(Download PDF) Representing Gender Based Violence Global Perspectives Caroline Williamson Sinalo Full Chapter PDF

Representing Gender-Based Violence:
Global Perspectives Caroline

Williamson Sinalo
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/representing-gender-based-violence-global-perspecti
ves-caroline-williamson-sinalo/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender

Violence Anita Hill
https://ebookmass.com/product/believing-our-thirty-year-journey-
to-end-gender-violence-anita-hill/
America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and

Sexuality at the Movies 2nd Edition, (Ebook PDF)
https://ebookmass.com/product/america-on-film-representing-race-
class-gender-and-sexuality-at-the-movies-2nd-edition-ebook-pdf/
Violence and Peace in Sacred Texts: Interreligious

Perspectives Maria Power
https://ebookmass.com/product/violence-and-peace-in-sacred-texts-
interreligious-perspectives-maria-power/
Gender: Psychological Perspectives, Seventh Edition 7th

Edition, (Ebook PDF)
https://ebookmass.com/product/gender-psychological-perspectives-
seventh-edition-7th-edition-ebook-pdf/
Gender, Sex, and Sexualities: Psychological
Perspectives Nancy Dess (Editor)
https://ebookmass.com/product/gender-sex-and-sexualities-
psychological-perspectives-nancy-dess-editor/
Towards More Effective Global Drug Policies 1st ed.

Edition Caroline Chatwin
https://ebookmass.com/product/towards-more-effective-global-drug-
policies-1st-ed-edition-caroline-chatwin/
(eTextbook PDF) for Sustainability: Global Issues,

Global Perspectives by Astrid Cerny
https://ebookmass.com/product/etextbook-pdf-for-sustainability-
global-issues-global-perspectives-by-astrid-cerny/
America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and

Sexuality at the Movies Third Edition Harry M. Benshoff
& Sean Griffin
https://ebookmass.com/product/america-on-film-representing-race-
class-gender-and-sexuality-at-the-movies-third-edition-harry-m-
benshoff-sean-griffin/
Do It Now! Napoleon Hill & Judith Williamson
https://ebookmass.com/product/do-it-now-napoleon-hill-judith-
williamson/
Representing
Gender-Based
Violence
Global Perspectives
Edited by
Caroline Williamson Sinalo
Nicoletta Mandolini
Representing Gender-Based Violence
Nicoletta Mandolini
Editors
Representing Gender-
Based Violence
Global Perspectives
Editors
Caroline Williamson Sinalo Nicoletta Mandolini
Department of French CECS
University College Cork Universidade do Minho
Cork, Ireland Braga, Portugal
ISBN 978-3-031-13450-0 ISBN 978-3-031-13451-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13451-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgments
Edited volumes are, by definition, the result of a collective effort. The case
of Representing Gender-Based Violence: Global Perspectives, however, radi-
cally questions the idea of research in the field of the Humanities as an
individual process driven by scholars’ personal knowledge and interpreta-
tive skills. The volume is one of the main outputs produced by the coop-
erative work that, since 2015, has been carried out within the research
cluster on Violence, Conflict and Gender, which is part of CASiLaC
(Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures) at University
College Cork. The research group, which the editors of this volume co-
convened between 2016 and 2019, has functioned as stimulating labora-
tory where scholars from different disciplinary areas and backgrounds
could discuss their research interests in gender violence, and its numerous
manifestations and representations. We would like to thank Nuala
Finnegan, Silvia Ross, Adelina Syms and Emer Clifford, who were among
the founders of the research cluster. But we would also like to acknowl-
edge the contribution that other members of the group to the intellectual
and practical production of this book: Céire Broderick, Theresa O’Keefe,
Chiara Bonfiglioli, Alan Gibbs, Vittorio Bufacchi, and David Fitzgerald.
A cornerstone moment for the realisation of this project was the work-
shop Representing Gender-Based Violence: Establishing an International
Interdisciplinary Network (University College Cork, 22–23 May 2017).
We thank all those who participated in the workshop: Susan Brison, Tamar
Pitch, Rosa Logar, Karen Boyle, Una Mullaly, Deborah Jermyn, Héctor
Domínguez-Ruvalcaba and Georgina Holmes. Thanks also to the Irish
Research Council for funding the event.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Individual seminars with international researchers, activists and authors

in the field of gender-based violence were also crucial to the development
of insights and scholarly knowledge that lead to this publication. Special
thanks to Caterina Peroni, Stef Craps, Giampaolo Simi, Linda Connolly,
Caroline Forde, and The Junk Ensemble.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Nicoletta Mandolini and Caroline Williamson Sinalo
Part I Representation as Violence 23
2 Do
the Media Make Sexual Violence ‘Congolese’? Phallo-
and Ethnocentrism in the International Coverage of Dr
Mukwege’s Story 25
3 The
Case of Norma Cossetto: A Femorevisionist Issue 47
Federico Tenca Montini
4 Representing
Human Trafficking as Gendered Violence:
Doing Cultural Violence 69
Gillian Wylie
5 Representing
the ‘Comfort Women’: Omissions and
Denials in Wartime Historiographies in Japan 89
Anna-Karin Eriksson
vii
viii Contents
Part II Revealing Representations 111
6 Acid
Attacks in Italy: Gender-Based Violence,
Victimhood, and Media Representation113
Stefano Rossoni and Olga Campofreda
7 Diagonal
Truths: The Representation of Gender Violence
in True Crime Podcasts—The Case of West Cork143
Nicoletta Mandolini
8 Albinism
and Gender-Based Violence in Women’s Writing
from Southern Africa: Meg Vandermerwe’s Zebra Crossing
(2013) and Petina Gappah’s The Book of Memory (2015)165
Charlotte Baker
9 Transnational
Feminist Interventions on Gender-Based
Violence During the Bosnian War: Representational
Dilemmas in Activism, Advocacy, and Art185
Chiara Bonfiglioli
Part III Representative Re-Imaginings 205
10 Representing
Gender-Based Violence in Spain:
Performance Protest, the #Cuéntalo Movement, and
Purple Friday207
Andrea Hepworth
11 Gender,
Violence, Populism and (Social) Media in Turkey233
Mine Gencel Bek
12 Mónica
Mayer’s ‘El Tendedero’ Project: Forty Years of
Feminist Art Framing Gender-Based Violence in Mexico255
Elisa Cabrera García
Contents ix
13 Topless
in La Habana: Space, Pleasure, and Visibility in
Ethically Representing Gender-Based Violence283
Clare Geraghty
Index303
Notes on Contributors
Charlotte Baker is Professor of French and Critical Disability Studies in

the Department of Languages and Cultures at Lancaster University.
Charlotte’s research focuses on disability and stigma in sub-Saharan Africa,
with a particular interest in the genetic condition albinism. She has pub-
lished widely on the socio-cultural realities of living with albinism, cultural
representations of albinism, and the human rights abuses against people
with albinism. She led the Wellcome Trust funded Albinism in Africa proj-
ect (2014–2017) and she is currently leading the AHRC-funded Disability
and Inclusion in Africa project, which foregrounds the importance of
alternative explanations for disabilities in African contexts.
Mine Gencel Bek currently works as a lecturer, researcher, and co-
Principal Investigator at the University of Siegen. She completed her
Ph.D. at Loughborough University in 1999. She was a visiting lecturer at
MIT in 2013 and 2014. Her academic life started at Ankara University in
1991 as a research assistant. During 2008–2010, she worked as vice-chair
of KASAUM, the Women’s Studies Center at Ankara University. She
taught the Media, Violence and Women course at the Women’s Studies MA
program at Ankara University as well as supervised master theses on gen-
der and media. Some of the international projects she worked on as a
coordinator and researcher are related to gender and media such as those
titled Media and Domestic Violence and Media and Social Inclusion. She
published research and made translations as well as contributed civic
training on the issues of sexism, gender-based violence, gender equality in
relation to the media and the news, and journalistic ethical principles.
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Chiara Bonfiglioli is a lecturer in Gender & Women’s Studies at

University College Cork, Ireland, where she coordinates the one-year
interdisciplinary Masters in Women’s Studies. She completed a PhD at the
Graduate Gender Programme, Utrecht University, in 2012, and held
postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Edinburgh, the University of
Pula, and the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. She has published
widely on transnational women’s and gender history. She is the author of
Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav
Textile Sector (I.B. Tauris 2019).
Olga Campofreda gained her PhD in Italian Studies at University
College London. In 2020 she published her first monograph “Dalla
generazione all’individuo: giovinezza, identità, impegno nell’opera di Pier
Vittorio Tondelli” (Mimesis), then joined the Institute of Advanced
Studies (IAS-UCL) as a visiting research fellow with a project on Italian
women writers. In 2022 she co-edited the Altrelettere Special Issue
“Italian Girlhoods and Other Brilliant Friends”, focussed on the represen-
tation of female youth in Italian culture. She is a member of the organising
committee of the Festival of Italian Literature in London (FILL) and col-
laborates with the research network on girlhood supported by the AHRC
funded project “A Girls’Eye View”.
Anna-Karin Eriksson is PhD Student of politics at Linnaeus University
in Växjö, Sweden. She specializes in ‘comfort women’ politics, and has
contributed to the edited volume Historical Justice and History Education.
Her research examines the historical legacies of the comfort women issue.
She received her B.A. and M.A. in Politics, Japanese studies, and Chinese
studies from Lund University in Lund, Sweden. Prior to her PhD studies,
she worked as Coordinator of International Relations at Gifu Prefectural
Office in Gifu, Japan.
Elisa Cabrera García is PhD candidate in the Department of History of
Art at the University of Granada. She holds a degree in Art History and a
Master’s degree in Literary Theory from the same university. Her aca-
demic work is developed in the discipline of cultural studies, from where
she has addressed the politics of gender-based violence in the history of
feminist militancy. She has specialized in the concept of feminicide in Latin
America and its reception in Spain based on the aesthetic-historical analy-
sis of recent artistic and literary phenomena, which is the subject of her
doctoral dissertation.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
Clare Geraghty is a PhD candidate in the department of Spanish,

Portuguese and Latin American Studies at University College Cork,
funded by the National University of Ireland Travelling Doctoral
Studentship award. Her research interests lie at the intersection of queer
and feminist theory with Latin American and Caribbean studies.
Andrea Hepworth is a lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at
Victoria University of Wellington. Her research interests include the poli-
tics of memory in post-dictatorship countries such as Spain, Germany and
the countries of Latin America’s Southern Cone. Further research inter-
ests cover the intergenerational transmission of traumatic memories,
memory activism, human rights movements, transitional justice and gen-
der issues. She has published several articles and book chapters on her
research, for example ‘Localised, Regional, Inter-Regional and National
Memory Politics: The Case of Spain’s La Ranilla Prison and Andalusia’s
Mnemonic Framework’ in Memory Studies (2021), ‘Memory Activism
across Borders: The Transformative Influence of the Argentinean Franco
Court Case and Activist Protest Movements on Spain’s Recovery of
Historical Memory’ in Agency in Transnational Memory Politics: A
Framework for Analyzing Practice (2020) and ‘Literal and Discursive Sites
of Memory in Post-Dictatorship Germany and Spain’ in the Journal of
Contemporary History (2017).
Nicoletta Mandolini is FCT Junior Researcher at CECS (Centro de
Estudos de Comunicação e Sociedade) at Universidade do Minho
(Portugal), where she is working on the project Sketch Her Story and
Make It Popular. Using Graphic Narratives in Italian and Lusophone
Feminist Activism Against Gender Violence (https://www.sketchthat-
story.com/). She worked as FWO Postdoctoral Researcher at KU Leuven
(Belgium) and she owns a PhD from University College Cork (Ireland).
She authored the monograph Representations of Lethal Gender-Based
Violence in Italy Between Journalism and Literature: Femminicidio
Narratives (Routledge 2021). Among other articles on sexist abuse in
contemporary literature and media, she co-edited the volume Rappresentare
la violenza di genere. Sguardi femministi tra critica, attivismo e scrittura
(Mimesis 2018). She is an active member of the CASiLaC (Centre for
Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures) research cluster on Violence,
Conflict and Gender, that she co-convened from 2016 until 2019. She is
founding member of SnIF (Studying’n’Investigating Fumetti).
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Federico Tenca Montini is a researcher at the University of Trieste. After

receiving his MA in sociology at the University in Milan (Bicocca) with a
thesis on historical revisionism later published as a book (Fenomenologia
di un martirologio mediatico, 2014), he won funding of the Italian
Ministry of education and university for a joint Ph.D. in contemporary
history (universities of Teramo and Zagreb, mentor prof. Tvrtko Jakovina).
His doctoral thesis (La Jugoslavia e la questione di Trieste 1945–1954),
on the Trieste crisis reconstructed through Yugoslav documentation, has
been published in Italy by il Mulino in 2020 and in Croatia in 2021 (Trst
ne damo! Jugoslavija i Tršćansko pitanje 1945–1954). He has published
scientific articles in Italian, Croatian and English. He authored dissemina-
tion articles for a number of prominent outlets, including Internazionale,
Jutarnji List and Domani.
Stefano Rossoni is a Lecturer in Gender and Sexuality Studies at
University College London, where he completed his PhD in 2017.
Previously, he was a Visiting Assistant in Research at Yale University. His
research is interdisciplinary and spans across literature, cultural studies,
and sociology, with a particular focus on ageing and masculinities.
Caroline Williamson Sinalo is Lecturer in World Languages at University
College Cork and author of Rwanda after Genocide: Gender, Identity and
Posttraumatic Growth (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and co-author
of Transmitting Memories in Rwanda: From a Survivor Parent to the next
Generation (Brill Press, 2022). She has published widely on the lives and
experiences of survivors of violence.
Gillian Wylie is Assistant Professor in International Peace Studies at
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her research and teaching covers gender
in the shaping of war and peace with a particular interest in human traf-
ficking and human displacement. She is author of The International
Politics of Human Trafficking (Palgrave 2016).
List of Figures
Fig. 10.1 Demonstration in Pamplona against the manada sentence, 28

