Bracewell, Wendy. 2000. “Rape in Kosovo: Masculinity and Serbian Nationalism,”
Nations and Nationalism 6(4): 563-90.
Beginning of the article is incredibly biased; the Serbians were cracking down on the Kosovan's and killed many civilians.
"The politics of national victimisation formulated by the intellectual opposition on the Kosovo issue - and particularly the idea that Serbia’s most urgent political priority was a reassertion of its national rights - provided the platform for Slobodan MiloSeviC’s leadership challenge" p.564
"Defenders of the Kosovo Serbs interpreted sexual violence in Kosovo as part of a deliberately orchestrated Albanian campaign to terrorise and humiliate the Kosovo Serbs, encourage them to sell their lands and emigrate." p.565
"Even at the time, critics of nationalist trends in Serbia noted that the incidence of rape was lower than elsewhere in the federation, and pointed out the way that the politicisation of rape aggravated Serb-Albanian relations and fed Serbian paranoia" p.565
"the Yugoslav conflicts are far from unique in equating violent masculinity, militarism and nationhood. But neither is it accurate to say that war in Yugoslavia (or indeed, any war) represents ‘masculinity’ run riot. This
"Given the lack of evidence to support claims of a deliberate campaign of sexual violence, why did the subject receive so much attention?...The answer is that intellectuals, politicians and the media actively promoted hysteria over rape as part of their efforts to revive the Serbian national question in Yugoslav politics." p.568
"Accounts often blurred the boundary between rape and other forms of violence, so acts that might more correctly be described as attempted rape, statutory rape or assault - or even crude behaviour - were described as rape when an Albanian was the aggressor and a Serb was the target" p.569
"Structuring Serbian nationalism with reference to an aggressive and competitive masculinity also contributed to the break-down of political relations in Yugoslavia and to the violence of the war that followed." p.570
The Serbians made a law in 1986 that made nationalist rape (rape of another ethnic group) a more serious offence than national rape (rape of Serb/Serb or Albanian/Albanian), showing that it wasn't the injury of the woman that counted, but it was the dent in national pride that was at stake.
"These women were asserting a rigid gender differentiation, dividing the Serbian nation into virtuous mothers and heroic soldiers; those who nurture the nation and those who are called upon to defend it." p.574
Nationalist rhetoric began cherry-picking ideals of "Serbian culture" in order to reinforce a patriarchal rule: "the nation-state as a patriarchal family, governed by a father-ruler, its territory demarcated by ancestral ‘hearths’, nurtured by ‘Mother Serbia’, defended by her sons against rape by her enemies." p.575
"Throughout Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, these pervasive anxieties about masculinity were amplified by the crisis of communism. Calls for a reassertion of dominant masculinity were a central
part of the neo-traditionalist programme for restoring the ‘natural and authentic’ social order that had allegedly been subverted by socialism" p.577
"Themass nationalism of the late 1980s gave [unemployed men] an opportunity to reassert their own masculine dignity, as well as that of the Serbian nation." p.578
"If failing to resist aggression had emasculated the Serbs, nationalist calls to action asserted that Serbs could stand up and be men once again." p.578
"Many feminists were skeptical about the nationalist manipulation of the rape issue in Kosovo since it deflected attention away from sexual violence perpetrated by men (regardless of nation) against women, and pressed women’s bodies into the service of nationalist ideology." p.579
"Adversaries derided Serbian anti-war activists as women who had failed to fulfill their patriotic duty as mothers by bearing enough children to spare some to the defence of the nation." p.580
"‘We may not be good at working and earning money, but at least we are good at fighting’, as MiloSeviC would later remark (DjukiC 1994: 187). Such statements could be read as implying that war would reaffirm Serbian manhood, and the bloody conflict that followed would indeed be taken as
proving that the Serbs were indeed an ‘unyielding, tough, masculine nation’ with a ‘powerful male fist’" p.582
"soldiers who raped (and their superiors) could draw on memories of rape in Kosovo to interpret their acts as retaliation in kind for past Serb sufferings, as an effective means of destroying their enemies’ selfesteem, national identity and community, and as an affirmation of their own manhood and that of their nation." p.583
"Understanding the national community in terms of a family linked by ties of blood put a premium on ethnic purity, encouraging intolerance of mixed marriages and suspicion of the children of such unions" p.583
"Both gender and nation are best seen as relational identities, not reflections of a natural or immanent essence but created through a process of highlighting difference" p.585
Beginning of the article is incredibly biased; the Serbians were cracking down on the Kosovan's and killed many civilians.
