Abstract
The term gender violence is often used to highlight the role gender dynamics and expectations have in the commission of violence against women. However, in this chapter, I intend to demonstrate how at least within times of conflict this term can also be used to identify types of violence committed against men. I will use the case study of the Bougainville civil war to demonstrate how in certain types of conflicts, combatants’ inability or unwillingness to distinguish hostile forces from the male civilian population can result in the disproportionate targeting of this group. Consequently, this demographic can be at increased risk of assault, torture, and murder at the hands of combatants as a result of their gender. The intention of this chapter is not to try and marginalize the victimization of women during times of war but merely to demonstrate how gender roles and expectations can result in unique forms of violence against men as well.
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Notes
- 1.
This conflict also has the advantages of being of low intensity, and in a low population area where there was a low media footprint, all of which made it easier to catalogue the violence that occurred there.
- 2.
Note that the UN data is for PNG as a whole. However, comparisons of PNG’s demographic composition with that of Bougainville reveal only marginal variation. Additionally, the level and type of violence was not sufficient to skew the demographics (as in the USSR in World War II). Additionally, nothing indicates that the refugee population was sufficiently gendered to skew the demographics.
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Boomen, M. (2019). Guilty by Association: The Issue of Gender Violence and the Targeted Killing of Men of Fighting Age in Times of Conflict. In: Ratuva, S., Compel, R., Aguilar, S. (eds) Guns & Roses: Comparative Civil-Military Relations in the Changing Security Environment. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2008-8_18
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