April 2018. SantiVaquero© 218
Fig. 10.2 San Fermín Festival in Pamplona, 11 July 2017.
SantiVaquero©220
Fig. 10.3 ‘The she-wolves have awakened. We are the wolf pack’.
Pamplona, 28 April 2018. SantiVaquero© 221
Fig. 11.1 Men talking about the Istanbul Convention on Turkish TV
channels (Bildirici 2021) 243
Fig. 11.2 Campaign of the initiative of ‘We Want to Live’ for the
Istanbul Convention through Change.org 245
Fig. 12.1 Posters for the protest against the mother myth, MAS, 1971.
Courtesy of Archivo Ana Victoria Jiménez, Biblioteca
Francisco Xavier Clavijero, Universidad Iberoamericana,
Ciudad de México, México 259
Fig. 12.2 Mónica Mayer. Poster for round-table talks on feminist art,
1976. Courtesy of Archivo Ana Victoria Jiménez, Biblioteca
Francisco Xavier Clavijero, Universidad Iberoamericana,
Ciudad de México, México 261
Fig. 12.3 Funeral wreath created by Ana Victoria Jiménez and Lilia
Lucido de Mayer. Demonstration in Mexico City, May 10,
1979. Photograph by Ana Victoria Jiménez. Courtesy of
Archivo Ana Victoria Jiménez, Biblioteca Francisco Xavier
Clavijero, Universidad Iberoamericana, Ciudad de México,
México262
Fig. 12.4 Mónica Mayer beside the first Tendedero, at the new trends
77/78 exhibition, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City,
1978. Courtesy of Mónica Mayer 264
xv
xvi List of Figures
Fig. 12.5 Construction process of El Tendedero in Los Angeles as part

of the project Making It Safe, by Suzanne Lacy. Courtesy of
Mónica Mayer 267
Fig. 12.6 Answer to the question, ‘Have you ever been sexually harassed
at school or university?’ in El Tendedero installed at the
entrance to the exhibition Radical Women (2017): ‘Attempted
rape by a visiting professor at UCLA. Got away’. Photograph
by: Yuruen Lerma. Courtesy of Mónica Mayer 271
Fig. 12.7 Lorena Wolffer. Muros de Réplica / Expuestas: registos
públicos. Día Internacional para la Eliminación de Violencia
contra las mujeres, Inmujeres DF, Zócalo, Ciudad de México,
México. Foro de género y Salud, Universidad Autónoma del
Estado de Morelos, Cuernavaca, Morelos, México
(2008–2010). Photography: Lorena Wolffer. Courtesy of
Lorena Wolffer 276
List of Tables
Table 2.1 The table shows the number of articles analyzed for each news
source29
Table 6.1 The table shows number and gender of victims of attacks
resulted in permanent disfigurement in 2019 and 2020 118
Table 6.2 The table shows the number of acid attacks reported by la
Repubblica between 2011 and 2020, distinguishing those
generated within heterosexual relationships from other cases 119
Table 6.3 The table shows the number of acid attacks reported by la
Repubblica between 2011 and 2020 distinguishing the gender
of the perpetrator and the victim, as well as the relation
between them 121
Table 6.4 The table shows the number of attacks happened outside of
heterosexual relationship in Italy according to the data
reported on the newspaper la Repubblica 123
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Nicoletta Mandolini and Caroline Williamson Sinalo
Naming Practices
Gender-based violence (GBV) is a global social issue and so is its represen-
tation. Indeed, we open this volume with the assertion that the represen-
tation of GBV cannot be disentangled from its reality. The association
between this sociological phenomenon and its representation begins with
the very terms we employ to describe it; after all, what do we really mean
by ‘gender-based violence’; what does this term include and, as important,
what does it omit?
This work is supported by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a

Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the project UIDB/00736/2020 (base
funding) and UIDP/00736/2020 (programmatic funding).
N. Mandolini
CECS, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal
e-mail: nicoletta.mandolini@ics.uminho.pt
C. Williamson Sinalo (*)
Department of French, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
e-mail: caroline.williamsonsinalo@ucc.ie
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
C. Williamson Sinalo, N. Mandolini (eds.), Representing
Gender-Based Violence,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13451-7_1
2 N. MANDOLINI AND C. WILLIAMSON SINALO
According to the website of the European Commission (2020), GBV

may be defined as violence ‘directed against a person because of that per-
son’s gender or violence that affects persons of a particular gender dispro-
portionately’. This violence, the Commission reports, can include physical
harm (e.g. beating, strangling, pushing, use of weapons), sexual harm
(e.g. forced sex acts, acts to traffic or other acts directed against a person’s
sexuality), or psychological harm (e.g. controlling, coercion, economic
violence or blackmail). The European Commission’s figures suggest that
31 per cent of women in the EU have experienced physical GBV, 5 per
cent have experienced sexual GBV and 43 per cent have experienced psy-
chological GBV. In recognition of the pervasiveness of the problem, in
2011, the Council of Europe opened for signature the Convention on
preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence,
otherwise known as the Istanbul Convention, in the aim of protecting
victims and ending impunity of perpetrators (see Gencel Bek, this vol-
ume). As can be seen, the figures provided by the European Commission
refer exclusively to women and the Istanbul Convention chose to adopt
the term ‘violence against women’ rather than ‘gender-based violence’
because, as it highlights, ‘women and girls are exposed to a higher risk of
gender-based violence than men’ (Council of Europe 2011: 2). So why
not, like the Convention, employ ‘violence against women’?
In a discussion of naming practices surrounding the interrelationships
of violence and gender, Karen Boyle (2019: 21) underscores the fraught
choices that feminists must make because any name can occult some vic-
tims, perpetrators and even forms of violence. Boyle (2019: 32) analyzes
the terminology currently in use, beginning with a critique of the expres-
sion ‘gender-based violence’, which she considers ‘a worryingly gender-
neutral term which flattens important differences in terms of who is doing
what to whom, in which contexts, to which effects and to whose overall
benefit’. However, she ultimately also acknowledges the limits of the
phrasing ‘violence against women’ because it ‘problematically implies
women’s vulnerability rather than men’s responsibility’ and suggests ‘that
we accept that violence against women is an unchanging reality’ (Boyle
2019: 20). Identifying the perpetrator in expressions such as ‘men’s vio-
lence towards women’, Boyle argues, also fails to capture all experiences
because women, even if acting in male interest, can be the perpetrators
such as is preponderantly the case with female genital mutilation (Boyle
2019: 20).
1 INTRODUCTION 3
Another reason for not employing ‘violence against women’ or ‘men’s

violence towards women’ is that the terms convey an idea of relationships
and identities that is overall heteronormative. There are ongoing debates
(Pearce et al. 2020) as to whether members of the LGBTQ+ community
(especially trans and non-binary subjects) should be considered as allies of
the feminist struggle against sexist violence (e.g. Heyse 2003; Hines 2019)
or, on the contrary, as a threat to this struggle (e.g. Jensens 2016; Bindel
2019; Aguilar 2020). As editors, we believe that feminism should aspire to
inclusivity, solidarity and intersectionality, and therefore consider ourselves
as allies of this community, recognizing that misogynist, gendered vio-
lence also affects their members. This is clearly displayed in two of the
chapters included in the volume (Geraghty; Gencel Bek), where the
denunciation of discrimination against transgender subjects is addressed as
a form of gender violence. However, the central focus of these chapters
remains on gender-based violence, rather than on the worrying issue of
homophobic violence, which is based on sexual orientation, and is there-
fore conceptually distinct from the central question of this volume.
Beyond the imperative of inclusion, we believe that the term ‘gender-
based violence’ better identifies the issue at stake as it clearly recognizes
the cultural gender division as the source of abusive behaviours and struc-
tures. Considering the still dominant tendency of common (and some-
times even feminist) discourse on patriarchal violence to reproduce gender
stereotyping and dichotomous thinking (Roiphe 1993: 27; Sanyal 2019:
4), the adoption of a phrase that, despite its generalizing outlook, openly
addresses the dangers of gender constructions is a necessity that cannot be
escaped.
When it comes to defining the specific types of violence that constitute
GBV, we espouse Liz Kelly’s (1987) continuum model, which identified
the interconnection between different manifestations of sexist oppression.
Unlike the majority of scholarly discussions of representation and GBV
which focus exclusively on sexual violence, Representing Gender-Based
Violence: Global Perspectives fully embraces continuum thinking and
addresses a whole range of manifestations of GBV forms including rape
and sexual violence, but also domestic violence, femicide, sexual harass-
ment, voyeurism, trafficking, and acid attacks to name but a few. Some of
the essays included in the volume contest dominant understandings of
GBV, and many of them consider representational practices themselves a
form of gendered violence. None of them, however, leaves the risky prac-
tice of portraying GBV unproblematized.
GBV and Representation

Similar to the difficulties encountered in naming, major theoretical
approaches to GBV have also highlighted the interdependency of reality
and its representation. This relationship was made first famous by second-
wave cultural feminists from the United States (such as Susan Brownmiller,
Robin Morgan, Catherine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, and Susan
Griffin). These early writers considered all men as potential rapists and
some of them established a link between rape and pornography through
the slogan: ‘Pornography is the theory, rape the practice’. This idea was
legally formulated in the Dworkin-MacKinnon Antipornography Civil
Rights Ordinance of 1983, which defined pornography as ‘the graphic
sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or words’
(MacKinnon 1987: 176). The pioneering work of these cultural theorists
has been widely criticized by more recent feminists for its ethnocentricity,
heteronormativity and for its promotion of binary thinking, as it tends to
position men as absolute abusers and women as absolute victims (Burfoot
and Lord 2006; Mardorossian 2014; Gunne and Brigley Thompson
2010). Notwithstanding, the connection that second-wave feminists made
between GBV and its representation has remained central in more recent
feminist theories, although theoretical approaches to GBV have pro-
gressed significantly since then. This is the case of scholars who draw on
poststructuralist approaches to highlight the discursive dynamics embed-
ded in the reality of patriarchal abuse, such as Carine Mardorossian and
Teresa de Lauretis. Mardorossian (2014: 3), for example, views GBV as
neither a women’s nor a men’s issue but rather ‘an issue pertaining to
masculinity, an ideological construct’. In this regard, representation is cru-
cial and inseparable from reality because violence stems from the discursive
‘framing’ of masculinity (Mardorossian 2014: 4; De Lauretis 1985: 33).
Like poststructuralists, contemporary psychoanalytically-informed
scholars are particularly concerned with what representations of GBV
(specifically rape) reveal about society. Tanya Horeck’s (2003: 7) work, for
example, is interested in ‘what sort of wishes or desires are being played
out in and through’ public fantasies (representations) of rape designed for
cultural consumption. Drawing on WJT Mitchel’s (1995) theories of aes-
thetic/semiotic vs. political modes of representation, Horeck (2003: 7)
argues that ‘rape exposes the double meaning of representation in so far as
it is often made to serve as a “sign” for other issues, and as it is also fre-
quently used as a means of expressing ideological and political questions
concerning the functioning of the body politic’. Agreeing with Mitchell,
Horeck (2003: 7) suggests further that representation is also always a
1 INTRODUCTION 5
misrepresentation serving both as a ‘means of, and an obstacle to, com-

munication’. Sabine Sielke (2002: 2) adopts a similar line of argument,
specifying that ‘talk about rape does not necessarily denote rape, just as
talk about love hardly ever hits its target. Instead, transposed into dis-
course, rape turns into a rhetorical device, an insistent figure for other
social, political, and economic concerns and conflicts’ that are dimensions
of our collective thinking and fantasies.
Decolonial feminists also place representational practices at the centre
of their arguments, considering GBV as a product of patriarchal colonial-
ity (Shalhoub-Kervokian and Daher-Nashif 2013; Motta 2021; Segato
2014; Vergès 2019). For example, decolonial feminists have identified
how colonialism and neo-colonialism perform patriarchal violence on
racialized, marginalized women, including the brutalization of their fami-
lies, bodies and environments, all while representing them as invisible,
deviant and suspicious (Motta 2021: 125; Segato 2014: 598–604; Vergès
2019: 24–25). This approach to feminism has also deconstructed so called
‘civilizational feminism’, which it identifies as assimilating women’s rights
into the neoliberal, capitalist, racial order (Vergès 2019: 22). This includes
the tendency to accentuate, spectacularize and, at the same time, normal-
ize, the gender-based violence committed within marginalized cultures,
which are depicted as ‘violent, misogynist, barbaric and backward’
(Shalhoub-Kervokian and Daher-Nashif 2013: 297; see also Eriksson
Baaz and Stern 2013: 100; Hesford 2011: 7; Vergès 2019: 52, 69–70;
Williamson Sinalo, this volume, Wylie, this volume). Within the logic of
civilizational feminism—and similar concepts such as femonationalism
(see Tenca Montini, this volume)—gender equality and feminism are pre-
sented as a civilizing mission which ultimately reproduces the logic of
patriarchal colonialism and violence against non-white women (Lugones
2007: 187; Vergès 2019: 62; Shalhoub-Kervokian and Daher-Nashif
2013: 297; Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2013: 25). Representation, for deco-
lonial feminists, is also a means for combatting GBV. Françoise Vergès, for
example, suggests the need for the depatriarchalization of revolutionary
movements, a feminisme de marronage, which, in other words, means the
inclusion of feminist perspectives in decolonial politics which affirm the
right to existence for racialized, indigenous or other marginalized groups
(Vergès 2019: 19, 37). In Sara Motta’s (2021: 129) view, this includes the
imperative among indigenous, marginalized communities to ‘decolonize
the internal territories of knowledge and social life and create other decol-
onized and feminized ways of knowing-being’ (for a discussion of the role
of representation in such processes, see Geraghty, this volume).
In line with these recent feminist theories, we conceptualize the reality

of GBV and its representation as inextricable. Without denying by any
means the concreteness of the phenomenon and the materiality of victims’
experiences of abuse (as well as their legitimate claims for truth), our edi-
torial effort is shaped around the idea that patriarchal violence could not
exist without the support of a symbolic order that naturalizes gender hier-
archies and discriminations (Bourdieu 2002: 7–11), that intersect and
interact with other forms of control including imperialism, capitalism and
neoliberalism.
Like many contemporary theorists (Horeck 2003; Gunne and Brigley
Thompson 2010; Sielke 2002; De Lauretis 1985; Mardorossian 2014;
Shepherd 2013; Shalhoub-Kervokian and Daher-Nashif 2013), we are
particularly concerned with the ethical questions raised by representing
GBV. The aim of second-wave feminists was to bring the issue of rape and
other forms of GBV to public attention in order to prevent them from
occurring. Thanks in part to their efforts, GBV has become an established
category and the feminist perspective has entered political discourse and
has, in some cases, successfully managed to impact on legal measures as
well as cultural change (Boyle 2004; Romito 2008). Responding to and,
simultaneously contributing to, such change is a growing number of liter-
ary, audio and filmic narratives of gender violence, demonstrating in some
cases a sensitive understanding of the theme and showcasing an explicit (if
not unproblematic) feminist outlook. For example, Gone Girl by Gillian
Flynn (2012), The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (2002) and The Girl on the
Train by Paula Hawkins (2015) are all novels about gender abuse which
have been adapted into successful movies. Similar themes are evoked in
some popular television series (e.g. Broadchurch (Chibnall 2013–17), The
People V O. J. Simpson (Alexander and Karaszewski 2016) and YOU
(Berlanti and Gamble 2018–21), to mention only a few), documentaries
(e.g. City of Joy (Gavin 2018), L’Homme qui répare les Femmes [The man
who fixes women] (Michel 2015)) or on viral true crime podcasts (Serial,
Koenig 2014; Up and Vanished, Lindsey 2016; Trace, Brown, 2017; West
Cork, Bungey and Forde 2018). The same propensity to include feminist
insights on sexist abuse can also be observed in journalistic
representations.
An example of the impact of such popular representations can be found
in Italy, where the neologism femminicidio (feminicide) was introduced by
feminist activists to mainstream public discourse in 2012 (Laviosa 2015;
Mandolini 2020). Through this term, the physical or psychological
1 INTRODUCTION 7
annihilation of women was identified as being based on their female gen-

