Gender Certainty as a Defence: Oedipal Conflict in Wartime Sexual Violence

Abstract

This chapter examines gender certainty in men in relation to wartime sexual violence, with specific reference to acts committed by Japanese soldiers against Chinese and other Asian women during World War II. It argues that military discipline exacerbates oedipal conflict, including gender confusion. Sexual violence is then theorized as a defense, based on splitting off, projecting and attacking in enemy women the feminine aspects of the self, in order to regain certainty from this undermined masculinity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)