Look at the "war crimes" committed by some in the Bush administration in the form of torture (waterboarding). Those responsible will not be held accountable. The Geneva Conventions mandates have only the power our leaders are inclined to give them.

But I understand your need to see a positive because I feel it too.

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Mainly the idea that rape during the war is treated as this big awful thing (which obv it is) in the midst of the very patriarchal Slavic culture with the mentality of (and I'm quoting the book here) "if you're going to get raped, you may as well lay back and enjoy it", and there's something off with the idea that woman raped by random paramilitary during the war = victim but woman raped by her date during peacetime = well, did you see what she was wearing?

in other words, she seemed to view rape during the war, not as a product of the conflict, but of a manifestation of misogyny inherent in her culture, which the war gave people more opportunity to act upon.

And I can understand the message that hauling a guy off to the Hague for war crimes for rape might send: "you can't rape people during a war" but the message should actually be "you shouldn't be raping people EVER" and men in that society aren't going to be getting the second message from the international "community" and they certainly don't get it from their own culture. (I don't mean to bag on the Slavs here - there are plenty of other cultures where this is true. I'm more familiar with that particular culture so I feel more comfortable commenting on it)

Whether it is intentional or not, distinguishing between rape during war vs. rape during peace time creates a dichotomy of "worthy" vs. "unworthy" victims, and the idea that rape in one circumstance is somehow worse and deserves more punishment than in another. I definitely am not comfortable with assessing whose experience was more traumatic, or somehow ranking the degree to which scenario is "worse" than the other. What's worse, being raped by a stranger during a war, or being repeatedly raped at home by a relative or family friend? I dunno, they both seem pretty horrible to me.

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This was clearly illegal, and yet it was an answer to the Germans' illegal abuses, so it is an often-overlooked page in history.

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