“Let Us Have a Little Fun”: The Relationship between Gender, Violence and Sexuality in Armed Conflict Situations*

Abstract

The genealogy of sexual violence in war, inter-war and post-war periods can only be understood through an analysis of the relationship between gender, violence and sexuality. Armed conflicts function as a kind of magnifying glass, making visible definitions of sexual identity constructed through the legitimization of violence. Wartime crimes of sexual violence, viewed until now as limit phenomena characteristic of a state of exception, thus point to regularities whose form and function may vary but whose reference points are rooted in the social expression of power.