Sexual Violence against Men and Boys during the Holocaust: A Genealogy of (Not-So-Silent) Silence*

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorota Glowacka
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Male Victim ◽  
Adult Men ◽  
Conflict Settings ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
Male Heterosexual ◽  
Jewish Survivors

Abstract Although far more women than men are sexually violated in conflict settings, the records indicate that sexual violence against men and boys has been routinely practised as a weapon of war and genocide. Sexual violence against men and boys during the Holocaust was likely a regular occurrence, but it has remained undocumented and under-researched. Sexual violence against men, because it does not conform to prevalent gender norms and expectations, has been subjected to cultural and epistemic erasure. As a result, it is construed on the model of female rape, making it difficult to recognize male-victim specific forms of assault. Moreover, normative and legal frameworks developed to address it do not take into account the role that the stigma of homosexuality plays in male sexual violence. This article is based on oral testimonies by male heterosexual-identified Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. I focus on the survivors’ self-presentation as adult men in light of their past abuse and on the dynamic of the interviews. I also reference one memoir (Nate Leipciger’s The Weight of Freedom) and reinterpret a chapter from Elie Wiesel’s Night in light of my findings. Revealing the extent of sexual violence against men helps delegitimize harmful gender stereotypes and conceptions of manhood and ‘homosexuality’ and expose their central role in the perpetuation of genocidal violence.

scholarly journals Gender stereotypes 2.0: Self-representations of adolescents on Facebook

Comunicar ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (48) ◽  
pp. 81-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Úrsula Oberst ◽  
Andrés Chamarro ◽  
Vanessa Renau
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Sex Role ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Redes Sociales ◽  
Psychological Well Being ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Bem Sex Role Inventory ◽  
Adaptive Use ◽  
Adolescent Girls And Boys ◽  
Bienestar Psicologico

Adolescent girls and boys use online networking sites differently, and girls have a higher risk of being harmed by non-adaptive use. The aim of the study was to assess the extent to which adolescents portray themselves according to gender stereotypes on their Facebook profiles. Participants were 623 Facebook users of both sexes who responded to the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) and the Personal Well-being Index (PWI). In the first step, the adolescents responded to the BSRI with respect to how they view a typical adult in terms of gender stereotypes. In the second step, half of them responded to the BSRI with respect to how they view themselves and the other half responded with respect to their self-presentation on Facebook. The results show that adolescents consider themselves to be less sexually differentiated than a typical adult of their own sex, both in their self-perception and their self-portrayal on Facebook. The study confirms that the psychological well-being of girls decreases considerably with age and that it is associated with a greater degree of masculinity. We conclude that adolescents produce accurate self-representations on their Facebook profiles, and both boys and girls tend to offer a less sexually differentiated self-concept and self-portrayal than that of the typical adult, with a slight preference for masculine traits; moreover, masculinity is associated with a greaterdegree of psychological well-being. Chicas y chicos adolescentes hacen un uso diferente de las redes sociales online, y las chicas presentan un mayor riesgo de verse perjudicadas por un uso no adaptativo. El objetivo de este estudio era investigar en qué medida los adolescentes se presentan en términos de estereotipos de género en sus perfiles de Facebook. Los participantes, 623 usuarios de Facebook de ambos sexos, contestaron el Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) y el Personal Well-being Index (PWI). En la primera fase, respondieron sobre cómo ven a un adulto típico en términos de estereotipos de género. En la segunda fase, la mitad de ellos contestó el BSRI en relación a cómo se ven a sí mismos, y la otra mitad cómo se presentan en Facebook. Los resultados muestran que los adolescentes se consideran más sexualmente indiferenciados que un adulto típico de su mismo sexo, tanto en su auto-percepción como en su presentación en Facebook. Se confirma que el bienestar psicológico de las chicas baja considerablemente con la edad, y que está asociado a un mayor grado de masculinidad. Se concluye que los adolescentes producen representaciones verdaderas en sus perfiles de Facebook, y que existe una tendencia hacia una auto-concepción y auto-presentación más sexualmente indiferenciada con una leve preferencia por rasgos masculinos, tanto en chicos como en chicas; además, la masculinidad está asociada a un mayor grado de bienestar psicológico.

