Rape: A Matter of History

Abstract

Throughout history war was always an ugly endeavor, steeped in political rivalry, ideological elitism, unimaginable brutality, torture and terror. The streets of Jerusalem were known to be running ‘with blood’, first after the Christian crusaders and later after the Romans captured the city in AD 70 (Kern, 1999, p. 353). The meta-narrative of human pain and suffering on the many canvases of war and peace was discriminate -race, class, ethnicity specific — and it was gendered. Women were usually the spoils of war and sexual violence, rape and sexual slavery common components of the many bloodsheds of the past. In Homer’s Iliad, Greek warriors were promised women as reward if Troy were to fall. ‘If the gods permit us to sack the great city of Priam, let him pick out twenty Trojan women for himself’ (Vikman, 2005, p. 24). The application of sexual violence displayed a disturbing facilitating role in the warring interplay of state expansionism and nation building. ‘Coercion and conscience, enmity and good-will, self-assertion and self-subordination are present in every political society. The state is built up out of these two conflicting aspects of human nature’ (Carr, 1939, p. 96). These profound incompatibilities created constant tensions within the international system of states. They remained largely unaddressed throughout history; hardly ever reconciled.