Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Survey ed. by Amy E. Randall (review)

Amy E. Randall presents an impressive collection of thirteen essays in this volume on the often-neglected topic of gender and genocide. Most of the contributing authors are specialists in history or law, but included also are works from political science, anthropology, and religious studies.

Readers will find this anthology a valuable resource. I originally purchased it primarily to read Anthonie Holslag’s chapter on sexual violence against women during the Armenian Genocide, since little literature on the subject exists in English. I was not disappointed by his analysis of the symbolic meaning of rape in genocide, although one might have preferred more empirical detail and less psychoanalytic theory. His was not the only chapter on the Armenian Genocide: Lerna Ekmekcioglu chronicles the Armenian project of “rescuing” women who had been coerced into marrying Muslims, or who had been impregnated by Turkish or Kurdish men. Armenian society made exemplary efforts to re-integrate not only these women (along with abducted orphans) back into the community, but also to welcome the ethnically-mixed children of war. This decision to welcome rather than reject overcame the established practice of tracing ethnicity through paternity. It distinguishes this genocide from events elsewhere—such as Bangladesh or Rwanda—where the children of rape and their mothers were made into outcasts.

A strength of the volume is authors’ avoidance of simplistic or stereotypical perspectives. Lisa Pine, for instance, eschews the portrayal of Jewish women in the Nazi camps as monolithically angelic: some stole, prostituted themselves, or engaged in aggressive behavior—even against family members. Nichole Hogg and Mark Drumbl discuss the role of women as perpetrators or abettors— an area few scholars have explored—in their study of the role of Hutu women in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.

The inclusion of a “men’s studies” perspective perhaps reflects a commendable intent to transcend tropes, but the book may go overboard. Women have remained largely invisible in the existing scholarship. Devoting three of Gender and Genocide’s eleven chapters to the subject of masculinity seems excessive. Moreover, some of what is included appears problematic in several regards. First, Olivera Simić’s contribution on sexual violence against men, despite illuminating a near-taboo subject, fails to recognize that the experience of rape during war differs because only one sex becomes pregnant. This is not to discount the suffering of men, but rather to emphasize that women’s reproductive capacity is critical when we consider rape in the context of genocide. “Preventing births within the group” is a legal criteria under the Genocide Convention. Rape of men surely harms and humiliates them and the group to which they belong, but it does not prevent births and, thus, by itself does not constitute genocide. Second, Stephen Haynes’ chapter on “Ordinary Masculinity” in the Holocaust relies on only a few sources and reflects too little grounding in the feminist literature on genocide. Third, Adam Jones’s chapter on “Masculinities and Vulnerabilities” reiterates the familiar argument that men suffer more than women during most genocides because the latter are less likely to die. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey brilliantly counters such arguments in her concluding chapter. Fourth, the depiction of gender identity in strictly binary terms is out of step with current understandings. In any hypothetical second edition I would recommend inclusion of a chapter on the experiences of LGBT people during genocide (for example, on the deaths of tens of thousands of homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps).

Another of the collection’s limitations is its Eurocentrism, both in terms of who is writing and of what is discussed. It appears that all the authors are from Australia, North America, or Europe (including Turkey). Although chapters on Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo feature here, their authors were trained and live in the West. A second edition might increase the volume’s diversity.

In her introduction, Randall writes that she...