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Patterns of Prejudice
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From atrocity to data: historiographies of rape in

Former Yugoslavia and the gendering of genocide
R. Lindsey
Published online: 07 Dec 2010.

To cite this article: R. Lindsey (2002) From atrocity to data: historiographies of rape in Former Yugoslavia and the
gendering of genocide, Patterns of Prejudice, 36:4, 59-78, DOI: 10.1080/003132202128811556
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/003132202128811556

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ROSE LINDSEY 59

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ROSE LINDSEY

From atrocity to data: historiographies of

rape in Former Yugoslavia and the
gendering of genocide
The media response to the mass rape of women in Former Yugoslavia,
and the subsequent setting up of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former
Yugoslavia, have had a massive impact on the way in which these rapes have been
represented, researched and analysed. The early conclusion that the rapes were part
of a genocide, perpetrated by Serbs against Muslims, led to a demand for physical
evidence to prove that the rapes were taking place, that they were systematic and
were ethnically driven. The result has been an overarching emphasis on evidence
that has dominated the description, analysis and theorizing of the rapes and has led
to the marginalizing and silencing of a range of voices, particularly of those working
with survivor communities and the survivors themselves. The evidence-led debate
has created a genre in which there has been an almost casual use of survivor
testimony by academics to illustrate the types of violence that have taken place. This
appropriation of survivors stories has degraded survivor testimony and led to a
readership habituated to narratives of violence. The dominance of evidence and
proof in writing on rape has fossilized the debate on sexual violence and genocide. If
these debates are to be revived, new theoretical directions need to be developed.
Lindsey argues that a feminist analysis of the social structures within societies that
have experienced mass sexual violence alongside genocide can provide a new and
enlightening contribution to the broader debate on gender and genocide.
ABSTRACT

crime against humanity, ethnicity, evidence, feminist analysis, Former

Yugoslavia, gendercide, genocide, hegemony, interdisciplinary, NGO,
perpetrator, rape, sexual violence, social structures, survivor, use of testimony

KEYWORDS

he International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, established

in 1993, has placed the systematic ethnic rape of women on to the statute
books of international law. Since then a small number of Former Yugoslavian
men, of all ethnicities, have been tried for rape. The campaign that preceded
this legislation, and the legislation itself, have had a formative effect on public
perceptions and understanding of rape and genocide. What has been the cost
of this legislation? What has been lost in the debate on the way? An analysis
of the development of this debate on rape shows that the legal process has
shaped the public and academic discourse to give it a narrow, legalistic framework based on the burden of proof. This discourse dominates reportage,
analysis and theory to the extent that a number of other discourses that explore
PATTERNS OF PREJUDICE Institute for Jewish Policy Research, vol. 36, no. 4, 2002
SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi) 0031-322X/5978/029698

60 Patterns of Prejudice 36:4

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alternative readings of rape have been excluded from mainstream debate, while
the rapes of women in other conflicts and other genocides have failed to capture sustained media interest.
Breaking news: the start of a legal campaign
On 9 August 1992 the Sunday papers in the United States broke the story of
the mass rape of women during the conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina (19915)
with the publication of an article written by the journalist Roy Gutman.
Gutmans article, published in the Guardian, the British broadsheet, the following day, reported that those targetted for rape were Muslim and Croat
girls just above the age of puberty, and suggested that the rapes might be
systematic.1 The rape stories derived from two principal sources: spin-doctors
from the predominantly Muslim Bosnia-Herzegovinan government who were
selling the rape stories to western media organizations; and grassroots
Croatian, Bosnia-Herzegovinan and Serbian womens NGOs that were working with survivors of rape. These NGOs sent out press releases urging the
world press to cover the story. They also established networks with western
feminist activist groups asking them to lobby their governments and national
media. However, because propaganda wars were a feature of the conflicts in
Former Yugoslavia, representatives of the British media were slow to take up
the story and were initially sceptical when they did.2
The limited press coverage, the lobbying of feminist activists and the
persistent claims of the warring sides in the conflicts eventually prompted
inquiries from a number of different international groups. NGOs such as the
World Council of Churches, human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the United Nations Special Rapporteur and
representatives of European, North American and other governments sent
investigative teams to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. Many of those investigating approached the Former Yugoslavian womens NGOs to gain access
to women who had experienced rape. All of those investigating sought out
and interviewed survivors willing to testify: validating, authenticating and
recording these survivors accounts of rape.3 The different investigating groups
1 Quoted from R. Gutman, Witnesses call teenagers rape in camp typical, Guardian, 10 August
1992, 8.
2 For an example of British media disbelief, see Tim Judah, Truth gives way to fantasy on
Balkan propaganda war, The Times, 3 October 1992, 7. My analysis here is limited to the
British media. Gabi Mischkowski has researched the German media for this period, and
arrived at similar findings; see her paper Sexualisierte Gewalt im Krieg und ihre
Funktionalisierung um ethnischen Diskurs in den Medien, delivered at the conference Krieg,
Geschlect und Traumatisierung: Ehrang und Reflexionen in der Arbeit mit traumatisierten
Frauen in Kriegs und Krisengebieten, Medica Mondiale, Bonn, 1998. For critiques of the
British media reaction, see Rose Lindsey, The Lobby for Rape to Be Accepted as a War
Crime: A Feminist Failure?, MA dissertation, University of Sussex, 1995, and Rose Lindsey,
Nationalism and Gender: A Study of War-related Violence against Women, PhD dissertation, University of Southampton, 2000.
3 Often the same survivor was interviewed by different investigative missions causing, in some
cases, a retraumatization of the survivor giving testimony. In post-war Kosovo, groups such

