Question
"What are the determinants of life chances and control of reproduction during genocide?"
Drawing on the work of Helen Fein discuss the role of sexual violence in genocide for men and women.
What lessons do we learn from the Rwanda genocide and other cases of political violence discussed in class? How would you apply those lessons to preventing conflicts and violence from erupting in Kuwait?
The question of the determinant factors of life and control of reproduction in regards to genocide can be answered in four folds. The first is the that the oppressors insure that both men and women are killed indiscriminately, by that they insure the control of reproduction. Second, that goal can be achieved also by means of disposing of men while enslaving women for other serving purposes. Third, both men and women can be enslaved while being denied the right of interacting with each other or by imposing other means that prevents the outcome of reproduction. Fourth, it is women may be enslaved, sexually used, or converted if they are of a different religion in efforts to be assimilated into wives, while the men can be disposed of and killed.
ReplyDeleteSexual violence in the context of war or genocide serves a sort of a different role. While I am not sure on the role of sexual violence in other situations, it seems to serve a specific set of goals in the context of war. One being that it is a mean to the end to strike fear and terror to the enemies population and government. It can also serve as a reward to the participant of the genocidal act as well. However, in the bigger picture it is not far fetched to assume that the role of sexual violence in war and genocide serve the purpose of emasculating the patriarchal notion of the defeated group. By way of proving that such group is not able to protect their women.
Genocide is the worst crime that can be committed by a group of people. It is a systemic, targeted approach to eliminating one specific group based on prior prejudices or hateful rationale. Helen Fein, and many other scholars that study genocides, have proposed that sexual violence has become a synonymous crime associated with genocide. In Rwanda and other genocides in the past 30 years, there has been a number of sexual crimes on top of other genocide-related crimes. All genocides are gendered. They differentially affect men and girls, and enact socially made meanings of biological variations, and represent gender relations within the post-genocide amount. When we ignore the impact of gender on genocide, we erase the significance of many atrocities. We may miscount victims (including the deceased) and make some errors in dating the endings of genocides. We write laws that misdefinegenocide. These realizations are relatively new.
ReplyDeleteHelen Fein published the book of “Genocide and Gender: The Uses of Women and Group Destiny" in which she recognized that genocides had traditionally left the men dead but the women raped and incorporated as slaves, concubines, or spouses into the victorious group. But in more recent times, Fein discussed, that ancient pattern has started to shift, with females of the victim group were slaughtered along with the men or, when raped for instrumental reasons as a tactic serving strategic war aims (as in Rwanda).
Smith and Fein were asking about differences in sex among genocide victims. They mentioned the word "gender," but they wanted to emphasize on "women," whose meaning is that biology defines them as female humans. On the other hand, gender is used to refer to the socially constructed roles, experiences, and expectations associated with sex. Still, it differs from group to another, culture to another, man to another, and woman to another. The vast scale of rapes by the Hutu, together with horrific sexual mutilations by both groups, proved in some cases rape was used as a means to achieve political-military ends. Rape is no longer dismissed as a spoil of war. It is used to destroy a targeted group. Scholars began calling this genocidal rape.
There are many crimes of rape that happen during genocidal processes: systematic mass rape, forced maternity, and rape as a means of murder, sexual torture, gang rape, coerced rapes between family members, sexual mutilation, forced prostitution, sexual slavery, rape in rape camps, women forced to marry the murders or the people who had weapons to kill, and so forth. These unfortunate incidents led to an explosion of new analyses of the genocide gendered nature. Violent conflicts are social processes that are carried out collectively and must have a collective meaning. As Helen Fein pointed out, "acts that do not result in death have not been taken seriously in estimating the toll of victims by students of genocide". And by putting gender in our analyses, we will be more sensitive to the gender constitution of post-genocidal societies.
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Helen Fein draws on multiple, different genocides that happened throughout history and especially in the recent years to highlight the sexual violence that takes place during the act. There is the Holocaust, Rwanda, Sudan, Armenia, Cambodia, Serbia and more. The killing and extermination of one gender of a group is not always carried out with the intention of gendercide at the beginning but rather, it happens as the perpetrator attempt to commit genocide. The perpetrators, almost in all cases, even in ancient warfare, murdered men first and foremost. Many women were left widowed, as it happened in Rwanda where 60,000 wives were left without their husbands. The female population of the victims, as well as the children, were usually taken to be used as slaves. From there, they were assimilated into the group of the perpetrators as it was easier for women and children to be taken and absorbed in the community than men. Moreover, in slavery, women no longer own their bodies and therefore they do not own their children (48) so even if technically the heritage continues with the birth of a child, when a woman is a slave the baby is taken in by the perpetrator group to increase their population instead. This is not particularly genocide but it is a long term form of it as it ensures the death of a group over generations rather than immediately as the children would be restricted to take after the paternal side; “status determined by the father” (49) as it happened with the ancient Egyptians and Jews. And of course, once slavery is over and the woman is not needed for her services she is killed off.
ReplyDeleteRape is another tactic used by perpetrators to administer a form of discontinuity in ethnic groups. It was used as a tool to degrade the men and women; men by an attack on their masculinity as it shows that they were not strong enough to protect their families, and women by forcibly assaulting and impregnating them and then taking their baby. Not to mention the emotional and spiritual toll this action takes on the victims; it demoralizes them and induces terror and humiliation among the women (54). In Rwanda, the genociders ensured further destruction of Tutsi women by having men with HIV and AIDS sexually assault them and passing the diseases onto them so even if their lives were spared after the genocide was over, they could not reproduce in a healthy manner anymore. Even when rape was not a planned, organized attack, it was not particularly restricted or stopped, like in the Armenian genocide (55). Sexual abuse was not restricted to women alone though, as was observed in Yugoslavia, where men were also subjected to humiliation by being forced to display their body parts, watch their women and children be sexually attacked, be castrated and have them do unwilling sex (55).
These are some of the many ways in which sexual violence was carried out in genocide, whether it was ‘gender-neutral’ or not. Nowadays though, women are not spared in the acts of atrocities anymore as slavery is prohibited, except in Sudan, so they are killed along with the rest of their population by perpetrators. Lastly, it is important to consider the injured, incapacitated, and tortured when genocide occurs as its definition in the convention insinuates; “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group” (44). Not to mention the other conditions regarding preventing reproduction and limiting the continuation of the victim group that renders these atrocious acts as genocide which must be halted and punished for.
