TW: sexual violence, assault, military conflict, genocide
The etymology of “rape” originated from the Latin rapere meaning to grab, snatch, or carry off.
The mass abduction of the Sabine women occurred when Romulus founded Rome in 753 BC and feared a shortage of women to ensure Rome’s future. Pictured is the Rape of the Sabine Women (also known as the Abduction of the Sabine Women or the Kidnapping of the Sabine women); wherein the words rape, abduction, and kidnapping are used interchangeably.
Perhaps when the Iron Age, Celtic queen Boudicca revolted against Nero’s Roman rule in A.D. 60 after the death of her husband Prasutagus, and was flogged publicly, her daughters raped for humiliation, the rape committed was subjugation in light of victory. The idea that victory emphasized only when the conquered is subjugated resounded in the Latin phrase vae victis (woe to the conquered).
In her book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1975), journalist Susan Brownmiller dismissed the association of desire or male libido to rape. “[Rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.”
Military historian Antony Beevor believes that the notion of rape being about power and violence is flawed by the fact that crime is defined through solely the victim’s view point. “It fails to utterly probe the range of male instincts and motives – revenge on the enemy, a desire to humiliate the enemy, a need to wipe away his own humiliations at the hands of his own superiors and of course sheer sexual opportunism because he has a gun in his hands and can pick his victim.”
Subjugation, genocide, humiliation, degradation; what terminology, among others, most sufficiently and justly constitutes the established legal definition of rape – is it truly possible for an established legal definition to fully account for all its perils?
The case of The Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu trialed at the International Criminal for Rwanda (September 2, 1998) gave rise to the first ever definition of rape and sexual violence in international law formulated by Judge Dhaya Pillay, which read as follows:
The Tribunal considers that rape is a form of aggression and the central elements of the crime cannot be captured in a mechanical description of objects and body parts . . . The Tribunal defines rape as a physical invasion of a sexual nature, committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive. Sexual violence is not limited to physical invasion of the human body and may include acts which do not involve penetration or even physical contact.
“From time immemorial, rape has been regarded as spoils of war, now it will be considered a war crime. We want to send out a strong message that rape is no longer a trophy of war. Until then [1998] rape had been regarded as collateral damage and also something mechanical with no understanding of the effect on the women […] We picked up what the women like [witness] JJ said that it destroys life itself for them”
stated Judge Dhaya Pillay, Our Bodies Their Battlefield, p. 148.
In her foreword in Listening to the Silences: Women and War, Judge Pillay wrote of the aftermath following the testimony of witnesses in the case aforementioned: “I have now learned that Witness JJ [is] living in . . . a ramshackle hut on bare ground amidst sparse provisions, rejected by and rejecting the society of others . . .
The international community has responded to only one aspect of the aftermath of the genocide: that of bringing perpretrators to justice – but not the needs of women to help feed, clothe, house, educate, heal and rebuild.”
Judge Dhaya Pillay, Listening to the Silences: Women and War
“It’s not a sexual thing, it’s a way to destroy another, to take from inside the victim the sense of being a human, and show you don’t exist, you are nothing. It’s a deliberate strategy: raping a woman in front of her husband to humiliate him so he leaves and shame falls on the victim and it’s impossible to live with the reality so the first reaction is to leave the area and there is total destruction of the community. I’ve seen entire villages deserted.”
Dr. Denise Mukwege, Our Bodies Their Battlefield, p. 306.
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