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ROSE LINDSEY 61
then began to publish their findings, editing the stories of the survivors that
they had talked to. As these were published, the British news media also began to publish stories that accepted that the rapes were taking place. The media,
and some of the investigating groups, adopted the reading formation begun
by Gutman.4 They argued that the rapes had occurred on a mass scale (some
tried to guess the numbers that had been raped) and were systematic, that
they were being perpetrated by Serbian men, and that the victims were predominantly young, Muslim (and some Croatian) women.
As the international investigations into the rape stories progressed,
feminist activists, human rights workers and legal experts began to act and
provide commentary. The debates that sprang from the investigation of the
rapes in Former Yugoslavia focused on the dynamics and practice of rape,
with an emphasis on evidence and proof. Their purpose was to persuade the
international community that many women were being raped, and to argue
for an international legal response to the raping of women. Accordingly, most
commentaries were built around a core framework that included a discussion
of the precise number of women being raped, an insistence on the systematic nature of the rapes, and an insistence that rapes were being committed
because of a victims ethnicity. The debate on rape grew to involve the international legal community, which was already responding to the allegations of
mass killing in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In the spring of 1993 the United Nations Security Council signalled its
intention to set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The statutes of the ICTY were adopted as UN law on 25 May
1993. Conceptually, most of these statutes derived from the International Military Tribunal (IMT) set up by the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and
France in 1945 to try Nazi leaders for atrocities perpetrated during the Second
World War. This suggests that the international legal community saw clear comparisons between the atrocities committed in the ongoing Former Yugoslavian
conflicts, and those committed by Nazis during the Second World War.
Article 5 of the ICTY statute dealt with crimes against humanity. Under
Article 5 section (a), a perpetrator of mass killing could be indicted for murder,
in conjunction with section (h), persecution of a political, ethnic or religious
group. A perpetrator of mass rape could be indicted for rape, section (g), in
conjunction with section (h), persecution of a political, ethnic or religious

as Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the OSCE, investigating reports of rape, have shared
testimonies with each other, showing that, within these particular organizations, some lessons have been learned from the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
4 Tony Bennett, Texts, readers and reading formations, in Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh
(eds), Modern Literary Theory: A Reader [1983] (London: Edward Arnold 1989), 20620.
Bennetts term refers to a set of intersecting discourses that productively activate a given
body of texts and the relations between them in a specific way (208). To simplify, in the
context of this essay a reading formation refers to the production of a popular reading/set of
discourses that are assumed by those engaging with the debate on rape in war. It is determined
by the ideological position of those engaging in the debate.

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62 Patterns of Prejudice 36:4

group.5 The wording and concept of Article 5 derived directly from the Nuremberg Charter (Article 6c) of the 1945 IMT, and from Control Council 10,
established after the IMT for the prosecution of less infamous Nazi war criminals. (Control Council 10 specifically named rape as a crime against humanity.)
The ICTY statute also provided for other ways to try the perpetrators
of rape. Article 3 of the statute gave the ICTY the power to indict alleged
perpetrators for war-crimes, that is, violations of the Geneva Conventions
on laws and customs of wars.6 Article 2 of the statute gave the ICTY the
power to indict for grave breaches: violations of the four Geneva Conventions.7 Additionally, under Article 4, the ICTY statute provided for the
indictment of an alleged perpetrator of mass rape for a constituent act of genocide under the terms of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide (1948).8
The campaign for the Former Yugoslavian rapes to be recognized as
war crimes had been successful; mass rape now stood alongside mass killing
in the international legislation. As in the legal work that constituted the campaign, the jurisprudence underpinning the legislation necessitated proving that
many women had been raped and that they had been raped because of their
ethnicity. This meant that, even after the campaign had been successful, evidence, mostly in the form of testimony, was very important, as this was the
basis for the subsequent potential prosecution of a perpetrator. Again, particular attention was paid, within womens testimonies, to the dynamics,
practice and methods of rape. Identifying the who, where, whom and how
of a rape was the means by which ethnic motivation could be proved. This
continuation of an evidence-based approach to rape reinforced international
perceptions (informed by the media) that the rapes were ethnically driven. It
also influenced and shaped the way in which most information on the rapes
was gathered. Evidence-led data-gathering continued to underpin many of
the primary sources that dealt with the subject of the war-time rapes in Former
Yugoslavia, and that form the epistemological basis for studying them.
Sourcing the epistemology of rape
There is a small pool of accessible primary sources on the rapes that took
place during the Former Yugoslavian conflicts. This is comprised of news
reportage, investigative reports by international NGOs, reports of the UN
5 The statute is available online: www.un.org/icty/basic/statut/statute.htm (as of 2 July 2002).
6 Individual nations sign up to laws on war, and the Conventions are not legally binding if a
country has not signed up to them. But the Nuremberg Charter, Article 6b, which also sets
out the laws and customs of war, circumnavigates this loophole.
7 The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had signed up to these four conventions. Article 3 of the
ICTY statute also drew on Protocols I and II drawn up by the UN in 1979. These deal specifically with rape.
8 Article 4 follows the wording of the original Convention. It states that genocide means any
of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical
or religious group, as such and included: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing
serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

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ROSE LINDSEY 63
Special Rapporteur, reports of international governmental investigations, reports from Former Yugoslavian NGOs working with survivors, human rights
reports and individual investigations.
In this context, news reportage and investigative reports from nonhuman rights organizations had their limitations. News articles were not
necessarily accurate or reliable. Investigative reports tended to be too focused
on brevity and proof. The reports put together by the Special Rapporteur,
international NGOs and governmental investigative teams consisted mostly
of brief factual accounts, organized by region and sometimes supported by
edited testimony. They concluded with a limited analysis that was clearly driven
by their mission brief, which was usually to find out whether the rapes were
targetted at a particular ethnicity and whether they were systematic.
In contrast, in terms of breadth of research and perceived veracity,
human rights literature tends to be perceived by experts in the field as a more
reliable primary source. Yet this genre comes with its own set of problems. In
their attempts to maintain objectivity while giving voice to their extensive
collections of testimony on war crimes, editors of human rights literature
on Former Yugoslavia collated atrocities into discrete categories. The effect
is that, at times, acts of violence can read rather like a shopping list, in which
the voice of the survivor is disturbingly neutralized. An example of this
repackaging of atrocity into data is illustrated in the index to the second
volume (1993) of the report by Helsinki Rights Watch, War Crimes in BosniaHercegovina, which sorts evidence into the following groups: abuses by
Serbian/Croatian/Muslim forces; abuses in detention; rape; mutilation; reported castrations; forced displacement; other abuses; killings; human shields;
siege warfare; hostage taking . . .
The testimonies of some witnesses/survivors quoted in this volume include evidence of multiple abuses, such as being raped, being beaten, being
used as a human shield, being starved or denied access to water, being denied
medical attention, being denied access to toilets, or being subjected to mock
executions. This results in the need for substantial cross-referencing within
the text. In this cross-referencing, the testimony of the informant is cut off
and edited, out of context, and thus is only partial, so that the voice of the
survivor is never entirely heard. Instead, testimony becomes a collection of
episodic memories of specific physical acts of violence, a disconnected temporal narrative that focuses on identifying perpetrators, victims, types of
violence and the types of spaces in which violence occurs.
In addition to news reportage, investigative reports and human rights
reports, there is an analysis of the practice of rape written by Alexandra
Stiglmayer.9 Stiglmayer, a journalist who interviewed rape survivors when the
rape stories broke, collated her evidence into discrete groups, in much the
9 Alexandra Stiglmayer, The rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in A. Stiglmayer (ed.), Rape:
The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Lincoln, NE and London: University of
Nebraska Press 1994), 82169.