der. Until its introduction, there had been a failure to recognize any con-
nection between the murder of women and societal sexism, as the crime
was often depicted as one of passion (Gius and Lalli 2014). Things started
to change more dramatically following the introduction of the feminicide
concept as it provided the Italian media with a new discourse through
which to portray the frequent episodes of gender-based murders (Giomi
2015; Mandolini 2020).
Similarly, worldwide media attention to the atrocities against women in
the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda made action unavoidable (Pankhurst
2008). The legal processes that followed these tragedies had a hugely cata-
lytic effect on advancing international gender justice, leading to the first
international definitions of rape as well as to the recognition of sexual
violence as a crime against humanity, a war crime and even a crime of
genocide. Popular representations of sexual violence in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC) (documentaries, media narratives and offi-
cial reports) have further solidified international understandings of rape as
a strategy of war, a war crime, rather than the result of inevitable biological
urges (Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2013).
More recently still, the #MeToo campaign erupted onto the world
stage in late 2017, an international movement against sexual harassment
which swept across global social media and popular culture. #MeToo, a
social media hashtag, became popularized following its use by high-profile
alleged abuse victims of the famous film producer Harvey Weinstein but it
soon started being used by millions of women to draw attention to the
widespread nature of the problem. The hashtag was translated into dozens
of other languages and had a major impact, particularly by drawing peo-
ple’s attention to the phenomenon of GBV, in some cases, affecting public
opinion as well as leading to policy-based changes (Giomi 2018). On 24
February 2020, Weinstein was found guilty of a criminal sex act in the first
degree and rape in the third degree, and acquitted on three further
charges. While it is not possible to draw a direct link between this convic-
tion and the online media campaign, the abundance of accusations and
change in public perception undoubtably played a role in this landmark
victory for victims of sexual harassment.
Following the aims of radical feminists, victims and activists have suc-
cessfully put the issue of GBV on the global agenda. Notwithstanding the
laudable results achieved, many ethical issues persist in relation to the rep-
resentation of GBV (Mandolini and Williamson 2017). For example, in an
analysis of contemporary coming-of-age television dramas, such as The

Hunger Games (Ross 2012), Kelly Oliver (2016: 20) argues that despite
the increasing representation of strong young girls able to fight back, the
girls in these stories ‘continue to face the dangers of assault, particularly
sexual assault’. She concludes that ‘images of teenage girls being repeat-
edly beaten and battered on screen normalize violence toward girls and
women, including sexual violence’ (Oliver 2016: 18). Other critics have
highlighted a lingering tendency to silence the voice of GBV victims and
reproduce gender stereotypes in portrayals (Mandolini 2017), particularly
when victims represent traits of otherness because they are working class
or African American (Bourke 2007). A number of scholars have noted the
tendency to glamourize GBV as can be seen in critical analyzes of popular
TV series like The Fall by Alan Cubitt (2013) (Jermyn 2017: 4) or Twilight
by Catherine Hardwicke (2008) (Borgia 2011). Meanwhile, depictions of
sexual violence in postcolonial contexts have been widely criticized, often
for their inherent racism. For example, the phenomenon of gender-based
violence is often spectacularized, making victims hyper-visible yet voice-
less, while other forms of violence and suffering go unreported (Finnegan
2018; Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2013; Shalhoub-Kervokian and Daher-
Nashif 2013; Williamson Sinalo, this volume).
Despite its success, #MeToo was also problematic. It has been criticized
for, among other things, being ill-defined, over-relying on specific cases,
and failing to represent minority women and the plight of women in the
Global South (Onwuachi-Willig 2018; Burke 2017). Certain cases, such
as that of the Italian actress Asia Argento, caused further confusion around
the #MeToo message, after the woman, one of Weinstein’s accusers, was
herself accused of sexual harassment by the young male actor, Jimmy
Bennett.
Clearly representing GBV raises a range of ethical questions. As Sorche
Gunne and Zoe Brigley Thompson (2010: 3) highlight, if the primary
objective of second-wave feminism was to put GBV (particularly rape) on
the agenda, ‘now what is at stake is not just whether we speak about rape
or not, but how we speak about rape and to what end’. Challenging claims
that have dominated contemporary scholarship on the issue, according to
which sexual violence implies a process of annihilation and trauma that, as
such, could not be represented but only evoked (Bal 1990: 142; Pollock
2013: 4–8), the essays included in this volume address the representation
of GBV as an always risky but necessary and urgent practice. As editors, we
are aware of the processes of violence and betrayal that are inherent to
1 INTRODUCTION 9
every representative act (Noys 2013) and we are particularly conscious of

the potential dangers (spectacularization, glamourization, re-victimization,
triggering, to name a few) of portraying a delicate phenomenon like
GBV. However, the discursive terrain that the patriarchal symbolic order
has occupied for centuries cannot be left untouched or unexplored and
representation is, as Hillary Chute (2010: 3) astutely pointed out, a risk
that feminists have the responsibility to take, both in the field of popular
and experimental narratives.
Global Perspectives
As the title suggests, the aim of this volume is to provide global perspec-
tives on representing GBV. With an awareness that the term ‘global’ could
imply that the volume is exhaustive of all contexts, we emphasize our use
of the term as a desirable, if impossible, endpoint. Following the start
made by Gunne and Brigley Thompson (2010) to investigate this topic in
other cultures, we also embrace the concept of ‘feminism without borders’
and the notion that Western narratives of GBV should not be privileged
above those coming from other cultures. To date, the scholarship sur-
rounding GBV has been heavily influenced by the North American con-
text. Gunne and Brigley Thompson (2010) pioneer a cross-cultural
approach to the study although their volume continues to rely on
Anglophone narratives and, like many discussions, it centres on rape rather
than considering the broad spectrum of gendered violence.
Representing Gender-Based Violence: Global Perspectives uniquely
includes essays that cover every continent, including numerous
Western/Global North (France, Spain, Italy and the USA),
postcolonial/Global South contexts (the DRC, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and
Mexico) as well as contexts which do not neatly fit within this North/
South, colonial/postcolonial binary (such as Turkey, Japan, and the
Balkans). As such, the volume is able to encourage a conversation about
and between global feminisms, embracing what Vergès (2019: 34) refers
to as feminisme de la totalité [feminism of the whole], to consider multidi-
mensional experiences including those related to race, capital, neoliberal-
ism, gender identity and sexual orientation.
We also adopt the term ‘global’ to allude to the inclusive approach we
take to the concept of GBV. Overall, we aim to offer a comprehensive
volume that is global in its geographical and cultural reach, but also in
terms of the types of violence included in the term GBV (e.g. not just rape
and sexual violence but other manifestations of GBV), the identity/ies of

its victims (women, men, LGBTQ+, and non-binary subjects), and the
media through which we investigate representation (e.g. fiction, non-
fiction, art, journalism, law, social media, transmedia). In summary, we
embrace the concept of intersectionality in its fullest meaning to recognize
specificity in relation to the subject, context and medium but also to create
a cross-cutting solidarity between experiences of violence and gender.
Contemporality
A final feature of this volume is the contemporality of its focus. This choice
raises a series of questions and concerns. Firstly, as the above discussion
highlights, in contemporary culture, feminism and the category of GBV
have become mainstreamed, resulting, in many cases, in genuine cultural
change. However, as the discussion also demonstrates, new representa-
tions raise new ethical and theoretical questions.
Secondly, the focus on contemporary culture also confronts us with the
cultural changes brought about by new technologies. Unfortunately,
many of these technologies have facilitated old forms of GBV. Anastasia
Powell and Nicola Henry (2017: 4) use the term ‘technology-facilitated
sexual violence’ to describe perpetrators’ use of technology in a range of
types of GBV including domestic violence, dating abuse, cyberstalking,
and the sexual exploitation of children. Scholars have also noted the use of
technology in creating new forms of GBV, particularly image based vio-
lence, such as the taking and sharing of ‘creepshots’ (a photo taken by a
man of a woman or girl in public without her consent) (Oliver 2016),
‘sextortion’ (coercion based on the threatened release of sexual images)
and revenge pornography (the distribution of sexually explicit images or
videos of individuals without their consent (Oliver 2016; Powell and
Henry 2017, Hepworth, this volume).
New technologies and media have also given rise to new forms of resis-
tance and activism in the field of GBV representation. The recent success
of podcasting, which features a great number of podcasts tackling the issue
of sexist abuse (see Mandolini, this volume), is maybe one of the most
notable examples available here. The adaptation to contemporary media
practices of the traditional format of radiophonic narrative has made sto-
ries of gendered violence accessible and palatable to younger and more
global audiences. Moreover, feminist blogging and other social media
practices have been identified by a growing number of scholars (e.g.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
Motter 2011; Rentschler 2014; Mandolini 2017) as crucial to the national

and transnational denunciation of patriarchal violence and as new power-
ful means to create virtual communities that operate with the aim of
opposing the phenomenon. More generally, the electronic format that
technology facilitates has proved to be flexible and able to reach wide
audiences, often allowing representations of GBV to overcome class, cul-
tural and national boundaries. The Indian multimedia comic Priya’s Shakti
(https://www.priyashakti.com/) serves as an example in this sense.
Explicitly created to raise awareness among women and girls after the
event of a vicious gang rape in New Delhi in 2012, the producers make
extensive use of the internet as a platform to disseminate online versions of
their comics and also to enrich the same material with new features (trail-
ers, descriptions, translations etc.). In addition, the comic books (both the
hard-copy and online versions) avail of the technology of augmented real-
ity, through which readers become users who interactively expand the
boundaries of the narrated story.
Notwithstanding their growing popularity, the domains of the virtual,
the online and the electronic have not eroded the space dedicated to more
traditional, material and localized representative practices. Priya’s Shakti is
emblematic in this regard too, as demonstrated by the use of street art and
exhibitions to complement the online dissemination of their work. This
testifies to the impossibility, now recognized by scholars in the field of
activism studies (Treré 2018; Zamponi 2020), to draw a clear line between
digital and analogue forms of campaigning or between the use of new and
traditional technologies of representation. Contemporality, in this sense,
also refers to the holistic approach that, as editors, we have decided to
adopt while dealing with a growing, and often interconnected, range of
media platforms (see Hepworth, this volume; Mandolini, this volume;
Gencel Bek, this volume).
The same principle applies to the relationship between art and activism
that, as many contributions included in the volume illustrate, is constitu-
tive of representative operations on the topic of GBV. Contemporary ten-
dencies to combine artistic and political practices (Groys 2014) lead to the
production of new critical terms such as ‘artivism’, ‘art activism’ and
‘activism art’ that testify to the deeply interconnected aesthetics and poli-
tics of representing social issues such as sexist abuse. In light of this, the
structure and the general outlook of the volume mirror our rejection of
rigid distinctions between art and other representative practices such as
campaigning or even journalism.
Last but not least, the concept of contemporality suits our decision to
explore a different range of media (radio, theatre, film, music videos, pod-
casts, graphic novels, posters, television) and communicative forms (jour-
nalism, social media, literature, visual art, music) without restraining each
medium/communicative form into limiting critical boundaries. Far from
being a strategy to bypass examinations on medium-specific approaches
adopted to discuss GBV, this choice comes from the awareness that gender
violence representations often transgress media perimeters and/or over-
flow into a broader narrative composed by different media responses
around the same story or event (see, for example, Bonfiglioli, this volume;
Tenca Montini, this volume).
The interdisciplinary outlook that characterizes the volume reflects the
intrinsically interdisciplinarity of studies concerning GBV, a phenomenon
that requires extensive knowledge in the areas of Social Sciences,
Psychology, Political and Legal Sciences, Criminology and Philosophy in
order to be fully understood. This is particularly true when it comes to the
representation of GBV, a topic that can be analytically approached from
the following different fields: Semiotics, Cultural Studies, Literary Studies,
Film and Media Studies, Journalism Studies, Visual Studies, as well as
from a hybrid position of interconnection between them, which may in
fact be preferable.
Overall Aim and Structure of Book

