SCOPE

SCOPE Academic journal of University College Utrecht

Fall 2019

Menstruation, a choice? P.06

Morality as a Nomad P.20

Penetrate and perpetrate P.26

editorial Dear Reader, For this edition, we gave you the adjective, ‘red’. A colour that rests at the end of the spectrum (next to orange and opposite violet), it symbolises far more than a mere addition to one’s painting. Massive social change, sexual passion, violence, political affiliation and raw emotion. Needless to say, these are things that, arguably, shaped humankind and the trajectory that we now find ourselves on. We did not expect you to produce social movements, stories of sexual passion nor acts of violence. Thankfully, you met our expectations.

As red can be representative of things of such magnanimous proportions, so too can it allow for one to get a greater insight to the world of things left unaddressed, but equally as important. Rape. Taboos. These are all scary things.

Things we would rather not talk about. Things that take bravery to address, but more to share. We are proud to be given the privilege to disseminate some of these things with you. To create a dialogue around certain taboos. Not to normalise, but to listen. To change.

The notion of ‘inequality’ is perhaps something that one would not naturally think of when someone whispers ‘red’ in their ear. Neither would we. Regardless, some do. You did. Power dynamics that not all notice. Warped realities that the omnipresent internet allows us to create. Wars and their origins and impacts.

Morality. Swarming fish. Lightning-strikes. Menstruation-stained pants. The things you are told to hold your breath at. The buildings of Athens and the unnamed contaminated toilets.

When we gave you the topic of red, we knew that there was oh so much you could come up with. A category so wide-ranging that we feared the amount of submissions we would receive. Once again, we were right. Attempting to place all of your work into one piece was both a blessing and a curse. How could we say what was right and what was wrong? You seemed to understand the concept better than we. A concept we thought was liquid was proven to be even more than that – a concept that encouraged you to think.

Through red, we realised the potential for us to give you a platform to share what we do not notice. What most people do not notice. What most people refuse to notice. We wanted you to see the red, but you saw through it.

Colofon Scope Board Sylvie van Wijk Louis Stapleton English Dany Kirilov Nadège Desmedt Vanessa Morgan Writers Ambre Ferrié Cosme Mesquita da Cunha Doris Velora Vlaar Louis Stapleton Belgian Mathilde Panis-Jones Millie Rosette Rosa Soeterbroek Editor Louis Stapleton English Artists Ambre Ferrié Doenja van der Veen Emilienne Bardsley Idalina Lehtonen Fares S. Alwani Nadège Desmedt Nia Alexieva Sylvie van Wijk Tanya Karakyriakou Vanessa Morgan Cover & back

All works have been picked with great care and even more debate. We know you will enjoy it as much as we did.

Sylvie van Wijk Nadège Desmedt

Yours truly,

E-mail: scope@ucsa.nl Facebook: facebook.com/ scopeucu/ Instagram: @scope.ucu

Louis Stapleton English, Managing Editor on behalf of the Scope board Fall 2019.

Editor in chief Sylvie van Wijk Secretary Dany Kirilov Layout Director Nadège Desmedt PR Manager Vanessa Morgan

Scope magazine

Contents Humanities World War Zero? The political and geopolitical impact of the Russo-Japanese War

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The Red Herring of the Virtual Self

38 Social Sciences

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Menstruation, it’s a choice?

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Morality as a Nomad, Living in Human Perception

26

Penetrate and perpetrate: An attempt at understanding rape in IR

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The Rwandan Genocide: a Failure of the International Community

Creative Writing Charcoal

36

Untitled

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Untitled

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Photography by Ambre FerriĂŠ

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Menstruation, it’s a choice?

Introduction

By Rosa Soeterbroek Gender and Sexuality

Illustration by Nadège Desmedt

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The Pill has been a successful and widely popular contraceptive since its introduction in the 1950’s. Over the years, its use and meaning have changed. What was first a contraceptive Pill that meant the sexual liberation of women through the ability to control their reproduction, has now developed into a commercial product.

Currently, the Pill is used by many as a menstrual suppressor as well as a contraceptive. This use, supposedly one of ‘medicine’s best-kept secrets’ (Mamo & Fosket, 2009), has been marketed as a product that allows for the choice and agency to decide over one’s body. However, its cultural effects are highly problematic for the critical feminists who so adamantly cheered on the Pill’s prior use. The contemporary use of the medicine, and the commercial editions that have come out since, have strong consequences for the lives of women, especially because it is used so widely.

Why do we so unquestionably and willingly supress our menstruations? After all, the menstrual cycle is natural to the biologically female body, and arguably no different than the production of saliva or the shedding of skin. Yet, culturally we value red menstrual blood far differently than saliva or dead skin cells.

We value it differently because of a long history of female biological inferiority and rational exclusion has taught women to hide their bodies. In this essay, I will argue that our evaluation of menstruation as connected to womanhood has created a justification for menstrual suppression in a seemingly feminist discourse. To understand the success and collective use of the Pill and commercial medication for menstrual suppression, we must understand why we feel the need to contain the female body and its products. Furthermore, the marketing rhetoric of Pill-like pharmaceuticals in the United States will shed light on the spreading of false sense of agency and choice.

This essay argues that the current discourse around menstruation reflects a patriarchal gender imbalance, a discourse that must better itself for the sake of emancipation.

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eminist and anthropological literature have agreed on one salient ‘fact’ about gender and embodiment. Namely, that the female body has been used as one of key justifications of the general power hierarchy between men and women.

“Women’s social inferiority is attributed to her faulty biology.” (Reed, 1979: 44) Female biology, subject to hormone swings and bloodshed, and predetermined to reproduce, has been historically used against women as a sign of their inferior status to men.

As Ortner (1972) states, this subordination of women exists because her physiology makes closer to nature. Ortner’s (1972) starting point is that the global positioning of women as the second sex is because of a collective dichotomy between nature and culture. Culture here is the overcoming and controlling of nature and has been accorded to men.

The reason why the woman is identified as closer to nature is because of her physiology, her ability to give birth and all additional bodily processes. Her body is preoccupied with the biological and natural side of life, with recurring menstruations and pregnancies.

In opposition, man is free of these shackling biological features, and thus has the liberty to pursue culture and rationality. The respective positions men and women take in society are highly divided, where men are occupied with public projects of enlightenment, women are relegated to the domestic familial domain. “[…] men are the “natural” proprietors of religion, ritual, politics, and other realms of cultural thought and action in which universalistic statements of spiritual and social synthesis are made.” (Ortner, 1972: 18) Contrastingly, women are associated with the lower order of social and cultural organization. In sum, the rational and cultural practice of manhood is what lacks in women, as they are preoccupied by their physiological tasks and thus have not the opportunity of self-actualization. Applying this to a bodily process natural to the female, menstruation, it becomes clear that as a part of women’s physiology, the menstrual cycle is one that holds women back from accessing the sphere of culture. Menstruation is stained as a symbol of femininity and thus relegates femininity to the domain of nature.

De Beauvoir reverses the order of this argument, when she postulates that “[…] it is because femininity means alterity and inferiority that [menstruation’s] revelation is met with shame.” (p. 378) Throughout her manifesto ‘the Second Sex’, de Beauvoir finds that woman is positioned as the Other in relation to the Man and finds that the complete inferiority of womanhood is why periods are devalued so greatly in comparison to male reproductive processes. Essentially, de Beauvoir finds the cause for menstruation being depreciated

in the subordination of woman, whereas Ortner sees menstruation being a cause for devaluation, therefore subordinating the female subject and femininity entirely.

The dualism central to Western cultural conceptions of life has also been used against women, as menstruation would supposedly be a proof of ‘women’s natural lack of separation between body and mind’ (Granzow, 2007: 45). Bordo (1993) argues similarly, when she finds that the Cartesian dualism between body and mind has been gendered. Structuring this dualism are the notions discussed above, the realm of ratio is that of men and the realm of the body is that of women. Bodily fluids have been assigned to the material, emotional and feminine world, including menstruation (MacDonald, 2007).

“Periods are a structuring factor in the hierarchy of genders” Either way, the outcome remains the same; periods are a structuring factor in the hierarchy of genders.

According to Woods (2013), ‘feminine corporeality’ in Western culture has been associated with ‘an uncontrollable flow’ of blood and tears, a body that leaks.

The leaking nature of the devalued female physiology is again a reinstation of this cultural devaluation. In short, throughout contemporary Western history, menstruation’s association with female inferiority has been expressed thoroughly (MacDonald, 2007).

The fear of menstruation Individual and societal reactions to menstruation differ, but one of the most common receptions of menstruation is fear. The fear of menstrual bloodshed has two angles, that of the environment of the menstruator and that of the menstruator themselves. The former reflects the cultural notion that menstruation belongs in the domain of nature, and, according to Turner (2003), these human fluids therefore disturb the order of culture. We have exiled bodily fluids to the material and feminine world, a world that is controlled by the rational and masculine realm (McDonald, 2007). Culture is to overcome nature (Ortner, 1972), thus any signs of menstrual blood in public are a threat to this conquering of nature. Fluid flows that transgress this line between culture and nature “challenge our sense of order and orderliness”

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(Turner, 2003: 5). We fear that periods blend and blur this division when they are public and open (Salazar, 1999), but we do not fear the blood itself.

The latter angle, that of the menstruator themselves, is an internalized fear of menstruation. Women who menstruate are required not to leak ‘socially offensive liquids such as blood’ (McMillan & Jenkins, 2016), which transforms the act of leaking into a shameful act. Again, menstruating women do not fear the actual blood though, only when it shows itself in an unwanted manner is the blood feared. We have to control our menstruation in such a way that is not visible to the outer world, we would not want our feminine inferiority to be reconfirmed. Thus, menstrual leaks point to a shameful lack of control, and losing that control is what the menstruating woman fears (MacDonald, 2007). We are mindful always of maintaining control over our bodies, to conceal the fluids that we discharge so naturally (Young, 2005). The entire practice of menstruation is tainted by furious attempts to hide these blood flows as effectively as possible; it has become a practice of discipline.

With our constant focus on concealment, we have come to experience menstruation as a bothersome element of our female bodies (Colbeck, 2018). Other than patients with obvious medical and pain-related complaints, e.g. pre-menstrual syndrome, for whom periods can be extremely painful, the monthly bleedings are seen as a chore by most women. “Many describe periods as “something to dread,” “a mess,” “a pain in the neck,” […]” (Young, 2005, p. 104) Attitudes towards menstruation range from inconvenience to disgust (McDonald, 2007; Granzow, 2007). This discomfort and unwantedness of menstruation is one of the major reasons many European girls wish to supress their periods (Aubeny, 2007).

Patriarchal instrument: The Pill A legion of sanitary products exists, from maxi-pads to ‘mooncups’ (Sesay, 2005), each designed to hide the flow, albeit as comfortable as possible for the user. We spend buckets of money on these products throughout our lifetime (Worcester, 2013). However, the new method of period control that has gained popularity since the turn of the 21st century are Pilllike commercial lifestyle drugs. With the advance of these menstrual suppressor pharmaceuticals, ‘a whole new era of menstrual concealment’ is upon us (Woods, 2013).

The Pill and its commercial editions, such as Seasonale and Seasonique, have become the new instruments of female bodily control. Rebranded and marketed as lifestyle drugs, these Direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceuticals offer the liberating option of reducing the amount of menstruations per year to a minimum of 4 or the option of absolute elimination of monthly periods. Their marketing purports a postfeminist and liberal rhetoric, effectively reinforcing traditional gender roles and keeping menstruation as a taboo (Kissling, 2013; Granzow, 2007; Mamo & Fosket, 2009).

The starting point of the DTC’s marketing strategy is proclaiming the necessity of their product for women, using feminist-sounding argumentation.

The companies employ a very successful rhetoric, that of liberal feminism or post-feminism. For liberal feminists, emancipation has been “[…] the struggle of women’s inclusion as rational actors in the social and public sphere.” (Granzow, 2007: 46) To achieve this inclusion, the menstrual suppressors are offered as the solution. Reflecting the cultural need for control over women’s bodies, post-feminism focusses on controlling the body to enable women’s access to the rational realm of men. Liberal feminism stresses individualism, choice and empowerment, to gain access to these exclusionary domains of cultural and rational self-actualisation.

Additionally, important elements of this neoliberal feminist thought are the notions of self-definition and control over one’s own body, two values that have been targeted in these DTC campaigns (Kissling, 2013).

Commercial menstrual suppressors tap into this wish for bodily control by promoting the pills as easy and effective ways to overcome the physical burden that

“We have to control our menstruation in such a way that is not visible to the outer world, we would not want our feminine inferiority to be reconfirmed” 8

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they relentlessly encourage women’s bodily discipline.

As a reconfirmation of society’s social and cultural requirement of women to control their physiology, these menstrual suppressor pills are an instrument in the patriarchal gender divisions and norms placed on the feminine.

limits their self-actualisation (Mamo & Fosket, 2009; Granzow, 2007; Kissling, 2013; MacDonald, 2007). “[…] the language of empowerment, taps into the desire for freedom, and repackages it into a pharmaceutical.”