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64 Patterns of Prejudice 36:4

same way as the human rights literature has done. She describes rapes in internment camps, rapes at home, rapes to impregnate a woman, rapes in Croatia,
rapes by paramilitaries, rapes of Serbian women. In an essentially descriptive
text, she uses testimony to validate this categorization.
What is clear in this description of the available primary sources on rape
in Former Yugoslavia is the effect that the legal agendas behind evidence collection have had on the presentation of that evidence. In essence the identity
and specific testimony of each individual survivor is lost behind the sorting
and categorization of testimonies. This is exemplified by Darius M. Rejali
when she summarizes the state of the feminist debate in North America on
rape in Bosnia:
Analysts have distinguished three kinds of rape in Bosnia: rapes that occur when
Serbs first occupied a village; rapes committed by prison guards in detention camps;
and rape camps or houses temporarily commandeered by Serbs to keep women
expressly for that purpose. Reports have also emphasized that rapes often took
place publicly; and that often the victims knew the aggressors.10

In Rejalis summary the reader is left only with the ethnic identity of the perpetrators. The survivors, and those who did not survive, are elided from this
description. She adds:
In assessing this information, American feminists agreed that wartime rape could
not be reduced to the psychological attributes of the individual aggressors or their
mere aggregate in war. Rape must be understood in relation to social structures and
practices. Mass rape also cannot be understood by emphasizing its unique or exceptional wartime character; rather it can only be comprehended in terms of
everyday forms of violence which are considered legitimate. Finally, a rape account
must identify the interrelationship between ethnicity and gender.11

Rejalis text thus references, and reproduces, an established process in many

analyses of rape in the Bosnian conflicts. First, evidence/testimony is examined; second, the evidence is arranged into categories based on different types
of practice of rape; and thirdand there is a clear, paradigmatic demarcation
in Rejalis own text that demonstrates this pointrape is theorized. There is,
therefore, a dialectic relationship between the categorization of testimony/
evidence of the practice of rape, and the theorizing of rape.
However, there is a deficit in Rejalis description of the relationship
between the evidence for rape and the theorizing of the perpetration of rape.
What is missing is an analysis of how and why theorists arrived at the broad
conclusions that Rejali outlines. Her text demonstrates that the categorization of the evidence has influenced the theorizing of rape and, as I have stated
earlier, this has resulted in a reading formation that favours a focus on the
10 D. M. Rejali, After feminist analyses of Bosnian violence, in Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer
Turpin (eds), The Women and War Reader (New York and London: New York University
Press 1998), 2632 (27).
11 Ibid.

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ROSE LINDSEY 65
ethnicities of the victim and the perpetrator. But Rejali does not clearly identify the influences that have contributed to this theoretical reading formation.
This suggests that there is a historical/analytical void. There is no established
historiography that tracks the development of the theorizing of rape, and examines the reading formations that have developed along the way. This leaves
a number of questions unanswered. Are there any marginalized theoretical
voices that have not penetrated the dominant theoretical discourses? What
are the consequences of uncontested theoretical hegemony? Does this lack of
curiosity leave us uninformed as to the effect that the dominant theoretical
discourses have had on a broader reading of gender and genocide?
Sourcing theories
What the historical picture has specifically neglected, when examining the
debate on rape, is the role that was played by Former Yugoslavian womens
NGOs. These groups often acted as the gatekeepers to survivors testimony
and, through their therapeutic work with survivors, were well placed to theorize on the rapes. Their history, effectively a history of contention and argument
around the way in which the rapes were interpreted, informs the history of
the development of theory on rape. It begins with the campaign for international legal recognition of the rapes and its focus on ethnically motivated rape.
As the campaign gathered pace in late 1992 and early 1993, some feminist
commentators, within and without Former Yugoslavia, began to criticize the
specificity of the international communitys focus on ethnicity. In early 1993
a huge difference of opinion emerged within the Former Yugoslavian NGO
community specifically working with survivors of rape. The community was
effectively split by this debate. Some NGOs argued that the focus on numbers and ethnicity was extremely important. They stressed that the rapes were
part of a planned genocide and argued that other debates diverted the international public gaze away from the genocide.12 Other NGOS argued that the
framework of this debate was too simplistic and too narrow, glossing over,
for example, the fact that men from all ethnic groups were raping women, and
that rapes should also be perceived as sexualized violence against women.
The split was dramatic and, in the aftermath, all sides of the NGO
divide began to assume more radical political identities. Many of those NGOs
that had argued that rape represented genocide began endorsing the actions
of their own governments and refusing to acknowledge the crimes committed
by those fighting on their side. While this move was welcomed and supported by their individual governments, the international feminist-activist
community became alarmed by what it saw as an increasing alignment with
right-wing and nationalist politics. It began to exclude these NGOs from the
international feminist-activist community, effectively casting them in the role
12 Serbian NGOs working with survivors of rape were, at this stage, pointing out that the
raping of Serbian women had been elided from the international reportage on the conflicts. Some of these Serbian NGOs read the raping of Serbian women solely as an act of
genocide.