First and foremost, one of the key determinants of life chances in genocide relies on incentive. At least in “primitive” societies and ancient civilizations, there was no incentive to keep defeated men alive, but many incentives to keep females alive (48). Females were kept as slaves, which means they had no right over their bodies, meaning they have no right over their children. It is therefore clear that women were kept alive because through laying claim to their children, the perpetrators were able to “destroy whatever remained of the group biologically and socially” (48).
ReplyDeleteAnother reason why women were kept alive in “primitive” societies and ancient civilizations is due to the fact that early genocides were conducted to eliminate a real or potential threat; at least that's what Chalk and Johansson believed (48). This threat was usually framed as a military threat rather than a sexual threat. Therefore, it was more common for men to be killed and women to be enslaved. Women were usually incorporated into societies as slaves rather than murdered outright, and that’s why their lives were spared.
Although women can be spared instead of killed in modern genocides too, it is less common. As Helen Fein states, “there is no longer any general incentive to save women for their utility as slaves in most parts of the world” (57). The determinants of life chances in modern genocides exist to a much lesser degree because the end of slavery meant the end of any real reason to save woman. Modern genocides do not discriminate between men and women.
As for reproduction, it plays a big role in genocides. Simply put, controlling reproduction is to control the group. Controlling reproduction is a “means of ensuring group death over the generations” (48). Not only are the perpetrators preventing more people from being born into the victimized group, but they are also simultaneously breeding more children into their group through forced impregnation. Children are also taken away to prevent them from exercising their own culture.
PART ONE - ID: S00045045
In regards to sexual violence, it most definitely plays a role in genocides.
DeleteFirstly, sexual violence through organized and instrumentalized rape are used to create an “ethnically exclusive state” (54). Sexual violence is a way in which ethnic cleansing is accomplished through terrorizing and humiliating women and it leads to a lot of victims and their families not wanting to return back to their area (54). Sexual violence is used to drive out people and destroy the group biologically (through paying men with AIDS to rape such as in Rwanda for example) and mentally. As mentioned by Helen Fein, sexual abuse plays a role in genocide by “destroying the opponents culture because by raping women you rape the body of the culture” (43).
Of equal importance, sexual violence plays a role in communicating a very subtle and brutal message to the victims. Sexual violence is used to showcase how the victims “failed” to protect their own woman. This leads to more shame and humiliation. It allows the perpetrators to impose themselves and further degrade the men through undermining their masculinity. Upon seeing their women and children violated in such a horrific way, a lot of men also feel humiliated at seeing their “identity and autonomy” destroyed (55).
Sexual violence is also used to “shatter” any images and portrayals of dignity and prestige the women in the targeted group have. As in Rwanda, a lot of the men who raped the women mentioned the women’s ethnicity to demean them and more importantly, demoralize the group as a whole (55).
It’s important to note that sexual violence does happen to men as well. If men are not the ones witnessing their women and children being violated, then they are the ones being raped. Therefore, sexual abuse affects all genders in genocides, either through witnessing it or by being the victim.
Sexual abuse definitely plays a role in genocides as it degrades, offends and embarrasses the victim, so much so that they start losing sense of their own identity. It is punishable under the genocide convention and is yet another sickening method employed to destroy a group.
PART TWO - ID : S00045045
Do masculine and feminine roles differentiate between women and men as genocide’s victims, perpetrators? gender intersect with variables such as social class, age, and ‘combatant’ or ‘civilian’ status, as a result the usage of structural sexual violence affect women more than men in genocidal crimes. Even though both genders equally have been targeted by perpetrators as subject of genocide, Helen Fein raises the questions of the hypothesis of keeping women alive in order to control and prevent reproduction among the targeted group. The fact that this criminal action of kidnapping and enslaving women have been used throughout history from the very beginning of war, as a symbolic revenge and reward for the participants, The threat to society posed by the harms of rape, forced pregnancy and forced maternity leaves women who are victims, as members of the ‘enemy’ group, with children born of forced birth. However, “Rape is part of the rules of war, an element of male communication, an extension of an idea of masculinity associated with aggression” according to Smith, and to elaborate more on the topic the modern idea of war does not necessarily protect civilians and women especially from sexual violence and mass rapes, even in the time of pace in dictatorship society, women used as investigations tool to force men to sunder and obey the ruler. Moreover, in order to understand genocide we need more than the common definition, we need to analyze the perpetrators motives and the overall conditions before the act occurs. Breaking down all of the elements will help define every genocide separately than other, with consideration to all scientific research in this context that have been based on the historical events of genocide. In ancient history, women from the oppressed groups would be forced into slavery and marriage against her well, Moreover, sexual violence and rape in modern societies evolved into new usage and methods, for instance the rape of the women of Berlin by the Soviet Union which reached a horrific numbers to civilians, and as Antony Beevor describes it as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone. According to Natalya Gesse, Soviet soldiers raped German females from eight to eighty years old. In addition to the institutionalization as in the comfort women and focused prostitution by the Japanese military during WWII. Lastly the instrumentalization as a tactic serving strategic war aims as in Bosnia and Rwanda. Most women in time of genocide have no control over their lives, the only alternative of death is to be abducted, enslaved or appropriated by authoritarian men(the Armenian). However, the Holocaust didn’t seem to document specific abuse of women in compression with other genocide, but women in consecration camps who survived were facing humiliating stripping and sexual abuse. And to know the fact that, Holocaust did not have vivid patterns of gender discrimination is kind of surprising. In addition, women may survive genocidal act regarding the fact that they don’t participate in military and form army, which gives them slightly higher rates of survival. Unfortunately, due the systemic sexual abuse women can not fully recover and it many cases the victims committed suicide rather than living with such shame and guilt. And if they don’t end their lives, most societies forced them to be stigmatized and isolation as if they had options. Moreover, rape culture during war and genocide have been normalized and tolerated in all the documented genocide in modern history. To conclude, it is important to analyze and examine the question of what role does gender play in the experiences people have in episodes of genocide and mass violence, and how does gender shape that experience.