Representing Gender-Based Violence: Global Perspectives will be the first
scholarly book to focus exclusively on the politics, ethics and stereotypical
pitfalls of representational practices surrounding GBV from a global per-
spective. The originality of the volume is linked to its cross-disciplinary
perspective as the topic of representing GBV is analyzed across the domains
of philosophy/epistemology, fiction and the arts (including literature, the-
atre, film, television series and music) and non-fictional representations in
the media (including broadcast media, online/print journalism, transme-
dia activism). In the recognition that ‘systems of representation bear
directly on historical change by establishing habits of thought crucial to
rationalizing particular actions’ (Gullace 2002: 10), the overall aim of the
volume will be to identify current representational practices and their the-
oretical and critical responses, examining various aspects of popular cul-
ture from around the world. In doing so, we put feminism in conversation
with global representational trends to identify its cultural frontline.
1 INTRODUCTION 13
The volume is divided into three broad thematic sections. The first,
Representations as Violence, includes essays that investigate representations
that re-affirm the patriarchal symbolic order from which GBV originates,
thus characterizing themselves as violent. Many of these essays draw atten-
tion to the problematic forms of representation discussed above but bring
new contexts, new voices, new media and new forms of GBV and its rep-
resentation to the fore. Sadly, some of the representational pitfalls remain
strikingly similar to those identified in the past such as the re-victimization
of victims through representation, not to mention the reproduction of an
ethnocentric, orientalist perspective.
For example, Caroline Williamson Sinalo focuses on journalistic repre-
sentations of sexual violence in the DRC, a context known problematically
as the ‘rape capital of the world’. Specifically, she analyses coverage of the
2018 Nobel Peace Prize won by Dr Denis Mukwege. Despite this being
heralded as a victory both for international feminism and for the DRC,
Williamson Sinalo’s analysis reveals the ways in which Congolese women
are represented in the coverage through a phallocentric frame which sees
them as objects or even currency to be possessed and exchanged by men.
This phallocentrism is embedded within a broader narrative of ethnocen-
trism which sees Africa as a troubled, indescribable, unknowable place in
which sexual violence is inevitable and can only be prevented by Western
civilization.
In a similar vein, Federico Tenca Montini’s chapter in this section inves-
tigates femonationalist practices—the exploitation of feminist themes in
xenophobic campaigns and the stigmatization of foreign men under the
banner of gender equality—in the contemporary re-writing of Norma
Cossetto’s story, the daughter of an Italian Fascist officer who was suppos-
edly raped and killed by Yugoslav partisans during World War II. In the
chapter, Tenca Montini shows how neofascist and populist political agents
promote cultural artifacts in which tales of gender-based violence by com-
munists are used to denigrate Eastern Europeans while silencing the wide-
spread use of sexual violence made by the Nazis and their allies.
In her essay on human trafficking, Gillian Wylie analyzes common
tropes adopted in the media, literature, television and cinema as well as in
anti-trafficking campaigns. She argues that such representations, while
effective as advocacy tools, often adopt stereotyped narratives based on
essentialized protagonists including the innocent female victim, the for-
eign male trafficker and the Western saviour. Such depictions reinforce
orientalist stereotypes, silence the agency of those who experience
exploitation in migration and mask the structural violence that causes such
exploitation. Anna-Karin Eriksson’s chapter draws on Maria Eriksson Baaz
and Maria Stern’s (2018) erasures of the sexual in sexual violence (2018)
to investigate tensions and conflicts over the category of ‘comfort women’
in Japan. While the first part of the chapter sheds light on feminist attempts
at gaining gender justice for comfort women through international law,
the second and third parts show how, in response, historical revisionists
framed these women’s victimhood as voluntary in an attempt to restore
Japan’s dignity following its perceived humiliation following World War II.
The second section, Revealing Representations, includes essays that
analyze the use of representations by victims, activists and media content
creators in an attempt to uncover otherwise silent forms of gendered
abuse, under-discussed different victim typologies and the hidden politi-
cal, social or discursive dynamics linked to the practice of sexist violence.
Focussing on the particularly interesting case of Italy, Stefano Rossoni
and Olga Campofreda author the first essay of this section, which provoca-
tively considers acid attacks as a form of GBV used for revenge and to
exercise coercive control by both men and women when heterosexual rela-
tionships fail. Through an analysis of media coverage of these attacks,
Rossoni and Campofreda examine the different ways in which victims and
perpetrators are depicted depending on their gender and in relation to the
popular media discourse surrounding the phenomenon. Their chapter also
considers the Italian legal framework around acid attacks which, they
argue, constitutes a step forward in tackling a vicious practice that has
emerged as a recurrent form of gender-based violence, yet ultimately
responds to the media coverage of a selected number of cases whose vic-
tims fit into gendered constructions of ideal victimhood.
Nicoletta Mandolini focuses on representations of true crime via the
podcast medium and considers the role played by this medium in repre-
senting and re-negotiating truth. In her study of West Cork, she analyzes
the rhetorical strategies that allow the podcast’s authors to portray the
reality of gender-based violence and its possible connections to unsolved
cases of women killing without renouncing to the (inherently feminist)
critique of linear narratives and judicial truth. West Cork’s successful
attempt is compared to the pioneering true crime podcast Serial, where
violence against women and its gendered dimension fail to be represented
and exposed.
Turning to an under-researched minority in the African context,
Charlotte Baker looks at fictional narratives by and about Zimbabwean
1 INTRODUCTION 15
women with albinism and considers the intersectionality of their experi-

ences of violence and marginalisation on the basis of their gender and
albino identity. Among these women’s experiences of violence, Baker’s
chapter reveals, is the extreme objectification, commodification and dehu-
manization of their female bodies, whose parts are thought to possess
supernatural powers. The chapter also highlights the narrative strategies
adopted by these Zimbabwean women writers to expose, critique but also
resist the realities that they confront.
In a discussion of representations of mass rapes during the conflict in
the former Yugoslavia, Chiara Bonfiglioli highlights the common pitfalls
including essentialist depictions of gender and ethnic relations in the
region, as well as the discursive patterns of Orientalism and Balkanism,
which contributed to the construction of mass rapes as the epitome of
violent masculinity and victimized femininity. Bonfiglioli considers femi-
nist artworks which have attempted to draw attention towards survivors,
and point to the complexity of individual and collective experiences of
gender-based violence during the Bosnian conflict. Despite their overall
successful ethical representation, these works, Bonfiglioli argues, nonethe-
less highlight the mediated and always partial character of such representa-
tions, which become entangled with different and competing political,
media and expert discourses.
The third and final section, Representative Re-Imaginings, includes
essays that contribute to our understanding of the GBV category by con-
testing given or assumed meanings, terms, categories and identities in rep-
resentations of GBV and creatively re-imagining social and political
realities.
Andrea Hepworth contributes to this section an analysis of the strate-
gies adopted by women’s rights activists in performance protests and social
media in Spain. The author considers these protests, which eventually
crossed international borders into Argentina, Columbia and Portugal,
through the lens of Rancière’s notion of ‘dissensus’ and Keck and Sikkink’s
scholarship on transnational activism networks. Hepworth shows how
protesters creatively reappropriated the language used by GBV perpetra-
tors into empowering discursive strategies that emphasize female solidarity
and amplify women’s voices.
Mine Gencel Bek examines representations of GBV on social media in
the Turkish context, exposing the increasingly sexist, traditionalist and
Islamist discourse of the ruling AKP party on the one hand, and, on the
other hand, the response from feminists, LGBTQ+ groups, leftists and
social democrats, who use social media to defend women’s rights. Despite
highlighting the resilience and creativity of these activists, Gencel Bek also
argues for the need to increase these activities and to extend them beyond
the boundaries of nation states, given the deteriorating situation that
women and LGBTQ+ groups face in Erdoğan’s Turkey.
Drawing on second-wave feminism, Elisa Cabrera García’s chapter
examines the feminist artwork of Mónica Mayer’s and reveals how it made
visible the invisible violence committed against the feminized body in
Mexican culture. Mayer’s artwork stands at the avant-garde of second-
wave feminism and conceptual and performance art in Mexico, playing a
touchstone role in transnational contemporary feminism and the global
fight against gender-based violence through aesthetic performances of
personal experiences.
The final essay in this section, by Clare Geraghty, considers the activism
of Cuban queer feminist hip-hop group, Lxs Krudxs in order to (re-)con-
sider the conversation around gender-based violence as bound up in ques-
tions of embodiment that must be inclusive of trans* narratives to be
ethical. Geraghty emphasizes the specificity of the Cuban context as well
as Lxs Krudxs’ subjectivity as ‘black and latin feminist queers, gender not
conforming, woman, immigrants and intersectional beings’ (Krudas
Cubensi, cited in Geraghty, this volume). Drawing on decolonial feminist
approaches, her chapter highlights these artists’ use of performance to
change social realities and possibilities.
As opposed to dividing the chapters according to the cultural area in
which the portrayal was produced, this structure allows us to identify the
critical aspects as well as the potentials of representing GBV, while at the
same time highlighting the global dimension of specific representative pat-
terns. The group of chapters included in the first section testifies to the
risks linked to the practice of discussing GBV, which might result in the
adoption of discursive postures that reproduce, instead of confronting, the
patriarchal rhetoric of gender segregation and hierarchy that legitimizes
the actual phenomenon of sexist abuse. This practice, which we have
labelled ‘Representation as Violence’, can be observed in portrayals origi-
nating from different areas of the Global North and the Global South, as
well as from different discursive sectors (journalism; political advocacy and
campaigns; museum configuration; film; literature; comics) and in relation
to different types of sexual violence (rape; war rape; sexual slavery; the
comfort women system). The second section, on the other hand, offers
insights on the array of strategies that can be employed in media or
1 INTRODUCTION 17
representative practices such as podcasting, news coverage, film, theatre,

visual art and literature, for making visible specific forms of GBV that, in
various cultural contexts, are still neglected or continue to present issues
of political, social and discursive recognition. With the aim of delineating
an optimistic trajectory, we concluded with a section including examples
of representative efforts that successfully manage to denounce GBV and,
at the same time, challenge binaristic gender structures or destabilize the
symbols of patriarchal order. These creative or mediatic products are, not
by coincidence, mostly referable to the area of Latin America and, more
broadly, to the hispanophone world, where the political discussion on
GBV is particularly evolved (see, for example, the pioneering theoretical
efforts made by Mexican feminists on the issue of femicide). However,
even geographical and cultural areas characterized by a worrying turn
towards conservative politics such as Turkey resonate with the (re)produc-
tion of inventive techniques of media representation aimed at contrasting
right-wing and patriarchal legitimizations of GBV. This, we believe, leaves
space for an uplifting (as well as necessary) degree of hope.
As its overall structure suggests, Representing Gender-Based Violence:
Global Perspectives engages with the analysis of GBV representations from
a militant, yet scholarly, perspective. The category of militant criticism
adequately reflects the general approach that editors and authors have
unanimously adopted. The aim is to offer rigorous inquiries that, however,
do not disguise their feminist ethos as well as their objective of providing
the reader with a set of interpretative tools to be used whenever a critique
of the ethical positioning of a text or discourse concerning GBV is needed.
Considering simplification as the root of every form of exclusion and dis-
crimination, we firmly believe that enhancing critical thinking is the most
important (and political) contribution that a collection of academic essays
on sexist violence could possibly make.
Works Cited
Aguilar, P. 2020. ‘Feminismo y transactivismo IV’. Tribuna Feminista: https://
tribunafeminista.elplural.com/2020/01/feminismo-y-transactivismo-iv/ (last
access 04/09/2020).
Alexander, S. and Karaszewski, L. 2016. The People v. O. J. Simpson: American
Crime Story. FX Networks.
Bal, M. 1990. ‘Reading with the Other Art’. In Theory between the Disciplines:
Authority/Vision/Politics, ed. by M. Kreiswirth and M. A. Cheetam. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 135–151.
Berlanti, G. and Gamble, S. 2018–21. You. Lifetime TV/Netflix.
Bindel, J. 2019. ‘It’s Time for Progressives to Protect Women instead of Pronouns’.
Quillete: https://quillette.com/2019/06/14/its-time-for-progressives-to-
protect-women-instead-of-pronouns/ (last access 04/09/2020).
Borgia, D. N. 2011. ‘Twilight. The Glamorization of Abuse, Codependency, and
White Privilege’. The Journal of Popular Culture 47.1: 157–173.
Boyle, K. 2004. Media and Violence. Gendering the Debate. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Boyle, K. 2019. ‘What’s in a Name? Theorizing the Inter-relationships of Gender
and Violence’. Feminist Theory 20.1: 19–36.
Bourdieu, P. 2002. Masculine Domination. Trans. by R. Nice. Palo Alto: Stanford
University Press.
Bungey, S. and Forde, J. 2018. West Cork. Audible.
Bourke, J. 2007. Rape: Sex, Violence, History. Berkeley: Shoemaker and Hoard.
Brown, R. Trace. 2017. Trace. ABC
Burfoot, A. and Lord, S. 2006 ‘Introduction’ in Killing Women: The Visual
Culture of Gender and Violence, edited by A. Burfoot and S. Lord. Waterloo,
Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, pp. xi–xxii.
Burke, T. 2017. ‘#MeToo Wars Started from Black and Brown Women and Girls.
They’re Still Being Ignored’. Washington Post (9th November): https://www.
washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washing-
tonpost.com%2fnews%2fpost-n ation%2fwp%2f2017%2f11%2f09%2fthe-
waitress-w ho-w orks-i n-t he-d iner-n eeds-t o-k now-t hat-t he-i ssue-o f-s exual-
harassment-is-about-her-too%2f (last access 08/09/2020).
Chibnall, C. 2013–17. Broadchurch. ITV
Chute, H. 2010. Graphic Women. Life Narratives and Contemporary Comics.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Council of Europe. 2011. Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence
against Women and Domestic Violence: https://rm.coe.int/168008482e (last
access 08/09/2020).
Cubitt, A. 2013. The Fall. BBC.
De Lauretis, T. 1985. ‘The Violence of Rhetoric. Considerations on Representation
and Gender’. Semiotica 54.1–2: 11–31.
Eriksson Baaz, M. and Stern, M. 2013. Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War?:
Perceptions, Prescriptions, Problems in the Congo and Beyond. (Africa Now)
London: Zed Books.
European Commission, ‘What is gender-based violence?’: https://ec.europa.eu/
info/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/gender-equality/gender-based-
violence/what-gender-based-violence_en#relatedlinks (last access 08/09/
2020).
1 INTRODUCTION 19
Eriksson Baaz, M. and Stern, M. 2018. Curious erasures: the sexual in wartime
sexual violence. International Feminist Journal of Politics 20.3: 295–314.
Finnegan, N. 2018. Cultural Representations of Feminicidio at the US-Mexico
Border. London/Oxon: Routledge.
Flynn, G. 2012. Gone Girl. New York: Crown Publishing Group.
Gavin, M. 2018. City of Joy. Netflix.
Giomi, E. 2015. ‘Tag Femminicidio. La violenza letale contro le donne nella
stampa italiana’. Problemi dell’informazione XL.3: 549–574.
Giomi, E. 2018. ‘#MeToo e loro pure (forse). Dalla copertura giornalistica degli
scandali sessuali alle policies di genere adottate dai media italiani’. AboutGender
7.14: 227–241.
Gius, C. and Lalli, P. 2014. ‘“I Loved Her so Much, but I Killed Her”. Romantic
Love as a Representational Frame for Intimate Partner Femicide in Three
Italian Newspapers’. ESSACHESS. Journal of Communication Studies
7.2: 53–75.
Groys, B. 2014. ‘On Art Activism’. E-Flux Journal 56: http://worker01.e-flux.
com/pdf/article_8984545.pdf (last access 07/09/2020).
Gullace, N. 2002. The Blood of Our Sons: Men, Women and the Renegotiation of
British Citizenship During the Great War. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Gunne, S. and Brigley Thompson, Z. 2010. Introduction: Feminism without
Borders: The Potentials and Pitfalls of Retheorizing Rape. In Feminism,
Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation ed. by S. Gunne and
Z. Brigley Thompson. Oxon/New York: Routledge, pp. 1–20.
Hardwicke, C. 2008. Twilight. Summit Entertainment.
Hawkins, P. 2015. The Girl on the Train. New York: Riverhead Books.
Hesford, W. 2011. Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions,
Feminisms. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press
Heyse, C. 2003. ‘Feminist Solidarity after Queer Theory: The Case of Transgender’,
Signs 28.4: 1093–1120.
Hines, S. 2019. ‘The Feminist Frontier: On Trans and Feminism’. Journal of
Gender Studies 28.2: 145–157.
Horeck, T. 2003. Public Rape: Representing Violation in Fiction and Film.
New York: Routledge.
Jensens, R. 2016. ‘Is the Ideology of Transgender Movement Open to Debate?’,
Voice Male Magazine: https://voicemalemagazine.org/is-the-ideology-of-the-
transgender-movement-open-to-debate/ (last access 04/09/2020).
Jermyn, D. 2017. ‘Silk Blouses and Fedoras. The Female Detective, Contemporary
TV Crime Drama and the Predicaments of Postfeminism’. Crime Media
Culture 13.3: 259–276.
Kelly, L. 1987. ‘The Continuum of Sexual Violence’. In Women, Violence and
Social Control, edited by J. Hanmer and M. Maynard. London: Palgrave,
pp. 46–60.
Koenig, S. 2014. Serial. This American Life.

