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Title: Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina by Alexandra Stiglmayer, Marion Faber, Alexandra Atiglmayer, Cynthia Enloe, Roy Gutman ISBN: 0-8032-9229-5 Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr Pub. Date: June, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Worth the time
Comment: This was a decent grouping of articles relating to the mass rapes occuring in Bosnia. Including interviews with the women themselves, as well as some of the rapists, it paints a vivid picture of these troubling events. I would have liked more analysis of the situation, specifically within the context of other wars in which rape has been a primary tool of warfare. Also, more information on where officials in Bosnia stand on this issue. This book could have been more well-rounded analytically.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Generally Strong Analysis of the Horrific Rapes in Bosnia
Comment: Stiglmayer's useful book binds together a dozen essays on the mass rapes in Bosnian war. When it was written in 1993 the conflict still raged and disclosures of systematic government-ordered rapes primarily against Muslim women by Serbs were new and shocking to most readers. Now five years later the crimes still shock, but by their magnitude and not their novelty. This book is still a powerful witness to the rapes, but more importantly it provides a legal, psychological, and historic framework for coming to an understanding which is necessary if we are to try to prevent more such horrors in the future, or at least to provide a timely intervention and vigorous prosecution of the perpetrators.
Stiglmayer's own pair of essays are the most useful and interesting. Her first piece is an absorbing history of the Balkans that concisely untangles the web of hatreds and violence which have plagued the area for millennia and which are still powerfully germane. Her second piece constitutes the heart of the book. In it she dramatically and persuasively demonstrates that the rapes in Bosnia are not "typical" rapes, even by wartime standards, but are a tool systematically employed by the Serb leadership to pursue its genocidal campaign of "ethnic cleansing". Her interviews illustrate that the rapes are about the humiliation of women, but they are also directed at the Bosnian Muslim population as a whole as a tactical means to accomplish the evacuation by the Muslims of large swaths of Bosnian territory.
In other essays, Paul Parin offers some ideas on the psychology of the rapes. He doesn't claim to have all the answers, but his essay is thought-provoking. Rhonda Copelon provides a considered analysis of the state of international law and its applicability to the Bosnian horrors. Her otherwise sound piece is marred by her lawyerly/academic tendency to misuse words ("surface" as a transitive verb meaning "bring to light"; "intersectional" where she means "intersecting") and her occasional unlawyerly hyperbole (she notes on p.198 that a midday women's talk show opened with the script, "In Bosnia, they are raping the enemy's women". Two pages later this has turned into the assertion that the media "often refer to the mass rape in Bosnia as the rape of the 'enemy's women'").
Surprisingly, the most disappointing essays are those by the best-known authors. The first of Catharine MacKinnon's two pieces is a reprint of a 1993 Ms. Magazine article. She gets in some obligatory feminist chops, pokes at Gloria Steinem, equates the Third Reich with Penthouse, and moans about American women in porn films, in brothels, and in slavery. She slips in a couple of gratuitous anecdotes, and that's it. No analysis, no nothing. It reads as though she wrote it on a train with a short deadline and did her research by cell-phone. Her second piece is marginally better, but her point is a weak one. She is horrified by the crimes against women, yet she wants to pile every insult and irritation ever suffered by woman under the umbrella of human rights violation. In one breathless sentence (p.185) she says "...UN troops were targeting women: 'In the streets of Zagreb, UN troops often ask local women how much they cost'". Her whining about merely boorish behavior undermines her credibility and belittles the plight of women who suffered grievously in the wars. MacKinnon is exasperating, yet passionate, but ultimately her pieces fail because of her unsupported allegations and the scattered and distracting nature of her attacks on anything that pops into her head.
Similarly, Susan Brownmiller spends her essay slamming men as warrior animals. So much so that she entirely misses the point that these rapists were not beasts out of control, but were entirely under control and following their leaders' war plans to a tee. Brownmiller is not a scholar of Balkan history with any depth or understanding. She doesn't have Stiglmayer's innovative perceptions of the war. The Brownmiller piece offers no value added, it is mere filler.
Overall the book is excellent. Although, now, five years later, Stiglmayer could well give it another update, in addition to the changes she has made for this English edition. The wars have reached a precarious end, the ICTY war crimes trials are underway. There is another chapter to be added to the book, one can only hope that Stiglmayer will provide it, so that this work can remain fresh for many more years.
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Title: Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia by Beverly Allen ISBN: 0816628181 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: February, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Wars Dirty Secret: Rape, Prostitution, and Other Crimes Against Women by Anne Llewellyn Barstow ISBN: 0829813934 Publisher: Pilgrim Pr Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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