ReplyDelete52830
Genocide and war crimes have many things in common, specifically the role of sexual violence in fulfilling the perpetrator’s goals. Since women are normally one of the many minorities in nation-states, it is unfortunately very common for them to suffer from different kinds of abuses and violence, with little-to-no rights to protect them. An exceptional source of information that sheds light on the high correlation between genocide and gender, is Helen Fein’s Genocide and Gender: the uses of women and group destiny. Fein begins her article by explaining the four determinants of life chances and control of reproduction during genocide, for both male and females, from historic and present genocides: 1) “Both men and women might be killed indiscriminately” 2) “A perpetrator might kill the men and enslave the women and prevent reproduction” 3) “They might enslave both men and women and prevent reproduction” 4) “Men might be killed, women enslaved and sexually appropriated, either in a harem or as household concubines, or they may be converted… and assimilated to become wives.” (1999, 43). The difference between historic and modern wars/genocides is that modern innovations, like the radio and newspapers, have instrumentalized rape towards women. This gender-specific act is fulfilled by the perpetrators to intervene in their victim’s reproduction process and to implement degradation into the victim’s community. Because women are universally seen (in one way or the other) as vessels of reproduction, they are heavily targeted in both the reproduction and degradation aspect of genocide. The role of sexual violence for women, specifically rape, is to take control of the victim groups’ reproduction through forced impregnation, genital mutilation, infections from STD’s, and also by taking away their children to prevent their culture from reproducing. The perpetrators may assimilate these children to their own culture and benefit from them (for labor, professions, etc.). Women are also assimilated into the perpetrator’s culture by forcefully becoming their wives, slaves, or become involved in prostitution. These factors of reproduction are applied biologically, socioculturally, sexually, and perhaps economically. Moving on, the degradation aspect of genocide’s sexual violence against women attacks both the victim community as a whole and it’s male population. Here, the rape isn’t limited to women and is also applied to men and boys. By sexually violating women, it attacks the male population’s lack of strength and power to protect their own women, which emasculates them and their importance in life (“I can’t even protect my own wife/mother/daughter/girlfriend”). Similarly, having a male perpetrator raping another male victim or boy would make the victims feel small and feel like even more of a failure (now, they can’t protect both their women and themselves). On a wider scale, rape symbolizes degradation and the submissiveness of the victim’s community, which quantifies the perpetrator’s victory. After reading Fein’s article, I would like to conclude this post with her question that states “when do rape and rituals of degradation become acts of genocide as well as war crimes?”. We must begin to question why acts that do not result in death have not been taken seriously, even though they are included in the UNGC as international crimes.
ReplyDeleteTo begin with, one must note that there exists a variety of definitions regarding genocide, such as the UN Genocide convention’s and other definitions posed by social scientists who have studied genocide. Helen Fein describes genocide as a calculated action by a perpetrator to either a segment or an entire group to physically destroy them, by prohibiting biological and social reproduction of that group, even if no threat was posed by victims and regardless of surrender (44).
ReplyDeleteThe connection between gender and genocide is seen in the most ancient of times, in the form of “cutting open pregnant women,” and assimilating women. Thus, genocide destroys reproduction, and rape implants fear and degradation to the lives of the victims. Unfortunately, rape has been taken for granted and even encouraged in genocide, where mostly women fall as victims, with no protection of the horrors of sexual assault. It is almost a given, like a rule of war, for women to be raped, as it is seen as a symbol of revenge towards the victimized group and a reward to the dominant group. In the 20th century, there has been an eminent rise in rape and sexual assault, and especially in the use of media and propaganda. This escalation is seen through the toleration to rape, the encouragement of it, institutionalization, and instrumentalization (49). In the Armenian genocide, women and children were isolated, which points to Raphael Lemkin’s genocidal techniques. Some were deported and pushed by soldiers into the desert in extremely harsh conditions, in drought, starvation, and rape. This led to hundreds of girls committing suicide every day. To understand what determines whether or not women can live, and whether her reproduction will be controlled, Fein suggests four possibilities used to determine that. Either both men and women are killed with no discrimination, or men are killed and women are enslaved to prevent reproduction, or both men and women are enslaved, or lastly, that men are killed while women are sexually assimilated, appropriated, and enslaved. Thus, the determinant of life-chances of women during genocide rests on either being ‘allowed’ to live, and living through assimilation by becoming wives or slaves, or spared their existence.
Sexual violence has been carried out systematically, through forced impregnations, for example in Bosnia (a gender specific genocide), and can be used as an instrumental policy, such as in the case of Rwanda. According to Quindlen and Allen, “gynocide,” “genocidal rape” and “genetic warfare” were terms given to such sexual assault that involved both direct and indirect effects on group reproduction (54). Meaning, measures are taken in an objective to prevent births amongst a group, in short and long term. In Rwanda, sexual slavery and torture, forced marriages, and display of body parts were common. However, sexual violence is not just restricted to women. Although seen less, it does play a role in men, and they too suffer from trauma of the tortures of sexual victimization. The case of Yugoslavia illustrates circumcision, forced sexual acts, castration, and injuries occurred. In a more indirect sense, it is used as a way of 'male communication' by the dominant group to communicate the victimized group's inability to protect their women and symbolize revenge.
In this sense, Helen Fein analyzes the intersection between gender and genocide, and does an impressive job in doing so.
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ReplyDeleteDrawing on Helen Fein’s work, the determinants of life chances for victims are based on their perceived ability to assimilate and whether allowing them to live would destroy the group in ways other than physical. For women in the Armenian genocide forced assimilation was common, due to the nature of the conflict being religious rather than biological, the assimilation of victims into the perpetrators group was not seen as an ‘ethnic impurity.’ This was not the case for Jewish women in the Holocaust, as they were seen as inherently biologically different there was no attempts to assimilate them to Aryan Germans, intermarriages were even prevented starting from 1935 by the government.