(Mamo & Fosket, 2009: 940) More importantly, these DTC’s have been marketed as instruments of choice (Granzow, 2007). The message is that now, with the availability of these simple and liberating drugs, women have the choice and power to regulate when they menstruate and how often (Mamo & Fosket, 2009). The companies induce a sense of agency (Colbeck, 2018), the agency to cast off the limitations of their female bodies and have the lifestyles they want. These lives are portrayed as that of professional, sporty and beautiful young white women and mothers that are now free to live the fast-paced lives they strive for (McMillan & Jenkins, 2016). This notion of choice resonates well with the intended liberal feminist audience, consisting of women living busy demanding lives that do not want to concern themselves with their menstrual cycle.

However, as has become quite salient through this analysis, this rhetoric of choice implies that the choice offered is merely one of easier, more effective bodily control. The choice to control the bothersome female biological processes, in order to free the woman from her bodily restraints (Granzow, 2007; Kissling, 2007).

Women who used the pills expressed this feeling of being in control of their lives, seeing it as a positive effect of the menstrual suppressors they used (Granzow, 2007).

They identified themselves with the main messages of the DTC marketing, “avoidance of embarrassing leaks’’ and ‘‘the freedom to do whatever you want’’ (McMillan & Jenkins, 2016: 9). To these women, feeling in control means practically minimising the chance of leaks and the successful suppression of the body to allow a normally functioning life (Mamo & Fosket, 2009).

Despite the positive feelings of control expressed by the DTC users, these pills are problematic in that

Choice or constraint?

The distinction between choice and constraint reflects how these pharmaceuticals are marketed. They pose the decision as; does the consumer want be burdened by their periods, constrain their daily lives and have to deal with the hassle of monthly menstruations, or does the consumer choose for an easier life with the Pill in which she herself decides when to menstruate and how often. This portrayal of menstrual control as a choice is highly problematic in many senses, the issue of socially required control already elaborated above. Another result of this rhetoric, however, is the promotion a neoliberal sense of choice and agency, devoid of situatedness and context. The DTC campaigns’ language of freedom and possibility signal agency and autonomy, yet, in reality, this agency and autonomy is not the complete truth (Mamo & Fosket, 2009).

The choice to control, is that considered to be a choice at all? The articles analysed for this paper argue the negative, claiming that the cultural construction of the DTC Pills signal to consumers in Western society that menstruation and their body is ideally controlled, showing no leaks of biology (Mamo & Fosket, 2009; Granzow, 2007; Kissling, 2013) The agency allotted to the women taking these pills is a false understanding of self-determination, based on the assumption that there is such a thing as free agency for social actors (Granzow, 2007). Granzow (2007) and Illouz (2012) argue, like many others, that choice is always made in a political framework and social, cultural and historical context. Choice is a practice that is constrained within

Illustrations by Emilienne Bardsley

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and by the social environment an actor makes choices within. The choice in menstruation suppression is thus a decision made in specific context, a patriarchal one specifically. Even though women feel liberated by their

“Periods should not be perceived as a bodily process in the way of emancipation, but a process that can be used specifically for the emancipation of women” control of their body, there is a contradictio in terminis within this experience. Liberation through control is a gendered paradox between choice and constraint (Granzow, 2007), as it reinforces Ortner’s and de Beauvoir’s arguments of menstruation and female inferiority. Menstruating women endure the constant pressure to conceal and control their bodies, only to attain the same level as biologically unrestricted men. As such, the collective practice of menstruation suppression is the reaffirmation of existing gender norms.

Doing periods differently The effective concealment of menstruation as a result of menstrual suppressors continuously relegates the reproductive processes of women to the taboo, the unspeakable. Salazar (1999), Worcester (2013), Woods (2013), Bobel & Kissling (2011) and McMillan & Jenkins (2016) thus propose to do periods differently and uncover what has been concealed for so long. What this deconstruction of menstrual suppression has provided is an insight to the gender paradigms of western society. As Salazar (1999) posits, the transitional nature of fluids challenges the masculine and feminine binary that our society holds. More importantly, we structurally hold our daily and academic debates within this binary opposition, a practice Salazar (1999) argues we should change. We must take menstruation out of its linguistic concealment, by talking about it more openly; writing about it avoiding the binary perspective; and illustrating it as something meaningful (Bobel & Kissling, 2011). “We need to purposefully ‘leak’,

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to dare to speak out loud and positively about the blood that is natural to our existence.” (MacDonald, 2007: 352) By communicating more and better about menstruation, and not discarding it as merely a nuisance, we might attempt to take away the shame and fear associated with it (MacDonald, 2007). Periods should not be perceived as a bodily process in the way of emancipation, but a process that can be used specifically for the emancipation of women. Through actively revaluating menstruation as a naturally feminine and non-restrictive practice, we might achieve a more balanced understanding of gender and embodiment (Woods, 2013). Changing the language (Worcester, 2013) and changing the rhetoric will hopefully achieve a reorganisation of our conceptions of the female body and freedom.

In light of doing periods differently, McMillan & Jenkins (2016) encourage reflexivity among their audience on how the menstruation control narrative has played out in their lives so far. This is exactly why I have written this paper so passionately. From personal experience with the Pill and using it to suppress my monthly periods, I have noticed how I have internalized these negative feelings about menstruation. I too see the monthly bleeding as annoying and unnecessary, even though I do not have any medical or painful complications during my period. Understanding the narrative of the Pill producers has prompted me to question my own menstrual practices. As Colbeck’s (2018) auto-ethnography illustrates, through reflecting on one’s own attitudes and behaviour towards menstruation, one can uncover the biases and unconsciously held beliefs towards womanhood and embodiment.

In conclusion, the practice of menstruation and menstrual suppression as it is now, is a problematic discourse of women’s bodily oppression, encouraged under a false sense of emancipation. By equating the female body to her inferiority, menstruation too is a physiological process looked down upon. The female body becomes an axis of social control and is socially manipulated into practices of concealment and control.

The Pill and its DTC variants allow for a simple measure of control; menstrual suppression. The promotion of these pills follows rhetoric of choice and feminist agency, but in reality, the Pill is an instrument of the patriarchy. The choice that these suppressors proclaim is one of enhanced feminine control and is thus more a constraint than a choice. To avoid such problematic conceptions of menstruation, we must end the literal and linguistic concealment of menstruation and ‘leak’ it. Only then will we truly be able to self-determine and have agency over our bodies, only then we can say; menstruation, it’s a choice.

Photography by Ambre FerriĂŠ

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Photography by Tanya Karakyriakou

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HUMANITIES

World War Zero?

The political and geopolitical impact of the Russo-Japanese War Introduction

By Cosme Mesquita da Cunha The Rise and Fall of Great Powers in the Modern World

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The Russo-Japanese war set the stage for the First World War. It was a bloody and wide-reaching conflict, originating in expansionist endeavours from both belligerent nations. It shook up the balance of power, not only in East Asia where it took place, but in the whole world.

This essay will briefly explain why and how the conflict took place. It will then look at how it ended, concisely describing the terms of the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth, during which United States President Theodore Roosevelt mediated the conclusion of the fighting and the peace agreement between the two warring nations. Hereafter, this essay will discuss the consequences of the conflict. On the one side, it triggered internal change in Russia while simultaneously severely affecting its prestige and morale. On the other, it symbolised Japan’s entry in the circle of great powers at the time.

Lastly and most importantly, this essay will consider whether or not there are enough historical arguments for the conflict to deserve the name it is sometimes given - World War Zero.

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Origins of the conflit n 1904, the Russian Empire led by Tsar Nicholas was one of the biggest territorial powers in the world. It sought control over a warm-water port in the Pacific Ocean, both for trade and as a base for its expanding navy. The Siberian shipping centre of Vladivostok was forced to close for much of the winter months. In 1896, Russia had concluded an alliance with China and, in the process, pressured China into leasing them Port Arthur, strategically placed at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, in Southern Manchuria.

In the same diplomatic manoeuvre, Russia had won rights to extend its Trans-Siberian Railroad across Chinese-held Manchuria all the way to Vladivostok.

It had thereby gained domination of Manchurian territory and economy, as well as a potential monopoly over its future. It was simultaneously in position to threaten Japan’s interests in Korea and further hinder her advances west. These developments concretised Japanese fears of Russian encroachment on its plans to create a sphere of influence in Manchuria and Korea.

Russia and Japan had been on bad diplomatic terms since the 1895 Sino-Japanese War, during which Russia had provided military support to China, and after which the Russians had denied Japan the gain of Korea and the Liaodong Peninsula. The aforementioned Russo-Chinese alliance, highly economically profitable for Russia, did not help appeasing the Japanese. Seeing Russia as a rival, Japan offered to recognise Russian control over Manchuria, in exchange for Russia’s recognition of the inclusion of Korea in the Japanese sphere of influence. Russia refused, requesting the Korean territories north of the 39th parallel to act as a neutral buffer zone between Russia and Japan.

After failed negotiations early February 1904, Japan perceived Russia as a clear and immediate threat to their expansion plans in Asia, and chose to go to war, firing the first shot in a surprise attack on Port Arthur on February 8th, 1904. A few hours later, Japan formally declared war to the Russian Empire.

From a broad historical perspective, this conflict can be regarded as the logical, almost anticipated result of

a long-standing animosity between two technologically advancing and geographically expanding nations.

Indeed, both empires had been willing to emulate the more advanced Western great powers since the 1860’s: Russia by abolishing serfdom – thereby paving the way for an expansionist economy – and Japan by abandoning its exclusiveness, industrialising, arming itself and seeking spheres of influence abroad, inspired by the spectacular Meiji Restoration.

Furthermore, Russia had been advancing southeastward for centuries, and the Japanese Empire had been looking westward for three decades. For both nations, the area of prospected expansion was the weakening Chinese empire that Britain, France, Germany and the United States were already penetrating like Africa before. The realisation on both sides that they had to act quickly to be part of the carveup and settle in Manchuria and Korea might have been an important cause of the conflict. In the hurry, they might not have been inclined to compromise when it became clear they were jeopardising each other’s aims.

Ending of the conflict The war lasted from the surprise attack on Port Arthur on February 8th, 1904 until its formal end on September 5th, 1905, when a peace treaty was signed by both parties in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. During the war, Russian forces had been scattered over a vast area in the Far East, and reinforcements from the west took time to arrive, as the Trans-Siberian Railroad was not sturdy enough to support heavy traffic. Much of Russia’s fleet was stationed in Europe. Japan’s troops and naval forces were better trained, and their intelligence was more effective than Russia’s. After several bloody battles spread over 19 months, Japan won the war decisively, showing superiority in military and naval infrastructure, as well as in tactics. Numbers vary between approximately 100,000 and 200,000 casualties in total.

The Treaty of Portsmouth had the following immediate consequences: both nations pledged to return Manchuria to China and to evacuate their troops

“From a broad historical perspective, this conflict can be regarded as the logical, almost anticipated result of a long-standing animosity between two technologically advancing and geographically expanding nations” 15

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within one and a half years. Japan gained control of the Liaodong Peninsula (comprising Port Arthur) and the South Manchurian Railway (which led to Port Arthur) as well as half of Sakhalin, for which the Japanese had to drop their claims for reparations. Russia evacuated Southern Manchuria, which was restored to China.

Japan’s control of Korea was recognised.

Consequences for Russia The consequences of the conflict were considerable for Russia, both internally and internationally.

Firstly, the war was the main cause and catalyst of the 1905 Russian revolution. Shortly after Portsmouth, anti-war sentiments grew among the population.

The constraints of a large and unexpected colonial conflict, away from the Russian territory – costly in both human lives and material – aggravated social divisions, harmed the agrarian economy, and thus led to a financial crisis and enhanced social opposition to the autocratic regime. Witnessing the weakness of the regime through a painful defeat affected the people’s trust in the Tsar.

The 1905 Russian Revolution became a wave of political and social unrest that spread through the Russian Empire, including worker strikes and military mutinies, calling for reforms that were eventually granted to the people, such as the establishment of the State Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia), the multi-party system and the Russian Constitution of 1906. The effects of the war were also felt on the Western borders of the Russian Empire, with the 1905 Revolution giving rise to revolts and demands for greater freedom in Sweden but especially in Finland and Poland, where a national awakening and a burst of hope for independence took place, successful to some degree.

It is commonly believed that this first revolution of 1905, after which the Tsar was able to keep his rule, paved the way for the two decisive Russian Revolutions of 1917, which resulted in the fall and execution of the House of Romanov and the creation of the Soviet Union by the Bolsheviks. The 1905 revolution allowed Bolshevism to emerge as a political movement in Russia; Lenin, as head of the USSR, would later call it “The Great Dress Rehearsal”, without which “the victory of the October Revolution in 1917 would have been impossible”.

Secondly, the Russo-Japanese War represented a substantial blow for Russia’s international prestige.

This new power status had tangible repercussions on the European balance of power. Russia did not become a marginal power after 1905, but it became secondary in its image, its military capabilities and its potential to influence other nations. Its collapse compromised

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a political and military balance that had endured in Europe since the Napoleonic era; for while Russia lost its military status, Germany was completing an industrial and military build-up, thereby emerging as continental Europe’s supreme military and industrial power.

