Finding the man in the soldier-rapist

Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 211–227, 2001 Copyright © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/01/$–see front matter

Pergamon

PII S0277-5395(01)00157-1

FINDING THE MAN IN THE SOLDIER-RAPIST: SOME REFLECTIONS ON COMPREHENSION AND ACCOUNTABILITY Lisa S. Price Gibsons, B.C. Canada [[email protected]]

Synopsis — Drawing on research into war rape in the former Yugoslavia, this article considers a means of comprehending the motives of perpetrators. It argues that they are neither mad nor bad but ordinary men acting out of comprehensible motives. It further argues that to the extent that perpetrators act out of choice, they can and should be held accountable for their acts of sexual violence. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

COMPREHENSION Recently I spent some months trying to get into the mind of a perpetrator—to comprehend the thinking processes of a man who would commit war rape. On a sensual level I did not and still do not understand. I cannot imagine wanting to be sexual with someone who did not want to be sexual with me. On one level, then, I was unsuccessful. I did come to understand, though, that men who commit sexual atrocity in war are not mad. Nor are they in any theological sense evil by which I mean possessed by the devil or carrying bad seed. Stated otherwise, I came to understand that evil is a profoundly human capacity, one that we all share. The question then becomes why do some people, some men, act on that capacity and others do not. A common response to egregious violence, especially sexual violence, is incomprehension. There often appears to be an underlying assumption that acts of cruelty cannot be understood by normal, sane people. Thus, Wendy Hollway (1981) charts the medical, legal, and media depictions of Peter Sutcliffe1 as either mad or bad—outside the bounds of normal male sexuality. A similar, and perhaps more

I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers whose comments were both helpful and engaging.

extreme example, is that of Peter Snow who, in 1993 in Vancouver, Canada, kidnapped two women, kept them captive in a forest outside the city, and subjected them to sexual torture over a number of days until he was found and arrested. During the hearing on the prosecution’s application to have him declared a dangerous offender (a status that results in an indeterminate sentence), the Court heard from two psychiatrists regarding Snow’s mental state. These “experts” did not interview Snow, as he refused to cooperate. Instead, they based their assessment on reports from Snow’s family and neighbors and, crucially, on police descriptions of his crimes. They concluded that Snow was mentally ill, arguing that it would be a “psychiatric impossibility” for a healthy person to have committed these offences.2 When perpetrators are depicted as either mad or bad (crazy or demonic), the effect is at once dismissal and alienation. Dismissal means that the observer need not struggle to understand either the act or the actor, as by definition they are incomprehensible. Alienation represents the perpetrator as a monster, inhuman, unlike me. As with dismissal, it serves as an excuse to avoid thought, most especially, reflection on the social origins of abusive male sexuality. This article is premised on an assumption that evil is neither mysterious nor supernatural. Rather, it is a human capacity, and is understandable in human terms. As much as we,

211

212

Lisa S. Price

the observers, may wish to close our eyes and minds to man-made horror, we have the ability, and so the obligation, to struggle to understand. Proceeding from this grounding assumption, the analysis in this article has been further inspired by two sources. The first is Hannah Arendt’s description of the conviction that led her to write The Origins of Totalitarianism in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust: That this called not only for lamentation and denunciation but for comprehension seemed to me obvious. This book is an attempt at understanding what at first and even second glance appeared simply outrageous. Comprehension, however, does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalities that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden that events have placed upon us—neither denying their existence nor submitting meekly to their weight as though everything that in fact happened could not have happened otherwise. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality— whatever it may be or might have been. (Arendt, 1979, p. xiv)

The second inspirational source is Max Weber’s construct of Verstehen, or interpretive understanding,3 which he developed out of the work of Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Simmel. Weber maintained that the aim or purpose of an action is its cause. As Fritz Ringer puts it, “agents envisage the results they hope to achieve, along with the means of attaining these results, and that is what moves them to act” (1997, pp. 92–93). Understanding human behavior, then, requires an investigation of motives, not in any sort of teleological sense, but in the sense of discovering “what actually moved persons to act in particular cases” (Ringer, 1997, p. 94). As a mode of analysis, Verstehen begins from the premise that any given action has a purpose envisaged by the actor. That is, actions are “rational” from the actor’s perspective. The interpreter’s task is to understand the

action by comprehending the actor’s subjectively intended meaning even—perhaps especially—when such action appears to diverge from logical or ethical rationality. Like Arendt, then, Weber held that even the outrageous is open to comprehension. Procedurally or methodologically, Weber recommended that the analyst attempt to understand the world (self, other, means, resources) as it is perceived by the actor without identifying with the actor. In other words, interpretation does not require any correspondence between the actor’s subjectivity and the interpreter’s. Weber repeatedly stressed that one does not have to be Caesar to understand Caesar (Ringer, 1997, p. 95). Relatedly, interpretation does not imply empathy. Still less does understanding lead to moral relativism or subjectivism. In short, understanding an action such as genocide is one thing, tolerating or excusing it is quite another. While not denying that the process of attaining understanding can be intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually taxing, it is nevertheless both possible and necessary. This article assumes that the perpetrators of war rape are not madmen or devils but ordinary men acting out of comprehensible motives. Actuation for Individual Perpetrators One of the functions of violence, especially when applied unidirectionally, is that it exaggerates difference, creating psychic and ontological distance between the violator and the victim. Daniel Goldhagen, for example, argues that the violence and degradation of the Nazi camp system served to create simultaneously both the “new German” and the “subhuman” prisoner (Goldhagen, 1997, pp. 174–177). The gulf so produced then functioned to legitimize (Goldhagen uses the term “self-ratification”) both the violence itself and the larger program of extermination. Elaine Scarry, too, in her treatment of torture, emphasizes the creation of difference as an operative of violence. Beginning with an understanding that “intense pain is worlddestroying” (Scarry, 1985, p. 29), she proceeds to demonstrate how violence—the deliberate infliction of pain—establishes a series of oppositions: the torturer has the absence of pain, the prisoner has the presence of pain; the torturer has the presence of the world, the prisoner has the absence of the world; the torturer has voice

Finding the Man in the Soldier-Rapist

and therefore agency, the prisoner is either voiceless or his voice is a betrayal. Across these inversions, says Scarry, “pain becomes power” (Scarry, 1985, p. 37) for as the prisoner’s world contracts, so the torturer’s world expands. In the world view of militarized state nationalism, as in the masculinist world view, loyal (male) citizenship is defined as the will and capacity to commit (“to do”) violence upon the enemy.4 It is not simply that as a soldier one is given permission to perform violence. Rather, one is offered the promise of fulfillment, an actualization of identity, through violence. Identity is realized or accomplished in opposition to the Other, in creating a manicheistic gulf that obviates any recognition of species being. Drawing on Freud, Michael Ignatieff refers to this as the “narcissism of minor differences” (Ignatieff, 1998, p. 48). Similarly, Suzanne Kappeler comments that “the subject can be posed only in being opposed—he affirms himself by posing ‘the other’ as inessential and as object” (Kappeler, 1995, p. 38). I AM only to the extent that you are not—male because you are female, Serb because you are Muslim, soldier because you are civilian. Your absence marks, verifies my presence and your pain becomes my power. In a sense, what each of these writers is describing is an operation of Dorothy Smith’s ideological circle (Smith, 1990), played out on bodies rather than through texts. One begins with a conceptualization of the Other as evil, as subhuman, as an object of revulsion. One then recreates the Other to conform to that conceptualization. Finally, that recreation acts to confirm the original conceptualization. As Goldhagen notes, the victims in the Nazi camps—heads shaved, starving, lice-ridden, cowed—would indeed appear to their captors to be subhuman, “lacking a variety of essential human attributes, not the least of which was even a minimally healthy human appearance” (1997, p. 177). Violence and degradation are necessary conditions for genocide, central to the construction of both self and other. Furthermore, to the extent that a self-identity built upon violent oppression is inherently unstable, it may require an ongoing escalation of cruelty: He then spread my legs and raped me. He was very strong—you cannot defend your-