"The politics of national victimisation formulated by the intellectual opposition on the Kosovo issue - and particularly the idea that Serbia’s most urgent political priority was a reassertion of its national rights - provided the platform for Slobodan MiloSeviC’s leadership challenge" p.564
"Defenders of the Kosovo Serbs interpreted sexual violence in Kosovo as part of a deliberately orchestrated Albanian campaign to terrorise and humiliate the Kosovo Serbs, encourage them to sell their lands and emigrate." p.565
"Even at the time, critics of nationalist trends in Serbia noted that the incidence of rape was lower than elsewhere in the federation, and pointed out the way that the politicisation of rape aggravated Serb-Albanian relations and fed Serbian paranoia" p.565
"the Yugoslav conflicts are far from unique in equating violent masculinity, militarism and nationhood. But neither is it accurate to say that war in Yugoslavia (or indeed, any war) represents ‘masculinity’ run riot. This
interpretation of the Yugoslav conflict rests on an essentialist view of
masculinity as fundamentally violent" p.567
"Given the lack of evidence to support claims of a deliberate campaign of sexual violence, why did the subject receive so much attention?...The answer is that intellectuals, politicians and the media actively promoted hysteria over rape as part of their efforts to revive the Serbian national question in Yugoslav politics." p.568
"Accounts often blurred the boundary between rape and other forms of violence, so acts that might more correctly be described as attempted rape, statutory rape or assault - or even crude behaviour - were described as rape when an Albanian was the aggressor and a Serb was the target" p.569
"Structuring Serbian nationalism with reference to an aggressive and competitive masculinity also contributed to the break-down of political relations in Yugoslavia and to the violence of the war that followed." p.570
"The nationalist clamour over rape in Kosovo helped to gender this sense of national decline by phrasing it in terms of masculine honour and impotence." p.570
"In the words of nationalist critics, the Serbian nation had been placed in an unnatural position, forced to submit, violated and degraded by Albanian autonomy and separatism, and had passively, even masochistically, failed to defend itself" p.571
"In effect, Serb-Albanian relations in Kosovo were presented as a matter of competing masculinities, with the bodies of women serving as the markers of success or failure." p.572
"These women were asserting a rigid gender differentiation, dividing the Serbian nation into virtuous mothers and heroic soldiers; those who nurture the nation and those who are called upon to defend it." p.574
Nationalist rhetoric began cherry-picking ideals of "Serbian culture" in order to reinforce a patriarchal rule: "the nation-state as a patriarchal family, governed by a father-ruler, its territory demarcated by ancestral ‘hearths’, nurtured by ‘Mother Serbia’, defended by her sons against rape by her enemies." p.575
"Throughout Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, these pervasive anxieties about masculinity were amplified by the crisis of communism. Calls for a reassertion of dominant masculinity were a central
part of the neo-traditionalist programme for restoring the ‘natural and authentic’ social order that had allegedly been subverted by socialism" p.577
"Themass nationalism of the late 1980s gave [unemployed men] an opportunity to reassert their own masculine dignity, as well as that of the Serbian nation." p.578
"If failing to resist aggression had emasculated the Serbs, nationalist calls to action asserted that Serbs could stand up and be men once again." p.578
"Many feminists were skeptical about the nationalist manipulation of the rape issue in Kosovo since it deflected attention away from sexual violence perpetrated by men (regardless of nation) against women, and pressed women’s bodies into the service of nationalist ideology." p.579
"Adversaries derided Serbian anti-war activists as women who had failed to fulfill their patriotic duty as mothers by bearing enough children to spare some to the defence of the nation." p.580
"‘We may not be good at working and earning money, but at least we are good at fighting’, as MiloSeviC would later remark (DjukiC 1994: 187). Such statements could be read as implying that war would reaffirm Serbian manhood, and the bloody conflict that followed would indeed be taken as
proving that the Serbs were indeed an ‘unyielding, tough, masculine nation’ with a ‘powerful male fist’" p.582
"soldiers who raped (and their superiors) could draw on memories of rape in Kosovo to interpret their acts as retaliation in kind for past Serb sufferings, as an effective means of destroying their enemies’ selfesteem, national identity and community, and as an affirmation of their own manhood and that of their nation." p.583
"Understanding the national community in terms of a family linked by ties of blood put a premium on ethnic purity, encouraging intolerance of mixed marriages and suspicion of the children of such unions" p.583
"Both gender and nation are best seen as relational identities, not reflections of a natural or immanent essence but created through a process of highlighting difference" p.585
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