66 Patterns of Prejudice 36:4

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of pariahs. Meanwhile, many of the NGOs that had argued against the focus
on rape and ethnicity began to be fted by the international feminist-activist
community,13 while, within their own countries, they were branded by their
governments and national media as feminists and traitors.
Split discourse
The rejection by the international feminist community of NGOs that were
arguing that rape was part of a broader genocide against their ethnic group
had some noticeable negative effects. The Serbian NGOs fared particularly
badly in their claim that Serbian women were being raped en masse. The international vilification of Serbians as the bad guys meant that Serbian women
NGOs with nationalist leanings gained little credence with this argument
outside their own ethnic and nationalist networks. Although not vilified by the
international political community, the Croatian and Muslim groups claiming
rape as genocide were shunned by the international feminist-activist community, and consequently failed to attract international funding. In turn they
were forced into closer partnerships with their governments and nationalist
and religious NGOs. Their voices were thus limited to networks within their
own countries, and to some international Catholic and Muslim organizations.
However, in Croatia, two of these NGOs (part of a broader network of
Croatian and Bosnian Muslim NGOs) working with displaced Croat and
Muslim survivors in Zagreb had a modicum of success when they hosted the
visits of the North American authors Beverley Allen and Catharine
MacKinnon. Beverley Allens publication, Rape Warfare,14 grew out of fieldwork undertaken with these groups. What is noticeable in her book is that
she does not reference the NGO split, nor does she note the subsequent difference in local readings of rape. Women from the NGOs on the other side of
the split, commenting on Allens text, voiced concern as to whether Allen was
aware of the differences in opinion and interpretation. They also expressed
concern about the possible nuancing of the evidence provided to Allen by the
host groups, and the type of respondents to whom she was given access.15
Similarly, Catharine MacKinnons Turning rape into pornography:
postmodern genocide, which originally appeared in the July/August 1993
issue of Ms. magazine,16 used information from these same groups without
referencing the split. More worryingly, MacKinnon failed to indicate how
she came about the primary sources she cites for some of her evidence on how
and why the rapes took place. Noticeable, even in the titles of both these
authors works, is the fact that they follow the ideological lines of these NGOs
13 This is a somewhat simplified account. To understand the complexities of this debate, see
Lindsey, Nationalism and Gender.
14 Beverley Allen, Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia
(Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press 1996).
15 Interviews held in Croatia and Germany between October 1998 and February 1999.
16 Catharine MacKinnon, Turning rape into pornography: postmodern genocide, in Stiglmayer
(ed.), 7381.

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ROSE LINDSEY 67
in interpreting the rapes as Serbian-perpetrated genocide. What should also
be noted is that the fieldwork undertaken by Allen and MacKinnon has
afforded these publications academic kudos. Both are key starter texts used
by new researchers, and thus may have had a considerable impact on the
development of theory.17
On the other side of the NGO split were Croatian, Bosnia-Herzegovinan
and Serbian NGOs that were urging the international community to look
at the feminist implications of the Former Yugoslavian rapes, challenging
theorists to look beyond genocide for other motivating factors. The feministanalysis NGOs accessed funding and support from feminist-activist groups,
and from a range of international NGOs working on sexual violence, gender
and conflict, and conflict negotiation in multi-ethnic communities. They became part of the Za Mir (For Peace) electronic network, which enabled
communication to cross international borders without challenge, linking
Former Yugoslavian NGOs to each other and to the international NGO community. The prolific nature of electronic mail, and the number of electronic
mail-bases that replicated Za Mir material in whole or in part, meant that these
groups were in contact with an audience that would probably come under the
broad umbrella description of alternative, some of whom were feminist academics. Thus these NGOs managed to influence and infiltrate feminist
academic opinion by tapping into alternative networks of communication.
There is evidence that a number of feminist academics drew on these networks.18
However, few academics have acknowledged the split and the difference in
local interpretation. Indeed, it is uncertain whether those commenting knew
of the split, given that electronic material often became separated from the
context of its host mail-base. Metaphorically, the exchanging of electronic
material was akin to the passing on of a newspaper cutting, or journal article,
without knowing its source or political identity, other than that it was feminist.
Many of these Former Yugoslavian NGOs that were part of the Za Mir
network also published reports that explained the groups reading of rape,
but that focused primarily on their praxis, that is, the work being done by
these NGOs with survivors. Some also published books based on local and
international conferences that they had organized. One group, Medica
Mondiale, a German/Bosnia-Herzegovinan NGO, published a critique of the
ICTY.19 However, these groups had little input into mainstream publications.
Most of their reports and books had small print-runs and were distributed by
the groups themselves. There is, then, little in the way of hard (as opposed to
virtual) secondary texts from these groups.
17 MacKinnons text, after its appearance in Ms., was reprinted in Stiglmayers edited volume.
18 For example, some academics have acknowledged individuals from these NGOs without
naming the NGOs. Some academics have acknowledged individuals from British or North
American feminist-activist groups, who have supported these NGOs and/or disseminated
their literature.
19 Medica Mondiale (ed.), The War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague: Sexualised Violence on Trial
(Cologne: Medica Mondiale 1997).

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68 Patterns of Prejudice 36:4

Reading politics
What is noticeable about the local NGO split, and the differences in interpretation of the rapes, is the political basis of the debate. The polarization of the
NGO standpoints is a paradigm of the way in which ideological identity
can affect the reading of an event. Yet, what we hear too little of, in the
historiography of recent catastrophic events, is the effect that religious or
political identity can have on the development of a dialectic explaining and
historicizing those events.
In this case, one side of the ideological divide, the Croatian NGOs that
read the mass rapes as genocide, was hugely influential in kick-starting the
debate. Before the split actually took place, one of these NGOs sent out the
first press releases breaking the news of the rape camps, defining them as a
tactic of genocide, of a final solution.20 This reading was replicated by the
media, international lawyers, Croatian and Bosnian governments, international governments, the UN and two iconic authors. Yet these NGOs received
little actual recognition for their contribution to this reading. On the other
side of the ideological fence were the Croatian, Bosnia-Herzegovinan and
Serbian NGOs that advocated a feminist analysis of the sexual violence component of these rapes, as well as an analysis of the links between rape and
genocide. These local NGOs failed to penetrate the mainstream media and
opted for use of alternative media to reach communities of feminist activists,
peace campaigners and feminist academics. In terms of publications, like the
NGOs on the opposite side, they also received little recognition for their
contribution to the debate.
Thus the ideological influences behind the theorizing of the debate went
largely unnoticed or, perhaps, largely unattributed, particularly by academic
theorists. This lack of referencing seems inexplicable and dangerous. By not
exploring the ideological roots of a theory, does an academic collude with the
elisions that are taking place within the various theoretical camps? If this is
the case, then, by default, is the academic colluding with the violence itself? In
addition, the academic who has used information from local NGOs but does
not reference her/his sources for theorizing rape, therein also ignores, or masks,
the work that NGO groups have done with survivors. Without their praxis,
would the level of current academic debate on rape have been possible?
The separating off, at the level of theory, of academia and praxis, endures beyond the development of theory, to the heart of academic comment,
that is, to its aims and objectives, to the message it is trying to get across. Is
theory developed for theorys sake? Or do academics developing theory on
rape have the objective of future prevention within the aims of their theoretical discourse? The separation of praxis and academia arguably makes it more
difficult to prevent these events from recurring. It also gives little back to the
survivors, without whom there would be no theory.
20 Press release (entitled Report) by Nina Kadi of the Zagreb Womens Group Tresnjevka,
1992.