213

self. When he was done, he inserted his hand inside me and began pinching me with his fingers, as if he wanted to pull everything out. I screamed and he grabbed my right breast and twisted it so hard that I screamed again; long afterwards my entire breast was blackened. He thrust the knife to my throat and said that, if I screamed one more time, he would slaughter me. He inserted his fingers inside me again—it hurt tremendously—and then he thrust his hand at my face and I had to lick his fingers clean, one by one. He repeated the whole thing once more. (testimony of K.S., Human Rights Watch, 1993, pp. 174–175)

The assault is suffused with malevolence, with hatred, and with loathing so extreme, so palpable that it seems pointless, almost dishonouring, to attempt to make sense of it. Yet there is sense, or at least a structure to the rapist’s actions. Pain, humiliation, threat, the transgression of sexual taboos, and control all escalate through the progress of the assault. He inflicts pain and is rewarded with the proof of her scream. He inflicts more pain, elicits more screams, then threatens to slaughter (note, “slaughter,” not “kill”) K.S. if she screams again. In silencing her he is all-powerful, for he has forced what should be humanly impossible. Here, again, Scarry provides a useful perspective: [The prisoner] will, while being hurt, be made to speak, to sing, and, of course, to scream—and even those screams, the sounds anterior to language that a human being reverts to when overwhelmed by pain, will in turn be broken off and made the property of the torturers in one of two ways. They will, first of all, be used as an occasion for, be made the agent of, another act of punishment. As the torturer displays his control of the other’s voice by first inducing screams, he now displays the same control by stopping them . . . (Scarry, 1985, p. 49)

Each stage of the assault marks a diminution of her, and hence, an augmentation of him. As her world and her being contract so his expand. The rapist does not, in the end, “slaughter” K.S. Instead, the fillip of the final act (forcing her to lick his fingers clean) renders K.S. into living proof of the debased, disgusting nature of Enemy Woman, and con-

214

Lisa S. Price

comitantly, the rightness of his cause and of his being. By forcing K.S. to participate in her own degradation, he confirms what he already believes: that she is debased by nature, and hence, that he is right to oppose her kind. In discussing what she refers to as the sexualization of the political technology of the female body, Inger Agger suggests that one of the functions of torture is to “disgrace its victim by disgracing her body” (Agger, 1994, p. 69). Drawing on the work of philosopher Agnes Heller on the power of shame, she argues that to the extent that the prostitute is viewed as a symbol of shame, torture’s fundamental goal is to “turn the woman into a whore” (1994, p. 72). She quotes one of her informants: I think that many men who torture a politically active woman try to convince themselves that she is a kind of whore. They know, too, that many of us were more liberated than other women. I think it was easier for them to torture a woman who was a whore than a woman who could be like their own mothers or daughters. There has to be a kind of separation: “I can act like this toward this woman because she is not like my mother or my wife or my daughter.” There must be a lot of prejudice against us political women. But our lives were also very different from the traditional woman’s. I think there are many men who don’t think politics is anything for women. (1994, p. 72)

K.S. is recreated as a whore, an object of disgust, for only a whore would perform such a shameful, degrading act as to lick his fingers clean of her own blood and secretions. Her treatment calls to mind a chilling comment by another perpetrator quoted by Maja Korac: “I only remember that I was the twentieth, that her hair was a mess, that she was disgusting and full of sperm, and that I killed her at the end” (1996, p. 137). Disgust is a common element of misogyny. As in peacetime, rape in war is a gender-specific act, an expression of hatred of women qua women. Hatred is not too strong a word. Tamara Tompkins comments: “Sometimes, the nature of the specific acts inflicted on women when they are raped are cruel in such a biologically specific way that one literally feels the loathing of women” (1995, p. 873). As in K.S.’s

account, hatred and loathing are palpable in many survivors’ descriptions of sexual torture and mutilation: On that occasion, I was raped with a gun by one of the three men already in the room. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 218) If a man couldn’t rape [i.e., if he was physically unable] he would use a bottle or a gun or he would urinate on me. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 217) They pushed bottle necks into our sex, they even stuck shattered, broken bottles into some women . . . Guns too. And then you didn’t know if he was going to fire, you’re scared to death, everything else, the rape, becomes less important, even the rape doesn’t seem so terrible to you anymore. (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 118) They forced the woman and her husband to undress in front of each other in the living room. They bound the woman’s hands behind her and raped her with a wooden baton and a spoon. She was then thrown onto a bed and threatened with further rape. Instead, the men bound her legs, threw her into the bathtub, and one of the perpetrators walked across her chest. She sustained broken ribs, a damaged lung, and other internal injuries. (Commission of Experts, 1994, para. 233)

What is described in K.S.’s account is not “just rape” in the commonly understood sense of illicit sexual intercourse accomplished by force. Neither is it “just torture” in the commonly understood sense of the infliction of pain or wounding to extract information. There is more at stake here than mere transient sex (however pleasurable the confluence of sex and power or sex and violence may be) or mere information. What is at stake is being—particularly, his being. It is not enough that he rapes her—that is over in the first sentence. It is not enough that he injures her in biologically specific ways—her vagina, her breast. It is not enough that using his knife he threatens to slaughter her—knife-slaughter, butcher-food animal. In silencing her he negates her. In shaming her he makes her complicit in that negation. Finally, crucially, complicity is proof that even the enemy recognizes

Finding the Man in the Soldier-Rapist

215

the triumphant righteous I AM. She confirms I AM by being recreated as all that I am not. K.S.’s account continues:

would show me how a Serb does it. He tied my hands and then he raped me on the table. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, pp. 166–167)

He lowered his knife down below and said that he would rip me open. He kept cursing at me and shouting: “Where is your [Bosnian President] Alija [Izetbegovic] now?” He called me an Ustasa [and cursed at me]. I thought it was the end of me. But then, he left. I do not know why he did not kill me. Before they left, they threatened to burn everything if we told anyone what happened. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 175)

They said they were going to show us what real Serbian men were like. But they weren’t men at all, they were animals, monsters. (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 109)

The soldier threatens to sexually mutilate K.S. but does not. Why? Was he at this point bored, running short of time? Or was it sufficient that they both knew that he had the power to do so? He calls her Ustasa, an appellation for Croats, yet in invoking the name of Izetbegovic he clearly recognizes that K.S. is Muslim. Croat or Muslim, what is important to him is that she is non-Serb. Her otherness, in other words, is both gendered and ethnic. Euan Hague suggests that in such circumstances, the perpetrator asserts his “hetero-nationality” (1997, p. 55), a national identity different from that of the victim. In raping K.S. he proves to himself his identity as powerful, manly and, crucially, Serb (Hague, 1997, p. 56). In turn, the rape victim “has her or his national identity (as Bosnian) rejected and humiliated as it is forced, by the rape, into an inferior position as feminine” (Hague, 1997, p. 55). This last comment brings to mind feminist discussions of the eroticization of dominance and submission. It can be argued that such eroticization derives from two reciprocal ideations relating to male sexuality: first, that sex requires dominance; second, that dominance is experienced as sexual. Furthermore, the axes of oppression may be racial, ethnic, class as well as gender and each of these may be sexualized. Accordingly, we may consider whether the perpetrator experiences his national dominance as sexual and performs that national dominance by forcing K.S. into a position of sexual submission. The notion of perpetrators performing their national identity sexually is also evidenced in the following cluster of quotes: I started to cry, and I told him that I was menstruating. He said he didn’t mind and that he