The Galician Paradigm? Post-war Voices of German-Speaking Polish Jewish Survivors1

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Aleksiun
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
German Culture ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Historical Commissions ◽  
Post War ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
Jewish Survivors ◽  
Second World

Abstract This paper examines the experience of Galician-Jewish survivors who were fluent in German and who had developed close ties to German culture before the Second World War. It suggests that looking through the German linguistic lens highlights the multilayered nature of Jewish cultural identity in Galicia and offers an important critical tool with which to understand the distinct ways in which Galician Jews experienced the Holocaust. Using personal accounts, this article analyzes the ways in which complex cultural biographies of Galician Jews shaped their identities as eastern European Jews, Polish citizens, and Holocaust survivors. On the basis of testimonies included in early accounts for the Jewish historical commissions, statements by Jewish witnesses in post-war trials, oral interviews, and memoirs, this article discusses the ways in which Galician Jews remembered their relationship with German culture and how their complex cultural identity shaped their personal trajectories after the liberation.

scholarly journals Diana Dumitru, Peasants’ perceptions of Jewish life in interwar Bessarabia and how this became interwoven into the Holocaust

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 131-148
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Vast Array ◽  
Republic Of Moldova ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
Memorial Museum ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
National Archives ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Jewish Survivors

This article analyzes the imagery shared by interwar Bessarabian peasants about their Jewish neighbours and traces the role that this imagery played in determining gentiles’ attitudes or behaviour during the summer of 1941. It is built on a vast array of sources, including, over three hundred testimonies of Jewish survivors, and archival materials studied at the National Archives of the Republic of Moldova and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. During the start of the war, civilians had brief interregnum allowing them to act on their own, unrestrained by local authorities. At this time, robberies in Jewish towns and villages occurred on an unprecedented scale across the region, with open involvement of numerous groups of civilians; sometimes these robberies were accompanied by assaults and murders. This paper argues that the plunder of Bessarabian Jewry was something more complex than war banditry.

scholarly journals Examining the Appropriateness of Gender-Inclusion as a Humanitarian Response Mechanism for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence against Men

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-41
Author(s):  
Catherine Akurut
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Humanitarian Response ◽  
Conflict Settings ◽  
Gender Inclusion ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Specific

This review examines the appropriateness of including men within the existing sexual and gender-based violence programming in armed conflict settings rather than providing services explicitly designed to address their needs. A central premise of the paper is that men experience sexual violence differently to women and that the way they seek help also varies. This gender-specific difference calls into question why humanitarian organisations pursue a ‘gender-inclusion’ approach, which simply extends services designed for women to men. There is a need to reconsider this approach, and specifically its implementation. The paper reviews relevant secondary sources and argues that current practices of sexual and gender-based violence programming fail to translate into actionable responses suited for and sensitive to men.

Clinton stated, Trump exclaimed!

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea McDonnell
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Presidential Debates ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Linguistic Style

Abstract This study examines tweets posted by candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the weeks preceding the 2016 presidential debates in an effort to assess the ways in which the candidates’ language use either conformed to or refuted gender stereotypes. Analysis of 490 tweets (724 sentences) suggests that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton used language in ways that were gender counterstereotypic. Clinton’s tweets contained a significantly greater number of statements and directives, suggesting that the candidate adopted a more masculine linguistic style, but also a greater number of cooperative words, which are stereotypically associated with feminine speech. Trump’s tweets contained a significantly greater number of exclamations, but fewer statements and directives than Clinton, thus defying masculine linguistic stereotypes. The implications of these findings on candidates’ political self-presentation are discussed.

Women’s Emancipation from Slavery in Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia van der Spuy
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Nuclear Families ◽  
The Status ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
Involuntary Servitude ◽  
And Control ◽  
British Colonies

Women were the majority of enslaved people in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. Slavery was transformed and expanded in the context of so-called “legitimate commerce” that followed the abolition of oceanic slave trading. Abolition proclamations followed, in British colonies in the 1830s, and elsewhere from the 1870s through much of the 20th century, but abolition did not equate to freedom. Gender was at the heart of emancipation everywhere. Colonial merchants and officials colluded with local male elites to ensure the least disruption possible to the status quo. For these male allies, emancipation was a contradiction in terms for women, because masculine authority and control over women was assumed. In many regions, it was difficult for Europeans to distinguish between marriage, pawnship, and slavery. Women engaged strategically with colonial institutions like the courts over such distinctions to assert some form of control over their own lives, labor, and bodies. Where slavery and marriage were categorically distinct, again women might engage with Western gender stereotypes of marriage to extricate themselves from the authority of former slaveholders, or they might withdraw their labor by fleeing from the farms. Whereas for Europeans women were ideally defined as subservient wives within nuclear families, for many women themselves motherhood and access to their children were key to struggles toward emancipation. Women’s decisions about their emancipation were influenced by many factors, including whether or not they were mothers, if they were born into slavery or enslaved as children or adults, their experiences of coercion and cruelty including sexual violence, their status within the slaveholding, and their relationships of dependency and support. Topography and location mattered; urban contexts offered different kinds of post-slavery opportunity for many, and access to land and other economic opportunities and limitations were critical. The abolition of slavery by European colonial officials did not emancipate women, but it did provide the context in which some women might negotiate or claim their own rights to freedom as they defined it—which in some cases meant walking away from systems of involuntary servitude. Some women engaged colonial officers and institutions directly to demand a change in status, whereas others decided to stay in relationships that, in many cases, were subtly redefined.

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