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Critiquing emergent academic theory

When the rape debate entered academic discourse it inevitably hit the disciplinary divide, according to which it was categorized and channelled into
disciplinary pigeon-holes, such as history, politics, law, womens studies, ethnic
and racial studies. The effect was a watering down of the debate and a narrowing down of the discourses employed to suit the discipline. Exploration
of the links between genocide and gender was mostly limited to law, ethnic
and racial studies/international relations, and feminist analysis.21
Leading law
Most of those commenting on the international law on rape were feminist lawyers (including Catharine MacKinnon).22 Rhonda Copelon, a North American
legal academic, led international feminist legal theory with a number of publications commenting on the Former Yugoslavian rapes. In 1994 she commented
on the setting up of the ICTY and its future role in trying the perpetrators of
mass rape.23 Copelon questioned why the Former Yugoslavian rapes had attracted global attention, and a reading of genocidal rape, when there were a
number of other cases of ethnically motivated rapes, in other parts of the world,
that could be read as genocide. She quoted the examples of genocide-driven
rapes in Bangladesh, Ecuador, Liberia, which have, so far, gone unchallenged
by the international community. Unfortunately, Copelon did not answer this
particular question (possibly because its remit extends beyond international
law to the field of cultural studies).24 She concentrated, instead, on the term
genocidal rape. Deconstructing it into its component parts genocide and rape,
she argued that these needed separate legal consideration on their own terms.
The elision of genocide and rape in the focus on genocidal rape as a means of
emphasizing the heinousness of the rape of Muslim women in Bosnia is thus dangerous. Rape and genocide are each atrocities. Genocide is an effort to debilitate or
destroy a people based on its identity as a people, while rape seeks to degrade and
destroy a woman based on her identity as a woman. Both are grounded in total
contempt for and dehumanization of the victim. . . . From the standpoint of these
women, they are inseparable.25

Copelon endorsed the jurisprudence of the ICTY, but warned that in the current legislation the import for other contexts in which women are subjected
to mass rape apart from ethnic cleansing is not clear. The danger, as always, is
that extreme examples produce narrow principles.26
21 As described above in the section on the epistemology of rape.
22 MacKinnon brought out a civil suit, in the United States, on behalf of raped women against
Radovan Karadzi, then leader of the Bosnian Serbs.
23 Rhonda Copelon, Gendered war crimes: reconceptualizing rape in time of war, in Julie
Peters and Andrea Wolper (eds), Womens Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives (New York and London: Routledge 1994), 197214.
24 I say this is unfortunate because an analysis would highlight the implicit racism and othering
that was taking place within the rape debate.
25 Copelon, 199.
26 Ibid., 203.

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70 Patterns of Prejudice 36:4

Commendably, Copelon wrote the survivor of rape into her analysis.
However, her conclusion that survivors see genocide and rape as inseparable
is questionable; its rigidity suggests a lack of knowledge of the survivor community, or the possibility that she had not talked to a wide range of NGOs
working with survivors. Copelon wrote later in the same article: Every rape
is multidimensional.27 Although she was referring to the motivation of the
perpetrator, this thesis should be extended to survivors explanations for their
experience of rape. From interviews with NGO activists who have worked
with survivors, my own conclusions are that most survivors will have multiple and, at times, contesting readings of why they were raped.28 For some,
ethnicity leads as the perceived explanation of their experience; for others, a
sexual-violence reading has more meaning. However, what stood out, during
fieldwork in Former Yugoslavia, was the need for more research into the role
that some NGOs have had in influencing a womans reading of her experience. Activists from some of the NGOs, in which rape was read as genocide,
hinted that their therapists and counsellors had explored that reading with a
survivor, and that the reading itself may have helped a woman to rationalize
what had happened to her. Similarly, in some NGOs in which rape was read
as sexual violence, activists made references to exploring this reading with a
survivor. In a therapeutic sense, either reading may have been useful to survivors. Understanding the motives for rape can enable recovery, particularly if
a woman acquires, or holds on to, a strong ideological identity throughout
this process. In the longer term, though, there is the question of the effect on
a survivors political trajectory. Does such a politicized reading of rape create
nationalists or feminists out of survivors? If so, what effect will this have on
the future generations of Former Yugoslavia?
International relations: gendercide versus feminism
In 1994 Adam Jones, commenting in the field of international relations with a
controversial piece on gender, ethnicity and the rapes in Former Yugoslavia,
was extremely critical of the feminist reading of war-rape as it stood.29 Initially a lone voice, but now a leading light in what he terms the gendercide
debate, Jones contested feminists narrow foci on the rapes within both the
media and academic theory. He argued that . . . feminism is in some respects
constrained by its normative commitments and by the distinct standpoint
by which these commitments arrive;30 that is, feminism has its limitations
because it derives from womens experience. In the case of Former Yugoslavia,
he argued that the focus on the rapes within the genocide debate had occluded
male (in particular younger, battle-age males) experiences of violence, torture
27 Ibid., 208.
28 Fieldwork undertaken between August 1998 and February 1999. This opinion is also informed by personal contact with NGOs, 19932000.
29 Adam Jones, Gender and ethnic conflict in ex-Yugoslavia, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 17,
no. 1, 1994, 11534.
30 Ibid., 115.

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ROSE LINDSEY 71
(including sexual torture) and genocide in Former Yugoslavia. Extrapolating
this further, to genocides per se, he argued that men experience more sexspecific violence, in particular gender-selective killings, and, when it comes
down to numbers, there are always far fewer male survivors.
Although Joness argument is tenable (and there are a number of feminists that concur that the genocidal killing of men should be studied on its own
merits), it is also extremely problematic because of his insistence in placing
his argument in opposition to the rape debate. The effect on Joness own
argument is to make it seem narrow, tendentious and uninformed. It forces
the reader to imagine that the feminist debate on rape focuses solely on genocide while at the same time excluding all other victims of genocide. There is
no room for an inclusive or sophisticated feminist reading of rape or genocide.
In more recent work and in his work with the NGO Gendercide Watch,
Jones corrects this imbalance by removing his focus from the rape debate.31
The group Gendercide Watch has admirable aims in attempting to monitor
the occurrence of sex-selective verbal and physical violence towards
outgroups of men and women throughout the world, noting that these are
the early warning signs, the precursors to genocide. Nevertheless, Joness 1994
article remains on public record as a commentary on the rapes in Former
Yugoslavia. Its tendentiousness, its opposition to the feminist debate on rape,
gives it an appeal to the anti-feminist, and promotes an inter-gender tension.
It also detracts from the strengths of his original thesis and his current work,
which, if combined with the work of those working on alternative progressive feminist analyses of gender-specific violence, as outlined in the conclusion
of this paper, would formatively change the debate on sexual violence in war.
Academic bandwagonism and the politics of testimony
My criticism of Joness work lies not only with his championing of male
victimhood in the face of a perceived feminist hegemony, but also with his use
of borrowed testimony to illustrate gender-specific genocide. In exoneration of Jones, this criticism is not limited solely to his work, but extends to a
broad range of academics, and others, writing at the time. The use, or rather
abuse, of testimony is pervasive in mid-1990s writing on the violence in Former
Yugoslavia. Some writing is more problematic than others. For example,
Slavenka Drakuli, normally a writer with some integrity, appeared to jump
on the testimony bandwagon when she wrote an article on rape in 1994.32 Her