[in presence of approximately ten Muslim men] One of them screamed: “I’ll fuck your mother, all your mothers. Here, I brought you one of your women; look how the Chetniks love them.” And they started to kiss me right in front of them, they did everything, there wasn’t anything they didn’t do. (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 129) They said I wasn’t a real Chetnik and now I would have to prove to them if I was at least a real man . . . They said, “Here are twelve broads for you.” The women were already there when I got there, and five or six soldiers came in too. I was supposed to rape the women . . . The soldiers told me I should rape her, and the others too . . . The soldiers said, “You guys aren’t real Serbs at all; but don’t worry, we’ll show you how it’s done” (Stiglmayer, 1994, pp. 156–157). They cursed our mothers ‘cause I hadn’t turned into a real man and said what a disgrace it was that they’d come from so far off just to fight for us. Then I was also supposed to strip and rape the women who were left over, catch them . . . They showed me how you do it, how you grab a woman by her breast and take hold of her sex, and they told me that I was free to rape them . . . The Chetniks were doing a lot of yelling, making animal noises, whistling: “Oh looky there, that’s supposed to be a man. That’s no man, that’s a sissy.” And they were bragging about how they raped the women themselves, how much fun they had with these twelve women the day before. At the end they said they’d forgive me this time, but not next time. And then they let me go. (Stiglmayer, 1994, pp. 156–157)

So potent is the narcissism of minor differences (Freud) in nationalist ideology that even male sexuality becomes specific: Serbs “do it” differently than Croats or Muslims. As well, we may note the audiences for these perfor-

216

Lisa S. Price

mances of ethnicized male sexuality. In the first two quotes the audiences are the female victims. In the third quote the audience is Muslim men. The last quote, though, is somewhat more complex inasmuch as the audience, a young Bosnian Serb named Cvijetin Maksimovic, is forced to become a performer. Maksimovic brings another dimension to the analysis, for he claims, “The killing and the raping were supposed to teach us to hate” (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 158). Thus, through harming another one comes to hate that other, a reversal of common sense understanding of causation reminiscent of Goldhagen’s treatment of the instrumentality of violence and degradation in the Nazi camp system. Rape may also function as a performance of masculinity within a group of men. Many commentators, including Brownmiller (1975), Niarchos (1995), and Tompkins (1995), note that a high proportion of sexual violence in war is gang rape. In these instances war rape appears to be a performance for fellow soldiers: While one of them was raping me, the other two were laughing, insulting me and cheering him [i.e., the rapist] on. They smelled of alcohol. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 167) Others stood watching. Some spat on us. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 218) I was taken away only once and was raped by only one soldier, although there were many soldiers in the room where I was being raped. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 248) Two of them held me tight, and the third one raped me. I tried to defend myself, but they used a knife on me. (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 98) They tore all my clothes off me until I was naked, and then two of them held me down and two of them raped me. They forced me to do it with my mouth. (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 136) The men, paramilitary troops . . . had stripped to the buff, and two pinned her to the bed as the third raped her. Then they switched places, each watching the others perform. (Gutman, 1993, p. 74) Another report . . . states that two Croatian women were subjected to a night of multiple

and continuous rape while others watched. The perpetrators were reportedly “known for such activity.” (Commission of Experts, 1994, para. 83)

The statements are remarkably similar in their description of serial rape as a collaborative act. In some cases the soldiers may have made a collective decision to rape; in others, one may have initiated the rape and others followed. The soldiers may have negotiated among themselves who would be first and who last.5 While we are not given any information about the decision-making and negotiation (indeed, the survivor/witness may not have been privy to those discussions), we are told clearly that the soldiers cooperated to effect a series of rapes. They took turns and either by presence alone or by active participation, facilitated their fellows’ acts of rape. The similarity between these statements, taken jointly, and Peggy Sanday’s analysis of fraternity gang rape is striking. Sanday conceptualizes “pulling train” (the serial rape of a woman by a group of men) as a bonding ritual by which fraternity brothers are brought together as “virile, heterosexual, loyal comrades” (Sanday, 1990, p. 133). In the milieu of a campus fraternity, loyalty and comradeship are values necessary to group cohesion. In a military fraternity, particularly though not exclusively in a state of war, those values often come to be seen as matters of life and death. Sanday further describes “pulling train” as a homoerotic act. In this regard Gutman’s (Sanday, 1993) description “each watching the others perform”—is particularly telling, for it unmistakably conjures the image of men having sex with each other through the medium of a woman’s body. In light of the earlier discussion of the sexual performance of national identity, the notion of loyal comradeship may be especially resonant. Recalling Maksimovic’s account, we may imagine perpetrators using rape performance as a means of proving to each other their individual fealty to the masculine Serb nation. Through rape they demonstrate to each other that they are “real men” and “real Serbs,” worthy of inclusion in the brotherhood. This, in turn, suggests that for all the talk of biological determinism—of blood—ethnicized masculinity is not experienced as a genetic inevitability but rather as an accomplish-

Finding the Man in the Soldier-Rapist

ment, constantly measured and negotiated through processes of performance. In raping, the perpetrators play out what Michael Kimmel views as the animating condition of men: “The fear of humiliation, of losing in a competitive ranking among men, of being dominated by men” (Kimmel, 1990, p. 127). Or, as Jeffrey Weeks puts it, “Masculinity . . . is achieved by the constant process of warding off threats to it” (quoted in Hague, 1997, p. 56). To the audiences of female victims, subjugated male onlookers and fellow soldiers we may add a fourth: the perpetrator himself. Is it too speculative to consider that he too watches and measures his performance of ethnicized masculinity? Scarry comments:

217

They used to think the Muslims were their friends and neighbours, but then the propaganda clouded their minds. They told me that the Muslims had lists with the names of Serbian children who were going to be butchered. That was the propaganda lies of Serbian TV from Banja Luka. (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 89)

It is not accidental that in the torturers’ idiom the room in which the brutality occurs was called the “production room” in the Philippines, the “cinema room” in South Vietnam, and the “blue lit stage” in Chile: built on these repeated acts of display and having as its purpose the production of a fantastic illusion of power, torture is a grotesque piece of compensatory drama. (Scarry, 1985, p. 28)

Recourse to pharmaceutical aids (either for stimulation or for sedation) may indicate doubt and uncertainty about one’s actions, possibly one’s identity. These can produce distress, which in turn, may result in the men redoubling their violence toward women: “It [anti-woman violence] soothes their own fear of annihilation, their fear of other men, their fear that they might be wrong” (Martha Royea, personal communication, 1997). Why does a deeply cowardly act make you feel more like a soldier? Why does hurting and humiliating another human being raise your spirits and your stature? For all that we may analyse hatred of the Other—woman, non-Serb—as a motive force, what underlies that hatred may be hatred (and fear) of oneself. Julia Kristeva offers the following insights:

What does this drama compensate for? Scarry seems to be suggesting that an illusion of power is created in order to make up for the absence of real power. But perhaps another interpretation is possible. The segment of K.S.’s account presented above ends with the soldier’s demand that she and the others with her keep silent about their treatment. This suggests that despite the constructed manicheism and self-ratification, on some level the Serb soldiers knew that what they had done was wrong. Gutman, interviewing survivors of systematic rape in Brezovo Polje, reports: “According to the young women, the rapists discussed the assaults with their victims as a mission they had to accomplish. Many of the men fortified their resolve by taking white pills that appeared to stimulate them, the women said” (1993, pp. 69–70). Similarly, a Muslim male internee at Trnopolje camp states:

The cult of origins is a hate reaction. Hatred of those others who do not share my origins and who affront me personally, economically, and culturally: I then move back among “my own,” I stick to an archaic, primitive “common denominator,” the one of my frailest childhood, my closest relatives, hoping they will be more trustworthy than “foreigners,” in spite of the petty conflicts those family members so often, alas, had in store for me but that now I would rather forget. Hatred of oneself, for when exposed to violence, individuals despair of their own qualities, undervalue their achievements and yearnings, run down their own freedoms whose preservation leaves so much to chance; and so they withdraw into a sullen, warm private world, unnameable and biological, the impregnable “aloofness” of a weird primal paradise—family, ethnicity, nation, race.