It should be noted that the annihilation of Russia’s navy (the third strongest in the world at the time) placed the British navy (the biggest in the world) in an even stronger position than it had been in the past decades, and allowed Britain to focus on the new German threat.

However, Germany had been rising for decades, and the Russian defeat highlighted Germany’s continental hegemony. Its ascent was already jeopardising the political stability on the continent, and the exposure of Russia’s military, naval and financial weakness as well as its internal fragility did not help in recovering a military balance. In fact, it is likely that the desire of Germany to maintain the continental supremacy it had acquired in 1905 is one of the central causes for the outbreak of the First World War. German chances of a successful offensive on its Western borders were probably bigger in 1905 than in 1914, notably because Russia would not have been able to help France after its defeat in East Asia.

Consequences for Japan The treaty of Portsmouth drew bitter reactions in Japan for several reasons. Firstly, it did not grant Japan control over the whole of Sakhalin, an island the Japanese had reluctantly turned over to Russia following the Treaty of Saint Petersburg in 1875. Secondly, Japan had had to abandon its demands for a war indemnity; Nicholas II had made clear that Japanese insistence on this point would be a reason for Russia to resume the war – Russia had been defeated but did not believe Japan had the financial capacities to keep on fighting.

Theodore Roosevelt siding with Russia on this matter elicited anti-western feelings in Japan and these were exacerbated by the American and British loans given

“This animosity and struggle for control over the Pacific Ocean would eventually materialise itself in the Pacific War, 37 years later”

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to Japan as financial support. Indeed, these gave the Treaty’s opponents the argument that Japan had fought America and Britain’s war to end Russian hegemony in Manchuria: America and Britain would have furnished the money while Japan sacrificed the men.

These somewhat unfavourable terms for Japan were caused by the fact that the war had virtually emptied the country’s coffers, which did not give Japan the negotiating power one might have expected them to possess after such a convincing military victory. This resulted in the Hibiya riots in Tokyo, subsequently leading to martial law being declared from September 6th, 1905 until November 29th, 1905. Despite this, Japan had demonstrated – with flying colours – that its military could compete with a European Great Power.

It was the first major military victory of an Asian power over a European one in the modern era - which shattered nineteenth-century illusions of western superiority - and it not only made Japan the rising Asian power; it symbolised its entry among the Great Powers of the age.

Japan, however, was not to rest on its laurels. It had showed its willingness and readiness to assume a leading role in Asian affairs, but imperial European encroachment in Asia was persistently aggravated by the growing strength of the United States, that was exploiting the war in its steady rise to global supremacy. The fact that peace was negotiated in the United States marked the establishment of America as a Pacific power, and Roosevelt’s support of Tsar Nicholas’ refusal to pay indemnities convinced Tokyo that America had more than a passing interest in Asian affairs.

Indeed, America had been a ‘sympathetic supporter’ at the outbreak of the war, but as Japan waged war without losing a single battle, Roosevelt’s hopes of seeing both belligerents exhausted soon faded, and he stated in a letter to British Diplomat Cecil Spring-Rice in December 1904 that he wondered if the Japanese did not consider all Westerners ‘white devils inferior to themselves … and seek to benefit from our [the West’s] various national jealousies, and beat us in turn.’ As Roosevelt became aware of the danger Japan constituted for American presence in East Asia, the following decades were characterised by mutual suspicion and American attempts to check Japanese continental ambition and reach in naval domination of the Pacific. This animosity and struggle for control over the Pacific Ocean would eventually materialise itself in the Pacific War, 37 years later.

World War Zero?

The Russo-Japanese War is sometimes dubbed ‘World War Zero’. There are several historical arguments for

this denomination. John W. Steinberg argues that the 1904-1905 conflict had all the elements historians discern in the World War I. Firstly, its origins are linked with the imperialist expansions of the two powers, as explained in the second chapter of this essay. Secondly, the conflict can be looked at as a ‘total war’: a twentieth-century phenomenon where every aspect of a nation’s economic, cultural and political life is affected, and where the societies and politics of the belligerent nations are transformed after the hostilities. In this regard, the Russo-Japanese war resembles the First World War more than any other previous conflict does. Thirdly, in military terms, more than 2.5 million men were mobilised, all armed with sophisticated weapons, products of the late nineteenth-century industrial machine, both more efficient and available in greater numbers than ever before in military history. The Industrial Revolution had taken warfare to a higher level, that necessitated a new quality of professional management, from the acquisition and the production of raw materials and equipment to the recruiting, training, supplying and commanding of soldiers. Waging war now required a

“Crudely said, the war was fought by a European power against an Asian power and funded by a third-party money market” firm relationship between government, industry, and the rest of the economy.

This development in armaments also heightened the killing power of war. Engagements were prolonged and produced no decisive victories, but rather massive casualties. Science also played a decisive role in restructuring warfare, through the development of naval mines and torpedoes, greater communication with the telegraph, and transportation with railroads. However, even more than the dimension and the brutality of the war, Steinberg believes it is the scope of international involvement during and after the conflict that brings it closer to a World War than previous conflicts. Every European great power was implicated by willingly or reluctantly supporting one of

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the belligerents, mostly by financing the war. Crudely said, the war was fought by a European power against an Asian power and funded by a third-party money market. The demands of the industrialised battlefield made war costly, and both nations had to reach outside their own resources to finance the conflict.

The role of the United States in resolving the conflict is another indication of the global scale it had taken. The involvement of transnational and non-governmental organisations aiding victims of the war also marked the new consideration given to common problems and challenges, and these agencies would become increasingly necessary as the twentieth century progressed. As last argument, Steinberg mentions that the Treaty of Portsmouth left as many issues unresolved as resolved, similarly to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, and that Portsmouth planted the seeds for the future conflict.

Rotem Kowner quite sharply disagrees with Steinberg’s arguments. To him, the Russo-Japanese War was not a global conflict, since it involved only two adversaries directly. For neither of the two countries was it a ‘total war’ like they would experience during the World Wars; relative to the numbers of participants, the war was a bloody one, but compared to subsequent wars in the 20th century, the death toll was rather low. Furthermore, the conflict was not motivated by hatred and dehumanisation, characteristic of several 20th century conflicts. He continues saying that during most of the war, only a small segment of the Russian military apparatus was employed, and that the Russian casualties were far lower than those in the Crimean War. No other power intervened directly, and even their closest allies - the United States and Great Britain on Japan’s side and France on Russia’s side - did everything to avoid taking active part in the conflict.

Finally, no revolutionary weapon on the scale of the airplane, tank or submarine was introduced during the war like it was during World War I. He claims that if the Russo-Japanese war carried any global significance, it was in its repercussions. Firstly, in how it touched upon the economy and military organisation of every power in the early twentieth century and affected the stability of Europe, as explained in the fourth chapter of this essay. Secondly, how it changed the equilibrium between the United States and Japan and the territorial situation in Asia, as explained in the fifth chapter of this essay.

However, Steinberg and Kowner agree on a crucial point: the war saw the rise of large-scale, bloody battles, on an industrialised battlefield, and marked a significant improvement in military logistics as well as the renewed importance of overwhelming firepower.

Most importantly, they both stress that the inability of

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“This new kind of warfare is a testimony of the folly of politicians and nations during the Belle Époque and led to the horrendous slaughter of the First World War” the European powers to learn lessons from the war and recognise the horror of this new kind of warfare is a testimony of the folly of politicians and nations during the Belle Époque and led to the horrendous slaughter of the First World War. Conclusion There are many reasons to argue against the viability of the Russo-Japanese War as World War Zero. Even though it had considerable consequences on the internal politics of Russia, Japan’s status as a world power and the balance of power in both Europe and Asia, ultimately shaking up the established world order, it was, geographically speaking, not a global conflict, and it did not reach the level of infamy, insanity and destruction of the two World Wars.

However, the Russo-Japanese War was a modern twentieth-century conflict that revealed the direction in which the internal and external policies of the Great Powers were taking the world. Little good can be said about the culmination of these policies, since they turned out to be the introduction to the period of total, cruel, dehumanised conflict that the first half of the 20th century would become.

Top: Photography by Doenja van der Veen Below: Photography by Nia Alexieva

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SOCIAL SCIENCES

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Where does morality live?

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Morality as a Nomad, Living in Human Perception

By Ambre Ferrié Psychology 20

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o date, there has been no ‘universal’ moral norm invariably held across the world and across time. Even seemingly universal moral taboos, such as incest and murder, are or have been accepted and viewed as morally permissible under certain circumstances, in certain places in the world, and at certain times. For instance, the Zoroastrians in Iran, one of the world’s oldest religious communities, historically practiced nuclear family incest, yet also abided to strict moral rules, such as not having physical contact with any flow of blood or any creature harmful to man (i.e. wasps), as these were seen as impure (Boyce, 2001).

Furthermore, nowadays, murder is considered as morally permissible, under the form of the death penalty, in certain areas (i.e. it is legal in 30 out of 50 American states, and in about 52 other countries across the world), and morally impermissible in others, in which it has been abolished (Hood, & Hoyle, 2015).

However, although there appears to be no universal moral rule, the concept of morality is universal itself, as it is invariably found across time and space: there is no known Human community or culture in which a dimension of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is absent (Ayala, 2010).

This simple fact strongly suggests that the capacity for morality (perhaps largely based on the ability to emotionally empathise) is universal, and thus very likely biologically based, whereas moral content is found somewhere else (Ayala, 2010; Decety, & Cowell, 2014). In other words, the capacity to emotionally empathise may be genetic, but who to emotionally empathise with and in which circumstances (i.e. moral norms) is most likely not hard-wired in our genes, much like the neurological structures are genetically ‘in place’ to acquire language once it is perceived, but the language itself is not genetically inherited. One cannot speak a language without exposure to it, like one does not have a sense of morality or a moral stance before they are exposed to a set of moral rules or values, as seen in feral children (LaPointe, 2005). Further, one is not simply exposed to language or morality, but they are born into a social world, which can only exist and function if there is a common agreement that certain sounds and symbols in certain combinations must represent certain concepts (i.e. language), and that certain actions or scenarios have a strong ‘good’ or ‘bad’ valence (i.e. morality).

Moreover, the deep impact that enculturation, or ‘moral enculturation’, may have on individuals can be reflected by the observation of “dumbfounding” (i.e. difficulty to justify one’s moral judgement). Used by researchers such as Haidt to argue for biologically rooted moral foundations, this phenomenon does not necessarily entail that moral content is encoded

in Humans’ genes (Haidt, 2001). Indeed, a part of enculturation may be done subconsciously, perhaps through classical conditioning: from the moment one is an infant, and throughout one’s entire life, what the culture/ household they are born into considers immoral is associated with negative outcomes, that can in turn deeply and negatively affect the individual (i.e. punishment, negative views and affect from others and eventually from oneself towards oneself, negative social consequences like ostracism), and moral scenarios may be associated with positive outcomes or affect.

Moral judgements thus become like an ‘automatic’ reaction, what Haidt considers an “intuition”, but through associative learning and experience, instead of genes stemming from evolutionary adaptations (Haidt, 2001). That being said, numerous historical events nevertheless demonstrate that enculturation does not seem to equal cultural determination of moral judgement. Indeed, even as social beings, individuals are not entirely subject to enculturation, as they often question, resist, and sometimes elicit change in cultures’ moral norms, as illustrated by protests, revolutions, social movements, and socially motivated art (i.e. literature, photography, etc.). Linking back to the parallelism with language, one can be (by choice, or not) exposed to a different set of moral rules and choose to ‘learn’ them, as well as whether to ‘use’ them (i.e. ‘learning’ them does not necessarily entail ‘using them’, but ‘using’ them requires ‘learning’ them, just like language). One can also decide to create a new language, like one can advocate for a new or different (set of) moral rule(s) using an already existent moral ‘matrix’. For this reason, a common agreement is at the same time both very strong and prone to breaking down: if enough people counter the common agreement, then a new common agreement can form.

Indeed, an especially useful historical event for understanding where morality lives is one that basically formed a new ethical system (i.e. a system of moral values providing a classification of certain actions as ‘evil’ or ‘good’), or redefined an already-existing concept of morality, such as the Nazi movement. What is notable is that the Holocaust did not represent evil for most of the perpetrators (contrarily to themajority of the rest of the world), who described it as a “difficult but justifiable way of dealing with their situation” (McFarland-Icke, 1999; Haas, 2014). People participating in the mass Nazi movement were not characteristically immoral individuals either (which would also be unlikely given the scale of the movement): one moment, individuals did not believe that Jewish people were morally ‘bad’ and that it was morally permissible to take their lives, whilst another moment found them contributing to the mass deportation and

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extermination of millions of Jews, including children, in some way or another (Haas, 2014). One could even say that these people were ethically sensitive, like the vast majority of neurologically- unimpaired individuals in the world, as they exhibit a moral dimension. It is what they understood to be evil that shifted, and the depth of this shifted belief is revealed through the dedication and professionalism through which Nazi lawyers, doctors, and camp commandments did their job, one that they found not simply morally permissible, but morally valuable (Haas, 2014). This case study thus reveals not the evil nature that people can have, but the Human ability to redefine what evil is (Haas, 2014).