Laviosa, F. 2015. ‘Killing in the Name of Love. Violence against Women in Italy’.
JOMEC Journal 8, ‘Italian Cultural Studies’, ed. F. Bernardi: https://doi.
org/10.18573/j.2015.10033 (last access 08/09/2020).
Lindsey, P. 2016. Up and Vanished. Tenderfoot TV.
Lugones, M. 2007. ‘Heterosexualism and the Colonial / Modern Gender System.’
Hypatia 22.1: 186–209. JSTOR. Available at: www.jstor.org/stable/4640051
(last access 02/02/2021).
MacKinnon, C. 1987. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law.
Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press.
Mandolini, N. 2017. ‘Politicize and Popularize. The Theoretical Discourse on
Feminicide in Italian Feminist Blogs’. Journal of Italian Cinema and Media
Studies 5.3: 357–373.
Mandolini, N. 2020. ‘Femminicidio, prima e dopo. Un’analisi qualitativa della
copertura giornalistica dei casi Stefania Noce (2011) e Sara Di Pietrantonio
(2016)’. Problemi dell’informazione XLV. 2: 247–277.
Mandolini, N. and Williamson, C. 2017. ‘The portrayal of gender abuse is often
misused in order to justify discriminatory and even racist speech’. The Journal:
https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/the-portrayal-of-gender-abuse-is-often-
misused-in-order-to-justify-discriminatory-and-even-racist-speech-3564800-
Aug2017/ (last access 08/09/2020).
Mardorossian, C. M. 2014. Framing the Rape Victim: Gender and Agency
Reconsidered. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Michel, T. 2015. L’Homme qui répare les femmes: La Colère d’Hippocrate. Les
Films de la Passerelle et Ryva Production.
Mitchel, WJT. 1995. ‘Representation’. In Critical Terms for Literary Study, edited
y F. Lentricchia and T. McLaughlin. Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, pp. 11–22.
Motta, S. 2021. ‘Decolonizing Our Feminist/ized Revolutions: Enfleshed Praxis
from Southwest Columbia’. Latin American Perspectives 239.48: 124–142.
Motter, J. L. 2011. ‘Feminist Virtual World Activism: 16 Days of Activism against
Gender Violence Campaign, Guerrilla Girls, Broadband and Subrosa’. Visual
Culture & Gender 6: 109–118.
Noys, B. 2013. ‘The Violence of Representation and the Representation of
Violence’. In Violence and the Limits of Representation, ed. by G. Matthews and
S. Goodman. London: Palgrave, pp. 12–27.
Oliver, K. 2016. Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from the Hunger Games to
Campus Rape. New York: Columbia University Press.
Onwuachi-Willig, A. 2018. ‘What about #UsToo: The Invisibility of Race in the
#MeToo Movement’. Yale LJF 128: 105–120.
Pankhurst, D. 2008. Gendered Peace: Women’s Struggles for Post-War Justice and
Reconciliation. London/New York: Routledge.
1 INTRODUCTION 21
Pearce, R., Erikainen, S. and B. Vincent. 2020. ‘TERF Wars: An Introduction’.

The Sociological Review 68.4: 677–698.
Pollock, G. 2013. After-affects/After-images: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation
in the Virtual Feminist Museum. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Powell, A. and Henry, N. 2017. Sexual Violence in a Digital Age. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Rentschler, C. A. 2014. ‘Rape Culture and the Feminist Politics of Social Media’.
Girlhood Studies 7.1: 65–82.
Roiphe, K. 1993. The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism. Boston: Little
Brown & Company.
Romito. P. 2008. A Deafening Silence. Hidden Violence against Women and
Children. Trans. by J. Eastwood. Bristol: The Policy Press.
Ross, G. 2012. The Hunger Games. Lionsgate.
Sanyal, M. 2019. Rape. From Lucretia to #MeToo. London and New York: Verso.
Sebold, A. 2002. The Lovely Bones. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Segato, R. L. 2014. ‘El Sexo y la Norma: Frente Estatal, Patrarcado, Desposesión,
Colonidad’. Estudos Feministas, Florianópolis 22.2: 593–616.
Shalhoub-Kervokian, N. and Daher-Nashif, S. 2013. ‘Femicide and Colonizaition:
Between the Politics of Exclusion and the Culture of Control’. Violence Against
Women 19.3: 295–315.
Shepherd, L. 2013. Gender, Violence and Popular Culture: Telling Stories. Oxon/
New York: Routledge.
Sielke, S. 2002. Reading Rape: The Rhetoric of Sexual Violence in American
Literature and Culture, 1790–1990. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press.
Treré, E. 2018. Hybrid Media Activism: Ecologies, Imaginaries, Algorithms.
New York and London: Routledge.
Vergès, F. 2019. Un feminisme decolonial. Paris: La Fabrique éditions.
Zamponi, L. 2020. ‘#Ioricordo, Beyond the Genoa G8: Social Practices of
Memory Work and the Digital Remembrance of Contentious Pasts in Italy’. In
Social Movements, Cultural Memories and Digital Media: Mobilizing Mediated
Remembrance, ed. by S. Merrill, E. Keightly and P. Daphi. London: Palgrave
2020, pp. 141–171.
PART I
Representation as Violence
CHAPTER 2
Do the Media Make Sexual Violence

‘Congolese’? Phallo- and Ethnocentrism
in the International Coverage
of Dr Mukwege’s Story
A significant amount of media and scholarly attention has been paid to

sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the conflict afflicting the
eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) over the past 25 years,
much of which has been criticized for falling into some common represen-
tational pitfalls (such as those discussed in the Introduction to this vol-
ume, see also Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2010, 2013; Freedman 2017;
Ibelema 2014; Stearns 2009). This chapter investigates representations of
the most recent and significant ‘media event’ relating to the DRC context:
the 2018 Nobel Peace victory of Congolese gynaecologist, Dr Denis
Mukwege, for his ‘efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of
war’, (shared with Nadia Murad, Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist who, in
C. Williamson Sinalo (*)

Department of French, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
e-mail: caroline.williamsonsinalo@ucc.ie
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

Switzerland AG 2023
C. Williamson Sinalo, N. Mandolini (eds.), Representing
Gender-Based Violence,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13451-7_2
26 C. WILLIAMSON SINALO
2014, was kidnapped by the Islamic State). The prize was generally con-
sidered a victory for women and for the DRC (e.g. Cojean 2018a; Le
Monde 2019; Le Soir 2018a, 2018b). However, while it rightly acknowl-
edges the extraordinary work of Mukwege and brings global attention to
an otherwise invisible conflict (PeaceWomen 2011), it also reinforces the
equation of the DRC with sexual violence. In the aim of unpicking
the most recent representational practices relating to sexual violence in
international media, this chapter offers a qualitative discursive analysis
of the news coverage of Mukwege’s Nobel victory in 4 online newspapers:
Le Soir (Belgium), Le Monde (France), The Guardian (UK) and
Mediacongo (DRC).
Sexual Violence and the DRC

Since the start of the first Congo war (1996), evidence suggests that the
DRC has experienced SGBV on a massive scale, although collecting reli-
able data on the matter is a challenge and estimates vary considerably
(Freedman 2017: 67). For example, a 2004 Human Rights Watch report
estimates that ‘10,000 women and girls had been raped by combatants
during the conflicts in the DRC’ while a 2011 study claims that over
400,000 women were raped in 2006 alone (Freedman 2017: 67). Given
the difficulty of gaining accurate data on the matter, Freedman (2017):
68) encourages her readers to consider the figures with ‘some caution’ and
recommends instead that we pay attention to ‘more fundamental ques-
tions relating to the causes of such violence and means of prevention’.
The reportedly high numbers of SGBV cases in the DRC have resulted
in widespread international media and academic attention paid to the phe-
nomenon, and past theories of SGBV have now been challenged. Previously
considered an inevitable consequence of male sexual urges during conflict,
the dominant international view has drawn on feminist insights on the
constructed nature of gender, conceptualizing sexual violence in the DRC
as a ‘strategy of war’ that is used by militarized masculine actors to punish
and humiliate (feminine) victims, in the aim of meeting some military
objective (Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2013). From this perspective, sexual
violence is seen as something that can be prevented which, in combination
with the international attention to the phenomenon, has resulted in a
huge influx of development aid for victims and activism on behalf of wom-
en’s (sexual) rights (Freedman 2017).
2 DO THE MEDIA MAKE SEXUAL VIOLENCE ‘CONGOLESE’?… 27
While this could be seen as a victory for feminism, such singular atten-
tion has been a cause for concern. For example, the sexual violence ‘hype’
(Hilhorst and Douma 2018: 79) created a ‘market’ for services for preven-
tion and protection, leading many NGOs to compete for international
funding (Freedman 2017). As Freedman (2017: 129) observes, the ‘rush
for funding’ created a culture of opportunism, leading some organizations
who claim to work for women, to fail to ‘engage in real analysis or research’
(Freedman 2017: 130). In addition, external donors pressured local devel-
opment bodies to shift their attention (away from other causes) to focus
on sexual violence (Lake 2014; Mertens and Pardy 2016), and many of
the new organizations working in the field had no relevant track record
(Hilhorst and Douma 2018).
Other concerns that have been raised address the style in which SGBV
is understood and represented. While they do not reject the ‘rape as a
weapon of war’ discourse, Eriksson Baaz and Stern (2013: 86) argue that
it does not account for the ‘messiness’ of warring. In their observations,
rape is often described by the perpetrators as a consequence of anger, frus-
tration and trauma created by the extreme context of war, rather than a
thought-out strategy. The ‘weapon of war’ discourse also fails to ade-
quately deal with the issue of peacetime rape, because of its emphasis on
militarized masculinities (Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2013: 62).
The biggest issue with the discourse, however, is that it places the ‘trou-
ble’ in the ‘wrong’ type of gender. As such, the solution must be to ‘teach
soldiers a less violent masculinity’ (Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2013: 62).
Drawing on postcolonial theory, Eriksson Baaz and Stern (2013: 25) sug-
gest that this characterization may be seen as part of a more general pro-
cess of racial ‘Othering’ of the Congolese who are portrayed as exceptionally
(sexually) violent and engaged in ‘bizarre and uncivilized methods of war-
fare’. In their view, this ultimately leads back to the raced/sexed story. As
they explain:
Images of the barbaric African (masculine) Other, who is unleashed by the

conditions of war to act according to his ‘true’ nature, both complement
and disrupt the parallel storyline of rape as a gendered weapon of war. They
also complement and disrupt the story of rapists as embodying (or adorn-
ing) a violent masculinity constructed in the military and in unequal gen-
dered power relations in society more generally. The raced/sexed story
complements the gendered story through its anchoring of sex/gender on to
specific kinds of bodies—racialized bodies that are necessarily Other. These
bodies are Other because of their backward reflection of an uncivilized site,

which was seemingly left behind, through, among other things, a revamping
and enlightened modernization of gender (Eriksson Baaz and Stern
2013: 26).
Demmers (2014: 27) also calls us to examine the discursive practices sur-
rounding sexual violence in the DRC, arguing that the singularized focus
on the ‘vandalized female’ body at the hands of ‘a ruthless, oversexed,
primitive savage’ resurrects colonial stereotypes of the dark and dangerous
continent discussed in classical postcolonial theory (e.g. Mudimbe 1988;
Mbembe 2001; Fanon 1952, 1961). In her view (Demmers 2014: 42),
such ‘representations work to obscure structural and global histories of
violence’ (e.g. colonialism, neoliberalism).
This Othering discourse is often paired with descriptions of SGBV
being unparalleled, never seen before, or exceptional, with the DRC char-
acterized as the ‘Rape Capital of the World’ (Wallström 2011) or ‘the
most dangerous place on earth to be a woman’ (BBC News, cited in
Demmers 2014: 27). This characterization has created a form of ‘SGBV
tourism’ (Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2010), where celebrities, journalists,
human rights and women’s rights activists, representatives of various gov-
ernments and international organizations travel to the DRC to learn
about, report on and publicize the phenomenon. Indeed, the term ‘por-
nography of violence’ has been widely used to describe the singular inter-
est, fulfilled by shocking images and descriptions used in reporting SGBV
in the DRC (Freedman 2017; Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2013; Stearns
2009; see also Hesford 2011). As Stearns explains, media outlets try to
‘outdo each other with the most barbaric gang-rape scenario’ (2009) cre-
ating what Eriksson Baaz and Stern (2013: 100) refer to as a process of
‘rapid horror-fame-profit-spectacle-masquerade’. Such a process, in
Autesserre’s (2014) view, overshadows other forms of extreme violence
including killing, maiming, torture and other conflict-related traumas.
The various international accolades of Congolese gynaecologist, Dr
Denis Mukwege, which most famously include the 2018 Nobel Peace
Prize, could be seen to exemplify this process in the DRC. Indeed, the
prize explicitly draws on the ‘weapon of war’ discourse and could be seen
to exemplify the Western view that Congolese culture is inherently sexu-
ally violent.
Methodology
To investigate if this is the case, this chapter examines all articles featuring
Mukwege published in the four online newspapers from October 2018 to
September 2019. Le Monde and The Guardian are left-leaning, interna-
tionally renowned broadsheet outlets from France and the UK respec-
tively. Le Soir is Belgium’s largest broadsheet newspaper and Mediacongo
is a Congolese online news source covering current affairs of the DRC and
the Congolese diaspora.
Le Soir was chosen because of Belgian’s historical and diplomatic links
to the region, as the former colonial power. This outlet also has a particu-
lar relationship to the story as many of its articles are authored by Central
African specialist, Colette Braeckman, who is also the outlet’s editor for
Central Africa. Braeckman knows Mukwege; she has authored an
interview-based book with him (Braeckman 2016) and, in partnership
with Thierry Michel, has produced a documentary film about him (Michel
and Braeckman 2015).
An outlet from France was chosen on account of the latter’s historical
links to the context as it was the dominant political and cultural influence
since the 1970s. The UK offers an interesting point of comparison as
another former colonial power but from the anglophone world while
Mediacongo offers a Congolese perspective of events.
High-brow/elite outlets were chosen because, as Ibelema (2014: 165)
puts it, they offer ‘the best that can be expected’ in terms of journalistic
quality, and therefore offer the most authoritative depictions of the stories
they cover. All articles were retrieved using keyword searches (the term
‘Mukwege’ was used) via the outlets’ online search facility.1 The total
number of articles analysed for each outlet can be found in Table 2.1.
The discursive analysis that follows is informed by the recent postcolo-
nial feminist critiques of SGBV representation in the DRC discussed above
Table 2.1 The table shows the number of articles analyzed for each news source
Le Soir Le Monde The Guardian Mediacongo
Total articles 56 32 17 32
1
https://www.theguardian.com/international, https://www.lemonde.fr/, https://
www.lesoir.be/; https://www.mediacongo.net//.
(Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2013; Demmers 2014) classical postcolonial