Women’s life chances increased based on their ‘ability’ to assimilate and the lack of threat they posed on the perpetrators – as per Islamic tradition the children of Armenian women took on their father’s religions, thus the assimilation and forced impregnation and marriage of Armenian women did not cause ethnic impurity while at the same time was a way to destroy future generations of the group. Women and children were easier to assimilate, which is why they were spared; however this was not the case for men – they were rarely spared in genocide and if they were it was for labour. There was no incentive to keep men alive, the aim of genocide was to destroy a nation, therefore allowing people who could not assimilate to live would be counterproductive. Men were also normally the soldier class, and so killed in battles and conflicts.
The appropriation of the nation’s reproduction also played a big role in genocide, the removal of their ability to produce any future generation would lead to the eventual destruction of the group as a whole. The perpetrator’s aim is not only the cultural, physical and social death of a group but also its biological destruction. With children being taken away the culture of the group dies with no one to carry and pass it on. The rape and sexual violence of women also functions as a way to ‘repay’ soldiers and participants, as was the case in the Nanjing massacre.
The sexual violence women endured additionally served a different purpose than simply appropriating the reproduction of the group, it was a way to degrade and humiliate the nation, to establish its inability to protect its women, thus emasculating the male members of the nation. In Rwanda it was also used as a method to directly humiliate the women themselves and to ‘put them in their place’ as no better than the Hutu people. The forced impregnation of women with the children of Hutu men left effects on the community even after the end of the violence, their children would remain a source of conflict for the mothers and the community as a whole, the effects of the attack remain long after the end of it, such was the aim of ‘genetic warfare’. The sexual attacks directed against women are directed towards the collective, it became a symbolic way to defile the group as a whole. Additionally apart from methods of degradation aimed at the women, their husbands and fathers and the community that could not protect them, such attacks dishearten the group and reduces the chances of any resistance, this is exacerbated when women were raped in front of their families or forced to preform sexual acts with family members. It’s important to note that men were also the victims of sexual violence, both indirectly by being forced to view their female family members being assaulted and directly through the sexual assault they suffered. In Yugoslavia male victims suffered things such as “castration, circumcision, forced sex acts” (55).
Genocide is always a product of hatred and discrimination. Helen Fein discussed how sexual violence was used during genocides by the perpetrators to achieve their long-term goal in both genders. She mentioned how sexual violation such as assimilating women and stopping reproduction by using different means of sexual violence has never changed during the course of time. four types of genocides were stated by her; ideological, retributive, developmental and despotic. It is interesting to mention that different time periods used different type of genocides in order to destruct the targeted ethnicity.In the article she mentioned the two time periods of genocides; ancient and modern. If we look at the uses of sexual violence during the ancient times, in most cases women were always the targets of genocide. For example, during the Armenian Genocide which is the one of the ancient ideological genocides, women and girls were targeted, raped, enslaved, and converted. Girls had to commit suicide because they preferred dying rather than experiencing all of these horrible acts. On the other hand, in modern time, genocide have changed its purpose and the ethnicity that is targeted is seen as a threat and genocide is used as a response to that threat, for that reason women are no longer enslaved because the perpetrators want to get rid of that threat which in this case is the group as a whole. An example of a modern time genocide is the case of Rwanda. Women were sexually tortured and killed and in other cases they were purposefully not killed so that they will suffer from AIDS.
ReplyDeleteBeside women, men also have suffered in genocides. In the case of Bosnia, men also suffered sexual victimization. Gender has never been an issue in genocides. Both men and women suffered although not equally but eventually they have been sexually victimized. Fein also discussed the two parts of sexual violence in genocides; reproduction and degradation. In the case of reproduction, she mentioned that taking control of the reproduction in ways such as force impregnation, or by preventing reproduction or by taking away children; this was famous during the Armenian Genocide when they had taken forcibly the children, converted and gave them to other Muslim families. And for degradation such as rape and attacking on patriarchy, this was used as means to attack the society as a whole.
In all cases, genocide with its proponents is a very inhuman acts towards a group of people. No matter what the case is, genocide is not a way in solving an issue just because the perpetrators own power. We always hope that the previous genocides are the last ones, but history always repeats itself in different times with different ways of destructing a nation. It should be understandable that women are not objects and they are not the only ones who have to pay the price of the hatred and discrimination.
50076 (part 1)
ReplyDelete- Many genocide cases have shown control of reproduction as well as determination towards the nature of life chances, as we learned that genocide kills, traumatizes and destroys a nations ethnic, religious, cultural or national beliefs. History shows groups of “superior” people violently enforcing their culture or religion on the oppressed group while mentally traumatizing as well; for example, the Holocaust genocide case displays control of biological reproduction by forbidding certain marriages and decreasing the birth rate due to discrimination. Helen Fein goes more into detail with how the role of sexual violence in genocide for men and women in her journal of genocide research named Genocide and gender: the use of women and group destiny. I believe all victims, regardless of gender, have been put through hell in all genocide cases, but Fein dives deeper to display what each gender goes through, such as rape, enslaving and sexual violence towards women during the capturing of the victims. On page 48, we learn some ancient societies decided on killing males, as they were seen as military threats, while keeping females in order to enslave and have total control of them. And if a woman was pregnant, or had children, they had no rights to claim as children and women were “easier to take in and to absorb in the community than men”. Obviously everyone is being affected in situation like these, men have their taken away from them, women have been tortured and enslaved (left with no rights), and children have been controlled- it’s un unjust situation where nobody wins, but we can’t ignore the fact that women were chosen and targeted to survive solely to be controlled and tortured. By capturing pregnant women, they can control the reproduction, similar to what happened in the holocaust. They can raise the children with beliefs the mother she does not agree on, breeding them to their personal beliefs. Or enslave women and rape them in order to have their children and do the same. The Armenian genocide, a second case to potray this treatment, began with measures to isolate women, children and older people and strip communities of the means to resist (50), before captivation and lead to starvation, rape, wounds and suicide among the victims. In he beginning of Fein’s journal she expresses four determinants in genocide which include a.) both men and women are killed indiscriminately, b.) perpetrator might kill men and enslave women and prevent reproduction, c.) enslave both genders and prevent reproduction and d.) men killed and women enslaved, sexually appropriated and converted and assimilated to become wives. These determinants can be seen and are portrayed in many genocidal cases and it leaves these victims either to death or mentally traumatized. The Armenian genocide survivors revealed that hundreds of women would purposely drown themselves in a single day just to avoid the unjust actions the Turkish have caused to themselves and their nation, forcing them to convert, carry their children (through rape), separated from loved ones, and treated violently- “they might be saved from death by being abducted, enslaved and appropriated by local men who had them converted so they could become Muslim wives (51).