As a doctor I was considered an authority, even by the Serbs, and in the first days many Serbian soldiers came to see me in the camp. They wept, they came to cry their hearts out, and they asked for apaurin [a sedative]. “What’s going on here?” they kept asking.

A defensive hatred, the cult of origins easily backslides to a persecuting hatred. And wounded souls may be seen to turn around and fight their neighbours who are just as hurt as they are—perhaps by the same totalitarian tyrant (political or religious)—but

218

Lisa S. Price

who can easily be taken for the weak link in that chain of hatred, for the scapegoat of one’s depression. (Kristeva, 1993, pp. 2–4)

Kristeva’s use of the term “scapegoat” bears comment. In Biblical tradition, this was literally a goat, sent out into the wilderness after the high priest had symbolically laid upon its head the cumulative sins of the people (Leviticus 16). The goat is innocent yet bears the blame of others. The goat escapes, but not into freedom; rather, it enters the realm of Azazel, a desert demon. In turn, the people also escape; that is, they evade responsibility for their wrong doings. It is not uncommon for batterers, for example, to blame their violence on the victims: “She made me hit her . . .” Kristeva, though, seems to be suggesting a somewhat more complex, tripartite relation, involving victim, perpetrator and, crucially, tyrant. The perpetrator hates himself, “despair[s] of [his] own qualities,” in having to submit to the tyrant’s power. That self-hatred is externalized and projected on to the victim who becomes at once both the instrument of and the scapegoat for his degradation. In The Wretched of the Earth (1967), Frantz Fanon describes a somewhat similar process. The colonized person, though he tolerates the worst insults and blows from the settler and his police agent without retaliation, will, with little provocation, attack another colonized person with murderous intent. Fanon’s explanation of this is that “the last resort of the native is to defend his personality vis-à-vis his brother” (Fanon, 1967, p. 54). Scapegoating, in other words, is fundamentally a process of displacement originating in a sense of powerlessness. A number of survivors relate that perpetrators described their acts of sexual violence as romance, and professed a desire to marry their victims: He alleged that I was the lover of [another prisoner] and that, because of this, I was shunning his advances. Then he beat me with a wire and hit me in the chest with his revolver. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 165) He was screaming that he wanted to marry me. [husband/witness adds: “He shouted at my wife and told her to leave me and marry him.”] (Human Rights Watch, 1993, pp. 168– 169)

One of them grabbed my arm and insisted that I say I loved only him and no one else in the world. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 230) They acted as if they were making love to their own girlfriends but, if you tried to resist, they would hit you and it was all the same anyway. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 234) Nihada removed the pieces of surgical tape on her arms and inner thighs. Her attacker, Rade Dolas, had tattooed his name and the following words on her body: “Rade—husband” [Rade, muz.] and “Rade. Don’t forget me.” [Rade. Ne zaboravi me]. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, pp. 254–255) He announced that he wanted to marry me, but I didn’t say anything to that. Then he pointed his gun at me and led me away. We left the building, and he took me to a house in the Bikavac quarter. When we got there, you couldn’t see anybody, but inside the house there were suddenly twenty of them, and they called out, “Leave something for us, Zoran, don’t forget about us.” As soon as one of them was done, the next one came. Twenty of them took turns with me . . . . Afterward Zoran said, “Now I don’t want to marry you anymore, now that all of them have”—you know the word “fucked you down the line.” (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 127) That Chetnik said that he was going to marry me. (Gutman, 1993, p. 74)

It seems likely that in some, perhaps most, of these incidents the parody of romance was invoked to heighten the victims’ humiliation. Others, though, suggest that the perpetrators themselves found the charade necessary, revealing again, as above, uncertainty as to actions and maybe identities. Tompkins, drawing on Brownmiller’s work, describes a somewhat similar blurring of sex and rape among American soldiers in Vietnam, though her interpretation is different: This was reflected in the following gang rape story told by an American soldier who was not a participant. The soldier related that one of the rapists later told him that “it was

Finding the Man in the Soldier-Rapist

the first time he had ever made love with his boots on” (Brownmiller, 1975, p. 114). The nonparticipating soldier went on in his own words to explain that “the last man to make love to her shot her in the head” (Brownmiller, 1975, p. 114). Note that both the rapist participant and the soldier interpreting and relating the story describe what happened as “mak[ing] love” (Brownmiller, 1975, p. 114). Possibly this is just semantics; the verbal result of limited vocabularies. More likely, though, it reflects their total indifference and incomprehension of the true nature of this sexual encounter. Either way, it is pathetic. (Tompkins, 1995, p. 873)

Certainly indifference and (willed?) incomprehension may play a part in the rapist’s and observer’s descriptions of the gang rape. Equally, though, self-delusion born of doubt also may be operative, a necessary means to ward off fear, hatred and loathing of self. In other words, to be who they are, and do what they do, these men must lie to themselves. In this respect they may be no different from men in “peacetime” who, for example, act out romantic fantasies using prostitutes or convince themselves that sexually abusing a child is the act of a loving father. A form of sexual violence in the war in the former Yugoslavia that has drawn much attention is that of enforced pregnancy. This refers not to conception as a simple, natural, unintended though predictable outcome of rape. Those, of course, do occur in both war and “peace.”6 Rather, it refers to situations in which one of the stated purposes of rape is impregnation. In the former Yugoslavia, the most widely cited example was that of women held in rape camps and repeatedly raped, usually by a number of men. These women were denied access to contraception, were sometimes gynecologically examined both for the presence of intrauterine devices and for signs of pregnancy, were exhorted by the rapists to become pregnant (as if such were within their power of will), and were released from the camps only when their pregnancies were too far advanced to safely abort. Additionally, survivors report that in a range of settings other than rape camps, perpetrators stated their intention to force the women to “give birth to little Chetniks” (Commission of Experts, 1994, para. 110, 123, 221). In some cases it appears that the purpose of

219

the pregnancies was similar to that of other forms of sexual violence in war: to create in the victims a sense of humiliation so as to prompt the victims to leave the territory. In other words, a tactic of ethnic cleansing: It was their aim to make a baby. They wanted to humiliate us. They would say directly, looking into your eyes, that they wanted to make a baby. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 215) They wanted women to have children to stigmatize us forever. The child is a reminder of what happened. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 217) They told us we were going to give birth to Serbian children and they would do everything they could so we wouldn’t even dare think of coming back again. (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 109)

Other instances reflect the perceived superiority of nationalist masculinity and the transformative power of ethnicized sperm: And while they were doing it they said I was going to have a baby by them and that it’d be an honour for a Muslim woman to give birth to a Serbian kid. (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 118) They said I was an Ustasa and that I needed to give birth to a Serb—that I would then be different. (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 164)

It is important to recognize that unlike the Jewish tradition, both Islam and Orthodox Christianity hold that identity is passed along the patriline. In the eyes of the perpetrators, then, the children that result from enforced pregnancy inherit their fathers’ ethnicity alone. Culture thus becomes genetic. Hence, a child borne by a Muslim woman and presumably raised in an exiled Muslim community nevertheless will grow to be a Serb man. One survivor, who was raped almost daily by three or four soldiers during 6 months of detention was told she would “give birth to a Chetnik boy who would kill Muslims” (Commission of Experts Annex IX.A, 1994, para. 105). Similarly, perpetrators told their victims to “go and deliver fighting Serbs” (Sofos, 1996, p. 86, citing Vulliamy, 1994, p. 199). One effect of this is a paradoxical erasure of