theory (Mudimbe 1988; Mbembe 2001; Fanon 1952, 1961) as well as
the feminist theory of Luce Irigaray (1974, 1977). Like postcolonial the-
ory, Irigaray’s approach is rooted in Foucauldian, poststructuralist para-
digms which view identity as constructed, invented and negotiated. It also
highlights and describes how the identities of the less powerful (i.e.
women) have been constructed/invented by those in power (i.e. men),
who do so in order to define their own subjectivity. While Mudimbe
(1988: 15) refers to the construction of Africa by Europeans as epistemo-
logical ethnocentrism, Irigaray (1977: 77) similarly refers to men’s con-
struction of women as phallocentrism. Denied subjectivity in philosophy,
linguistics, psychology and anthropology, women, like black people, are
created as ‘that inaccessible “Other with a capital O”’ (Mbembe 2001: 3;
Irigaray 1974). In general, feminist and postcolonial theory share the view
that this Other is constructed as unstable, anarchic, irrational, incompre-
hensible and characterized by absence, lack or nothingness (Mbembe
2001: 4; Fanon 1952: 29; Irigaray 1974: 25, 1977: 26).
As the following analysis demonstrates, the coverage of Mukwege’s
Nobel victory recreates these constructions of women and of Africans. In
short, women are presented as objects or even currency to be possessed
and exchanged by men. This phallocentrism is embedded within a broader
narrative of ethnocentrism which sees Africa as a troubled, indescribable,
unknowable place in which sexual violence is inevitable and can only be
prevented by Western civilization.
Part 1: Phallocentrism—The Man Who

Repairs Women
Denis Mukwege was born in 1955 in a small town called Kaziba in Bukavu,
DRC. After studying medicine in Burundi and later France, he returned to
the DRC and, in 1999, established Panzi, a maternity hospital which was
soon transformed into a clinic for treating rape victims as the numbers
soared during the Great Congo War (1998–2003).
‘The fight against sexual violence, the fight of his life’:

The Dedicated Surgeon Activist
All the outlets portray Mukwege as a gynaecologist and surgeon of excep-
tional talent who has pioneered new methods in the treatment of victims
of extreme sexual violence through a combination of novel surgical proce-

dures with extensive psychological and social support. He is also depicted
as a dedicated activist against sexual violence during times of conflict and
a spokesperson for democracy and human rights. As Le Monde explains, he
‘a fait de la lutte contre les violences sexuelles le combat de sa vie’ [has
made the fight against sexual violence, the fight of his life] (Cojean
2018b).2 Showcasing Mukwege’s solidarity with the women he works
with while describing his own assassination attempt, The Guardian writes:
‘He has risked his life […] to break ranks with a patriarchal culture of vio-
lence towards women. He did it by standing with us, for us, when it was
one of the most dangerous things he could possibly do’ (Ensler 2018).
‘The world is listening to you’?: Absent Women

Despite Mukwege’s dedication of his Nobel prize to women and his dec-
laration that, as a result, the world is listening to them (‘le monde vous
écoute’ [the world is listening to you], Cojean 2018a and Le Soir 2018a),
there is a striking absence of Congolese women’s voices in the media cov-
erage of his victory. For comment on the victory, The Guardian is the only
outlet to offer two opinion pieces by women, albeit non-Congolese
women. The first is by American author, playwright and feminist activist,
Eve Ensler, who reproduces the weapon of war discourse (Ensler 2018).
For the second opinion piece, The Guardian turns to writer and victim of
sexual violence, Winnie M Li (2018), who offers a personal account and
highlights the problematic portrayal of sexual violence in the media:
My own rape, in Belfast in 2008, was heavily reported in the local media,
but it all centred around the developing news that my rapist was at large,
then arrested, then eventually convicted. There was little mention of me, the
victim, a nameless ‘Chinese tourist’—the implication being that I would
probably live out the rest of my life in silent shame and misery.
As the remainder of this chapter demonstrates, little progress appears to

have been made.
For example, rather than offering a woman’s perspective, Le Monde
includes an interview on the victory with the French/Congolese dancer,
Bolewa Sabourin, who has worked with Mukwege since 2016. Sabourin
2
This and all subsequent quotations were translated by the author of this chapter.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
bottle—a fault common with the wealthy in Persia—no vices such as
are usual in the Persians of towns.
We stayed with him four days; the first morning some fifty horses
were paraded for our inspection, for our host bred very fine animals,
and among other taxes had to find yearly three fine beasts fit for the
royal stables. As we sat at a window just raised from the ground, the
entire string were led or ridden past us; but as the clothing was on,
one could not see much of them.
This clothing consists of a perhan (shirt) of fine woollen blanketing,
which envelops the whole body of the animal, being crossed over the
chest, but all above the withers is bare. Over this is the jūl, or day
clothing; this the horse wears summer and winter, save during the
midday time in summer, when he is either naked or has only the
perhan on. The jūl is of the same shape as the perhan, but is of
coarser texture and lined with felt. Over the jūl is the nammad,[13] or
outer felt.
This is a sheet of felt half or three-quarters of an inch thick, and so
long that it can be drawn over the horse’s head and neck while the
quarters are still well covered, thus completely enveloping the animal
in a warm and waterproof covering, and enabling him to stand the
cold of winter in the draughty stables of the caravanserai, or even, as
is frequently required, to camp out. (During all the summer months in
Persia the horses sleep outside.)
This nammad is held in its place by a long strip of broad cotton
webbing, which is used as a surcingle, and usually, except at night,
the part of the nammad used to cover the neck is doubled down over
the animal’s body.
As the procession went by we gave free vent to our admiration; as
Pierson acknowledged, he had never seen such a collection of
horses. I, too, was surprised. Some dozen of the finer animals were
stripped, and as we admired each, the usual empty compliment of
“Peishkesh-i-shuma” (“A present to you”) was paid us.
The quail-shooting was good fun; we marched through the green
wheat in a row of some ten, horses and servants following, and the
birds got up in every direction, a very large bag being made, though
probably as many more were lost in the high wheat. The peculiar cry
of the bird resounded in every direction.
Several princes were among the guests of Mahommed Houssein
Khan, and he and his sons showed us and them the greatest
kindness and attention.
In the afternoon suddenly arrived Suleiman Mirza (literally Prince
Solomon), a near relative of the king, who was returning from a
pilgrimage to the burial-place of the saints at Kerbela, near Baghdad.
This man was quite a Daniel Lambert, moving with difficulty, very old,
but of a very merry disposition; a good deal of joking took place after
his arrival.
PERSIAN BAND.
After an apparently interminable Persian dinner, which consisted

