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Theorising sexual violence in global politics: Improvising with feminist theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2021

Marysia Zalewski Open the ORCID record for Marysia Zalewski [Opens in a new window]
Marysia Zalewski*
Affiliation:
School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

A key curiosity animating this article concerns how sexual violence is theorised. The work of feminist scholars has been crucial in unearthing ways in which women's traditionally demeaned bodies regularly materialised as ‘easy targets’ for such violence. The gift of the concept of gender has played a significant role in facilitating the production of this corpus of knowledge. Less noticed in the literature, in policy and legislation has been sexual violence against men – an egregious omission. Yet it seems that redeploying the concept of gender to make sense of sexual violence against men and elevate this violence into the realms of theoretical and legislative attention is not straightforward. Identifying feminist work as in part responsible for the rendering of sexual violence against men as too ‘unseen’ in theory provoked my attention, though it's not that I place feminist theory as ‘innocent’ or infallible – far from it. In this article I unpack some of the complexities around theorising sexual politics in Global Politics turning towards the aesthetics of feminist thinking to help reconsider the way connections take shape between gender, sex and violence. Underpinning this discussion are questions about feminist intentions to transform patriarchal and colonial structures and institutions.

Keywords

Feminist TheorySexual Violence
Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 129 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

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105 Ibid., p. 82.

106 Ibid., p. 76.

107 Ibid., p. 187.

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