The Feminist Collective invites you to a talk with Prof. Laura Sjoberg on women's political violence. Specifically, we will be covering her book Women as Wartime Rapists: “One of the Most Abiding Myths of Our Time: Re-visioning Women, War, and Rape,” suggests that a reconstruction of conflict sexual violence jurisprudence could be carried over into policy and advocacy work on war rape specifically and on gender subordination in war and conflict generally. It puts forward a frame for reconceptualizing the relationships between gender, war, and sexual violence in the policy world with an aim towards decreasing both wartime sexual violence specifically and gender subordination generally without essentializing, sensationalizing, or ignoring violent women. It does so by reframing two recent conflict sexual violence cases in the terms of the lessons learned about impossibility, visibility, and gender subordination in this book. In so doing, it suggests that rape among women is not something sensational, unmanageable, or strange for scholars, media, or courts—at least, it does not have to be.

About our panelist:

Laura Sjoberg is Head of the Department of Politics, International Relations, and Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London, and taught the course "Sexual Relations, International Relations, and the Law" at the Institute's IRPS department last semester.