This article explores the ways soldiers in the Congo speak about the massive amount of rape committed by the armed forces in the recent war in the DRC. It focuses on the reasons that the soldiers give to why rape occurs. It discusses how the soldiers distinguish between ‘lust rapes’ and ‘evil rapes’ and argues that their explanations of rape must be understood in relation to notions of different (impossible) masculinities. Ultimately, through reading the soldiers’ words, one can glimpse the logics—arguably informed by the increasingly globalised context of soldiering—through which rape becomes possible, and even ‘normalised’ in particular warscapes.
This article analyses discourses about sexual violence and masculinity within one of the main perpetrators itself in the DRC: the new integrated State Armed Forces (FARDC). Interviews were conducted in the Kinshasa area mainly with FARDC soldiers who had also served in the previous government forces, many as child soldiers. The study focused on soldiers and officers with recent experience in the “front” areas (about 80% of those interviewed). About half of those interviewed were officers, and around 20 % of all interviewees were women.
Key Findings:
- The soldiers understand the rape that they and their colleagues committed (both ‘‘lust’’ rapes and ‘‘evil’’ rapes) as ‘‘resulting’’—although differently—from masculine heterosexuality and the attendant discourses according to which men have sexual ‘‘needs’’ that must be satisfied and where a man/soldier, if deprived, has the ‘‘right’’ to take women by force. They also understood both ‘‘types’’ of rape to be different yet related expressions of a deep-seated frustration connected to poverty, neglect and lack of support and the general climate of warring. This frustration is manifested not only in rapes, but also in a general violence against civilians.
- The ways in which the soldiers draw lines of distinction between ‘‘lust rapes,’’ which are (somewhat) more ethically palatable and ‘‘evil rapes’’ from which they distance themselves—as well as how these lines of distinction blur in their texts—allow entry into the logics through which rape becomes possible, and even ‘‘normalised.’’
- The logics that ‘‘explain’’ the sexualised violence the soldiers commit are crafted out of the (also globalised) discourses around heterosexuality, masculinity (and femininity) that prevail in the particular warscape in which the soldiers live and act. In this sense they must be understood as something produced within the military institutions and armed forces. These discourses posit impossible masculine subject positions (those that construct the fighter as well as the provider) and the attending degrading images of women with formative power.
- In this ‘‘abnormal’’ state the soldiers still strive to achieve these impossible subject positions as ‘‘Men,’’ otherwise their ultimate masculine identity as ‘‘soldiers’’ would be undermined. Rape here serves as a performative act that functions to reconstitute their masculinity—yet simultaneously symbolises their ultimate failure to do so. Through the act of rape several key components of both the provider and the fighter are realised: the sexual relief ‘‘necessary’’ for the fighter is achieved, and the dominance and the heterosexuality of the provider is experienced, however temporarily. The act of rape thus symbolises a certain temporal realisation of the soldiers’ masculinity, while at the same time also symbolises the ultimate failure to be truly ‘‘masculine,’’ since the act itself is so clearly distanced from the ‘‘real’’ notions of masculinity that these soldiers articulate.
