transformations can be seen in public and political debates?

What do we need do take into account to make sense of different constellations, for example constellations involving »female perpetrators« or »male victims«? How can we grasp the different individual and structural levels in which this violence is gendered?

Are there alternative models, such as gendered practices, that might advance both our knowledge about, and preventive interventions into sexual violence in armed conflict?