220

Lisa S. Price

the victim’s ethnic identity. She becomes, in Beverly Allen’s words, a “sexual container,” nothing more than a “kind of biological box” (1996, p. 87). Thus, the ostensible “reason” she is targeted for rape and enforced pregnancy— her “enemy” status—is, in the very process of the assault, simultaneously reinforced and eliminated. Underlying this construction is a view of women less as property than as territory. When, for example, enforced pregnancy is described by the perpetrators as planting “the seeds of Serbs in Bosnia” (Commission of Experts, 1994, para. 261; Gutman, 1993, p. 76 ), it seems that for them rape and forced pregnancy are not simply means of accomplishing territorial conquest but actually are territorial conquest, women’s bodies viewed as fertile soil, no different from farm fields.7 In the “logic” of ethnic cleansing, this conceptualization makes a kind of sense. Just as the purpose of targeting cultural property— especially churches, mosques, and libraries—is to efface the history of Muslim, Croat, and Albanian occupation of the land (Commission of Experts, 1994, para. 285-301; Gutman, 1993, pp. 77–83), so too may effacing a woman’s ethnic identity and claiming that the child she carries is Serb serve to expunge history and memory:

tians” (Commission of Experts Annex IX, 1994, para. 122). Victims also report being forced to say “I am a Serb, I am not a Muslim” while being raped (Commission of Experts Annex IX, 1994, para. 186). Others were forced to drink alcohol, eat pork, or make the sign of the cross, though these may be less symbols of religious conversion than forms of additional humiliation and suffering. Some women who became pregnant in the rape camps were taken to Serbia (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 119). Finally, in the region of Rogatica, “many women were pressured to denounce their religion, convert to Serbian Orthodox Christianity, and change their names. They were reportedly told that their lives would be spared if they complied” (Commission of Experts, 1994, para. 196). This notion of transformation is not unique to the former Yugoslavia. Urvashi Butalia, for example, records that during the Partition of India and Pakistan, fear was expressed particularly in the Sikh community that through rape and impregnation women would undergo religious conversion:

The Serb and Bosnian Serb militaries devastated non-Serb territory, destroying villages, churches and cemeteries to render the territory without a history. By removing such buildings, the Serb forces could claim that the territory had always been “Serbia” and annex it accordingly. The non-Serb, person or territory, was, in the eyes of the Bosnian Serb soldier or associated irregular, unworthy of existence—unless it became “Serb.” By enforcing pregnancies and asserting that all children born as a result of these were “Serb” and by removing all traces of nonSerb inhabitation of territory, the only national identity of the Balkans would be “Serb.” (Hague, 1997, p. 54, emphasis added)

Apparently the greatest danger that families, and indeed entire communities, feared, was conversion to the other religion . . . Among the Sikhs particularly . . . the men felt they could protect themselves but they were convinced their women would be unable to do so. Their logic was that men could fight, die if necessary, escape by using their wits and their strength, but the women had no such strength to hand. They were therefore particularly vulnerable to conversion. Moreover, women could be raped, impregnated with the seed of the other religion, and in this way not only would they be rendered impure individually, but the entire community would be polluted and the purity of the race diluted. While the men could thus save themselves, it was imperative that the women be “saved” by them. (1997, p. 95, emphasis added)

The notion that an act of rape, especially when it results in pregnancy, will serve to transform the victim ethnically (hence, biologically) and culturally (hence, religiously) is evidenced in the words of one perpetrator: “Now you will have Serbian babies for the rest of your life” (Commission of Experts Annex IX, 1994, para. 223). Those babies will be “Chris-

These men “saved” the women by killing them or by exhorting them to take their own lives. As Butalia comments: “Once again, this burden [the preservation of religion] had to be carried by women: their bodies became the pure terrain of religion, which could, of course, be guarded only through death” (Butalia, 1997, p. 105).

Finding the Man in the Soldier-Rapist

In review, it appears that perpetrators maintain three distinct conceptualizations of their victims: as foreign therefore enemy; as tabula rasa, lacking any ethnic identity; and as subject to transformation/conversion, and therefore, potentially members of the perpetrators’ group. The coexistence of these seemingly antinomous ideations can be explained by reference to a preexistent, possibly preconscious image of all women as essentially mutable. Women are, or can be made to become, whatever the perpetrator wishes. They are, in a sense, no more than vessels (Allen, 1996, p. 97). Prior to the physical violence of rape, then, is what Kappeler refers to as ideological violence: To make an image of somebody is an act of ideological violence, a determination and definition to which the other has nothing to say. To have an “image” of the other means to select particular factors of my perception on the basis of criteria which I choose, reducing the other to those factors. The image is a fiction, a work of my own creation, a “knowledge” of my own making. It is an expression of my subjectivity, my fantasy and my thinking, which says nothing about the so-called object of my representation. (1995, p. 45)

As with their image of women, the perpetrators’ views of the children conceived in rape also appear to be multifaceted. On the one hand, they are enduring symbols of humiliation and degradation, who serve to disrupt kinship ties among members of the enemy nation (Sofos, 1996, p. 86). On the other hand, they are pure (male) Serbs, assumedly to be cherished and perhaps one day to be repatriated to the “motherland.” The strength of the idea that children inherit identity from their fathers alone is surprising, given that intermarriage was common, particularly in urban areas of the former Yugoslavia prior to the war.8 Possibly because of the rapidity with which ethnic nationalist ideology developed (was imposed) in former Yugoslavia, there are indications that this idea is less than hegemonic. For example, one survivor states: “They told us how much they’d like to see us raise their kids, they sang rhymes with words like ‘A mother raises a baby, he’s half a Muslim, half a Serb’ ” (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 132). Rather more ominously, Vojislav Se-

221

selij, an ultranationalist MP and paramilitary leader, is said to have acknowledged the existence of children of mixed heritage: “When Seselj came to Hrtkovci in May, he warned that children of ‘mixed marriages,’ i.e., those with Serbian and Croatian parents, were ‘illegitimate’ and that those children have to be ‘eliminated “ (Human Rights Watch, 1992, p. 83).9 It must be stressed that the official policy of the Yugoslav national Army (the JNA) and of the Serb political élite was to regard the children born of genocidal rape as purely Serb. One explanation for the evidence that this policy was not accepted wholeheartedly among all perpetrators is the former Yugoslavia’s urban/ rural split. City dwellers, with their experience of cosmopolitanism and familiarity of intermarriage, may have been more likely to consider these children “mixed.”10 Finally, we may wonder (again) how perpetrators view themselves in their role as impregnators. As soldiers or paramilitaries, they are, of course, familiar with the idea of using their bodies as instruments in the nationalist cause. In seeking to impregnate by rape, however, do they not transform their bodies into biological weapons? Allen advances such a view: Although historic use of biological agents in warfare may create the impression that such agents must be produced externally to the healthy human body, these definitions do not exclude internally produced agents. I would suggest, therefore, that, in spite of a general tendency not to think of it as a weapon of destruction, the faulty logic of the Serb policy views sperm in genocidal rape precisely as an agent of biological warfare. (1996, p. 129)

It should be noted that these remarks occur within a much longer discussion of legal, military, and scientific definitions of biological and, indeed, genetic warfare. Allen’s proposal—that the International Tribunal should consider genocidal rape aimed at enforced pregnancy to be a crime of biological warfare (1996, p.138)— may be politically unfeasible. Additionally, she writes of the view of a policy, rather than of the view or experience of individual perpetrators. As yet, there is insufficient evidence of the selfunderstandings of perpetrators to fully answer the question of bodily transformation. But it needs to be asked. Masculinity under militarized state nation-