50076 (part 2)
Delete-- The Armenian genocide differs from the holocaust due to the pattern of gender and discrimination and sanctioned rape as the holocaust was more of a racial genocide. After the Bosnian case, “In around 1992, a report of the commission of experts distinguished five patterns of rape and sexual assault which is used to document the ground for indictments of war crimes and genocide, which include; committing sexual assaults against women for the purpose of terrorizing and humilatiaing them, and shame and humiliation by raping victims in front of adults and minor family members in public places in order to never return to the area as well as forced impregnation” (54). And in 1998, the united nations criminal tribunal for rawadana found the former mayor of taba guilty for genocide, explicitly citing rape as an act of genocide as he was held responsible for more than 2,000 people and the rape of dozens of Tutsi women. Finally, some recognition is brought into these genocial cases and hopefully things will change as serious bodily and mental harms are being caused towards these victims, which is one of the crimes listed in UNGC’s definition of genocide.
Helen Fein’s article focuses on linking genocide and gender together and also discusses and examines the role of rape and sexual violence in genocide. She starts off by talking about several determinants that decide whether women are allowed to live and whether they’re allowed to reproduce or not. The first determinant she mentions is how men and women might be killed randomly instead of discriminately. Secondly, the perpetrator could kill the man and enslave the women which puts a stop to reproduction. Thirdly, they could enslave both men and women, and put an end to reproduction. Lastly, the perpetrators would kill the men and enslave and sexually assault the women, force them to convert to a different religion, then make them act like their wives.
ReplyDeleteThe role of sexual violence plays a huge role to both men and women during genocide. Although men are usually killed and women are more likely to endure sexual violence more during genocide, men are victims too. For example, in Sudan African Christian southerner women and children are kidnapped, raped, and enslaved, (50). The Armenian genocide also took women, children, and a few men to the dessert and tortured/raped them until they dropped dead from starvation and dehydration. Due to how they were treating women, it led to mass suicide where there were many women jumping off bridges and drowning themselves so that they wouldn’t have to endure the torment of rape, (51). Another case of women becoming sexual violence victims during genocide is during the Rwanda genocide. Hutu men used to rape Tutsi women all the time in order to degrade and destroy them. During the act, they would state that they’re merely just comparing Hutu women to Tutsi women, or that they’re raping them because Tutsi women think they’re too good for Hutu men. These acts were later on mentioned in court, and labeled rape as an act of genocide, (55-56). Although all the examples were mostly about women, men are also victims to sexual violence during genocide. For example, during the Bosnian genocide, men were more likely to be violated. Forced circumcision and castration, humiliation/degradation, rape were all things that a lot of Bosnian men had to undergo. Some were also forced to watch their children and wives get raped while not being able to help them, which was targeted to undermine their masculinity, (55).
Despite a number of the rape victims I’ve mentioned surviving, rape and sexual violence are extremely detrimental to a person’s mental state, not to mention can also cause physical harm such as STDs or abuse during the act. The psychological aftermath can cause the person to self-harm, forever feel dehumanized, and even commit suicide. Victims who are women can also be stuck with the baby of their rapist for the rest of their lives, and most of them are often forced to take care of them. People need to start noticing that although more men are killed during genocides and rapes, more women are raped and those women usually live the rest of their lives wishing they were dead instead.
The interests of the perpetrators of genocide- be that only the complete eradication of the victimized group, or if there are also interests in appropriating the victimized population’s reproduction, was the main determinant of the life-chances of women (this did not extend to men, even in scenarios of slavery, as they were seen as liabilities). This appropriation may take place due to an interest in expanding the perpetrator’s population, the institution of slavery, or other ideological factors- e.g. an exclusively patrilineal perspective on identity and inheritance, or general rules against unnecessary violence towards women and children and the elderly. This interest in seizing control of reproduction for the perpetrators’ use seems to have dissipated in the modern era, as this was typically only found in the ancient world where slavery was institutionalized and a general lack of inextricable group differences was present. Instead, genocides in the modern era opt to utilize sexual violence as a tool to end the reproduction of a subordinated nation within their borders, as opposed to controlling that reproduction, though there are scenarios (e.g. Armenian genocide; which is also comparable to ancient genocide in the lack of inextricable group differences) where both the control of reproduction and sexual violence are present.
ReplyDeleteSexual violence is a tool used for the perpetuation of genocide beyond a particular violent event or period, or for producing particularly pronounced messaging of terror, dehumanization/humiliation and defeat, both physical and moral, to the subjugated group. In genocide, sexual violence may be forbidden, tolerated, sanctioned, instrumentalized or institutionalized by perpetrator authorities. During the Holocaust in Germany, there were regulations against intercourse with the Jews, as they were considered a corrupting or contaminating influence on the pure Aryan race (in reality many Aryan spouses of Jews petitioned for their rights of marriage successfully, though perhaps these successes were deemed temporary by the state). This prohibition was generally neither present nor enforced in German satellite states; sexual violence was tolerated in those areas. In examples like the Armenian genocide, sexual violence was tolerated and also sanctioned under marital practices, as there was no racial deterrent to appropriating reproduction in this way as was the case in Germany. In Rwanda, we see sexual violence institutionalized through genocide propaganda depicting Tutsi women as desirable and admirable yet unattainable by Hutu men, and its instrumentalization by the Interahamwe, government military and presidential guards by means of gang-rape, torture, and mutilation.
Sexual violence was not only used against women; an example of this is in former Yugoslavia where castration, circumcision, and forced sexual acts took place. This and sexual violence generally are tools for humiliation, either by humiliating males directly by violating them, or indirectly humiliating them by forcing them to witness the sexual violence against their wives and children.