Indeed, events in history like this one thus also portray the power that persuasion detains in establishing moral rules, as the Nazis used the “weapons” of educational indoctrination, mass advertising, and propaganda to breakdown “traditional” morality, and gain support for the “Nazi ethic” (Wilson, 1993; Haas, 2014). Indeed, the Nazi propaganda focused on portraying the deportation of Jewish people as compatible with the overall good of self- preservation (which people can easily sympathise with), as Jews were very clearly and persuasively identified and symbolised as imminent threats to German culture (Haas, 2014). This was built onto the already existing Western moral concept that there is an ‘evil’ to combat: the focus was simply directed towards Jews in a very clear and coherent manner, that apparently Germans could at least somewhat identify with (Haas, 2014). Although some argue that the (temporary) implementation of this new set of moral rules is mostly due to the terror instilled by the Nazis, the Nazi regime gained support before it could use terror tactics, and the post-hoc testimonies and determined involvement of individuals suggests that they were motivated by moral conviction rather than terror (McFarland-Icke, 1999). In addition, this moral conviction and determination was notably exhibited during the Holocaust (the epitome of what would have previously been seen as ‘pure evil’ by Germans), which was the culmination of 12 years of Nazi ideology propagation (Haas, 2014). Adopting and being ‘dedicated’ to certain moral norms may thus also partly be due to Humans’ general preference for what is familiar, as reported in many different fields of psychology, perhaps to avoid the destruction of one’s world view (i.e. cognitive dissonance). This would explain why moral rules usually take time to change, and even longer to fully be ‘internalised’, or truly ‘believed’ (sometimes several generations) (Sluckin, Hargreaves, & Colman, 1982).

In sum, this paper has argued that morality is a common agreement within groups of people, crucial for a somewhat orderly functioning of society, much

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like the crucial common agreement that certain sounds in certain combinations have a certain meaning, otherwise known as language. The neurologicallyintact Human brain seems to have certain structures or functions in place (i.e. emotional empathy), which act as ‘receptors’ for morality, enabling one to deeply feel or understand the moral norms that they are being presented with, and thereby to act according to these moral expectations. However, these necessary predispositions do not have moral content, they simply enable the perception of a moral dimension (a ‘good’ to ‘bad’ scale). Indeed, one gains access to these common agreements, composing morality, through the exposure to their environment’s moral system or codes (‘moral enculturation’), and subsequent cognitive and emotional learning, which can be conscious (i.e. explicit memory, rationalisation, convincing perspective), and perhaps partly unconscious (i.e. associative learning).

The societal nature of morality can clearly be seen in some historical events, such as the Nazi movement, in which a new set of moral rules are formed and empowered on a mass scale, and thus by people with many initially different moral ‘profiles’. Indeed, this ability to redefine morality - what is considered good, and what is considered bad - strongly suggests that one does not have genetically-based sensitivities to different ‘moral foundations’ that are fixed after childhood, but that ‘morality’ is in fact a dynamic set of agreements on what should be avoided and what should be strived for within communities. These common agreements are very likely a product of many different factors, such as various environmental circumstances and history (i.e. religious and mythological stories and texts). However, despite a general preference for familiarity, moral rules can, have, and are constantly being challenged and changed across time and space, due to new arguments and perspectives, and thus shifting perceptions of the moral valence given to actions or situations. As Haas (2014) states, “one of the characteristics of the modern world is the unseating of the classical vision of the cosmos as containing ideal types, including objective, built-in cosmological standards of good and evil. For us, good and evil no longer are ideal and isolable standards but are conceptualisations intimately bound up with human perception, imagination, and discourse”.

Photography by Nia Alexieva

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Collage by Sylvie van Wijk

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Penetrate and Perpetrate An attempt at understanding rape in IR Abstract

By Mathilde Panis-Jones International Relations

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This paper aims to investigate the complex role rape plays in our daily, political lives. It quickly becomes apparent that rape is both condoned and condemned in society, through our relationship with nature, our understanding and appreciation for rape culture, and the contemporary portrayal of rape in private and public spheres.

This investigation is about questioning the behaviors and practices that make up our current apprehension of rape, about getting lost, and making oneself uncomfortable. An emotionally strong and yet factually rich research is what enabled this essay to come to its term. As Patti Lather puts it, “the only book that is worth writing is the one we don’t have the courage or strength to write�: and the hope for a better understanding of a phenomenon that affects not only society, but also our friends, sisters, and mothers is the sole driving force for such research.

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This essay addresses the politics of sexual assault.

I would like to emphasize the sensitive nature of some of these words, recognizing that they might be visual, hurtful, challenging, disturbing and potentially traumatizing.

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aving conversations with middle school counsellors about the length of little girl’s dresses. Holding keys between knuckles when walking alone at night. Taking selfdefense classes the moment one moves out of their parents’ homes. Tête-à-tête discussions in the living room with scared mothers explaining to their daughter how men “just are” sometimes. Going through the various bureaucratic procedures in the hospital emergency unit. Witnessing the explicit ignorance of rape allegations. Committing suicide after being raped.

Rape is all around us, and it has everything and nothing to do with violence. As a complex gendered sexual act with multiple motivations that can only be explained by combining diverse feminist theories and perspectives and by deconstructing women’s silences, studying rape seems vital in order to problematize rape as a phenomenon, as a tool, and as a problem to fix.

In the overwhelmingly rational field of IR, feminist research about rape stands out. Not only because it addresses a consistently dramatized and yet overlooked topic, but because it attempts to understand rape of many levels. Rape is more than just personal, but it is also more than just a phenomenon. The acknowledgement that these two levels of interpretation must be intertwined in order to become complimentary of each other is essential in order to make concretely evolve our current understanding of rape. This must be done because we find ourselves constantly legitimizing, accepting, embracing, and overlooking a broader understanding of rape while punishing or purposefully neglecting a personal one. The goal is to attempt to understand rape as a broader phenomenon, which includes the commonsensical imagery, but locates it in broader structures of patriarchy, misogyny, and knowledge. By doing so, institutionalized responses to an experience that is generally solely thought of in interpersonal terms might will come to being. And these responses will then be appropriate, englobing, universal understandings which will not fail to neglect the personal. It seems essential to make something visible that for many is too difficult to face up to: our own violence. At risk of victim-blaming, the understanding we might have of rape on a multidimensional field is one that we are all responsible for, aided by inherent concepts of misogyny, masculinity, patriarchy, imperialism and dominance. It is crucial to recognize

that this realization goes hand in hand with that of the role of women’s silences in academic and patriarchal culture. Not just victims.

The bulk of this essay will focus on the overlooked practical tool that rape has been and continues to become, as well as on the attempt to incorporate the neglected personal into the accepted universal. We will be able to understand that the rape that we have come to condone serves the purpose of legitimizing a broader practice of rape: the violation of nature, the world, and a large part of the population of the world; while the rape that we condemn is only understood in very narrow terms of victimhood.

I. Condoning Rape: a Practical Tool It is vital to highlight the unseen, the unheard, the unspoken in a field that, while bringing about subliminal understandings of things, tends to focus on the very visible aspects of politics. And an important concept of rape in IR is its very condonation on a widespread level.

This is not explicitly done, but is consistently reinforced through practices, observations and dialogues, notably through our compliance with systems in which nature is dominated, nations are colonized, cultures are appropriated, and the female gender is subordinated.

It is this very understanding that we, conveniently, tend to leave out of problematization of the rape phenomenon. And while we might agree that rape happens on a structural level, the tendency remains to just accept its benefits - therefore reinforcing, condoning such an understanding.

The rape of women: a gendered tool Overlooking the gendered nature of the crime of rape would be grossly negligent. Men tend to be the perpetrators of rape, with 91% of the victims of rape and sexual assault identifying as women, while 9% are male. This is not to say that women do not rape either, it simply serves the purpose of highlighting the overriding gender relations that come into play: much more often than not, rape consists of a man raping a woman. And while acknowledging that gender as a construct involves an intricate system of values, it is still possible to point out certain elements that reinforce the assumption that “gender-motivated violence against women is perpetrated against women collectively, albeit not all at once and in the same place”.

And including gender in one’s research about a sexual crime can prove to be controversial and confusing at times. With some not caring to acknowledge the difference between “sex” and “gender”, feminists must be critical in their choice of words and their respective analyses, while constantly holding each other

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accountable for their inclusivity and accessibility: MacKinnon criticizes Brownmiller for taking gender as a biological concept, instead of a social hierarchical construct. Rape is ultimately inseparable from the concept of gender. Understandings of women’s vulnerability, masculinity, compulsive heterosexuality, gender dichotomies, and misogyny are essential in order to comprehend the role gender plays in the perpetuation and acceptance of rape.

As a first layer of a gendered grasp on rape, we understand women as being complicit in their own rape.

Women in general, as a gender, operate in ways which make them defenseless towards being raped, whether

“Rape is ultimately inseparable from the concept of gender” it be through their own actions or through socially constructed expectations. Yet, it is fundamentally problematic to frame women as inherently vulnerable to violent crimes. Feminists, in their theories, sometimes emphasize the role that women play in their rapes, as an empowering way to showcase their ability to be responsible for their own actions. This victim-blaming is done by characterizing women as passive, vulnerable, weak, and impotent victims.

And this carries a certain weight. On the one hand, it justifies the crime by explaining that because women are so submissive, rape has to be a natural occurrence.

On the other hand, because of this mindset, it becomes possible to be able to promote rape as some sort of tool for femininity. Since rape is enforced and felt by a gender as a whole through girlhood, albeit not always directly, Cahill remarks that girls “enter womanhood freighted with post-memories of sexual violence”, and years of peremptory warnings and cautionary tales lead[ing] many victims to experience rape as “a threat fulfilled”. The evolution of girlhood to womanhood is marked and aided by general stories of rape, especially in society marked by a culture of rape. We are trained our whole lives to be reminded of the existence of rape, and this very prompting of rape is what makes us women. It plays an essential and unavoidable role in training women for the requirements of femininity, aided by the false promise that by being “good,” women will be able to avoid disaster. This tool for femininity is emphasized through understandings and trainings of the female body: the ideal body “is that of a previctim”. The perfect feminine form is marked by hesitancy, relative weakness, delicacy, and restraint -

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qualities that do in fact render women more vulnerable to violence. Yet, women and girls alike are taught to view their bodies and their sexual being as dangerously provocative because they are inherently and undeniably “rape-able”. If we are so rape-able, what else should we expect but to get raped? Understanding rape as a tool for femininity and as a way to make excuses for the crime, we are able to make sense of the indisputable need to include gender in the conversation. This cannot be seen as the only relevant explanation: these theories have been criticized by Esther Madriz and Haraway, among others, for having reconstructed (rather than displayed) women as victims – heaping the feminine experiences together under one common identity.

On the other side of the gender spectrum, explanations for rape often lay in men’s need to affirm, define and manifest their masculinity. Combining ideas of hostile masculinity and patriarchal ideology enables us to comprehend another facet of the rape conversation. Social Constructivism gives us the means to understanding how men redefine their maleness through rape through dominant cultural scripts. Their motivations to rape women are endless, confusing and sometimes contradictory, but fall within patterns of feeling powerless rather than powerful, achieving sexual gratification, and proving their manhood. American sociologist Diana Scully, in her empirical work with convicted rapists, found multiple motivations for the crime, including: revenge, punishment, sexual access to unavailable or unwilling women, sexual conquest, desire to have impersonal sex, fulfill a rape fantasy, adventure, recreation, pursue a challenge, power, control, dominance, to feel good, show camaraderie with other men, and to prove their masculinity.

Through learnt and engrained gendered assumptions, men are taught, albeit not explicitly, to rape. However, once again, there seems to be something dangerous about regrouping an entire gender under such ideas and presumptions. The (feminist) claim that all men have power over all women, and that the patriarchy privileges all men is an oversimplification of the rape phenomenon and fails to acknowledge male diversity.

This is impressively articulated by Kimmel, who explained that “the feminist definition of masculinity as the drive for power is theorized from a woman’s point of view. It is how women experience masculinity.

But it assumes a symmetry between the public and private that does not conform to men’s experiences.

Feminists often observe that women, as a group, do not hold power in our society. They also observe that individually, they, as women, do not feel powerful. They feel afraid, vulnerable. Their observations of the social reality and their individual experiences are therefore

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symmetrical. Feminism also observes that men, as a group, are in power. Thus, with the same symmetry, feminism has tended to assume that individually men feel powerful.”

Problems regarding the oversimplification of the male experience of rape might be diluted by including details of individual men’s motivations to perpetrate rape in their attempts to achieve masculinity rather than placing all men in a single class with a single motive. Again, it would seem counter-productive, as it is with regards to women, to assume that a whole gender is to blame. The perpetuation of dichotomous institutions and cultures propagate the axiomatic claim that rape is grounded in men’s socialized aggression and women’s socialized passivity. This phenomenon is then treated as if occurring in a neat binary that explains rape as a social problem. However, a model where men are to be blamed seems difficult to problematize. This is because passivity is never the cause of a rape, and the juxtaposition between the degree of aggression of the rapist with the level of innocence of the victim necessarily obscures the fact that a victim can neither be more nor less innocent of a crime she did not commit.