222

Lisa S. Price

alism is violent, heterosexist, and misogynist. These characteristics, of course, are present wherever male supremacy holds sway, but under militarized state nationalism they acquire the additional strength (and burden) of male civic duty. Korac speaks of men as “victims” of ethnic-national chauvinism. She writes: Ethnic-national projects, their ideologies and their war machines are based on manipulation of the values of masculinity as defined in patriarchy . . . . Men are made to be violent to a greater or lesser degree. Due to the pressure of patriarchal values they have to give themselves up to violence and hate in order to prove themselves “good” representatives of their people and nation, patriots, and above all, “real” men, men with “guts.” The intrinsic ingredient of such an ethnic-national ideology is violence embodied in militant masculinity. (1996, p. 137)11

What is important in this quote is the sense that militarized state nationalism does not simply allow men to be violent, but compels them so to be. In militarized societies generally—the former Yugoslavia no less than apartheid South Africa—men who resist violence are suspect. Not only is their loyalty to the state questioned, but also their loyalty to (heterosexual) masculinity. They are not just “cowards and traitors,” but also “sissies and queers.” Whether the masculine violence unleashed by militarized state nationalism is simply countenanced—that is, a preexisting inclination given license for expression—or is created and enforced by an élite, it seems it soon takes on a life of its own. This may be because, as Arendt (1969) argues, the practice of violence is inherently arbitrary and indiscriminate, a means that always threatens to overwhelm its ends. Alternatively, it may be that once habituated to violence men find it difficult to either forsake it or to constrain its use within particular settings. As Korac puts it, “once the Pandora’s box is open, violence is everywhere, on the frontline, at home, in the bedroom, in politics, on the street. Violence does not need strictlydefined territory, just victims” (1996, p. 137). Ignatieff argues that the savagery of war in the 1990s draws on a particular form of masculine identity: “the wild sexuality of the adolescent male” (Ignatieff, 1998, p. 127). He goes on to write:

To traverse a checkpoint in Bosnia where adolescent boys in dark glasses and tight-fitting combat khakis wield AK-47s is to enter a zone of toxic testosterone. War has always had its sexual dimension—a soldier’s uniform is no guarantee of good conduct—but when a war is conducted by adolescent irregulars, sexual savagery becomes one of its regular weapons. (1998, pp. 127–128; emphasis added)

One may take issue with Ignatieff’s stress on adolescence—wars have always been fought by young men. Additionally, while it is true that there may be less formal accountability, hence less discipline, among irregular soldiers, and while it is true that in the former Yugoslavia some of the worst atrocities were committed by paramilitary gangs such as Arkan’s Tigers, these in no way mean that regular forces did not also engage in wide-spread, sometimes organized sexual violence. More fundamentally, it appears that the “stylized masculinity” (Niarchos, 1995, p. 671) created under militarized state nationalism makes it possible for men to view sexual violence as simply an extension of their heroic soldierly duty. It is at once valourized and naturalized. Tompkins summarizes this sense of naturalness: The conditions of war magnify all the myths that traditionally define men, women and sex. One of these is the age-old belief that men have an uncontrollable sex drive. It is undoubtedly a short step from the idea that men have a unique nature that enables them to “do war” to the conclusion that they have a similar unique biology which makes it necessary for them to “do women.” And what makes women unique in this line of reasoning is their availability to “be done.” (1995, p. 871)

As one Serbian paramilitary put it, the most interesting parts of being a soldier are “shooting and fucking” (quoted in Korac, 1996, p. 137). The peacetime consequences of this saturnalia of violence are borne disproportionately by women and children. In South Africa over the past 3 years (that is, postapartheid), 140,416 rapes were reported. Crimes against children are increasing at a rate of 29% annually; 62% of crimes against children are sexual (Volpy, 1997, pp. 22–23). South Africa has such experience of the aftermath of militarized

Finding the Man in the Soldier-Rapist

nationalism that its “violence experts” now act as consultants in war-torn societies attempting to rebuild such as Kenya, Cambodia, and, not surprisingly, Bosnia. (Volpy, 1997.) In the former Yugoslavia, especially Serbia, feminist social services have noted an enormous increase in the incidence of violence against women as militarized state nationalism took hold. In Belgrade, for example, the SOS Hotline for Women and Children Victims of Violence recorded a 100% increase in reported physical violence and rape from the start of the war to 1993 (cited in Korac, 1996, p. 138). Additionally, the level of violence has increased, particularly the use or threat of military weapons such as machine guns and hand grenades (Korac, 1996, p. 138; Mrsevic & Hughes, 1997, pp. 121–122). Feminists have also noted what has been dubbed the “post-TV News syndrome” (Korac, 1996, p. 138; Mrsevic & Hughes, 1997, p. 120). This describes a pattern of men beating their wives or mothers after watching violent hate-filled war propaganda on television. It must be stressed that this is not “frontline” violence, and that the victims of this violence are, in the eyes of the perpetrators, “Our Women.” A similar phenomenon was observed in Canada during the Gulf War. Shelter workers report women describing their husbands dressing up in military uniforms before beating them, particularly after watching the television news (Kelly, 2000, p. 59). To briefly summarize what I discovered about the motivations of individual perpetrators, some acts of sexual violence in the war grew out of a synergism of ethnic hatred and gender hatred. Some were sourced in a desire for revenge and retribution. In some cases rape was used as a tactic of ethnic cleansing, a means of terrorizing not only the victims but also their families into leaving their homes. Some were expressions of triumphant nationalism. Some were performative acts with audiences of victims, captive male onlookers, and other soldiers. In some cases sexual violence was used as a means of asserting the perpetrator’s national and gender identities. In particular, national dominance and masculine dominance were simultaneously confirmed through an act of sexual submission. In other cases the victim was used as a scapegoat for the perpetrator’s own sense of powerlessness. Some assaults appear to have been acts of territorial conquest. Finally, related to conquest, the ritu-

223

alistic masculinity commonly present under conditions of militarized state nationalism can lead men to believe that sexual violence is simply an extension of their duty as soldiers. These sources are not mutually exclusive; two or more may be present in a single act of sexual violence, forming a complex fusion in which the violence of the assault may increase exponentially. Underlying all of these motivations, though, are misogyny and sexuality and male power. In relation to these, war rape is indistinguishable from “domestic” or “peacetime” rape. As Tompkins summarizes: “Rape is a gender-motivated crime; a one-way street where the risk factor is being female” (1995, p. 852). Whatever national, ethnic or geopolitical forces may be at play, the base-line reality of sexual violence in war is that women are raped by men such that “tortured female bodies [are] translated into male power” (Seifert, 1996, p. 41). Accountability Seeking to understand the forces and ideas that actuate individual perpetrators is more than an intellectual exercise. Potentially, such understanding could make a vital contribution to the broad, ongoing political project of ending men’s sex/sexual violence.12 Within the much narrower project of this article, such understanding, while necessarily incomplete, may speak to the central issue facing the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: individual responsibility and accountability. Choice is central to the ascription of moral responsibility. Ratiocination—the ability to reason—underlies choice. This is why those deemed insane (a legal rather than medical designation) are not held responsible for their criminal actions. Either they were unable to appreciate consequences or they were driven to act as they did and had no power to resist. Although society may legitimately protect itself from the actions of these damaged souls, it does not have the right to punish them.13 It would be untenable to argue that a form of mass psychosis was visited upon the hundreds, perhaps thousands of individual perpetrators of sexual violence in the former Yugoslavia. The question, then, is to what extent they acted out of choice. Two arguments can be put forward in favor of the proposition that individual men rightly should be held accountable. The first argu-