31 Adam Jones, Genocide and humanitarian intervention: incorporating the gender variable,
conference paper for the Fourth Global Biennial Conference of the Association of Genocide
Scholars, Minneapolis, MN, 1012 June 2001. See also Joness article, Gendercide and genocide, Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 2, no. 2, June 2002, 185211.
32 Slavenka Drakuli, The rape of women in Bosnia, in Miranda Davies (ed.), Women and
Violence (London: Zed Books 1994), 17681. Although Drakulis other writing suggests her
motives were academically altruistic, the flurry of interest in rape among journalists and academics encourages the comparison of rape stories to fashion accessories, in that no feminist
writer should be without a rape story under his/her belt.

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72 Patterns of Prejudice 36:4

methods of investigation appear crude and ethically suspect. However, the
work of Stiglmayer and MacKinnon is also particularly problematic in terms
of both ethics and style. What causes me concern is that, since their work
tends to be used as primary texts by new researchers, it may have established
a genre in terms of the way in which future writers will use testimony when
commenting on mass rape and genocide.
Stiglmayers lengthy article on the rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina might
illustrate this argument. Her interest in the subject evolved out of an existing
involvement as a journalist in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, and her journalistic background permeated her work in terms of style and hard-nosed
investigating, as she freely admits in her introduction.
In order to get to the bottom of the matter, my friend and colleague the American
journalist George Rodrigue and I set out for Bosnia-Herzegovina to find other
women with similar stories. Psychiatrists had told us that raped women in BosniaHerzegovina, where the danger is more immediate, would be more likely to speak
about what they had suffered than women who had escaped to the safe-haven of
Croatia.33

What immediately struck me in this introductory piece was that Stiglmayer

seems to have had little understanding of the mental health of her respondents, or consideration of the ethics in gathering testimony. This, unfortunately,
is very much in keeping with many of the journalistic methods that were
being used in Former Yugoslavia during the wars.34 In terms of style, what is
problematic with Stiglmayers text is the way in which she uses testimony as
data, while employing journalistic devices to make that testimony believable
and readable, effectively using testimony to hook the reader. Her method is
relatively simple: she introduces each survivor, then quotes edited portions of
testimony that include graphic descriptions of sexual violence, the range of
emotions felt by women and the conditions that women endured during imprisonment. The effect is curiously unsettling, imbuing testimony with a
voyeurism that can only be compared to the genre of hard-core pornography.
MacKinnon has much in common with Stiglmayer.35 Her analysis of the
links between pornography and rape in Former Yugoslavia, which appears in
the same volume as Stiglmayers article, employs similar devices to those used
by Stiglmayer. MacKinnon describes, in horrific detail, the pornographic
scripting of rapes, the positions women were made to adopt by the perpetrators, the language used and the filming of rapes. As in Stiglmayers piece, the

33 Stiglmayer, 83.
34 A respondent who used to work with rape survivors in Zagreb, recalled the tactics of CNN
journalists: . . . in a way CNN made it bloodier and bloodier, with more awful and more
awful stories. You know, Im sure the Centre still has the fax that says Can you find us a
woman with a really horrible, bloody story, preferably speaking English, for an interview
(interview, August 1998).
35 See earlier section that describes the problems with MacKinnons acknowledgement of her
sources.

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ROSE LINDSEY 73
effect is one of voyeuristic hard-core porn, ironically closer in style to the
pornography that MacKinnon lambasts than to an academic text.
What one might question, perhaps, is why, when Stiglmayers and
MacKinnons texts were published in English in 1994, were they not criticized as journalistic, voyeuristic or ethically suspect? Instead, they were
academically accepted as evidenced-based articles that formed part of a volume edited by Stiglmayer herself, to which several renowned and academically
respected western feminist academics contributed, including Ruth Seifert,
Susan Brownmiller, Rhonda Copelon and Cynthia Enloe. Indeed, Stiglmayers
volume continues to be referenced by academics without criticism. Similarly,
it has been deemed academically acceptable for a number of other academics
to use graphic testimonies of violence almost routinely in their texts. I suspect
that time and the location of these events has much to do with this phenomenon. The immediacy of the events, the fact that they were taking place even
as we read about them, gave them a news-room urgency that suspended normal rules of style, of what is acceptable and unacceptable, pressuring academics
and lay readers alike into engaging with these texts. The location of these
events, the fact that they were taking place in Europe, occurring to women
who were different, but not too different from those reading about them, also
contributed to attracting the horrified voyeur in a predominantly European
and North American readership. Yet this doesnt quite explain how voyeurism became acceptable and normal. Renata Salecl cast some light on this,
when she theorized about why people empathized with those directly experiencing the conflicts in Former Yugoslavia: The first response is something
like this could have happened to me. This is the kind of imaginary identification when we perceive the suffering victim in a mirror imageas the possible
image of ourselves.36
Extending Salecls thesis further, it is the difference, in conjunction with
a perceived similarity, between those people who testified to rape and the
people who read their testimony, that has allowed voyeurism. Identifying as
similar, but different, allows the reader to create a boundary between her/
himself and the victim, so that the testifying victim becomes removed and
objectified as other.37 This removal, this objectification, allows the reader to
suspend the rules on what it is acceptable or unacceptable to print and read.
Yet it should be noted that the acceptability of Stiglmayers and
MacKinnons texts was reinforced by the juxtaposition of other, seemingly
academically respectable texts next to their articles. This juxtaposition acted
as an endorsement of MacKinnons and Stiglmayers work, persuading the
reader that it must be academically credible. This issue of academic credibility
36 Renata Salecl, The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis and Feminism after the Fall of Socialism
(London: Routledge 1994), 138.
37 Morley and Robins quote Slavov iek on this phenomenon: far from being the Other of
Europe, ex-Yugoslavia was rather Europe in its Otherness (Ethnic dance macabre, Guardian, 28 August 1992). See David Morley and Kevin Robins, Spaces of Identity: Global Media,
Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries (London: Routledge 1995), 145.