Because, while male aggression is an invariable source of sexual assault, female passivity is neither a constant nor a cause of rape. And it remains difficult to be lenient towards men in a dichotomous world, because, as Catherine MacKinnon famously argued, “the state is male” to the extent that it understands rape only from the perspective of the men perpetrators. The more “objective” a claim appeared to the judicial system, the less it represents women’s point of view: objectivity in the legal system had come to mean men’s point of view. And while some focus solely on male aggression, an aggression which seems to only be able to be uprooted by addressing the problem itself rather than its symptoms, others suggest that female passivity is the site for change. While we must be careful with dichotomous conclusions, why aren’t we focusing on changing the behavior of the perpetrators rather than the victims? Why aren’t we promoting and locating the “possibilities for resistance” in self or rape-awareness courses for men rather than self-defense training for women?

Ideas about female passivity and male aggression are complemented with ideas about sexuality. We can recognize that concepts about gender persist in compulsive heterosexuality, and this deep-rooted phenomenon might be used to explain the occurrence of rape. In MacKinnon’s view there is commonality between heterosexual intercourse and the act of rape. In her opinion, rape is solely on a continuum of normative heterosexuality where violence is eroticized and female subjugation is ensured. Rape is about sex

and violence, which are fused under a system of gender inequality. This is notably visible in pornography: the very existence of public and accessible sources of visual pornographic rape is evidence enough to show the prevalence of normalized, aggressive, and ostentatious rape. And while the correlations between pornography and rape seem extensive, the very denial of its prevalence would only prove that many men who consume pornography are potential rapists, in that the only thing stopping them from sexually violating women is their ability to masturbate to porn. As a society, we like to condone and fear pornography for its potential to perpetuate rape culture, all while playing into the porn industry and the acceptance of rape. Even in mainstream porn, special categories of “popular with women” thrive, where the sexual experience is less violent, more caring, less “gangbang-y” and ultimately less “rape-y” for women.

What does that say about us? Our understandings of femininity and masculinity, female and male, women and men, are clearly materialize themselves into the core concept of misogyny. Misogyny, the ingrained prejudice against and outright hatred of women, is at the very core of our explanations for rape. For example, the idea that women need constant disciplining, and so therefore utilizing rape as a way to put women “back in their rightful spot” - as a marginal, as frail and fragile, as victims; clearly owes its existence to misogynistic values. Revenge porn as a way of getting back at girls and women who do not want men, sexually, exhibits itself as a form of conceptual rape. Through an “incel” subculture, we can see that misogynistic ideas about women and their rape is perpetrated by the violence of men who have been rejected by women time and time again. Misogyny as an umbrella excuse for all violence towards women is also understood in the way we treat the few women that come out as rape victims: it says something about the confidence we have in women’s ability to tell the truth.

We condone rape through our learnt convictions and actions surrounding our understandings of gender.

Because of our engrained misogynistic beliefs, we make excuses for the prevalence of rape, on account of female passivity and male aggression, continuously perpetuating dangerous dichotomies between male and female, victim and perpetrator. However, this is not the only way we are able to condone rape, silently ignoring its detrimental effects: we also do so through the rape of non-western society, and nature.

The rape of nature and of the non-western world: a cultural tool “Woman is to man what nature is to culture”, and culture tends to overpower nature. This seems to be

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at the heart of the ecofeminist understanding of rape.

Through our dominance over the physical, natural world, it has become clear that we, as “mankind”, have been raping nature for centuries. But how can our inherent dominance over nature be considered rape?

Some would flatly assert that we find women subordinated to men in every known society. By comparing the relationship between women and men, and nature and culture, we carry out the assumption that culture has been carrying out its dominance over nature for centuries. In this theory, we might equate culture with the notion of human consciousness, or with the products of human consciousness, by means of which humanity attempts to assert control over nature. This manipulation of culture over nature is understood to regulate and sustain order, asserting that proper relations between human existence and natural forces depend upon culture’s capacity to employ its special dominating powers to regulate the overall processes of the world and life. It is evident that culture’s project always seems to consist in overcoming and transcending nature. This leads to two important understandings: either women are to be understood as part of nature, especially noticeably through our depictions of women as earth mothers, casting and projecting women as passive objects, awaiting to be raped. Otherwise women in relation to men are to be considered what nature is to culture. If women were to be considered part of nature, then culture would find it “natural” to subordinate and oppress them: it is always culture’s role to transcend that of nature’s. Men are then not only distinct from nature but superior to it. Consequently, if nature were to be identified as a female body; the ecological crisis which the contemporary world faces should be depicted as the abuse, rape or slaughter of the sacred mother. Yet, this analogy is not helping us deal with either the issue of climate change (and other pressing environmental crises), nor with rape and its culture. On the other hand, perhaps this view does not function with the idea that women are victims, as is nature. If the rape metaphor is still applicable in the ecofeminism of today, it needs to go hand in hand with rape theories that construct women not as absent victims, but rather as figures of power, resilient survivors and transgressors of harmful dichotomies, rather than victims of natural rape. Either way, the characterization of nature’s rape is essential in our current, broader understanding of rape: we have normalized a phenomenon which, in its essence, is extremely destructive and scarring.

The Western world has not only carried out the rape of our nature, but also that of peoples and their cultures. Through the imperialistic ideal of colonization and our contemporary ideas of cultural

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appropriation, rape has played in integral part in our understanding of colonization, and vice versa. Rape is more than a metaphor for colonization: it is integral to colonization.” It seems difficult to even separate rape from the physical process of occupation, with a legacy of sexual violence itself originating in colonial processes and policies. While rape has been happening for centuries, it had been deemed as a particularly efficient tool when peopling millions of local inhabitants. Whether they were motivated by exoticist lusts, or a desire to whitify the current population through the impregnation of local colored women, rape was an omnipresent reality during colonialism.

It is also important to note that sexual violence is just one manifestation of the continuum of violence wrought by settler colonialism. Beyond the physicality of rape in colonial history, rape seems to draw resemblance to that of colonization: “the damage to self and spirit that rapists cause has some of the same features that colonial governments perpetrate against entire nations”. Not only that, but the distance we tend to take between the colonizer and the locals, as well between the rapist and the victims seems very similar: we ignore past actions, push to forgive and forget the past, and constantly forgive the wrongdoer on grounds of “human nature” and its impulses. Traditional rape, just can be seen as impacts towards all women and not just its victims, has the same effect on colonies: “the damage to self and spirit that rapists cause has some of the same features that colonial governments perpetrate against entire nations”. This form of physical and cultural violence, and violence in general, is not always experienced as an individual; some forms of brutality manifest themselves as systemic yet invisible structures that accomplish the trauma of violence on a large scale. And this is exactly how rape and colonization interact: they both accomplish the trauma of violence on a large scale. And it is not only about how colonialism can be employed as a metaphor for cultural rape, equating rape to the entire concept of colonialism, it is also about how colonialism contributed to our modern understanding of rape culture. Rape culture emerges from, and is fostered through, colonial ways of seeing the world which are expressed in the daily interpersonal actions, beliefs, and attitudes of rapists, victims and accomplices alike.

This culture, and colonialism more broadly, have both worked to sever relationships that have long been fostered in colonized lands: relationships between body and spirit, land and body, body and our nonhuman kin, and between ourselves and our relations.

Rape and colonization work in parallels, drawing elements from each other and building each other up.

Rape is a cultural tool, used to control nature and

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people alike. With stories of dominant and marginal coming into play, one can understand how fundamental and unsurprising this seems to be. Man, as a universal and as a gender, is consistently a dominant element in his interactions with the rest of the world. Men are able to use and abuse our bodies, our environment, and our culture. Their violence exceeds that of the physically living and transcends into complicated understandings of culture. By destroying certain marginal views, beliefs and ways of being, rapists, in the broadest of terms, have been able to create a new culture: one that enacts and reinforces our current widely shared cultural views about sovereignty, the environmental, femininity and sexuality.

The rape of politics and rape culture: a phenomenon of power, a tool for fear ‘‘When more than two people have suffered the same oppression the problem is no longer personal but political - and rape is a political matter.’’

As with the rape of the Earth or that of colonies, the very existence of political rape and rape culture seem to be challenging and questionable. While it seems clear that rape involves certain interplays of power dynamics and interactions between the dominant and the marginal, rape can also be understood as a phenomenon of power, promulgating a tool for fear.

Rape is an institution. A social one, a cultural one, and terrorist one. Card defined institutions as a structured social practice with distinct positions and roles, which can be understood as those of the dominant and the marginal, and with explicit or implied rules that define who may or must do what under what circumstances. Rape clearly falls into this definition of institutions: women and men are both expected to act in certain ways, reinforcing certain societal and cultural understandings of what it means to be male, and what it means to be a female. This is why rape can be seen as a terrorist institution: while it does not involve our traditional portrayals nor understandings, rape advances its political purpose by terrorizing a target population. The main goal of rape, as a terrorist institution, is the continued subordination of women.

Like all terrorism, rape has two targets: the direct victims, who are seen as expendable, and the broader population to whom a message is sent, and who can then be manipulated by fear into complying with demands they would otherwise reject. This is exactly what has

been put forward earlier in this investigation: rape is committed not only towards victims directly, but to women as a gender everywhere. This generalized and universal violation of women leads to fear in response.

On a smaller scale, women constantly think about their actions: what to wear, what to drink, how to act, who to talk to, who to avoid, etc. This is the very premise of terrorist institutions: women have been conditioned to modify their behavior in order to conform to certain rules, and to comply with patriarchal and misogynistic understandings of the ins and outs of the male world.

Even women who, because of their conformity to these rules, do not feel afraid of being raped have, nonetheless - as Card points out - been terrorized into societal compliance. Furthermore, this inculcation of norms does not discriminate: men have also been socialized into complying with the terrorist institution that rape is. Brothers, fathers, boyfriends and husbands alike are all eager to warn women about the dangers of certain men who rape, all while promising to deliver them from the alarming horrors committed by other men. However, the very articulation of these sentiments towards aggressors fails to be acknowledge the hypocrisy of the situation: if all men express these sentiments of distrust towards their gender, who is to be considered not part of this danger? And when men offer protection, it comes with a price. Men, as the group both creating the danger and proposing to deliver women from it, claim their role of protector sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent, often illusory - in exchange for women’s service, loyalty, and compliance. Part of being a woman, if she is seen to be virtuous and deserving, is being protected by “good” men from “bad” men. Who makes the distinction between the two?

Because of this general tendency to use terrorizing techniques in order normalize certain behaviors, and our potential inability to differentiate between good and bad men, we have entered an era of “rape culture”.

One can define rape culture as “an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture”. In an era in which it has become the norm to blame victims, trivialize assault, pressure men to score, and teach women to avoid getting raped instead of teaching men not to rape, it is clear that we are now part of one”.

Rape culture enacts and reinforces, rather than

“Rape is an institution. A social one, a cultural one, and terrorist one.”

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contradicts, widely shared cultural views about gender and sexuality. And the prevalence of this culture is because, at its heart, rape is a crime of the commons.

Rape is committed by exemplars of our social norms: it is no excess, no aberration, no accident, no mistake—it embodies sexuality as the culture defines it. Examples of social norms: star athletes, straight-A students, and fraternity members - just like Brock Turner, David Becker, Nicholas Fifield, and John Enochs, to name a few.” It is not only them, but all the people that support, or at least, sympathize with them: “[it is] incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart.” Yet, there is no regard for the victims of these crimes. Kate Manne regards this tendency to show compassion for rapists as “himpathy”, as an overlooked mirror image of misogyny. But this isn’t because the problem of himpathy is rare. On the contrary—it’s so common that we don’t even regard it: we overlook it.

The excessive sympathy we extend towards rapists is frequently witnessed in contemporary society to men who are white, and otherwise privileged “golden boys”.

The condonation of rape is a constant reality for women, nature, and culture; fueled by our general inability to tackle powerful and detrimental narratives of rape. It is easy to point out rape culture, and it has been done time and time again. What is more complex is locating opportunities and sources for change. How do we move on from rape culture, the epitome of the exact characterization of rape condonation? Our very narrow understandings of what “bad rape” is needs to be expanded, diversified and proliferated.

a practical tool to advance our hurtful views. At first glance, this seems hopeful: finally, a recognition of rape as a punishable, harmful offense - and it should be embraced. However, the problem with this specific understanding of rape is the detriment it poses to society: we glorify the trauma and the violence that makes “rape” rape in order to shape it into a flashy topic to serve selfish purposes, all while neglecting this very trauma and grandiosity once it does not serve the purpose of the media, the court, or the politician.

This dangerous cycle of recognition is only aided by the scope of rape and its portrayal, both pertaining to the personal and the universal.

The (Limited) Personal Scope of Rape When Rousseau thought to associate women with the private sphere, and the general “personal”, he had a reason: “women supposedly suffer unique bodily passions which bring on mental weaknesses, like an inability to think straight”. It seems logical then to involve the personal, for one of the most personal of crimes, violating one of the most personal of places: the body.