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ReplyDeleteThe control of reproduction has always been an essential part of genocide, to prevent the population of the victim’s group from being proliferated. Helen Fein notes down in her article her definition of genocide and the motives behind sexual violence in genocide, for both men and women. Firstly, Fein defines genocide as the following “Genocide is the calculated murder of a segment or all of a group defined outside of the universe of obligation of the perpetrator in response to a crisis attributed to the victims or an opportunity seen to be impeded by them.” She expands to list the significant reason behind genocide which are mainly domination, economic development, and social revolution. Secondly, she highlights the aspects of sexual violence and the elimination of reproduction in four conducts. The first is that the perpetrators kill both men and women indiscriminately, second is killing men, leaving women behind to enslave them and aim to prevent them (women) from reproducing, thirdly is to enslave both women and men and prevent the occurrence of reproduction and the fourth conduct is for men to be killed and for the women to be enslaved, sexually appropriated and violated in which they are raped, forced to convert religions or beliefs and assimilated to become the wives of the perpetrators. Moreover, since reproduction “serves to continue the group”, the purpose behind such horrendous performance is to eradicate the group of the “other”, that being the victims’ group. Additionally, women in genocide always had their children taken away from them, in which those children were either “brainwashed” into new cultures and ideologies and were culturally assimilated or killed to prevent the continuity of the targeted group.
As Fein’s article on Genocide and Gender discusses the notions of sexual violence in the oppressed groups, she emphasizes on how rape has occurred in modern, pre-modern and prehistoric war as an approach to intimidate the targeted group and to serve some type of ritual degradation and instill terror and torture as well as to demoralize the victim’s group, "the rape of the women in a community can be regarded as the symbolic rape of the body of this community". Furthermore, rape has been an essential part in the “rules of war” and that is because it coerces and insults the masculinity of the men in the victim’s group (the inability of the male victims to protect their women), men are also bound to be victims of rape as a form of masculinity degradation.
The Rwandan Genocide is one of the examples of how sexual violence plays a role in genocide; Over a hundred thousand of Tutsi women were raped and killed by the Hutu group, for an estimation of hundred days, they had to endure rape and terror, or commit suicide to avoid experiencing such torture. To conclude, sexual violence and reproduction control serves to destroy the continuity of the population in the victim’s group as symbolic revenge and reward to the perpetrators.
“Genocide is sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity directly or indirectly, through interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members, sustained regardless of the surrender or lack of threat offered by the victim.” Helen Fein in Genocide an Anthropological reader, page 82. During a genocide, the victims are seen as anything but humans. “The victim is (an) inferior subhuman (animals, insects, germs, viruses) or superhuman (Satanic, Omnipotent)... (sometimes victims are seen as) aliens” (84). To the perpetrator, they become the spawn of everything disgusting within their given land. And although genocide doesn’t necessarily discriminate between the victimized group, genocide, however does indeed affects men and women differently, vastly different. In a United Nations Security Council press release, titled Women Suffer Disproportionately During and After War, Security Council Told During Day-Long Debate on Women, Peace and Security published in 2003, stated the following exhibit concerning women and children: “that women and children accounted for the majority of those adversely affected by armed conflict.”
ReplyDeleteA genocide, to say the least is an ethnic cleansing, and the best way to ethnically cleanse a society is to aim the people in charge of the reproduction of society, and that is mostly the women. Women, in the majority of human societies are seen as the bearers of the future and society. Fein explains the second article of the United Nation’s Genocide Convention, in which she goes over the means of controlling the chances of reproduction. Fein explains that one manner of controlling the chances of reproduction, as provided by the UNGC article 2 is the prevention of births (82). Fein goes on to state that by “‘forcibly transferring children of the group to another group’, (this results in a) systematically breaking the linkage between reproduction and (the) socialization of children in the family or group of origin” (82). Fein also explains that “minorities at risk” are likely to be victimized by genocide (87). In Different regions around the world “minorities at risk” would include elderly people, women, pregnant women, and children. In another article written by Helen Fein titled Genocide and Gender, Fein emphasizes the difference between females and males during a genocide, and the contrast in treatment between the victim females and the victim males. Fein mentions that during the 20th century, the idea and enforcement of rape during a genocide has shifted from “toleration to Encouragement and sanction to institutionalizing (as in making the victim women prostitutes) to instrumentation as tactic serving strategic war aims…” (49). Fein continues on to state that in some cases such as in Bosnia, the perpetrators would rape girls and women in front of family members. “This may involve heightened shame and humiliation by raping victims in front of adult and minor family members, in front of detainees or in public places, or by forcing family members to rape each other.” (54). To conclude, Fein stated that “women in the vicitm groups were more likey than men to endure social death before physical death ” (57).
Genocide seeks to destroy everyone regardless of the gender, but usually when the reproduction of the identity stops, the identity stops with it. There were incidents were genocide was just targeting males. Why targeting males only? As Helen Fein mentions that both genders can be killed, preparatory can kill men and enslave the woman, this will stop the reproduction. In addition, when men get killed and woman becomes enslaved, there are ways that woman can be used, woman can be sexually abused, and this happened in the modern, pre-modern, and prehistoric war. To stop reproduction, either the men of the community gets killed, and the woman enslaved, both genders get killed, either the male gets killed and the woman left as slaves or wives, either both male and female gets enslaved but can't interact with each other. Some occasion woman can even be wifed from the other community and be converted to their religion/identity.Back then when the defeated army loses the battle, the woman of the army gets enslaved and raped. Rape is more like a rule of war. As Fein mentions that rape of the woman of a certain community can be viewed as “the symbolic rape of the body of this community”. On the other hand, there is sexual differentiation in genocide where it is less common for men to be raped. Men usually gets killed, and there is no incident recorded where there was a genocide that only targets female. Also, in an example of the Hebrews when genocide happened to them, the genocide targeted male children, whereas woman can be enslaved and wife, but men should be killed if the identity of the group wants to be destroyed. So the answer of why is male usually targeted to genocide and woman left, it is because the men is viewed as the holder of the identity. So if all men in a certain community gets killed, the identity of the community is killed with it.Even in ancient civilization the pattern of killing men and keeping women as wives and slaves was there. In my point of view, I can understand the differentiation between genders in an act of genocide. As seeing historical examples, the male is the source of identity in the community, so men should be destroyed, woman might not be a danger, to continue the identity and that’s why they aren't a priority in the genocide case. Although the woman reproduces but the identity comes from the father, so when the male is destroyed, the identity of the community gets destroyed as well. So to stop the reproduction of a certain identity, either both genders gets killed, either the male gets killed and the woman left as slaves or wives, either both male and female gets enslaved but can't interact with each other, either making the woman enslaved and converted to their identity/ religion.
