Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina [Paperback]

Alexandra Stiglmayer (Editor), Marion Faber (Translator), Cynthia Enloe (Afterword), Roy Gutman (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1994

Alexandra Stiglmayer interviewed survivors of the continuing war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to reveal, to a seemingly deaf world, the horrors of the ongoing war in the former Yugoslavia. The women—primarily of Muslim but also of Croatian and Serbian origin—have endured the atrocities of rape and the loss of loved ones. Their testimony, published in the 1993 German edition, is bare, direct, and its cumulative effect overwhelming.

The first English edition contains Stiglmayer's updates to her own two essays, one detailing the historical context of the current conflict and the other presenting the core of the book, interviews with some twenty victims of rape as well as interviews with three Serbian perpetrators. Essays investi-gating mass rape and war from ethnopsychological, sociological, cultural, and medical perspectives are included.

New essays by Catharine A. MacKinnon, Rhonda Copelon, and Susan Brownmiller address the crucial issues of recognizing the human rights of women and children. A foreword by Roy Gutman describes war crimes within the context of the UN Tribunal, and an afterword by Cynthia Enloe relates the mass rapes of this war to developments and reactions in the international women's movement.

Accounts of torture, murder, mutilation, abduction, sexual enslavement, and systematic attempts to impregnate—all in the name of "ethnic cleansing"—make for the grimmest of reading. However brutal and appalling the information conveyed here, this book cannot and should not be ignored.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.

From Library Journal

Ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia has prompted calls for a war crimes tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials. The core essay in this collection, originally published in Germany in 1993, is one of the documents that first called attention to the magnitude of the atrocities. Its interviews with 20 rape survivors makes clear that all sides in the dispute are committing a share of the atrocities and that these actions are part of a deliberate plan. Additional essays in this first English edition by editor Stiglmayer, Roy Gutman, Catharine MacKinnon, Susan Brownmiller, and others discuss ethnopsychology, why rape always occurs during war, previous war crimes tribunals, the legal and feminist issues involved in bringing charges now, and, unconvincingly, the roots of the present conflict. The reporting's nonsensational, understated approach does nothing to blunt the horror of the events reported. Recommended for international affairs and women's studies collections.
Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 234 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (April 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803292295
• ISBN-13: 978-0803292291
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #760,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #67 in Books > History > Europe > Bosnia and Herzegovina

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Generally Strong Analysis of the Horrific Rapes in Bosnia, December 5, 1998

By 

richard_t "richard_t" (Overseas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Paperback)

Stiglmayer's useful book binds together a dozen essays on the mass rapes in Bosnian war. When it was written in 1993 the conflict still raged and disclosures of systematic government-ordered rapes primarily against Muslim women by Serbs were new and shocking to most readers. Now five years later the crimes still shock, but by their magnitude and not their novelty. This book is still a powerful witness to the rapes, but more importantly it provides a legal, psychological, and historic framework for coming to an understanding which is necessary if we are to try to prevent more such horrors in the future, or at least to provide a timely intervention and vigorous prosecution of the perpetrators.

Stiglmayer's own pair of essays are the most useful and interesting. Her first piece is an absorbing history of the Balkans that concisely untangles the web of hatreds and violence which have plagued the area for millennia and which are still powerfully germane. Her second piece constitutes the heart of the book. In it she dramatically and persuasively demonstrates that the rapes in Bosnia are not "typical" rapes, even by wartime standards, but are a tool systematically employed by the Serb leadership to pursue its genocidal campaign of "ethnic cleansing". Her interviews illustrate that the rapes are about the humiliation of women, but they are also directed at the Bosnian Muslim population as a whole as a tactical means to accomplish the evacuation by the Muslims of large swaths of Bosnian territory.

In other essays, Paul Parin offers some ideas on the psychology of the rapes. He doesn't claim to have all the answers, but his essay is thought-provoking. Rhonda Copelon provides a considered analysis of the state of international law and its applicability to the Bosnian horrors. Her otherwise sound piece is marred by her lawyerly/academic tendency to misuse words ("surface" as a transitive verb meaning "bring to light"; "intersectional" where she means "intersecting") and her occasional unlawyerly hyperbole (she notes on p.198 that a midday women's talk show opened with the script, "In Bosnia, they are raping the enemy's women". Two pages later this has turned into the assertion that the media "often refer to the mass rape in Bosnia as the rape of the `enemy's women'").

Surprisingly, the most disappointing essays are those by the best-known authors. The first of Catharine MacKinnon's two pieces is a reprint of a 1993 Ms. Magazine article. She gets in some obligatory feminist chops, pokes at Gloria Steinem, equates the Third Reich with Penthouse, and moans about American women in porn films, in brothels, and in slavery. She slips in a couple of gratuitous anecdotes, and that's it. No analysis, no nothing. It reads as though she wrote it on a train with a short deadline and did her research by cell-phone. Her second piece is marginally better, but her point is a weak one. She is horrified by the crimes against women, yet she wants to pile every insult and irritation ever suffered by woman under the umbrella of human rights violation. In one breathless sentence (p.185) she says "...UN troops were targeting women: `In the streets of Zagreb, UN troops often ask local women how much they cost'". Her whining about merely boorish behavior undermines her credibility and belittles the plight of women who suffered grievously in the wars. MacKinnon is exasperating, yet passionate, but ultimately her pieces fail because of her unsupported allegations and the scattered and distracting nature of her attacks on anything that pops into her head.

Similarly, Susan Brownmiller spends her essay slamming men as warrior animals. So much so that she entirely misses the point that these rapists were not beasts out of control, but were entirely under control and following their leaders' war plans to a tee. Brownmiller is not a scholar of Balkan history with any depth or understanding. She doesn't have Stiglmayer's innovative perceptions of the war. The Brownmiller piece offers no value added, it is mere filler.

Overall the book is excellent. Although, now, five years later, Stiglmayer could well give it another update, in addition to the changes she has made for this English edition. The wars have reached a precarious end, the ICTY war crimes trials are underway. There is another chapter to be added to the book, one can only hope that Stiglmayer will provide it, so that this work can remain fresh for many more years.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth the time, April 25, 2000

By 

Brooke (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Paperback)

This was a decent grouping of articles relating to the mass rapes occuring in Bosnia. Including interviews with the women themselves, as well as some of the rapists, it paints a vivid picture of these troubling events. I would have liked more analysis of the situation, specifically within the context of other wars in which rape has been a primary tool of warfare. Also, more information on where officials in Bosnia stand on this issue. This book could have been more well-rounded analytically.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rape and and more rape, October 16, 2008

By 

S. karsou "I read it" (Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Paperback)

I read the book. After reading less than 50% of it I got sick of the repeated descriptions of rape incidents. If it is not rape then it is killing or at times both. All of this took place in the backyard of civilized Eroupe ! and for many months.

I did like the historical capture of the Bulkans going back to Roman Empire on.