Despite our general reluctance to promote rape awareness, we have managed to find a way to make rape very wrong and punishable. We have been able to do so by redefining sexual assault, albeit in very narrow terms. This straightforward, strict and uncompromising (re)definition of rape has been reinforced through our first understandings of the term, and this narrow understanding is primarily legal.

The law has been able to do so through the inclusion of certain minimum requirements to meet the threshold of rape, as well as general legal elements, such as that of consent, mens rea and the burden of proof. In its II. Condoning Rape: a Problem to Fix application, rape is a straightforward, technical and realist issue - one which has looked into statistics, A person (A) commits an offense if violence, UN Special Rapporteur reports, crime (a) he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another (B) with his penis scenes and psychological (b) B does not consent to the penetration, and assessment studies.

The first general element (c) A does not reasonably believe that B consents. of rape is consent. Often, we resort to the definition Mention “rape” in a conversation. Picture “rape”. of rape as “sex minus consent”. In most contexts, Explain “rape”. It is safe to assume that not a single there is a standing presumption that one does not one of these portrayals, whether internal or external, have access to and may not make use of another’s body, are positive. They are scenes of straightforward, back- property, personal information, or other elements ally, brutal scenes of sexual violence. As a general rule of his or her personal domain. This presumption is of thumb, we like to see rape as a traumatic, terrible reversed, however, when the other consents to such crime. A crime, not a phenomenon. With this view, it access. Consent thus alters the structure of rights and unproblematic and straightforward to condemn rape. obligations between two or more parties. So, rape exists Rape becomes a problem that needs fixing, rather than where consent does not. It seems quite straightforward

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to comprehend that when there is no consent, there is rape. And yet, judges, lawyers, politicians, and theorists alike still enjoy debating the extent of consent. Kazan, in 1998, remarked that in general, consent may be understood as either attitudinal or performative.

Attitudinal consent involving whether a person’s subjective attitude toward that act is strong enough; and performative consent gives rise to whether victims performed one or more consent-signaling acts.

And yet, despite this broad understanding of consent, debates about which definition is more englobing and more appropriate still arise. And this is the same situation for that of mens rea. Mens rea, the intention or knowledge of wrongdoing as opposed to the action or conduct of the accused (the actus reus), is what makes rape a crime in most jurisdictions. The acceptance of this element exists on a spectrum, whereby views differ, with conservatives believing that a man has mens rea only if he believes the woman is not consenting, while some feminists have argued that rape should be a strict liability offense, that is, one with no mens rea requirement at all. How can we achieve any progress in the broadening of our understanding when core concepts such as those of consent are still debated?

But why do we take our already existent understanding of rape for granted? It seems as if society has come up with a practical solution for solving rape (i.e. convicting and punishing rapists), so why not stop there?

Fundamentally, the system in place is one: not utilized enough, and two: not properly executed. Not only that, but there is something inherently wrong and problematic with the way that we already chose to address rape: by reducing rape to a punishable act, we can simply blame the evildoer and happily go on with our lives. We can trust the law will do its job, will

punish those who rape and will rectify the situation for those who have been raped by making use of our limited and narrow concepts pertaining to rape. A more comprehensive understanding aims to eliminate this. Feminist theorists have often sought to articulate a more richly textured sense of rape’s wrongness, and of its distinctive harms, than the law alone can provide.

They also need to resort to problematizing the solely personal: rape is about more than just the acts of two individuals engaging in non-consensual sex. The feminist community needs to become more alert to the ways in which the source of women’s powerlessness is constantly located within victims themselves rather than in the institutional, physical, and cultural practices that are deployed around them. We need to understand why, first of all, we are reluctant to take rape seriously, and when we do, we treat rape as violence, just as any other punishable crime. This is where the understanding of rape as “violence, not sex” should be additionally scrutinized: Cahill observes that “few women would agree that being raped is essentially equivalent to being hit in the face”.

The Portrayal of Rape In a world where a rape scene is understood to have to include “handcuffs whips stuff like that”, we have to acknowledge that there is a problem with the way we portray rape. While feminists acknowledge rape as a “culturally taught behavior”, it is more commonly represented as a deviant behavior. Rapists are represented as psychopaths, pictured as ruthless, unfeeling, and sadistic: they are terribly violent people, and ultimately criminals. This is true for rape on television, in books, in the media; but not in real life. One of the main issues we might face today is the

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portrayal of our narrow understanding of rape, made clear in three ways: the vilification of rapists, the victimization of women, and the dramatization of the action.

To describe someone as a “rapist” is already a demanding task. While a rapist is simply someone that has raped another, we tend to avoid the term as much as possible. And when we do, we have a hard time understanding that rapists are ordinary people, some of which are highly respected members of the community and very few convicted rapists are considered to be in need of psychiatric treatment. Yet, we love to imagine them as everything that makes up the abnormal. And that is because what is frightening about rapists is partly the lack of identifying marks and features, beyond the fact that they are by far most likely to be men. We are obliged to vilify them solely in order to identify them. The perpetrator, often described as “a devious monster”, falls within certain categories of understanding, touching upon our pathos and ultimately makes us want to take action.

However, as soon as something falls outside of that specific understanding of rape, our urge to be undignified is overpowered by our indifference and disinterest. Distancing ourselves as much as possible from what it means to be a rapist (besides the actual raping) is our way of protecting ourselves: we also see this when we describe perpetrators of sexual violence as “crazy” and therefore not to blame for their actions.

One reason for himpathy, as described by Kate Manne, is a mistaken idea about what rapists must be like: creepy, uncanny, and wearing their lack of humanity on their sleeve. Golden boys can’t be rapists, and rapists can’t be golden boys; it’s as simple as that.

And contrasted with the evildoing of men, women are represented one of two ways. Either they are innocent, frail, weak victims of their assault. In this category of victimhood, they specially fit into typical western norms of female beauty: they are thin, white, young, and able-bodied. The biased visual representation of women feeds into the rape myth that only these young women, who fit a western idea of beauty, become victims of sexual violence, and no one else. Other victims of rape, are not really victims at all. While still generally fitting out physical ideas of “who qualifies as a victim”, we also include a new category of women who actually invite rape. “She asked for it” is a story of female agency that actually invites rape. She does so by wearing a short skirt, walking alone at night, going to a night club, not being able to take a compliment, talking back, or wearing too much makeup.

The perfect rape equation is not present until we include the dramatization of the action. The stereotypical belief most people have about rape is

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that it is a crime involving physical violence, as it is frequently portrayed in popular media to be. The view that “it wasn’t rape if the victim didn’t physically fight back” largely comes into play here. This is problematic, as it perpetuates the rape myth that it is only a “real” sexual assault if physical force was used - either by the victim (to fight back) or by the perpetrator (to inflict it).

Studies have found that the notion that sexual violence is always perpetrated by a stranger who attacks his victim in a remote location is one of the most prevalent rape myths. If the only way we picture rape is by a strong-stranger-in-dark-back-ally picture, than we can imagine that this consequently narrows the scope of rape. This is not an actual realistic representation of sexual assault, seeing as many rape occurrences happen between people than know each other, and in their own homes. Another important addition to the dramatization of rape is the sexual nature of the crime. Research reveals sexual acts in the commission of sexual assaults including kissing, masturbation, licking and being forced to dance nude. One study recorded comments made by rapists including, “I won’t hurt you; I just want sex;” “I want you to enjoy this,” and “I can give you the wildest sex of your life.” A study of over 10,000 men and six countries found the primary reason given by men for rape was sexual entitlement.

Sex cannot be taken out of the conversation. And it is clear that perpetrators differ in their strongest occurrent motivations, but it is important to ask why so many men who wish to harm or violate women do so in a sexual manner. This is why portrayals of violence, even by feminists (“violence, not sex” slogan) may make it more difficult for people to recognize less obviously violent experiences of sexual force as rape. However, rape is not solely about sex. Rape is a sexually specific act that destroys the intersubjectivity, embodied agency, and personhood of the woman. Addressing sex must be part of a more holistic understanding of things.

“Sex cannot be taken out of the conversation” Anything that falls outside of this narrow understanding of rape is wrong. When women consent at first, then change their mind. When men are raped.

When women of color are raped. When “promiscuous” women are raped. When rape happens at home, within a marriage. When rape is carried out by a partner.

When a rapist is a college student, with a swimming scholarship and good grades. It is essential to expand

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our threshold of what qualifies as “bad rape”; rape that we want to condemn.

Rape as a War Crime When rape was recognized as a war crime for the first time in 1996, it felt like a landmark decision, illustrative of women’s progress. International Criminal Court officials said that although rape charges had been included in other cases, this indictment gave organized rape and other sexual offenses their due

“Demonizing rapists on a large scale aids a narrative of otherness, of exclusion” place in international law as crimes against humanity.

This was seen as very progressive, because the Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, which judged Nazi crimes after World War II, made no reference to rape in its charter. At a Tokyo war crimes court after World War II, some Japanese officials were convicted of failing to prevent rape, but overall, no substantial international judicial stand was taken against rape. It was included because “while not all rape should be understood as torture, certainly rape during wartime should have some standing as torture, due to its inevitable damage to the victim’s sense of agency and the sense of ongoing vulnerability engendered by it.”

Our narrow definition of rape is also shaped through the humanitarian legal understanding of the phenomenon. It reinforces the view of women as frail collateral damage, unable to defend themselves.

Women are rarely mentioned in times of war, if not for their brief, rare moments of heroinism. Bringing up conflict rape is only to serve the purpose of emphasizing the widespread-ness of the attack, to account for the damages, or to emphasize the amount by which a conflict was “won”. We solely “care” about war rape victims because they tend to be part of a large-scale issue. During the Bosnian War, for example, the European investigators calculated that in 1992, twenty thousand Muslim women and girls were raped

by Serbs. Years later, this seemed like an outrage, not only because the attacks were incredibly extensive, but because many victims were extremely young, and these crimes remained undealt with for too long.

Rape during wartime emphasizes the absence of humanness and cruelty, as if to say, “look at what they’re doing, they’re so evil, they’re raping our wives,

mothers, sisters and children”. Women, especially when addressing wartime rape, are not entities on their own. They are always wives, mothers, sisters, and children; not their own beings. This clearly adds to the outrageousness of wartime rape. This is a tactic that is also employed during global conflicts, such as the American-Mexican immigration crisis, that President Donald Trump tends to emphasize. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. […] They’re rapists.” Demonizing rapists on a large scale aids a narrative of otherness, of exclusion. This distancing and alienation of rapists, especially during events that give rise to international attention, is potentially used as tool from dominant regions to look down on marginal ones. As if, in some countries, rape does not exist - it is a far away, removed, and violent occurrence that we are only able to imagine in our distant minds, aided by statistics, blank statements, and numbers above the hundreds.

Conclusion Does it say something about us that we do not mind addressing rape when it happens during a time of conflict, yet we struggle to even believe it occurs when it happens to coincide with our everyday lives? Why can we only understand rape is such narrow terms, terms that end up forgiving so many men and protecting so little women?

I’m not angry about the way we currently discuss rape. I’m painfully aware that any acknowledgement of rape as a real issue, no matter how small, is extremely valuable in a society that continues to conceal its existence. And I’m too well informed to take that for granted, but too motivated to be satisfied with it: change must happen.

While I agree that women’s subordination should be understood in terms of a wider social system, it is unfortunate that this larger context nonetheless fails to be highlighted as the site of transformative action.

This transformation has to occur not only on universal level, but also on a local, and a personal one. I am sure that no progress will be made until a combination of inter-personal and universal understandings of rape are brought into the discussion, whilst still acknowledging my fear of only treating and addressing rape as a telltale of the systematic realities of the world, as it might take away some of legitimate blame that is being put on individual perpetrators. By focusing on the ways we condone rape, through the rape of a gender, the non-western world, and of culture, we might be able to address, emphasize and extrapolate the way we condemn with rape in specific, narrow scenarios.

And perhaps, this is already underway.

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C

h a

c

Give me a word, they said and I’ll shoot back at you the smack of steel stinging as the hour hand slaps the number XII skin prickling, merlot-hued, the words slip and slide into atriums, acid-like.

r o a

Give me a word, they said and I’ll make you wait seven autumns while you’re punched by the unrequited and the undesired each and every year.

The tenderness scorched crimson before frosted delicate violet at least, so you imagine; even you don’t have the privilege of sight.

The tinted reflections on the No.8 is the taste of this roughened pebble in your gut; jasper, yet not as precious.

Berry-red twinkles mockingly in avenues of tat.

l

as I stumble between what is raw and what is kind, cooling ruby embers into charcoal that sift and settle

deep within.

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Give me a word and I’ll spit it back at you -gracefully

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Illustration by Idalina Lehtonen

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HUMANITIES

The Red Herring of the Virtual Self Discourse analysis of the gamification of human relationships through computer-mediated communication and representation of the self, with Catfish: The TV Show as a central reference

Introduction

By Doris Velora Vlaar Visual Culture Studies

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“Images become more real than the real, creating a kind of hyperreality in which simulation replaced reproduction and representation. Images fascinate us, not because they are sites of the reproduction of meaning and representation, but because they the sites of the disappearance of meaning and representation, sites in which we are caught quite apart from any judgment of reality”.

