ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the seemingly straight forward task of making instances of sexual violence visible for the purposes of correction or elimination is made difficult by a discipline embedded in a world structured to obscure women. Cases of sexual violence in the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) have often been seen in the light of ethnic cleansing attempts and as a product of nationalistic conflicts, more or less unrelated to pre-existing practices and patterns of inequality. Rape is visible as a mass phenomenon, but individual by individual, in part because survivors are claimed to be specially traumatized and unreliable, the crime is believed difficult to prove and women are seen as liars. Rape and sexual violence bring shame and dishonor to women, consonant with the notion prevalent through much of history of women's supposed more lustful nature: she provokes male arousal and she is to be blamed for her sexual insatiable desires.