of some hundred plats, among which may be favourably mentioned
the pillaws of mutton or fowls, boiled and smothered in rice, in rice
and orange-peel, in rice and lentils, in rice and haricots, in rice and
“schewed,” a herb somewhat resembling fennel; the fizinjans of fowls
and boiled meats; also partridges boiled and served with the
concentrated juice of the pomegranate and pounded walnuts;
kabobs of lamb and antelope; a lamb roasted whole, stuffed with
dates, pistachios, chestnuts, and raisins; salt fish from the Caspian;
extract of soup with marrow floating in it; dolmas, or dumplings,
made of minced meat and rice, highly flavoured and wrapped in vine
leaves and fried; rissoles; wild asparagus boiled; new potatoes,
handed round cold, and eaten with salt; while roast quails,
partridges, and doves were served with lettuces, drenched with
honey and vinegar.
Each guest was supplied with a loaf of flat bread as a plate, and
another for eating.
We sat on the ground, some twenty in all, round a huge tablecloth
of red leather, if I may use that expression, for a large sheet of
leather laid on the ground. Suleiman Mirza, as the king’s relative,
occupied the place of honour. On the other hand of our host sat
Pierson, and I next him, while Abu Seif Mirza, as a prince, took his
position by right on the other side of the great man, and was by him
punctiliously addressed as prince, and generally treated as one.
Huge china bowls of sherbet were placed down the centre of the
sūfrah (tablecloth), and in each bowl was an elaborately-carved
wooden spoon, which were used indiscriminately; these spoons held
a gill, and were drunk from, no glasses being used.
During the time the dinner was progressing little conversation took
place, everybody being engaged in eating as much of as many
dishes as possible. But a band of villagers played the santūr, a sort
of harmonicon; the tūmbak, or small drum, played on with the tips of
the fingers—there were two tūmbak players; the neh or flute, or,
more properly speaking, reed; and the deyeereh, literally circle, a
kind of large tambourine, played, like the tūmbak, with the tips of the
fingers.
As soon as every one had (literally) eaten his fill, Suleiman Mirza,
the king’s relative, rose, and we all got up.
In lieu of grace each man said, “Alhamdillilah!” (“Thank God!”) and
from politeness most of the guests eructated, showing that they were
thoroughly satisfied.
This ceremony is common through the East, and it is considered
the height of rudeness to the host to abstain from it. Coffee was now
handed round, and pipes were brought. A singer, too, commenced a
ditty, which he shouted as do costermongers when crying their wares
in England; he put his hand to the side of his mouth to increase the
sound, his face became crimson with his efforts, the muscles and
veins stood out in relief on his neck, and his eyes nearly started from
their sockets. He frequently paused to take breath, and ceased amid
loud applause. The singing and music were kept up till a late hour.
Politeness prevented our retiring, but we longed for rest; and on
Pierson’s being tormented into a long disquisition on magic, he
seized the opportunity to get away by stratagem. Telling the fat
prince that, as he insisted on seeing the magic of the West, he would
gratify him, he placed the old gentleman on a mattress, and putting
four princes (he insisted on royal blood), standing each on one leg at
the four corners, with a lighted lamp in each hand, he gravely
assured them that we should retire and perform an incantation,
while, if no one laughed or spoke, on our return the lights would burn
blue. We got to bed, barricaded ourselves in our room, and tried to
sleep. After some few minutes, loud shouts announced the discovery
of the ruse, and a party arrived to bring us back, but too late, for we
had retired.
Next morning I was asked to see some of the ladies of the family.
So little does this village khan observe the Mahommedan rule of
veiling the women, that I was allowed to pass my whole morning in
his anderūn. My host’s wife, a huge woman of five-and-forty in
appearance, but in reality about thirty-five, was intent on household
cares; she was making cucumber-jam. The cucumber having been
cut into long slices the thickness of an inch, and the peel and seeds
removed, had been soaked in lime-water some month; this was kept
frequently changed, and the pieces of cucumber were now quite
transparent. They were carefully put in a simmering stew-pan of
strong syrup, which was placed over a wood fire, and, after cooking
for a quarter of an hour, the pieces of cucumber were carefully laid in
an earthen jar, and the syrup poured over them, spices being added.
I fancy that about a hundredweight of this preserve was made that
morning. When cold the cucumber was quite crisp; the result
satisfied our hostess, and she presented me with a seven-pound jar.
Our host’s young son, a youth of seventeen, caused considerable
commotion among the two or three negresses by his efforts to get
his fingers into the cooling jam-pots; while his two sisters, nice-
looking girls of fifteen and sixteen, tried to restrain his fancy for
preserves in vain. We all laughed a great deal, and mother and
daughters were full of fun, while the grinning negresses thoroughly
enjoyed the noise and laughing.
Not having seen a woman’s face for three months, these girls
seemed to me perhaps better looking than they really were, but I
confess returning to the outer regions of the berūni with regret; and
Pierson envied my good fortune in having, as a medico, had a
glimpse of Persian home-life which he could never hope for. Really
the patient was, as it often is, a mere excuse for entertaining so
strange a being as a Feringhi, and getting thus a good look at him.
We went out twice after antelope, which we hunted with relays of
dogs; but as we were not successful, there is little to tell. We
returned to Hamadan, regretting the end of a very pleasant visit.
On our arrival a grateful patient among the Armenians sent me
eighty kerans (three pounds ten) in a little embroidered bag. As the
woman could ill afford it, I told her that I would accept the bag as a
keepsake, and returned the money. So unheard-of a proceeding
astonished the Armenian community, and the priest, a wealthy old
sinner, saw his way, as he thought, to a stroke of business. I had
treated him, too, and he brought me a similar sum in a similar bag.
Great was his disgust when I thanked him for the money and politely
returned the bag, and he confided to my servant that, had he thought
this would have been the result, he would never have paid a farthing.
One day a villager brought us two large lizards, some three feet
from snout to the tip of the tail, and we secured them for a couple of
kerans. They ran about the place for a week or two, interfering with
no one, but did not get tame. The dogs chased them when they were
not on the face or top of a wall, and they at first used to bolt; but after
a time they stood still, allowed the dog to get within range, and then
—thwack—the tail was brought down with tremendous force, and the
dog retired howling. After a day or two no dog would go near the
lizards. They were uninteresting as pets, and as Pierson once got a
severe blow on the shin from one he stumbled over in the dark, we
sent them away. They were huge beasts, of a yellow-ochre colour,
and lived on flies and chopped meat; they were never seen to drink.
I purchased about this time a talking lark: he seemed the ordinary
lark such as we see in England; “torgah” is the Persian name. The
bird never sang, but said very plainly, “Bebe, Bebe Tūtee,” which is
equivalent to “Pretty Polly”—being really “Lady, lady parrot;” he
varied occasionally by “Bebe jahn” (“Dear lady”). The articulation
was extremely clear. There are many talking larks in Persia. The
bazaar or shopkeeper class are fond of keeping larks, goldfinches,
and parrots, in cages over their shops.
Sitting, too, on our roof, we could see the pigeon-flying or kafteh-
bazi. A pigeon-fancier in Persia is looked upon as a lūti (blackguard),
as his amusement takes him on the roofs of others, and is supposed
to lead to impropriety; it being considered the height of indecency to
look into another’s courtyard.
The pigeons kept are the carrier, which are very rare; the tumbler,
or mallagh (mallagh, a summersault), and the fantail, or ba-ba-koo.
The name exactly represents the call of the fantail. It was this bird
which was supposed to bring the revelations to the prophet
Mahommed, and consequently keeping a fantail or two is not looked
on as discreditable. They are never killed. These fantails do not fly
with the rest, keeping in the owner’s yard and on the roof. The yahoo
is the other ordinary variety, and is only valued for its flesh, being
bred, as we breed fowls, by the villagers. It has a feathered leg, and
will not fly far from home.
The pigeons are flown twice a day, in the early morning and
evening, and it is a very pretty thing to watch.
The owner opens the door and out fly all the pigeons, perhaps
thirty, commencing a circular flight, whose circles become larger and
larger. The fancier watches them eagerly from his roof, and when he
has given them a sufficient flight and there are none of his rival’s
birds in view, he calls and agitates a rag affixed to a long pole. This
is the signal for feeding, and the weaker birds generally return at
once to their cupboard, the stronger continue their flight, but lessen
the diameter of the circle, and one by one return, the best birds
coming back last. As they come over the house they commence to
“tumble” in the well-known manner, falling head over heels as if shot;
some birds merely make one turn over, while others make twenty. It
is a very curious and a very pretty sight. The birds are extremely
tame, and settle on the person of the fancier.
Hitherto there has been nothing more than a flight of pigeons, but
in the afternoon, about an hour or two hours before sunset, the real
excitement commences. Up goes a flight of some twenty pigeons,
they commence to make circles; no sooner does their course extend
over the house of a rival fancier than he starts his birds in a cloud, in
the hope of inveigling an outlying bird or two into his own flock; then
both owners call, whistle, and scream wildly, agitating their poles and
flags.
The rival flocks separate, but one bird has accompanied the more
successful fancier’s flight. As it again passes over the house of the
victimised one, he liberates two of his best birds; these are mixed
with the rest, but ere they have completed half a circle they, with the
lost one, rejoin their own flight. Their delighted owner now calls down
his birds, and in a few moments envelops a pair of his rival’s in a
crowd of his own.
Then again commence the cries, the whistlings, the agitating flags,
and the liberation of single or pairs or flights of birds. As one of Mr.
A.’s birds is being convoyed towards B.’s roof with a pair of his, Mr.
C. envelops the three in a cloud of pigeons, and the whole flock
alight—C.’s flight in his own dovecot, and A.’s bird and B.’s pair, as
timid strangers, on a neighbouring wall; A. and B. vainly screaming
while their two flocks keep circling high in air. C., B., and A.
simultaneously run over roofs and walls to get near the birds. But B.
and A. have a long way to travel, while happy C. is close by; he
crouches double, and carrying in one hand a kind of landing-net,
makes for the birds; in his bosom is a fantail pigeon, in his left hand
some grain. Artful B. throws a stone and his two birds rise and fly
home, and with a fancier’s delight he watches C.; but A. is too far off
for this manœuvre, and hurries over roof after roof. Too late! C. has
tossed his fantail down near A.’s bird, the fantail, struts about calling
“Ba-ba-koo, ba-ba-koo!” The prize has his attention taken and stoops
to peck the seed that C. has tossed over a low wall. As he does so
C.’s landing-net is on him, the fantail flies lazily home, and C.,
shouting and brandishing his capture, makes the best of his way to
the roof of his own premises.
Then the flights begin again, rival fanciers from distant roofs
liberate their flocks, flags are waved, and the drama, with endless
variations, is repeated. Once a fancier always a fancier, they say.
A. repairs to C.’s house to buy back his bird at six or more times
its intrinsic value, for to leave a bird in the hands of a rival fancier
might cost the man his whole flock on a subsequent occasion, the
captured birds, of course, acting as the best of decoys.
The favourite birds are ornamented with little rings or bracelets of
silver, brass, or ivory, which are borne like bangles on the legs (the
mallagh, or tumbler, has no feathers on the leg) and rattle when the
bird walks; these bangles are not ransomed, but remain lawful prize.
As the colours of the birds are very different, one soon recognises
the individual birds of one’s neighbours’ collections, and the interest
one feels in their successes and defeats is great. Our high roof,
towering over most others, made us often sit and watch the pigeon-
flying; and the circling birds as they whirred past us, flight after flight,
against the blue, cloudless sky near sunset, was a sight worth
seeing. The fanciers were many of them old men, and some actually
lived on the ransom exacted from the owners of their captives.
These pigeon-fanciers had a slang of their own, and each
coloured bird had a distinctive name. So amused were we that I
ordered my groom to buy a flight of pigeons and commence
operations; but Syud Houssein, the British Agent, pointed out that it
would be infra dig. to engage in a practice that was considered
incorrect. It is strange that sporting, or what is called sporting,
generally leads, even in the East, to blackguardism.
Card-playing, too, is only indulged in by the less reputable of the
community; there is only one game, called Ahs an Ahs; it is played
with twenty cards—four kings, four soldiers (or knaves), four queens
(or ladies), four latifeh (or courtesans), and four ahs (or aces). This
latter is shown generally by the arms of Persia, “the Lion and Sun.”
The lion is represented couchant regardant, bearing a scimitar, while
the sun (“kurshid,” or head of glory) is portrayed as a female face
having rays of light around it; this is shown as rising over the lion’s
quarters. There is only this one game of cards played with the
gungifeh (or cards); they can hardly be called cards, as they are
made of papier-maché an eighth of an inch thick, and elaborately
painted. As much as ten tomans can be given for a good pack.
European cards are getting generally used among the upper
classes, who, under the name of bank or banco, have naturalised
the game of lansquenet. But as Persians have an idea that all is fair
at cards, like ladies at round games, they will cheat, and he who
does so undetected is looked on as a good player (“komar-baz
zereng,” clever gamester).
Chess (“shahtrenj”) is much played by the higher classes, but in
the Indian manner, the pawn having only one square to pass and not
two at the first, as with us. Backgammon, too, is in great vogue; the
dice, however, are thrown with the hand, which leads to great
“cleverness,” an old hand throwing what he likes; but as the usual
stakes are a dinner or a fat lamb, not much harm is done.
The lower orders have a kind of draughts played on a board
(marked somewhat similar to our Fox and Geese), and at each angle
of which is placed a mor (seal), i. e. piece. This game is generally
played on a brick or large tile, the board being chalked, the pieces
stones; they are moved from angle to angle. I never could fathom
how it is played, the rules being always different and seemingly
arbitrary.
Another game is played on a wooden board or an embroidered
cloth one; this is an ancient one called takht-i-pul. I have a very old
embroidered cloth forming the board, the men being of carved ivory,
given me by Mr. G⸺, of the Persian Telegraph Department, but I
never could find two Persians who agreed as to the rules. Pitch-and-
toss is constantly engaged in by the boys in the bazaar.
Rounders (a bastard form of it) are played by the Ispahan boys,
and they also play at a species of fives. Marbles are unknown, but I
have seen the primitive game of “bonse,” which is played by our
boys with “bonses” (large marbles), large pebbles being the
substitutes for the bonses in Persia, as they are with street-boys
here.
Wrestling is in great favour; the gymnasia (Zūr Khana) are
frequented by the youth and manhood of all ranks, who meet there
on an equality. Wrestling bouts are common among the boys and
youths on every village maidān.
In each gymnasium (Zūr Khana, literally “house of force”) the
professional “pehliwan,” or wrestlers, practise daily; and gymnastics,
i. e. a course of attendance at a gymnasium, are often prescribed by
the native doctor. Generally an experienced and retired pehliwan
acts as “lanista,” and for a small fee prescribes a regular course of
exercises. Dumb-bells are much used; also a heavy block of wood,
shield-shape, some two feet by three, and three inches thick, with an
aperture in the middle, in which is placed a handle. The gymnast lies
on his back, and holding this in one hand makes extension from side
to side; a huge bow of thick steel plates, with a chain representing
the string, is bent and unbent frequently.
But the great and most favourite implements are the clubs (what
we call Indian clubs); these the professional athlete will use of great
size and weight; and after going through the usual exercises will hurl
them, together or alternately, to a great height, and unfailingly catch
them.
The wrestling is carried on, as a rule, good-temperedly; but when
done by professionals for reward, awkward tricks are employed,
such as suddenly thrusting the fingers into the eye of the adversary,
and others still more dangerous.
As a preventive against these, the wrestler always wears knee
breeches of stiff horsehide, some of which are beautifully
embroidered with blue thread; all above the waist and below the
knee being bare. A good deal of time is, as a rule, lost in taking hold
and clappings of hands, and then generally the bout commences
with one hand grasping the adversary’s, while the other clutches the
body. The object is not a clean throw, but to make the knees of the
opponent touch the ground, and consequently agility tells more than
strength and size. The pairs are always made with regard to skill,
size and weight being little considered.
The gymnasia are merely darkened rooms (for coolness), with a
sunken ring in the centre, where the wrestling takes place. The floor
is nearly always of earth only, to render falls less severe.
A Persian has no idea of the use of his fists. When a street-fight
takes place, the combatants claw and slap at each other, and end by
clutching each other’s “zūlf” (long love-locks, which most wear), or
beards, or clothing. Then comes a sort of wrestle, when they are
generally separated.
Every great personage retains among his favoured servants a few
pehliwans or wrestlers; and among the artisans many are wrestlers
by profession, and follow at the same time a trade.
CHAPTER IX.
KERMANSHAH.
Leave for Kermanshah, marching—Detail of arrangements—Horse feeding—

Peculiar way of bedding horses—Barley—Grape feeding—On grass—
Nawalla—Colt, Anecdote of—Horses, Various breeds of—Turkomans—
Karabagh—Ispahan cobs—Gulf Arabs—Arabs—Rise in price of horses—
Road cooking—Kangawar temple—Double snipe—Tents—Kara-Su River—
Susmanis—Sana—Besitūn—Sir H. Rawlinson—Agha Hassan—Istikhbal—
Kermanshah—As we turn in another turns out—Armenians—Their reasons for
apostatising—Presents of sweetmeats.
On Pierson’s return to Hamadan, I gladly prepared to start with