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74 Patterns of Prejudice 36:4

needs examination. I suspect that a lack of precedent in examining rape in an
academic context is a central issue in considering the phenomenon. The mass
rapes in Former Yugoslavia were, in a sense, unique. It was one of the few
times that mass rape had been publicly reported by survivors, had come to
the attention of the global media, and had caught the public imagination for a
sustained period of time.38 This, in part, is the problem. The difficult nature of
rape testimony, its overarching sexual theme, exacerbates the problems for
those who are reporting/commenting/writing on the rapes. How does one
present a graphic testimony of sexual violence without subscribing to voyeurism, and without privileging the perpetrator? Should one be attempting to
do this? Is this one of the dangers of an evidence-led discourse?
The closest parallel to this academic dilemma is probably the study of
the Holocaust, in which, in some academic, as well as populist, accounts of
killings, sexual slavery and dehumanization of victims and survivors, authors
have used testimony to create voyeuristic narratives of perpetrator violence.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagens internationally acclaimed, recent work on the
Holocaust might be considered such an example.39 Critiquing Goldhagens
style, Tony Kushner argues that, in the text, Jewish voices, either from sources
or more often as imagined by the author, are there purely to show the full
horror of Jewish mass murder (my emphasis).40 Kushner observes that, as a
result, Goldhagens text verges on the pornographic.
Kushners criticism of Goldhagen exemplifies a broader problem surrounding the purposes for which testimony is used, as embodied in
MacKinnons, Stiglmayers and Goldhagens work. All three of these writers
are driven to convey horror, to shock their audience. There is an implication
in their texts that they, as keepers of testimony, have a duty to do this, that
testimony must be used for political ends, primarily to re-educate. However,
this feels like extremely suspect political territory. Should a writer be using
testimony to shock? Is this not, as Kushner argues in reference to Goldhagen,
akin to pornography? What are the limits of representation? Indeed, should
there be limits?
Do the experiences and personal reactions of survivors have a greater
validity? Although some academics (myself included) are morally squeamish
regarding the Goldhagen book, many survivors applauded the tone and content of the book. This forces me to reappraise my position and my argument.
38 There are a number of other incidences of ethnic rape that have attracted the attention of the
media and/or academics: the First World War rapes of Belgian women by German soldiers;
Turkish rapes of Armenian women; rapes of German women at the end of the Second World
War; rapes of Korean women by Japanese soldiers in the Second World War; rapes in Bangladesh in 1971. However, the Former Yugoslavian rapes were different in that they attracted
such intense scrutiny from the world press and from academics.
39 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (London: Abacus 1997).
40 Tony Kushner, The users perspective, paper delivered at the conference Taking Testimonies Forward: Oral Testimonies of the Holocaust, National Sound Archive, British Library,
London, November 1999.

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ROSE LINDSEY 75
This tension between the academic and the survivor is foregrounded by Joanna
Reilly et al. who observe, with regard to the Holocaust, that: Many survivors
fear, not without reason, that the Holocaust could, in the hands of insensitive
academics, lose its human dimension.41 This observation bears equal weight
with regard to the future study of the recent conflicts in Former Yugoslavia.
What, then, of the Former Yugoslavian testifiers themselves? Stiglmayer
writes of her respondents: When they faltered and began to cry, I myself
often had a lump in my throat.42 It is possible that, at this particular point in
time, these women needed to give their testimony, and that Stiglmayers emotional engagement and her empathy made her more accessible, more
spontaneous, more human, than a counsellor, a UN investigator or feminist
academic. It is also possible that, if these women were to read Stiglmayers
article, the horror would be acceptable to them because the political purpose
of their testimony was based on a need for the world to know the horror of
what had happened to them. Perhaps, then, this is what respected feminist
writers also saw in Stiglmayers work when they chose to collaborate with her.
Although this discussion appears inconclusive in terms of how one
should interview survivors and how one should treat their testimony, what it
demonstrates is how little we know about the needs and feelings of those
giving testimony. This ignorance, endemic within both the academic and the
human rights community, extends to our knowledge of the long-term effects
of testifying.
What also emerges from the analysis is the way that survivors have been
written out of their stories at the publishing stage by those to whom they have
entrusted their testimony. The problems of representation, inclusion, style
and tone are matters on which Former Yugoslavian survivors and witnesses
have not been consulted. This highlights the fact that the experience of testifying is, in essence, very one-sided. Whether a researcher writes as a populist
author or an academic, the physical act of collating testimony for publication
is essentially a selfish one because the ego and career of the person who will
be controlling that testimony is bound up in the process of gathering it. The
people collating testimony rarely consult those testifying about their experience of testifying, the representation of that testimony and the after-effects of
testifying. The case of Former Yugoslavia, at this particular juncture in time,
represents a rare opportunity to redress this process, while at the same time
contributing to a nascent body of debate on testimony.
What is missing from this analysis is the link between the ICTY evidence-led discourses reviewed earlier in this article and the use/abuse of
testimony. The dominance of this evidence-led discourse should not be underestimated; it had a definitive effect on the way in which theory was presented

41 Joanna Reilly, David Cesarani, Tony Kushner and Colin Richmond, Appendix: Belsen testimonies: the camp and its liberation, in J. Reilly, D. Cesarani, T. Kushner and C. Richmond
(eds), Belsen in History and Memory (London: Frank Cass 1997), 209.
42 Stiglmayer, 83.

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76 Patterns of Prejudice 36:4

