Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on three feminist frameworks: liberal feminism, standpoint feminism, and post-structural feminism. It applies the frameworks presented by feminist theories to the issue of wartime sexual violence. The book explores the different feminist theories is to expose the knowledge gaps concerning wartime sexual violence and conflict. It situates war-rape survivors as existing within conditions of bare life and observes that the recognition of sexual violence does not always engender emancipatory possibilities. The book engages in an in-depth analysis of how particular frameworks of understanding wartime sexual violence can continue to marginalize survivors and their children. It explores the historical concepts of childhood offered by John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and then develops these concepts by reference to contemporary theorists dealing explicitly with the issues of children and war, including David Archard, Helen Brocklehurst, and Alison Watson.