ReplyDeleteWe all know by now that the intent of genocide is to destroy, destruct, and impose mental and physical harm on the lives and wellbeing of any given group. The perpetrator is usually seeking out to eliminate the longevity and reproductive possibilities of the oppressed group in order to succeed in an ethnic cleansing procedure. Whereas women are given the right and emotional resilience by god to conceive and reproduce is a powerful process of giving life; In some way, that contradicts the incentives of genocide.
ReplyDeleteIn her paper Genocide and Gender: The uses of Women and Group Density, Helen Fein sheds light on the role of sexual violence in genocide for men and women. Firstly, in gender neutral genocides, men and women are killed indiscriminately. However, genocides may not lead to direct killings, and instead take act in sexual assault and enslavement of men and women, whilst preventing reproduction, and assimilating victim group into perpetrators national patterns. Kidnappings and assault during times of war and crisis become a strong element of communicating qualities of masculinity, aggression, and power; victimization of vulnerable groups of women and children.
The main issue I have with the legal definitions of genocide is the lack of emphasis on acts that do not directly result in death. Sexual assault and population degradation are acts that kill the spirit of any given group; the role of sexual assault in times of war is meant to threaten and intimidate the other. It is unfortunate that spreading terror through violence and hearing the cries of the victims is seen as act of winning and a reason to celebrate.
Fein talks about some occurrences of sexual assault in ancient and modern genocides. In the case of the ancient world “Women were more likely to be spared from death, because of the existence of slavery and the general lack of ideologies” that create group differences. However, that is not to say that rape and methods of destruction to eliminate reproduction did not exist. Whereas modern genocide appears to be driven by ideological and developmental reasons, meaning “rape and social isolation through stigmatization” has led to many instances of social death of female victims, where there is no aim to “protect” women for their utility as slaves. If a woman from the victim group survives, she is likely to be assimilated, or impregnated by oppressor group to “appropriate babies” into preferred pattern of biological bloodlines.
Some examples such as the Armenian genocide show how rape occurrences were not organized, but were tolerated, and “in prospect of rape and death lead to mass suicides of young women” where woman would jump of cliffs and drown themselves as an act of “dying together”. It is known that the Holocaust and Cambodian genocides were “gender neutral” yet still does not mean that sexual assault did not occur to intimidation and show who’s boss. As in Rwanda, “rape is not only a ritual of degradation leading to genocide over generations but may be a means of inflicting death.”; ethnic cleansing.
Interestingly, Fein notes that Genocides tend to occur in patriarchal societies with male dominance; “in such societies, women’s purity and honor are usually cotangent on preservation of virginity before marriage.” So, rape and sexual assault may take place not only to destroy women but as an attack to “the family and self-esteem of fathers and husbands, as a public demonstration of their inability to protect their women.”
Although men may suffer from assault at times of war as well, it is likely that the act of rape or sexual violence is perpetrated and organized by men. The body represents the state of the human condition, and when it is assaulted, it becomes vulnerable, scared, and hopeless. I do not have a reason for why one would want to assault, but I believe that perpetrators are left with an a more detrimental illness to the heart, which is to live with the fact that they took part, the guilt, and unforgiveness, knowing the mental torture they have inflicted onto others.
Genocide is the end result of a well, gradually coordinated set of plans and steps directed to the annihilation of a distinct ethnic or national group. The steps involve the oppression of the national pattern of the oppressors in various aspects, such as culture, religion and morals. This may be done through cultural assimilation, changing and imposing dominant group’s political and social institutions, restricting use of native languages or linguistic chauvinism and restraining practice of cultural or traditional activities. Another significant way is to inhibit the reproduction or in other words the successive increase in the population of the oppressed ethnic group. This is not only done by sterilization and separation programs to stem the growth of the community from the base, but can also be achieved by forced impregnation by oppressors to in a way force their racial superiority, and transfer and impose their ‘pure’ genes to give rise to more ‘civilized’ and ‘acceptable’ populations. In several genocides across the world, it has been noted that treatment of men and women vary, even if ultimately annihilated. Men would mostly be subject to immediate annihilation. Women would undergo series of violence and torture in physical and sexual forms.
ReplyDeleteGender can be deployed to understand genocide and other forms of mass violence committed against a particular social group. It is important to note that gender groups do not only indicate the sexual and biological differences between males and females but also represent the social and identity differences they hold in society in terms of roles and gender identity. Gender roles may shape women and men as genocide victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. The ‘gendericide’ refers to the aimed direction of genocidal actions towards a gender group. This is not a modern phenomenon, but has been observed across various timelines. Determinants of life chances and control of reproduction, is their degrees of relatedness, vulnerability, class, ethnicity, submissive nature and minority in terms of population. Sexual violence in genocide for men includes sterilization and separation from their families, making them more helpless and inducing psychological torture. The actions against women are more symbolic and include rape to degrade the honor of the community, forced impregnation by oppressors which leaves a permanent mark in the society of the horrors the victims faced, as seen in the case of Tutsi women in Rwanda. There are several examples in history that show a gendered perspective of genocide. For instance, in the case of the Holocaust, sterilization programs were used to suppress the Jewish community. The communities of Dutch and Norwegians are considered of related blood thus, their bearing of children by German men (the oppressors) was encouraged. The oppressors sometimes would marry some of the oppressed women after cultural assimilation and religious conversion. Others would be dehumanized to objects to be disregarded and maltreated. This is a determinant of chances of life and reproduction. However, members belonging to a different racial group labeled as ‘killable’ would not have life chances. Their status, class, cultural background all act as determinants of whether they would be subject controlled reproduction.