Baudrillard’s analysis of the late twentieth century articulates into a postmodern dystopia, a matrix with the end of the ‘real’ and the dominance of the image, as if straight from a Black Mirror episode.

Such pronouncements, however, sound privileged in a world that still knows pain in all forms - something that simulation cannot supersede or replace with visual experience. The ease with which people travel between interactions in the real and over the virtual is nonetheless striking. Each true ‘self’ is simulated as a ‘self’ online; a Facebook, LinkedIn, Tinder, or (somewhat outdated yet brilliantly named) SecondLife page. Such social networking sites (SNS) have ingenious tricks to stimulate extensive use of their services – cleverly using game mechanics to influence user behaviour. The communication between personal selves on these virtual platforms and how seriously we handle these reminds us that aspects of postmodernity and thus Baudrillard’s theory, are embedded in our social lives, whether we like it or not. We claim to feel ‘real’ pain during moments in which we mistake computer-mediated communication for real-life communication, to the point where separating the two gets tricky and often leads to misconception. This latter case is visualized in the MTV show Catfish: The TV Show, where online relationships fall apart as soon as they come offline. In this paper, I would like to discuss how the semiotics of human relationships change thanks to postmodern gamified SNS. Analysis of discursive factors within Catfish: The TV Show, Foucault’s Technology of the Self, Baudrillard’s Simulation and Simulacra and several other scholarly papers regarding the ludification of relationships and the effect it has on our experience of the real, will be used to discuss this topic.

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ostmodernity has made capitalism more than just an economic theory, transformed into a liquid factor present in all facets of life: a true lifestyle of the West. Our lives are governed by sites that make a profit out of our comfort (except for Wikipedia maybe, but usually companies aren’t that kind), and therefore desire to motivate us to use their services as extensively as possible. A popular technique used in consumerist marketing is ludification. Game designers have learned how to design experiences in such a way that they capture and hold the attention of their target group, up to addictive levels. To incorporate game-like elements in whatever you’re trying to sell, means business. Corporations that make their money out of social networking sites, usually through the advertisements they sell on our beloved timelines or through subscription accounts, incorporate such gamified details as well. Facebook, Instagram and other platforms where one can upload one’s photos to the public, stimulate striving for a record of likes. A profile picture that surpasses a hundred likes, equals the ‘true’ feeling of satisfaction, especially if that means you’ve got more than that girl from your class you dislike so much. Celebrities with millions of likes on a photo of their breakfast set the example: the ‘love’ their fans feel for them translated into a pixelated number. Facebook promotes friendships through positive reinforcement: being ‘friends’ with someone for 1 year earns you a personalized video (made by Facebook themselves!), or you receive a celebratory notification that you made 100 new ‘friends’ this month. Good ‘friend’ you are, congratulating your other ‘friends’ on their birthday, even though we both know you wouldn’t have remembered it if it wasn’t for our reminder. And as you see that number of ‘friends’ rise, your sense of selfconfidence does too. Tinder is a deck of cards, where

a correct swipe to the right might result in a ‘Match!’ which enables new features, such as chatting with that potential ‘love interest’ you just considered based on his profile.

Quotation marks are essential in addressing this topic, since we still speak about distorted semiotics of words. ‘Love’ is a feeling, unique to human interaction, so is ‘friendship’. These concepts that stand so close to our real self, are copy-pasted into virtual simulation games. Love is counted in swipes and thumbs-ups, and a friendship with somebody is a click away, all transformed into recreational activities. We’ve got our social lives under our own control, and whenever someone makes us feel any less of a winner, we can always ‘press delete’ with no ‘real’ consequences. It is hard to deny that SNS are indeed reshaping our perception of relationships. At this moment we are still aware of the double meaning these concepts like love and friendship have. You wouldn’t invite your entire friend-list to your birthday party, Facebook still foolishly congratulates lifelong friends on their 1st friendship anniversary, and self-confidence isn’t exactly a stamina bar fueled by likes either. But somehow, the virtual ‘self’, is still considered a direct simulation of the ‘real self’.

Representation of the self An avatar means “a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth; an incarnate divine teacher” in Hindi. In Western semiotics, the concept ‘avatar’ is defined as a figure representing a particular person in a video game or on an Internet forum immortalizing the self by copying the bodily form into the virtual form. That transformation is where it often goes wrong in social networking sites. The profile you create online is completely in your own hands. If

Collage by Sylvie van Wijk

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Photography by Nia Alexieva

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you prefer people not to know about your miniature sockpuppet collection, even though you spent a lot of time on it and it is definitely part of ‘you’, you can just choose not to incorporate it in your ‘Interests’ on Facebook. That one photo you took when the lighting was especially nice and you borrowed that top from your friend is going online (let’s not say anything about that bit of Photoshop you used to edit out that pimple), and the ones where it looks like you pulled the fourth all-nighter in a row (even though you look like that most of the time) we neglect. The way you represent yourself is totally up to you, and you still feel like that avatar is ‘you’, and whatever happens to them happens to you.

Figuring out how ‘true’ this is to your ‘real self’, though, is a different story. Michel Foucault wrote on how one should know yourself, by assessing the technologies of the self. Technologies of the self, Foucault argues, are “those practices whereby individuals, by their own means or with the help of others, acted on their own bodies, souls, thoughts, conduct and way of being in order to transform themselves and attain a certain state of perfection or happiness, to become a sage, immortal and so on.”. Attaining a certain stage of perfection or happiness, in order to become immortal, seems to verify the act of creating a sugar-coated profile online.

And many think alike. Postmodernity is also the age of the epidemic of the fear-of-missing-out, since your life might not be as perfect as SNS make the lives of others seem - it’s a game after all. A popular mantra to help cure such negative thoughts is “No one on the Internet is who they say they are”. Catfish: The TV Show sees it as their job to visualize this in an equally awkward yet mesmerizing way.

Debunking the myth We know that even though nowadays you have to verify an account with e-mails and phone numbers, a profile online does not always represent a like-named person in the real world. But even though we know the online world is a mere simulation, we still get shocked by the violation of our expected behaviour. A Rape In Cyberspace by Julian Dibbell was a breakthrough in regards to the ethics of computer-mediated communication, where an incident of violation that happened over inscribed pixels, resulted in real tears.

The impact virtual-life events can have in the reallife, remains unexplainable, unless we agree that the avatars are indeed a trustworthy copy of ourselves feelings and all included. This would also explain why Catfish: The TV Show manages to create season after season, catfish after catfish. Catfishing, in this context, refers to the construction of a ‘fake’ profile on an SNS, in other words, a profile which does not correspond to a user’s ‘real’ self, by the use of photo’s of someone

else and false names. This account then engages in communication with other ‘real’ accounts on the platform, starting romantic (or platonic) relationships whilst still tricking them into believing the staged identity of the ‘catfish’. The MTV series makes it their mission to help these individuals that suspect the validity of their online friend or lover debunk the myth that is their profile. Using reality televisual tropes, like confessing one’s feelings directly to the camera emotionally, the scripts of social media use is articulated to the viewer. This discursive process places a victim of catfishing (someone who was actually in love with the other), opposite from the catfish (the ‘bad’ social media user, who hurt the other by pretending to be someone else). The ‘bad’ guys, however, often excuse their bad behaviour online by psychological issues of the past, as a young woman in an episode got the following off her chest: “The reason [I did it] was because I had so many self-esteem issues. I used to cut myself, like, I couldn’t handle the depression anymore, so I had to find something to make myself happy. And it was bad, I understand, but I got so much out of it.

That’s the crazy thing about the internet, you can be whoever you want to be”. The catfish then usually vows to work on learning to accept their ‘real’ selves, and to represent themselves ‘authentically’ online in the future. Their imperfect, flawed, but ‘authentic’ self is worth most. Sooner or later, your significant other was going to find out you don’t always look as good as on your profile picture, anyways.

Conclusion The virtual world is made for and by humans. It is designable, controllable and therefore able to mend to meet your preferences. Social networking sites have clever built-in tricks that make you come back, reward you with dopamine and become addictive, like games.

It’s a platform of neoliberalism; you can be whoever you want to be, talk to whoever you want to talk and befriend whoever you want to befriend. The real world, on the other hand, is not made to fit our desires. You are who you are, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. Rejection is not smothered by distractions, but straight up in your face and painful. That’s why catfishing usually ends up breaking hearts. The virtual simulation of human relationships is more pleasurable, with feedback loops of likes that we recognize as ‘love’ and a number that we identify as ‘friendships’. The change of semiotics of these concepts, and thus steps towards Baudrillards hyperreality, are uncontrollable as our postmodern society starts to rely more and more on computer-mediated communication to create and maintain relationships. Towards a point where catfishing is more common than actual fishing.

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By Millie Rosette

Far Soft peach on kitchen table windowpane breeze Far from here sun sets molten gold into cracks worn by land Far from here women dance (as if movement heals) Air red fire dusty Dry throat as you swallow the peach

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Photography by Vanessa Morgan

Photography by Tanya Karakyriakou

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SOCIAL SCIENCES

The Rwandan Genocide: a Failure of the International Community To what extent did the International Community (read: the UN, France, Belgium and the USA) fail in preventing the Rwandan Genocide?

Introduction

By Louis Stapleton English Understanding Conflict

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This essay aims to delve into the Rwandan Genocide (1994), which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 800,000 people. The focal point shall be the lack of action taken by the International Community.

This is because, “throughout the 20th century, the outside world has played a pivotal role in Rwandan society”, assisting in the shaping of its economy, social relations, power structure and public discourse (K. Masire, T. Touré, L. Palme, E. Johnson-Sirleaf, P.N. Bhagwati, H. Djoudi & S. Lewis, 2001). When needed, the International Community, drastic in the development of Rwanda, responded insufficiently, culminating in an utter inability to prevent the Genocide. Whilst the etiology of the Genocide will not be closely scrutinised (i.e.

Rwanda’s colonial past, economic/societal/political factors), it is worth recalling that it inevitably contributed to the inception of the Genocide. The notion that, had the International Community acted properly the Genocide could have been prevented, merits the majority of the attention of the subsequent text.

The responsibility of various political ‘players’ shall be elaborated on, as well as the impact of certain events on the Genocide as a whole. To best examine the aforementioned intent of the essay, the research question, “To what extent did the International Community (read: the UN, France, Belgium and the USA) fail in preventing the Rwandan genocide?” shall be posed.

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I

n 1994, the Rwandan Genocide, labelled the ‘Preventable Genocide’ (K. Masire et al, 2001), claimed the lives of approximately 800,000 people over the course of 100 days (April-July) (I. Carlsson, H. Sung-Joo, R. Kupolati, 1999). The genocide, organised by members of the core Hutu political elite (often occupying high-ranking positions within the government) saw to the decimation of much of the Tutsi population as well as the targeting of moderate Hutus and was planned a year prior (Prunier, 1999).

Following the assassination of the Rwandan President, Juvénal Habyarimana (6th April, 1994), a power vacuum was created, the on-going peace accords (the Arusha Accords) were ended, and the following day the Genocidal killings commenced with the execution of key Tutsi and moderate Hutu political and military leaders.

Consequently, around 77% of the Tutsi population was murdered (M. Verpoorten, 2005), and between 250,000500,000 women were raped (B. Nowrojee, 1996).

The failure of the United Nations to prevent/ stop the Genocide can be attributed to a lack of political commitment, which saw to the providing of insufficient resources for any UN effort concerning Rwanda. This can be evidenced through the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), whose austere lack of resources led to an inability to fulfil their mission, further aggravated by the limited mandate which they were issued (Carlsson, SungJoo, Kupolati, 1999). Insufficient political will can be said to have influenced both the (UN) Secretariat, as well as the security council as a whole. The primary (political) actors upon whom focus shall be placed are France, Belgium, the USA as well as the UN and the International Community. Lack of media reporting is considered a key failing, as “this meant that there was...no internal pressure from civilians who could influence policy-makers” (D. Maritz, 2012).

FRANCE

France, the Rwandan government’s closest ally militarily, politically and diplomatically, is deemed the most influential (international) player in the Rwandan genocide (K. Masire et al, 2001). During the 1990 Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) offensive, France supported Habyarimana’s Hutu-led government, supplying arms and military training to youth militias, (who conducted much of the Tutsi murders during the Genocide), and helped in the expansion of the Rwandan army (6,000-35,000 in three years) (Masire et al, 2001). Moreover, French troops interrogated military prisoners, provided intelligence, advised FAR officers, and trained the Presidential Guard and other soldiers, many of whom became leading genocidaires (Masire et al, 2001). France launched Amaryllis during the

first few days of the Genocide, an operation with the goal of evacuating expatriates from Rwanda, although refused to allow any Tutsi to accompany them; “those who boarded the evacuation trucks were forced off at Rwandan government checkpoints, where they were killed” (Prunier, 1999).

