Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Contrary to its title, the 10 essays in Mass Rape are concerned more with gender theory than with the plight of Bosnian women. Catharine MacKinnon, most often associated with the battle against pornography in North America, contributed two essays. In one, she likens rape camps to brothels. In both, she says, these sexual crimes ``are to everyday rapes what the Holocaust was to everyday anti-Semitism.'' Such repetition brings into question the skills of the editor, but because Stiglmayer's two essays are by far the most compelling--and stick closest to the subject matter--she can be forgiven. One of four contributors with direct experience of the former Yugoslavia, her accounts of the victims and rapists are chilling, and her historical perspective provides an understanding of what is happening now in the Balkans. The closest the other writers come to historical perspective is to theorize about why women are raped during war. Susan Brownmiller says ``the penis becomes justified as a weapon in a logistical reality of unarmed noncombatants.'' Ruth Seifert reasons that women ``are the objects of a fundamental hatred that characterizes the cultural unconscious and is actualized in times of crisis.'' As feminist jargon, it can't be beat. But when it comes to helping further the understanding of the Bosnian women who have been taken from their homes in the middle of the night, blindfolded, gang-raped and violated with broken bottles-- Mass Rape disappoints.Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.