Helen Fein started off by explaining that genocide’s purpose is to eliminate a specific group of people while reproduction serves to continue the linage of this specific group. Helen shares her definition of genocide as stated “genocide is sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity directly or indirectly, through interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members, sustained regardless of the surrender or lack of threat offered by the victim.” Therefore, reproduction is important for survival and the continuation or the passing down of culture and tradition of a specific ethnic group. Moreover, rape and the control of reproduction is an important aspect to consider when looking at genocide. Helen Fein goes to explain throughout her article the determinants of life changes and the control of reproduction during genocide in prehistoric, premodern, and modern context, as well as sharing and elaborating the determinants through examples of genocide which include the Rwandan, Armenian, Bosnian, and Sudanese genocides. Answering the question of determinants, she mentions four aspects that include when both men and women are killed, when the men are killed but women are enslaved and socialization is limited in order to control/prevent reproduction, when both the women and men are enslaved and reproduction is also prevented, and lastly when men are killed and women are enslaved and used sexually (prostitution) or forced to convert religions in order to be wives.
ReplyDeleteThe first aspect she describes is detonated as gender neutral, which can be seen in the Holocaust where men, women and children were killed indiscriminately. The Jews were seen as a virus so in order to eliminate them, they killed all the Jews, despite their age and gender. The second aspect she mentions is more related to prehistoric or primitive war as she explains that the men were killed and the women were captured and raped as well as used as slaves. The third aspect is rare but still presented as she mentions in the example of Israelites where both men and women were used as slaves. As for the last aspect, it was presented in many examples: such as the Japanese forcing women into prostitution after WW2 and the Sudanese that coerced women to convert in order to be their wives. In addition, there are countless examples of genocide and war that fit into the four categories and many that carry variations of rape for different purposes.
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Furthermore, sexual violence rape and slavery is committed by the perpetrator to the victim of the groups in order to have control of reproduction and other reasons. It was also inflicted for a variety of reasons that were shared in the article. It was noted that these acts were not just committed for the sake of pleasure but rather it is inflicted and used as a tool in genocide to limit and control reproduction. As per the article states, “in practice slavery was another name for recurrent rape, and since slaves had no rights to their bodies, they had no right to the children born of the pregnancies forced upon them.” (48) This comes to show that rape and slavery are interconnected with genocide is a tool of genocide. By committing these horrendous acts, it reinsures that over time the group will be diminished and wiped out. It also created social isolation due to the fact that slaves were owned by someone and were seen to have very little value as a human being, Orlando Patterson’s definition of slavery according to the article is, “the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons” who became subject to “social death” (48) Therefore, it didn’t just destroy the person biologically or physically but also mentally and socially. Women were not only the subjects of rape and slavery but men were as well. Although there is not much documentation on this topic is should not go unsound that men also could be victims of such detrimental acts. By acknowledging the fact that sexual assault, rape, and slavery is a step-in genocide and ethnic cleansing the definition of genocide would expand. As these factors are a means for perpetrators to eliminate and control the reproduction of the victims group.
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Fatma Al-Mutawa
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Helen Fein discussed the determinants of life chances and control of reproduction during genocide in her article Genocide and gender: the uses of women and group destiny. Some of them were that first both men and women were murdered with no exception. Second, the offender might slay males and capture females to become their slaves and stop them from reproducing. Third, both males and females might become slaves and stopped from reproducing. In that stage, women might get raped because as slaves they have no right over their bodies, and if they tried to have intercourse with males of the same group they will be punished. Fourth, males might be murdered, and females are “sexually appropriated either in harem or as household concubines.” Women of other religions might be converted and become spouses for the perpetrator. (43) Similarly, in the Armenian genocide. Sexual violence was used in wars first, as a “ritual of degradation to install terror and demoralize the victim’s group.” This could be established through rape, forcing family members to have intercourse with each other, rape women in Infront of their fathers and husbands in order to destroy their ideologies if what a family should be to destroy them mentally and spiritually. A case to back this up would be the Bosnia and Rwanda case. Second, “to destroy the continuity of their reproduction.” By stopping them from having sex with males of their group, paying males who are known to have sexually transmitted diseases to rape women, and give them drugs to prevent then from having children in the future. third, “ used as symbolic revenge and reward to the participants” similarly to the Rwanda case where women were raped because the men thought they looked down on them and because they wanted to know how they tasted as rumors were spread about the Tutsi women’s beauty. Fourth, Seifert discusses the role of rape as it “a part of the roles in wars” even though there were some cases were women were not harmed. He continues by explaining it was used to prove to the males of the victims’ group that they are week and helpless by not being able to protect their females. Fifth, the female's body portrayed as the soul of the “community” and by violating it, it destroys it and its culture. Finally, Smith argues that rape was to fulfill the “males desire” and war was seen as an excuse. (43-44) forced prostitution by the Japanese in WWII might be a similar case. (49)
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ReplyDeleteGenocide, being a result of social constructs, effects different genders differently. Males are predominantly always killed and never enslaved. Women on the other hand suffer a much more heinous reality. Women are prone to enslavement, rape in its various forms and an overall tortured existence. This is all due to one group wanting to annihilate another, which means destroying future generations as well. Rape is used as a form of degradation and dehumanization; leaving men broken and women torn apart. Fein’s work looks into the different motives behind rape whether it be on an individual level or to attain a greater goal; Fear, intimidation and symbolic gestures. The motives never justify the action. The age-old relation of man and woman makes the action of forcibly removing one’s partner in order to impose or remove certain ideals all the more animalistic. Whether it be to break a man’s spirit or to forcibly impregnate or whatever the reason may be to stop the continuity of a people. The atrocities inflicted in Rwanda, the Holocaust, China and USA are systemic and calculated to prevent the ongoing survival of people. Fein states that the factors that determine women’s survival during a genocide are as follows. First, men and women are killed indiscriminately. Second, men are killed and women are enslaved and are prevented from reproduction. Third, the enslavement of both men and women and preventing reproduction. Finally, men are killed and women are sexually appropriated and assimilated. This sexual violence focused towards women is because historically war and violence were a male aspect of life. Therefore, women were seen as a resource as a posed to equal human beings.