224

Lisa S. Price

ment involves access to alternative conceptualizations of women, men, sexuality, and sexual violence. Catharine MacKinnon describes a young Serbian soldier who, raised in a cultural environment of pervasive pornography, first experienced sex when he raped and killed in the war. MacKinnon draws a direct, causal link: “Pornography is the perfect preparation—motivator and instruction manual in one—for the sexual atrocities ordered in this genocide” (MacKinnon, 1993, p. 28). If all he knew of sexuality, if all he knew of women was what he had learned from pornography, did this soldier have a choice? I think he did. He could have refused the message of pornography, even a message reinforced by government policy, military ethos, and the encouragement of his fellows. If he had a mother, a sister, an aunt, a girlfriend, or a female teacher he had access to a different understanding of women than that presented in pornography. If he was raised as a Christian or as a citizen, he had access to a different message about fit social relations and behaviors. To the extent that he chose to heed one message (that of pornography) and not another, he is responsible and should be held accountable.14 The second argument in favor of choice, hence accountability, attends to evidence of similarly-located men—that is, subject to the same ideological forces, intragroup pressures, etc., as perpetrators—who did not sexually abuse women. First the counterargument, provided by Hague: The context of group rape is particularly important in a war where failure to obey orders to rape was likely to result in death for the abstainer. There was no anonymity for the soldier coerced to gang rape. There was no choice. (1997, p. 57; emphasis added)

Despite his claim that these men had no choice, Hague goes on to argue that they are still accountable. His concern is in apportioning blame. He suggests that while coercion does not absolve these men of their crimes, they should be seen as less culpable than the officials who dictated policy. Against this, there is evidence of soldiers who not only refused, but actually came to the aid of victims, protecting them by various means from the sexual violence of their comrades:

Then [another] soldier came in. I had never seen him before but I would like to know who he is because he saved my life. He shouted at these young soldiers and he cursed them. He said, “What are you doing to this woman?” (Human Rights Watch, 1993, p. 167) One girl told me that an older soldier saved her life. She’d been taken to a control point in the woods and was raped there by several drunken soldiers. They were supposed to kill her afterward, but this older soldier brought her back to the camp. (Stiglmayer, 1994, p. 91) The companion unsuccessfully tried to stop the volunteer, who was drunk, from raping, so he protected and hid the victim’s daughter. (Commission of Experts, 1994, para. 106) One of the men attempted to rape the woman of the house, but his companion stopped him. (Commission of Experts, 1994, para. 271)

It is important not to dismiss the very real, immediate physical threat under which some perpetrators felt themselves to be. Surrounded by armed men drunk on alcohol, testosterone, and triumphant nationalism, men who knew that their worst excesses would be ignored (if not condoned) by their political and military masters, it is perhaps understandable that some men raped out of fear for their lives. Yet, as witnessed above, others resisted. Even more important than the actions of “resisters,” though, is what underlies those actions. That some men were able to recognize that however fervently they believed in their nationalist cause, some actions were not justified; however much, like their fellows, they were immersed in an atmosphere of unbridled manicheistic hatred and fear and pornographic imagination, they knew that sexual abuse, torture, and enslavement were not the actions of honourable men and soldiers—to the extent that they knew, so could their fellows have known. To the extent that the perpetrators could have known and chose not to, or, knowing acted anyway, they are responsible for their actions. As Arendt, figuratively speaking to Adolf Eichmann says, “For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same” (Arendt, 1964, p. 279).

Finding the Man in the Soldier-Rapist

Over the years much debate has been conducted on the origins of male violence. Leaving aside biological explanations, once derided and now being reasserted by some academics, attention has focused on enviornmental conditions. The contested area of effects research into pornography is one example (cf. Boyle, 2000). While important, such research carries a risk, especially when it is popularized. By way of example, some years ago researchers, feminist, and otherwise, uncovererd a statistically significant correlation between men who batter their wives and who had fathers who beat their mothers. This correlation was translated into a causal analysis: men learn to batter their wives by watching their fathers batter their mothers. What this analysis elides is batterers whose fathers were not violent and, more importantly, the sons of batterers who as adults do not beat women. The existence of these two groups suggests that the nexus of environmental conditions and behavior does not entirely abrogate individual agency. A similar argument can be made regarding soldier-rapists. To suggest, as I have done, that the construction of masculinity under militarized state nationalism predisposes men to be sexually violent does not negate the agency of the individual soldier-rapist. And where there is agency there must be responsibility. Some men eschew the violence of their fathers. Some soldiers do not rape “enemy” women. Exposed to the same environmental conditions as other men, these men demonstrate that in the final analysis choice is always available. It is not possible to “prove” in any absolute sense that the men who raped women during the war in the former Yugoslavia did so out of choice. Very few men have admitted their deeds. Of those who have, most blame others, for example, that they were just “following orders.” The defense of following orders has not been accepted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia nor, I think, should it be. In any event, while we cannot know directly what prompted these men to rape, we can interpret their words and behaviors and extrapolate from the behavior of their fellows who did not rape. More research is needed into why some men rape in wartime and especially into why others do not. Are there differences of age, rank, socialization, religious devotion? Are some men immune to ideological hegemony and if so, why? Of the

225

men who rape in war, how do they explain their actions to themselves? On returning from “action” do they boast to their fellows or silently drink themselves into a stupor? The questions arising are multiple. For now, based on the evidence presented above, we can conclude that in most cases even in wartime rape is a discretionary power. What, then, are we to do with the perpetrators of war rape? I am not a criminologist or a lawyer. I cannot speak to the question of appropriate punishment. I note, however, that in a recent Tribunal decision a defendant named Hazim Delic was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for raping two women, to be served concurrently with a 20-year sentence for murder. This seems to me an appropriate reflection of the relative gravity of these crimes. Beyond the specifics I want to argue that perpetrators should be actively pursued, tried, and sentenced. It must be made clear to victims, the perpetrators themselves and to observers that the men who commit sexual atrocity in war will be held to account. We cannot ignore or excuse these men. Neither can we allow them to get lost in the shuffle of geopolitics. There can be no immunity for the men Cynthia Enloe refers to as “militarized nationalist rapists” (1993, p. 240). So, too, must the men who ordered and condoned war rape be held accountable for their decisions. To do otherwise is to dismiss the suffering of victims and to encourage future soldier-rapists. If we are serious about the project of ending men’s sex/sexual violence we must begin where the violence begins—with the perpetrators themselves.

ENDNOTES 1. Dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, Sutcliffe murdered 13 women, many of them prostitutes, between 1975 and 1980 in West Yorkshire, England. 2. The Dangerous Offender Act requires that the crimes for which the offender has been convicted must form part of a “pattern of persistent aggressive behaviour” resulting from a “failure to restrain his behaviour” and/ or “failure to control his sexual impulses.” The key is a conclusion that “his behaviour in the future is unlikely to be inhibited by normal standards of behavioural restraint.” Accordingly, it is necessary to demonstrate that the crimes resulted from “a personality disorder, major mental illness or the onset of a brian tumour,” as one of the psychiatrists in the case put it. Apparently, to be declared a dangerous offender one must be crazy, but not crazy enough for an insanity plea—dangerous offenders are held in prisons, not hospitals.