and illustrated. Developing theory through evidence is part of an established
positivist tradition but in the study of mass rape it inevitably leads to the use
of testimony to illustrate that theory and accordingly to a debate on the limits
of representation. My concern, though, is that the damage has been done, and
that the use of testimony is so well established as a genre that it is hard to
challenge. Indeed, it seems to have become so ingrained that there is a wholesale borrowing of testimony from secondary texts. All those commenting in
this field probably know the range of well-used apocryphal rape stories/quotes
that have done the academic rounds and can easily be drawn on to illustrate a
point. This has led to a further degrading of the worth of testimony.
Advocating a progressive feminist analysis
As well as leading to the problems of style discussed above, the almost casual
over-use of testimony has led to a point in the development of theory at
which testimony no longer needs to be used. Instead it can be alluded to, or
it is present through its absence, because the writer and the reader know
what these testimonies would say if they were used. Rejalis text, which summarizes the current state of play in feminist analysis of rape, demonstrates
that feminist analysis is evidence-led and thus, by association, built upon testimony. The phenomenon of alluded to, or absent, testimony is, therefore,
dominant within this field. My concern is that the nature of this debatethe
fact that we have been habituated to testimony and are driven by an evidencebased culture of study and researchis fossilizing the debate on the rapes in
Former Yugoslavia, and the broader debate on gender and genocide. What
the debate needs is a change in direction, method and theoretical influence.
There are theoretical avenues that have been under-explored and which
could reform and revitalize the gender and genocide debate. Here I would
like to focus on one particular avenue that informs feminist analysis, is broadly
interdisciplinary in nature and thus accessible to scholars from many disciplines. It was initiated by the Croatian academic/statistician Silva Meznari in
1994. Identifying with the need for a local feminist analysis, Meznari gained
international recognition, within the feminist academic community, for her
contribution to a volume edited by Valentine Moghadam.43 Meznari used
her local political and statistical knowledge, as opposed to drawing on testimony, to critique the links between ethnicity and rape within the rape debate.
Although she concurred that women were being raped because of their ethnicity, she argued that focusing on a womans ethnicity endorses the concept
of ethnicity as a marker of women, identifying them, or rather objectifying
them, as the possession of a particular man, family or group. Meznari reasoned that recognizing rape as a crime against a given ethnicity gave weight
to the perception of raped women as damaged goods, which led to the
43 Silva Meznari, Gender as an ethno-marker: rape, war and identity politics in the Former
Yugoslavia, in V. Moghadam (ed.), Identity Politics and Women: Cultural Reassertions and
Feminism in International Perspective (Oxford: Westview Press 1994), 76-97.

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ROSE LINDSEY 77
perception of rape as a weapon of war and, therefore, a reading that rape in
war is inevitable. Extrapolating this argument further, reading rape solely as
genocide encourages a view that women will always be targetted for rape
during genocide. It does little to challenge or prevent this view, and it does
little for the rehabilitation of a survivor. Meznaris focus broke away from
genocide and ethnicity to a consideration of inter-gender relations. She
looked to the example of the Kosovo rapes, a rape myth that flourished in
Kosovo in the 1980s (and may have influenced the incidence of rape in the
19915 conflicts). The Kosovo rapes derived from a rumour that Albanian
men in the province were trying (but failing) to rape Serbian women.44
Meznari read this as anti-Albanian propaganda, but expanded her reading
to look at the effect of this rumour on Serbian women. She argued that,
through its insistence that Serbian women in public places were in danger of
rape from Albanian men, the rumour instilled fear in women of entering into
the public domain . . . It was a way of disguising the opposition between
men and women that inevitably accompanies women into the public domain
in traditional societies.45
Mirjana Morokvai, who is also a local academic, concurred with the
need for a feminist analysis that looked at the background of Former Yugoslavian gender relations.46 Developing Meznaris argument, she linked the
raping of women to the growth of nationalism in Former Yugoslavia during
the 1980s. Morokvai argued that nationalism had an effect on local perceptions of women, whereby there was an increase in overt sexism and an
othering of women. She argued: Turning rape exclusively into a crime against
an ethnic community obscures the fact that women are raped because they
are both the female Other and the ethnic Other.47 According to this reading rape is motivated by misogyny engendered by a nationalist, masculine
discourse. The sex of the survivor/victim is as important to the perpetrator as
her ethnicity.
Morokvais argument looked away from evidence and looked, instead, to
social structures. These are not the social structures mentioned by Rejali, which
pertained specifically to rape and the difference between genocidal/war rape
and so-called everyday (non-war) rape. Morokvais social structures were
much broader; she attempted to identify what it was in pre-genocide Former
Yugoslavian society that made men rape women. This focus on social structures has also been developed in Sabrina P. Ramets interdisciplinary volume
44 Thus reinforcing the view of the Albanian male as feminine/impotent. This resonates with the
Nazi feminization of the male Other (particularly Jewish men) through the denial of their
fecundity. See George Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press 1985), 134. For comment on this phenomenon in Yugoslavia, see: Salecl, 23.
45 Meznari, 76.
46 Mirjana Morokvai, The logics of exclusion: nationalism, sexism and the Yugoslav war, in
Nickie Charles and Helen Hintjens (eds), Gender, Ethnicity and Political Ideologies (London: Routledge 1998), 6590.
47 Ibid., 82. Lindsey, Nationalism and Gender, examines the role of gender in the growth of
nationalism during the 1970s and 1980s.

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78 Patterns of Prejudice 36:4

of essays on gender in the Balkans.48 The volume draws on the research of a
group of American, Yugo-American and Former Yugoslavian scholars who
examine a range of social structures within Former Yugoslavia, including family
hierarchies and the relationship between mothers and sons, homosexuality,
constructions of gender in Serbia, religion and gender in rural Croatia. Although the volume represents an eclectic grouping of material, the combination
of research methods and subject matter creates an original and novel interrogation of the Former Yugoslavian social order. Its gaze is directed at the private
and the family, where gender and sexuality are first negotiated, and the way in
which the private informs the public.
The work of Meznari, Morokvai and Ramet represents a starting point
in looking beyond proving that the rapes took place and were sexually or
ethnically motivated. It initiates an debate on the role of the public and private in shaping the citizens of Former Yugoslavia who comprised the
perpetrators and victims of rape, those who colluded, those who ignored and
those who resisted and contested these events. It represents an intellectual
route that attempts to explain violence rather than prove and describe it. It is
an interdisciplinary route that can raise the debate from its narrow and limited focus on Former Yugoslavia to a global examination of mass rape, one
that is applicable, for example, to the under-researched cases of rape in Rwanda,
Indonesia, Ecuador, Bangladesh. Perhaps equally important, it can also privilege and include marginalized local voices. In the longer term it could
contribute to a body of theory that changes the nature of the current debate
on gender and genocide from a data-led, evidence-based categorization of
rape, to a debate on why rape takes place in different societies experiencing
genocide.
ROSE LINDSEY, a former field archaeologist, is now a research officer at King Alfreds
College, Winchester. She is currently preparing a book based on her doctoral thesis,
Nationalism and Gender: A Study of War-related Violence against Women.

48 Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Gender Politics in the Western Balkans: Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successor States (University Park: Pennsylvannia State University
Press 1999). Lindsey, Nationalism and Gender, explores and extrapolates the debates in
Ramets volume. Using feminist psychoanalysis it examines how the Balkan family and Balkan constructions of masculinity can inform our understanding of the violence of the early
1990s.