Feminiserade offer och maskuliniserade våldtäktsmän

Sammanfattning: Wartime rape is known as a new strategy in war during the past decades. Most commonly, rape is associated with the genocide in Rwanda and the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which have attracted the attention of researchers. However their greatest focus has been directed towards female victims of rape. For this reason this paper seeks to understand in which ways the state court of Bosnia-Herzegovina is making the male rape victims invisible. Through a quantitative content analysis of court cases and through a feminist perspective, with a focus on constructed gender identities, this paper examines eight court cases that demonstrate a clear difference between male and female victims of sexual violence and rape. The state court of Bosnia Herzegovina has completed 36 cases with rape/sexual violence as indictment. Of these 36 cases only four of them involve male victims. In these four cases, the crime is rarely mentioned as sexual violence or/and rape, unlike the cases that are involving female victims of rape or sexual violence, the terms are used frequently and are giving much more space in the verdicts. This result offers us an understanding that men are not seen as legitimate victims of wartime rape and sexual violence. The state Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina contributes to this perception by making male rape victims invisible in court proceedings. Based on the results of this study, men and boys are even more stigmatized than the female victims in an already stigmatized discourse.