During the conflict, Opération Turquoise was launched; a UN-mandated mission to create safe humanitarian areas (Carlsson et al, 2009). Due to the timing of French involvement - the Genocide coming to an end and the ascendancy of the RPF (to whom the French were opposed) - many Rwandans interpreted the mission as a means of protecting the Hutu from the RPF, inevitably including some genocidaires (Fassbender, 2011). “The zone proved to be safe for the Hutu Interahamwe (a Hutu paramilitary organisation) to carry on murdering and to protect the extremist government from capture and trial by the RPF” (C. McGreal, 2007). Through the safe zone, many Hutu managed to escape into Northern-Zaire.

France’s tight-knit alliance with a government guilty of “massive human rights abuses”, and of which “racism was the pillar of all policies of...government”, and its “deliberate policy” of failing to use its influence to terminate such acts is telling of the significant role France has to play in the run-up to the Genocide (Masire et al, 2001). The role Opération Turquoise played in preventing the advance of the RPF, allowing Hutu radicals to escape and providing training to many of the genocidaires can all be said to be compelling evidence in the proving of France’s complicity leading up to and during the Genocide (Masire et al, 2001).

BELGIUM

The ethnic tension between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsis is nothing novel, but post-colonial period, animosities increased radically (BBC, 2011). In 1916, the Belgian colonists assigned identity cards to Rwandans according to their ethnicity, favouring the Tutsis over the Hutus. Years of better opportunities for the Tutsis led to a build-up of resentment in the Hutu population, ultimately culminating in riots during 1959, the deaths of over 20,000 Tutsis, and encouraged many to flee to Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda. In 1962, following the Belgian relinquishment of power, the Hutus came to dominate, and in the coming decades the Tutsi were scapegoated for every crisis (BBC, 2011). During the Genocide, this historical discourse of dehumanisation and demonisation of the Tutsi would add to the hostilities.

Thus, Belgium’s colonial past in Rwanda warrants attention. The UN’s ‘unwritten rule’ - “Blue Berets from a country that may have...former colonial power are usually not sent” - was violated. As such, the Belgian

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troops were subjugated to a hostile environment, negating the possibility of the enactment of impartiality, required of (the) Blue Berets, a “condition essential to the success of a peacekeeping operation (P. Mahoux, G. Verhofstadt, 1997). The murder of ten Belgian peacekeepers (7th April 1994) is testament to this. W. Claes, the Foreign Minister of Belgium, called for the suspension of UNAMIR 5 days later, stating that Belgium had decided to remove its contingent from the country, and encouraged all other participants to do the same. Devoid of Belgian support, UNAMIR was “untenable” unless replaced by some other wellequipped contingent (Masire et al, 2001), which never occurred. Therefore, Belgium did not only inflame ethnic tensions within Rwanda, but its withdrawal of support following the murder of their peacekeepers further weakened the peacekeeping mission.

USA

In October, 1993, the moment Rwanda was placed on the Security Council’s agenda, the US lost 18 soldiers in Somalia, making it “politically awkward for the US to become immediately involved… with another peacekeeping mission” (Masire et al, 2001). Although Somalia was a US mission, Clinton scapegoated the UN, the effects of which were later named “the shadow of Somalia” (Barnett, 2002). In Congress, Republicans regarded any UN initiatives concerning this purpose with hostility, and the “shadow of Somalia” merely reinforced this prejudice. The Clinton administration claimed ignorance of the unfolding Genocide, but it, “like every Western government, knew full well that a terrible calamity was looming in Rwanda” (Masire et al, 2001). Thus, the problem lay not with ignorance, but with a lack of US incentives: no interests that needed guarding and no powerful lobbies concerning Rwandan Tutsi (Masire et al, 2001).

On the 6th of October, a day after UNAMIR came before the Security Council, the US withdrew its troops from Somalia. Following this, the Clinton Administration released Presidential Decree Directive 25 (PDD25), which ruled out any serious UN peace enforcement for the foreseeable future, placing strict conditions on US support for UN peacekeeping.

Inevitably, the UN Secretariat was deterred from advocating stronger protection measures for Rwandan citizens. Further worsening the situation was the unwillingness to acknowledge that a Genocide was taking place, and reducing the UNAMIR force to that of 270 men (Masire et al, 2001). As noted by a senior official, “if we acknowledged it was genocide, that was mandated in international law that the US had to do something....If we acknowledged it was genocide and didn’t do anything...what [would be] the impact on

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US foreign policy relations with the rest of the world following inaction after admitting it’s genocide...”

(Masire et al, 2001).

Dallaire, commander of UNAMIR, always insisted that, with 5,000 troops and the right mandate, UNAMIR could have prevented a majority of the killings. In 1998, several American institutions tested this argument.

An example of one of the conclusions of these findings was as follows: A modern force of 5,000 troops...sent to Rwanda sometime between April 7 and April 21, 1994, could have significantly altered the outcome of the conflict... forces appropriately trained, equipped and commanded, and introduced in a timely manner, could have stemmed the violence in and around the capital, prevented its spread to the countryside, and created conditions conducive to the cessation of the civil war between the RPF and RGF .” (Masire et al, 2001).

The American role in the Genocide was brief, powerful and inglorious (Masire et al, 2001). Whilst US policy was interested in the encouragement of conventional reforms (e.g. the Arusha accords, democratisation etc...), it had “little interest in human rights, ethnic cleavages, or massacres” (Masire et al, 2001). The blocking of Rwanda by the US in the (six) weeks leading up to the Genocide can be seen to have contributed enormously to the mass-killings, when they could have prevented the Genocide entirely. Whilst some argue America’s desertion of UNAMIR as Hutu Power’s (a racist/ethnically supremacist ideology propounded by Hutu extremists) greatest diplomatic victory, others contend that, whilst the US is undoubtedly responsible, they were not solely at fault.

UN

The ample knowledge the UN had concerning unfolding events in Rwanda was undoubtedly sufficient to merit a determined response. The faults that shroud the UN leading up to/during the Genocide are multiplicitous in nature, evidenced through the peacekeeping mission in place (UNAMIR), for which the optimum military personnel was 4,500, but who only had 2,548 personnel deployed. The result of this was a mission not only under-resourced, but also under-manned. UNAMIR’s mandate seriously hindered the peacekeepers, restricting the use of force in selfdefence, or to defend “other UN lives, or persons under their protection under direct attack” (Human Rights Watch, 2017). Moreover, the aforementioned pressure from the USA further weakened UNAMIR. Following the assassination of the President and the violence that ensued, Dallaire immediately wrote to the Security Council, “Give me the means and I can do more.” The response was, “...nobody in New York (was) interested in that” (Human Rights Watch, 2017).

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Guidelines issued to Dallaire stated, “...make every effort not to compromise your impartiality or to act beyond your mandate... [you] may exercise your discretion to do [so] should this be essential for the evacuation of foreign nationals. This should not... extend to participating in possible combat except in self defence.” (Masire et al, 2001). On the 26th April, 1994, the Security Council made the decision to limit the peacekeeping operation as opposed to “mustering political will and trying to stop the killing…” (Carlsson et al, 1999). In the face of the ongoing gross violation of human rights, the UN should have mobilised political will, rather than shun away from it. Each time Dallaire attempted to “act beyond (his) mandate” concerning the protection of Rwandans, he was instructed not to stray from the strict mandate of the Security Council.

“Is there a conclusion we can draw from this incident other than that expatriate lives were considered more valuable than African lives?” (Masire et al, 2001).

Leading up to the Genocide, reports stating the possibility of ethnic violence to the UN, UNAMIR and key nations (i.e. France, USA, Belgium) were present, indicating strategies to exterminate Tutsi, ethnic/ political killings of an organised nature, death lists,

“This begs the question: how many more lives could have been saved had UNAMIR had been sufficiently manned?” reports of the import and distribution of weapons to the population as well as hate propaganda. Lack of action antecedent to the Genocide itself can be said to be one of the primary faults of the UN, and all who were aware and had the power to act (Carlsson et al, 1999). A UNAMIR intelligence report asserted that these plans had been prepared at the headquarters of the MRND (the President’s political party), should the Arusha agreements fail (Masire et al, 2001). Rwanda’s (temporary) place on the UN Security Council preceding the Genocide meant that the Hutu-extremists were aware America would never support effective intervention (Masire et al, 2001). Hence, the failure of the International Community to stand up to Hutu power reinforced the culture of impunity that further

empowered the radicals. The belief that nothing would be done from the outside world proved to be accurate.

Whilst this essay focuses on the involvement of international agents, the statement, ‘the whole of the International Community abandoned the Tutsi’ is flawed, as although UN Secretariat officials specifically discouraged Dallaire from taking any action in protecting Rwandan citizens, he managed to keep the force at (almost) twice the size authorised, permitting UNAMIR to save the lives of 20,000-25,000 Rwandans (Masire et al, 2001). This begs the question: how many more lives could have been saved had UNAMIR had been sufficiently manned? This point is further illustrated through the “general rule”: Rwandans were safe as long as they gathered under UN protection.

When UN forces left, the Genocide continued. This is evidenced most clearly through the l’École Technique Officielle (ETO), where 100 Belgian soldiers kept Hutus at bay. “As the UN troops withdrew through one gate, the genocidaires moved in through another. Within hours, the 2,000 Tutsi who had fled to ETO for UN protection were dead” (Masire et al, 2001).

The failure of the UN to prevent/stop the Genocide was a failure by the UN as a whole. All nations were aware of the looming disaster, evidenced most clearly through the immediate evacuation of French, Belgian, US and Italian nationals immediately following the crash of Habyarimana’s plane (Masire et al, 2001). This is proof of not just awareness, but also of how the International Community can act. Firstly, troops can be mobilised in days, not weeks/months, and Western powers will act when their interests are endangered.

The prioritisation of expatriates over Rwandans is emblematic of a value-system that designates Western lives above (any) others.

Three fundamental mistakes may be identified.

Firstly, when UNAMIR was established, it was not treated as a difficult mission. This may be seen in the approval of a force substantially weaker than that which was ascribed by Arusha negotiators, as well as the inadequate mandate which prevented any effective action being taken. Secondly, the absence of (any) expansion/improvement of the mandate (undertaken 5 weeks into the Genocide, but not one new soldier had arrived by the end) (Masire et al, 2001). Thirdly, the “wrong-headed neutrality” adopted by the UN concerning the genocidaires and the RPF “compromised its integrity”, resulted in the mediation of the end of the civil war, but not the saving of Rwandan lives (Masire et al, 2001). Final aspects impeding upon the effectiveness of UNAMIR were the insufficient provision of troops and equipment, delayed funding (two days before the Genocide), and a lack of essential materials (Masire et al, 2001).

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CONCLUSION Leading up to and during the Genocide, the International Community, especially the UN, failed Rwanda. Fundamental mistakes were carried out by the (UN) Secretary-General, Secretariat, Security-Council and UNAMIR, as well as the broader membership of the UN. Actions taken by the Security-Council (21st April, 1994) – limiting the power of UNAMIR rather than “mustering political will” – are indicative of the inefficient support given to the peacekeeping operation.

Phillipe Gaillard (head of the ICRC in Rwanda) stated Dallaire was “abandoned by his own organisation” (P. Gaillard, 2002). The lack of political will from the USA (due to the ‘shadow of Somalia’) and the drastic impacts the decision to withdraw had (evidenced most firmly through PDD25) to the peacekeeping mission is clear.

“The constant refusal between nations to use the word “genocide” is indicative of not ignorance, but unwillingness” 48

Arguably due to its colonial past, at fault for the exacerbated ethnic tensions, the murder of ten Belgian peacekeepers saw to the eventual withdrawal of a majority of troops and an even greater decrease in manpower. This general lack of political will saw a mission austerely under-staffed and under-resourced, with troops numbering 550 by July 25th, 1994 (1/10th of the organised peacekeeping operation). During the Genocide, France remained “openly hostile” to the RPF, and in 1994 launched Operation Turquoise, which effectively granted Hutu Extremists protection from the RPF. Finally, the constant refusal between nations to use the word “genocide” is indicative of not ignorance, but unwillingness. With reference to the importance of the International Community and the attention it warrants, although not fully elaborated here, over the last 150 years, actions by the ‘outside world’ culminated in the Genocide, from “the racism of the first European explorers, to Belgian colonial policy; to Catholic church support for “demographic democracy” under a Hutu military dictatorship; to the Structural Adjustment Programme imposed by western financial institutions; and to the legitimizing of an ethnic dictatorship by France, the US, and many international development aid agencies” (Masire et al, 2001). To answer the research question, “To what extent did the International Community (read: the UN, France, Belgium and the USA) fail in preventing the Rwandan genocide?” it can be said that the International Community failed drastically. Finally, it is worth pointing out that, whilst big, governmental powers failed, individual members and NGos of the International Community, such as Mbaye Diagne and the International Committee of the Red Cross, sacrificed their lives to save and protect others.

Photography by Vanessa Morgan

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burning sun drips after red thigh - camera lens captures night holds hollow moon

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pomegranate pip your solid self - fragments of bone all veins and pulp

By Millie Rosette

Photography by Fares S. Alwani

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Collage by Nadège Desmedt, sister of Cyril Desmedt

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Photography by Tanya Karakyriakou

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Population (english Edition), 60(4), 331. doi:10.3917/ pope.504.0331 goodbye my dear board i loved working w/ u