him for Kermanshah. My traps were not numerous—a folding-table,
four chairs, a tressel bedstead, and two bullock-trunks, formed one
load; and my bedding in a case, made of carpet, bound with leather,
and surmounted by my head-man, another; my groom was perched
on a third, sitting on the clothing of the two horses, and carrying their
head and heel ropes and the stable spade, with which their bed of
“pane” (dried horse-dung) is prepared at night, and the copper
bucket for watering them.
The cook, with all his batterie de cuisine, had the fourth, and
Ramazan and the contents of the dispensary took two more. I think
another was charged with bottled beer, and of course we each rode
our horses. The stages were:—
Farsakhs.
Assadabad or Seydabad 7
Kangawar 5
Sana 6
Besitūn 4
Kermanshah 6
Or miles, 112; farsakhs, 28.
An hour’s riding took us clear of the vineyards of Hamadan, and
we passed over grassy downs with patches of desert till we got to
the commencement of the Seydabad Pass. This, though it would be
looked on as a tremendous matter in England, is nothing difficult to
get over when there is no snow, and an hour’s smart climb brought
us to the top.
The descent on the other side was much longer, and we made the
seven farsakhs, about twenty-eight miles, in nine hours’ continuous
marching. The road was very bad, being full of loose stones the
whole of the way from the commencement of the ascent. We put up
at the “chupper-khana;” as this was my first experience of marching,
I may as well detail our arrangements.
As soon as we had cleared the top of the pass, the servants
pushed on with those loads that it was needful to unpack, while we
came on slowly with the mules; the grooms, too, went on as smartly
as possible; my fellow had my other horse led in a halter. As it got to
nearly sunset (we had started very late, as is always the case in a
first stage), we cantered gently in to the post-house.
Our grooms were at the door ready to take our horses, and we
found the dirty little mud room swept, carpeted, a fire lighted, and the
entrance curtained with a tent door; the chairs and table had been
put out, and the kalians got under weigh. Our servants had tea
ready, and we were quite prepared to rest and be thankful. Our
books and pipes had been put handy in our bedding, and were laid
out for us.
Half-an-hour after sunset the groom came to say he was going to
feed the horses. We go into the yard, into which our room opens,
and find Pierson’s stud of Gods on one side, my two on the other,
each tethered by double head-ropes to a mud manger, which is
constructed in the wall, and secured by heel-ropes of goats’ hair tied
to pins of iron a foot long, firmly driven into the ground.
The horses had been carefully dry-rubbed and clothed, the
nammads, or felt coverings, drawn over their necks, for it was chilly,
and the beds of “pane” laid for them.
The Persians use no straw for making beds for their horses, as it
is too valuable; but they utilise the dung, which is carefully dried in
the sun and then stored, as bedding; this is very dry, clean, and soft,
and quite without smell. When thus dried, it is called “pane.” It is laid
a foot deep all round the standing of the horse, and the edges
carefully smoothed (as a gardener in England smooths his flower-
beds) by the grooms.
The horses, well aware that it is feeding-time, and having been
watered some ten minutes before (they had been walked about for
half-an-hour to cool them on arrival—a thing a Persian never omits),
now commenced neighing, playfully biting and letting out at each
other as far as their heel-ropes would permit. Pierson’s head-groom
measured out in handfuls the allowance of barley for each beast,
and it was poured into a nosebag filled with “kah,” or chaff, and then
affixed to the animal’s head, that not a grain might be lost. When we
had seen this done, and noticed that each horse fed well, we left, our
place being taken by the head-servant, who stayed till the barley was
eaten; for in those days we could not trust our grooms, who would
always steal the barley if they could.
Oats are not used in Persia, though there are many salt-marshes
in the country where they would grow well. Barley is the only food for
horses, the allowance being from seven to ten pounds of barley for
the animal’s two feeds; generally seven pounds are not exceeded. (It
must be remembered that the general run of animals is much smaller
than that of English horses, fourteen hands being the usual height,
and fifteen being an unusually large beast.) This allowance is divided
into two feeds, five pounds at night and two in the morning. This,
with as much as he chooses to consume of wheat or barley straw,
broken in pieces two inches long (“kah”), is all the animal has from
one end of the year to the other; no hay is given, but for a month the
horse is put on an entire diet of young green barley-grass, of which
he will eat two hundred and fifty pounds a day. Prior to being put on
this diet, which is termed full grass, he has a larger and larger
proportion administered with his chaff; this mixture is called “teleet.”
The barley-grass is cut by the grooms, by tearing handfuls of it
against a curved toothed sickle fixed upright in a piece of wood, and
is given from two to four inches long. As the horse is given “teleet,”
his grain is diminished, and, when he is on full grass, stopped
altogether; as he gets more and more grass, his teeth get blunt, and
do not break the grain, and on leaving off grass his barley has to be
soaked.
A horse on grass cannot do any serious work, and the gentlest
canter will put him in a lather. Of course it is very difficult to march a
horse when on grass, and in Persia it can only be had in the spring;
and unless he is going from a country where the season is early to
one where it is late, the animal has to do without grass altogether, or
even to march on “teleet”—a very dangerous thing, as he will often
break down. The Persians are very fond of seeing their horses fat,
particularly the townsmen, so that these latter will keep their beasts
on entire grass for two months, and on “teleet” seven months in the
year, giving clover, too, mixed with the “kah,” when they can get it.
The result is an animal bursting with fat, very irritable and restive, but
who can do no work.
To old horses “nawallah,” or balls of dough made of barley flour
and water, are given; the animals take to this, which is the usual
camel food, and will look fat and work well when they have not a
tooth in their heads.
During the only grape season that I was in Hamadan, the fruit was
so cheap that we put our horses on a diet of it for a week. Hasseens,
or earthen pans of tile, were affixed to the wall in the mangers, and
the horses grew extremely fat on a diet of grapes alone.
Persian horses, like Persian women, age early; possibly they are
ridden too young; the two-year-old is often put to hard work, and an
animal of nine is an old horse.
The young colt of two is termed a no zin, or newly fit for the
saddle. On one occasion I had removed a tooth for the Zil-es-sultan,
the Governor of Ispahan (the king’s eldest son). As it came out at
once he was much pleased, and gave me an order on his master of
horse for an “asp-i-no zin,” “a horse just ready for the saddle,”
meaning a two-year-old.
I sent over the order, and to my disgust got back an eight-months-
old colt. This, of course, was of comparatively little value. I did not
like to complain, for “one must not look a gift-horse in the mouth,”
and the master of horse was an acquaintance, and the prince’s
maternal uncle.
I had recourse to stratagem, being put on my mettle by ironical
questions from my Persian friends, as to whether I had ridden my
horse, etc.
The prince was about to review the troops, and I sent a polite
message to the master of the horse, asking the loan of a Persian
saddle, for, said I, “I want to ride out on my new horse, and to thank
the prince for his present.” This brought the master of the horse
(“mir-achor,” or “lord of the manger”) to my house to call on his dear
friend the English doctor. Pipes were smoked, tea drunk, and then I
was asked why I wanted a Persian saddle.
“You see, the prince’s present has been probably only used to a
Persian saddle, having been just broken in, and I have none.”
“But, dear doctor sahib, he is not fit to ride, he is eight months old.”
“Oh, my friend, you, as the mir-achor, are far too good a servant of
his Royal Highness to give me other than his order said, a horse fit
for the saddle—the order said so, so he must be fit for the saddle. I
ride him out to the review to-morrow, and shall thank the prince.”
The mir-achor sighed, and with a half-wink said, “I see you don’t
like the colt, I shall send you another; in fact, some to choose from.”
“Many, many thanks, let them be good, or I shall surely ride out on
the one I have; and in case I don’t take any of those you send, don’t
forget the saddle.”
The mir-achor left, and in an hour sent me over three full-grown
but worthless brutes to choose from.
I sent them back, telling his servants that I would send for the
saddle their master would lend me.
The grooms returned with a full-grown horse of considerable
value, which I took, and returned the worthless eight-months-old colt.
I was duly felicitated on my action by my Persian friends, and was
told that I had behaved in a very diplomatic way.
The horses most in use in Persia are, in the north, the Turkoman,
rarely seen south of Teheran, and despised in Fars—a tall, ungainly
animal, sometimes over sixteen hands, with no barrel, heavy head,
but great stride and endurance.
These Turkomans, when one is on them, give the idea of riding on
a gate, there is so little between the knees. They will get over, at a
jog or loose canter, one hundred miles a day, and will keep it up for
ten days. Their gallop is apparently slow, but, from the length of
stride, they get over a great deal of ground.
They are, however, not sure-footed, and quite useless on bad
roads and hilly country, having a tendency to fall. I have never seen
a Persian of condition ride a Turkoman horse himself, though many
great personages keep several for show, on which they mount
servants. In their own plains, and for the long expeditions for plunder
(“chuppaos”) made by the Turkomans, they are doubtless invaluable;
they are able to go without water for three days, and to subsist on
the hardest and scantiest fare, and after the severe training they
undergo previous to these expeditions, they will get over an amount
of ground that no other breed could hope to cover. Their paces are
rough and uncomfortable. They vary in price from kerans three
hundred to kerans five thousand; the usual price is four hundred to
six hundred for a good one. The mane is in some cases almost
wanting, and what there is is generally removed by a knife, and the
stubble burnt off by a hot iron, or by means of gunpowder or
depilatory. This gives the breed an unearthly and incomplete
appearance. The tail, too, is very slenderly provided with hair.
The “Karabagh”—also used in the north and towards the Caspian;
he is seldom seen south of Teheran—is a miniature edition of the
English hunter: big-boned and clean-limbed, he stands fourteen and
a half to sixteen hands; the latter is, however, an unusual size; he is
generally evil-tempered, but is up to hard work, and always has a
black mark running from the mane to the insertion of the tail; his
mane is thick, so is his tail; his head is heavy. Many big horses are
produced in Teheran from the mixture of the Turkoman and
Karabagh, but they are leggy, and retain the tendency of the
Turkoman to fall on stony ground. They are called “Yamūt;” the price
is two hundred and fifty to five hundred kerans. There is an
underbred look about both species.
Ispahan produces a peculiar kind of cob, with great weight-bearing
powers, short-legged, big barrelled, never exceeding fourteen hands,
often less. These animals are taught to amble, and are capable of
carrying heavy men or heavier loads. The neck is generally very
short and thick. Often very full of go, they are seldom fast, but have
much bottom, are very hardy, and stand exposure and hard work.
They have a clumsy appearance, enormous manes and tails, and
often a good deal of long hair under the jaw; all have huge ears and
coarse coats; the colour is generally grey; their appetites are
enormous, and they eat more than larger horses. Price, from one
hundred and twenty to four hundred kerans. This, I am convinced, is
the natural horse of Persia.
The horses of Shiraz, or “Gulf Arabs” as they are called in India,
because they are shipped from the Persian Gulf for the Indian
market, are the result of cross-breeding from big Persian mares by
the smaller and better-bred Arab horse. They are practically the best
horses in the country, quite free from vice, fast, and with most of the
good points of the Arab, particularly the small head. In the good ones
the forehead (brow) is always very convex, never flat. The ears are
small and carried well. The tail is carried, as the Persians put it, like
a flag, the tail-bone very short and straight. Among the natives, if the
tail is carried at all on one side, and not well up, it considerably
detracts from the animal’s value. They frequently dock the tail-bone,
but the hair is never shortened. Grey is the usual colour; though
there are many chestnuts and bays, I never saw a black. The barrel
and chest are very large, and the body short and compact; they have
magnificent shoulders, and are full of bottom. The better ones are
not at all goose-rumped, which all other breeds in Persia, except
Arabs, are, while the hoofs are large and healthy. These horses are
always full of spirit, and willing, their faults being that they are a little
delicate, and dainty feeders; they are very sure-footed, going at full
speed over the roughest ground or loose stones. They all pull, and,
from the severe nature of the Persian bit, are hard-mouthed, till they
have been ridden on the snaffle for some months. Many have a
tendency to shy, but no other vices; they stand fourteen and a half to
fifteen hands, and cost from five hundred to two thousand kerans.
The real Arabs, which come from Baghdad and the frontier, in the
Kermanshah Province, are too well known to need description, and
are all that the heart could desire, save as to size. They stand
thirteen three to fourteen two, seldom more, and cost from five
hundred kerans up to anything.
In the last fifteen years the price of horses has gone up from fifty
to eighty per cent.; this is due to the steady drain for the Indian
market, and also to the famine, when thousands were starved to
death and thousands more killed and eaten, and to opium-growing in
lieu of corn.
When I first came to Persia a fair yabū, or pony, could be got for
one hundred and twenty kerans; they cost now (1883) two hundred
to two hundred and forty. Horses in proportion. But the Gulf Arabs
are very cheap in Teheran, which is by far the best place to buy
horses in.
To return. We have smoked and chatted till eight o’clock, when our
dinner is put on the table—soup, tinned fish, a leg of mutton,
potatoes, a custard-pudding; these have been properly cooked, and
are served hot.
Save the eggs and the milk for the custard, we brought all these
good things from Hamadan, and the cook deserves great credit, for
his kitchen has been merely a corner of the post-house yard, his
range three or four bricks, and he has roasted his leg of mutton in a
saucepan, and sent it to table with delicious gravy; and thus we fare
daily while on the road. Some men, even when marching, insist on a
hot breakfast on the road itself, of three or four courses, but this is
only needful when there are ladies. Dinner over, kalians and coffee
are brought. Our beds are made one on each side of the fireplace,
but not on the ground, for we have tressel bedsteads, and ten sees
us fast asleep.
A fertile plain brings us, next morning’s stage, to Kangawar, a
large and prosperous village. Here the climate grows warmer. It is a
very well-watered district, and the people seem well-to-do. In fact, in
Persia, wherever there is water there is prosperity.
There is the ruin here of a temple said to have been erected to
Diana; nothing seems to be known about it, and it is only memory
that tells me that some authority gives it as a temple to Diana.
However, the four stone columns, minus their capitals, are still
standing; they are united by a mud wall, and form part of a villager’s
house.
In the swamp in front of the village we go out for snipe; Pierson
gets three brace and one double snipe. I manage to get a teal, which
I pot from behind some reeds, the snipe being as yet too much for
me. I also shoot several snippets, but am disappointed when Pierson
tells me to throw them away. I have one cooked in defiance—it is
uneatable.
We stop two days in Kangawar, and live in a tent. This is a very
comfortable one, with double walls, the property of Government,
made, so a label on it says, at the school at Jubbulpoor. It is
constructed, so another label tells me, for two subalterns. It has a
passage a yard wide between the walls, which keeps it cool in
summer. We find it chilly at night, and as we have no stove we are
unable to light a fire. The second day Pierson gets several double
snipe, and I get very wet.
On our next march we come upon the Kara-Su (black water) River,
and see a valley teeming with bird-life—herons, ducks, geese, what
appear to be black swans, cormorants, cranes of various colours,
from the big white “leg-leg” with black wings, to small and graceful
ones of pure white; mallards, teal, and widgeon. They unfortunately
are on the other side of the river, which is unfordable here, in a
swamp which extends for miles.
As we near Sana we see a man and woman seated on a mound
commanding the road, under a big green cotton umbrella, near a
grove. The woman, gaily dressed, with her face painted and without
any veil, her hair in long tails, strung with coins, importunately

(Download PDF) Representing Gender Based Violence Global Perspectives Caroline Williamson Sinalo Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Download PDF) Representing Gender Based Violence Global Perspectives Caroline Williamson Sinalo Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Representing Gender-Based Violence:

Global Perspectives Caroline

Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender

America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and

Violence and Peace in Sacred Texts: Interreligious

Gender: Psychological Perspectives, Seventh Edition 7th

Towards More Effective Global Drug Policies 1st ed.

(eTextbook PDF) for Sustainability: Global Issues,

America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and

Do It Now! Napoleon Hill & Judith Williamson

ISBN 978-3-031-13450-0 ISBN 978-3-031-13451-7 (eBook)

Individual seminars with international researchers, activists and authors

Part I Representation as Violence 23

Part II Revealing Representations 111

Part III Representative Re-Imaginings 205

Charlotte Baker is Professor of French and Critical Disability Studies in

Chiara Bonfiglioli is a lecturer in Gender & Women’s Studies at

Clare Geraghty is a PhD candidate in the department of Spanish,

Federico Tenca Montini is a researcher at the University of Trieste. After

Fig. 10.1 Demonstration in Pamplona against the manada sentence, 28

Fig. 12.5 Construction process of El Tendedero in Los Angeles as part

Nicoletta Mandolini and Caroline Williamson Sinalo

This work is supported by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

According to the website of the European Commission (2020), GBV

Another reason for not employing ‘violence against women’ or ‘men’s

GBV and Representation

misrepresentation serving both as a ‘means of, and an obstacle to, com-

In line with these recent feminist theories, we conceptualize the reality

annihilation of women was identified as being based on their female gen-

analysis of contemporary coming-of-age television dramas, such as The

every representative act (Noys 2013) and we are particularly conscious of

and sexual violence but other manifestations of GBV), the identity/ies of

Motter 2011; Rentschler 2014; Mandolini 2017) as crucial to the national

Overall Aim and Structure of Book

women with albinism and considers the intersectionality of their experi-

representative practices such as podcasting, news coverage, film, theatre,

Koenig, S. 2014. Serial. This American Life.

Pearce, R., Erikainen, S. and B. Vincent. 2020. ‘TERF Wars: An Introduction’.

Do the Media Make Sexual Violence

Caroline Williamson Sinalo

A significant amount of media and scholarly attention has been paid to

C. Williamson Sinalo (*)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

Sexual Violence and the DRC

Images of the barbaric African (masculine) Other, who is unleashed by the

bodies are Other because of their backward reflection of an uncivilized site,

(Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2013; Demmers 2014) classical postcolonial

Part 1: Phallocentrism—The Man Who

‘The fight against sexual violence, the fight of his life’:

of extreme sexual violence through a combination of novel surgical proce-

‘The world is listening to you’?: Absent Women

As the remainder of this chapter demonstrates, little progress appears to

After an apparently interminable Persian dinner, which consisted

Leave for Kermanshah, marching—Detail of arrangements—Horse feeding—

On Pierson’s return to Hamadan, I gladly prepared to start with

You might also like

Part I Representation as Violence 23

Part II Revealing Representations 111

Part III Representative Re-Imaginings 205