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pocketbotch 's review for:
Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: War Through the Lives of Women
by Christina Lamb
dark
emotional
sad
Bleak, infuriating read about the bottomless cruelty of men. One of the most interesting passages likened wartime sexual violence to chemical warfare, for its immediate and long-term damage. The author focused on modern wars, electing to tell the narrative through survivors who can directly speak about it, but I do wish there had been an introduction or something similar detailing mass sexual violence in earlier historical periods. Men have made women collateral damage in their wars since the dawn of time so I think it is important context, to know that the current mass rapes are just fruits of a very, very deep rot.
I have no idea what can be done about this. It will never end until men decide it has to stop. Based on the author's discussions, the only true solutions to decrease how much soldiers sexually attack the women they encounter involved either (1) having a well-disciplined fighting force without a culture of misogynistic bonding, or (2) having more women in the army. Neither of these are great options. The book is worth a read but it's a topic I will have to revisit every few years to see whether any modicum of progress has occurred.
The women in these warzones are so incalculably strong. They very much deserve to have their suffering acknowledged and to have wartime sexual violence treated as the genocidal war crime it so blatantly is. They deserve to be recognized as heroes and to no longer be written out of history. The sheer ubiquity of wartime rape was something I didn't comprehend and thanks to this book, with every new conflict that pops up, I'll wonder what is happening to the women.
I have no idea what can be done about this. It will never end until men decide it has to stop. Based on the author's discussions, the only true solutions to decrease how much soldiers sexually attack the women they encounter involved either (1) having a well-disciplined fighting force without a culture of misogynistic bonding, or (2) having more women in the army. Neither of these are great options. The book is worth a read but it's a topic I will have to revisit every few years to see whether any modicum of progress has occurred.
The women in these warzones are so incalculably strong. They very much deserve to have their suffering acknowledged and to have wartime sexual violence treated as the genocidal war crime it so blatantly is. They deserve to be recognized as heroes and to no longer be written out of history. The sheer ubiquity of wartime rape was something I didn't comprehend and thanks to this book, with every new conflict that pops up, I'll wonder what is happening to the women.