226

Lisa S. Price

3. It should be noted the Verstehen can be translated as either understanding or empathy, and means both. Weber’s project seems to have been to distinguish to former from the latter. Thus, he separated Verstehen (interpretive understanding) from nachfühlendes Verstehen (empathic understanding) (Ringer, 1997, pp. 92, 96). 4. For discussions of the construction of gender in nationalist ideology see generally Enloe (1989, 1993), Mertus (1994), and Korac (1996). 5. Seifert writes that gang rapes “are often distinguished by a ritualized procedure, that is, the order of the rape is determined by the status of the men within the group” (Seifert, 1994, p. 56). Similarly, Brownmiller describes individual acts of cruelty in the gang rape of a Vietnamese woman by American soldiers as “competition for a masculinity pecking order” (1975, p. 104). 6. Interestingly, there is some statistical evidence that suggests that the probability of conception is higher in rape than in consensual intercourse. Swiss and Giller, following standard statistical modeling, write that a single act of unprotected intercourse will result in pregnancy 1 to 4% of the time (Swiss & Giller, 1993, p. 613). Lanthrop, describing a rather more sophisticated model of single random coitus based on ovulation, fertility, and probability, suggest that a given rape will result in pregnancy 4–10% of the time. He indicates, though, that the actual rate of rape conception is much higher than this model predicts. He notes, for example, that available data suggest that up to 70% of rape conceptions occur during supposedly infertile times of the menstrual cycle. One theory put forward to explain this anomoly is that fear, anger, and stress (any or all of which may be experienced by the victim as she is being attacked) may act to trigger ovulation, thus making conception more likely (Lanthrop, 1998, p. 25). 7. Sofos notes that rape is perceived “as an act of ‘fertilization’ of women” (1996, p. 87). 8. Drawing on the 1991 census, Wing and Merchán indicate that 40% of marriages in Bosnia were “mixed” (Wing & Merchán, 1993, p. 23, No.. 110). They do not provide statistics for the other republics, which would likely be lower but still significant. 9. Korac relates a tragic story of the consequences of ethnic nationalism for children. Asked by his teacher to write something about himself, a young refugee boy wrote: “I am nothing.” When asked to explain, the boy replied: “Because my father is from Croatia, my mother is from Serbia. Where am I from?” (1996, p. 133, citing Zajovic, 1994, p. 197). 10. Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for pointing out the importance of the rural/urban split in the former Yugoslavia. 11. I beleive by “militant” Korac means “militarized.” 12. The term “men’s sex/sexual violence” encapsulates feminist understandings of three key features of violence against women: that it is gendered such that men do and women suffer; that it is sex violence, analogous to sex discrimination, directed against women and girls because they are female and therefore socially deemed vulnerable and subordinate; and that all such violence has a sexual component, whether overt or not. 13. Whether in practice incarceration in a secure hospital is experientially different from incarceration in prison may be moot. 14. One may argue in mitigation that he was an inexperienced, doubtless scared, bravado-filled man-child with-

out the courage or self-esteem to say no. Those factors do not absolve his culpability, though they should be weighed in the consideration of punishment.

REFERENCES Agger, Inger. (1994). The blue room: Trauma and testimony among refugee women—A psycho-social exploration. London: Zed Books. Allen, Beverly. (1996). Rape warfare: The hidden genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Arendt, Hannah. (1964). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York: Penguin Books. Arendt, Hannah. (1969). On violence. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. Arendt, Hannah. (1979). The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Boyle, Karen. (2000). The pornography debates: Beyond cause and effect. Women’s Studies International Forum, 23(2), 187–195. Brownmiller, Susan. (1975). Against our will: Men, women and rape. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books. Butalia, Urvashi. (1997). A question of silence: Partition, women and the state. In Ronit Lentin (Ed.), Gender and catastrophe (pp. 92–109). London: Zed Books. Commission of Experts. (1994). Final report of the commission of experts established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992), submitted 27 May 1994. UNDOC S/1994/674 [On-line]. Available: http:// www.igc.apc.org/tribunal. Enloe, Cynthia. (1989). Bananas, beaches and bases: Making feminist sense of international politics. London: Pandora. Enloe, Cynthia. (1993). The morning after: Sexual politics at the end of the Cold War. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Fanon, Frantz. (1967). The wretched of the earth. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. (1997). Hitler’s willing executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage Books. Gutman, Roy. (1993). A witness to genocide. New York: Macmillan. Hague, Euan. (1997). Rape, power and masculinity: The construction of gender and national identities in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Ronit Lentin (Ed.), Gender and catastrophe (pp. 50–63). London: Zed Books. Hollway, Wendy. (1981, October). “I just wanted to kill a woman.” Why? The ripper and male sexuality. Feminist Review, 9, 33–40. Human Rights Watch. (1992). War crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina (vol. I). New York: Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch. (1993). War crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina (vol. II). New York: Human Rights Watch. Ignatieff, Michael. (1998). The warrior’s honor: Ethnic war and the modern conscience. London: Chatto and Windus. Kappeler, Susanne. (1995). The will to violence: The politics of personal behaviour. London: Polity. Kelly, Liz. (2000). Wars against women: Sexual violence, sexual politics and the militarised state. In Susie Jacobs, Ruth Jacobson, & Jennifer Marchbank (Eds.), States of conflict: Gender, violence and resistance (pp. 45–65). London: Zed Books.

Finding the Man in the Soldier-Rapist

Kimmel, Michael S. (1990). Clarence, William, Iron Mike, Tailhook, Senator Packwood, Spur Posses, Magic . . . and us. In Emile Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, & Martha Roth (Eds.), Transforming a rape culture (pp. 119–138). Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed. Korac, Maja. (1996). Understanding ethnic-national identity and its meaning: Questions from women’s experience. Women’s Studies International Forum, 19(1/2), 133–143. Kristeva, Julia. (1993). Nations without nationalism (translated by Leon S. Roudiez). New York: Columbia University Press. Lanthrop, Anthony. (1998). Pregnancy resulting from rape. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, and Neonatal Nursing, 27(1), 25–31. MacKinnon, Catharine A. (1993, July/August). Turning rape into pornography: Postmodern genocide. Ms. Magazine, 24–30. Mertus, Julie. (1994, Winter). “Woman” in the service of national identity. Hastings Women’s Law Journal, 5(1), 5–23. Mrsevic, Zorica, & Hughes, Donna M. (1997). Violence against women in Belgrade, Serbia: SOS hotline 1990– 1993. Violence Against Women, 3(2), 101–128. Niarchos, Catherine N. (1995). Women, war and rape: Challenges facing the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Human Rights Quarterly, 17, 649–690. Ringer, Fritz. (1997). Max Weber’s methodology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sanday, Peggy Reeves. (1990). Fraternity gang rape: Sex, brotherhood, and privilege on campus. New York: New York University Press. Scarry, Elaine. (1985). The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

227

Seifert, Ruth. (1994). War and rape: A preliminary analysis. In Alexandra Stiglmayer (Ed.), Mass rape: The war against women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (pp. 54–72). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Seifert, Ruth. (1996). The second front: The logic of sexual violence in wars. Women’s Studies International Forum, 19(1/2), 35–43. Smith, Dorothy E. (1990). The conceptual practices of power: A feminist sociology of knowledge. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Sofos, Spyros A. (1996). Inter-ethnic violence and gendered constructions of ethnicity in former Yugoslavia. Social Identities, 2(1), 73–91. Stiglmayer, Alexandra. (1994). The rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Alexandra Stiglmayer (Ed.), Mass rape: The war against women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (pp. 82– 169). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Swiss, Shana, & Giller, Joan. (1993, August 4). Rape as a crime of war: A medical perspective. Journal of the American Medical Association, 270(5), 612–615. Tompkins, Tamara L. (1995). Prosecuting rape as a war crime: Speaking the unspeakable. Notre Dame Law Review, 70(4), 845–890. Volpy, Michael. (1997, May 17). The walls that apartheid built. Globe and Mail, pp. 22–23. Vulliamy, Ed. (1994). Seasons in hell: Understanding Bosnia’s war. London: Simon & Schuster. Wing, Adrien Katherine, & Merchán, Sylke. (1993). Rape, ethnicity and culture: Spirit injury from Bosnia to Black America. Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 25(1), 1–48. Zajovic, Stasa (Ed.) (1994) Zene za mir. Belgrade, Yugoslavia: Women in Black.