POLSCI 389 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Wartime Sexual Violence, Gender Analysis, Social Constructionism

• School: U of M
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLSCI 389
• Professor: Ragnhild Nordas

Document Summary

Theme: defining and conceptualizing wartime/conflict-related sexual violence. Learning goal: define and provide examples of conflict-related sexual violence. Seeing variation - important to have good/clear definitions of the phenomena we are studying and that helps with our understanding as well. A major trend went from a focus on the high profile cases (only) to a more comparative analyses. Essentialism: women are targeted because they are women, extension of peacetime/everyday sexual violence. Concern about militaristic masculinities (patriarchal norms) as a key feature of warzones. Proposes an overly simplified portrayal of men as essentially aggressive sexual predators. Structuralism: focus on some women being particularly targeted (not all women) Other identities (ethnicity, religion, political affiliation) interact with gender identity. Explanation brings in how sexual violence can be regarded as a transaction of identities between the perpetrator and the victims . Argues that sexual violence occurs to masculinize the perpetrator and feminize the victim.