ABSTRACT
Since the early 1990s and the wars in Yugoslavia, wartime rape has become, arguably as a matter of necessity, a feminist preoccupation. In the face of increasingly stark reports of extreme sexual violence against women in armed conflicts across the globe, feminists and other human rights activists have been working to secure greater international condemnation and prevention of violence against women. But, as Cynthia Enloe (2000) notes, sometimes making rape visible as a matter of political concern can be ‘dangerously easy’.1 Narratives of wartime rape engage a myriad of discourses and interests that shape and constrain how the rapes of ‘our’ women – or the enemies’ women – materialize. Not only is rape often refracted through the prism of nationalism – rape as an attack on the home front – but, as the recent wars in Afghanistan remind us, the suffering of women can be an all too visible and malleable justification for militarization.
