Gendercide
I wanted to post today about something important that stays under the radar. It's sometimes part of a larger genocide; it's sometimes a stand-alone occurrence. It's the term we don't know that's used to describe things we've always known about. It affects everyone, but, when it happens, it specifically targets only some of us.
It's Gendercide.
I've linked first to Wikipedia for a basic introduction. Gendercide is targeted, systematic attacks against a single sex group. Generally, it refers to killing members of a single sex, but, truly, it, like genocide, includes other forms of attack as well.
Femicide, the targeted, systematic killing (or attack) of women, is a much more well-known concept, if not a well-known term. The foundational texts of gendercide tend to discuss femicide only, as the study of these atrocities was formed out of the feminist movement. While it is important to study femicide--and work to end it--we cannot forget that women are not the only targets of this form of gender-based victimization.
Gendercide Watch is an organization out of Alberta, Canada dedicated to raising awareness of the crime of gender-based killing. One of their projects, which you can see on their website, is to increase the visibility of gender-based killings of men so that their suffering can be included in the field of study. Gendercide Watch is led by Adam Jones, a well-known scholar in the field of genocide studies and the author of several books on the subject.
The best known act of gendercide is female infanticide, that is, the killing of female infants, generally in preference for a male offspring. This pracatice has been occurring around the world for millenia. Currently, India and China are scrutinized for this practice. Why India and China? They are the two most populous nations, and have some of the poorest people, in the world. For decades, there has been international pressure on India and China to reduce their populations, and, as a result, they have each instituted population control policies. I have posted about these policies before. But, I think it is worth discussing again, in this context. Both countries' population policies have discouraged high parity births (second, third, fourth children), while this discouragement has been instituted in different ways. China's infamous "One Child Policy" codified a demand for fewer children, while the population programs in India (run by both the government and international non-governmental organizations) "merely" provided "rewards" for villages that saw lower population growths and fewer births and often reduced or eliminated aid to villages which failed to participate in the programs. While China has seen increased legalization of and access to contraceptives and abortions, India has seen mass sterilization camps. I am, in no way, congratulating China on better implementation. There have been plenty of reports of abuses, including forced abortions, coming from China. However, China has made strides in improving women's health and economic access that India has not. Kerala, a state on the southwestern coast of India, made a great effort to improve the economic and social rights of women, and, in turn, saw the birth rates fall, as women were empowered to a higher position than simply the producers of offspring. This effort is documented in the literature and demonstrates part of what ought to be the solution to the "problem" of population.
But, female infanticide remains a problem. Around the world, women earn less and have less agency (social power and access) than men. To have a son means you have a secure provider for your old age, the promise of heirs, the reassurance that your child will succeed. To have a daughter is to worry about her safety, to worry about your future, to fear economic ruin. In countries where women have even less agency and standing, such as those with more traditional cultures, this is even more true, and fatally so. Where births are restricted or discouraged, and a family is permitted fewer children, they will make the very real economic choice to have a son. While this choice is wrong, it is enforced by a culture that itself victimizes and subjugates half of humanity and reinforces this in its policies. How do you choose to have a son? You kill any daughters you have until you have a son. It is not rich people who make this choice, but those trapped in poverty. The solution to this practice is not punishment, or at least not punishment alone. To prosecute female infanticide while ignoring the culture that produces it will only continue to criminalize the poor who are already viewed as the source of the evils of overpopulation. The solution is to improve the position of women until it is no longer a burden to raise a daughter.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the former Yugoslavia was breaking up after the death of Tito who had managed to keep a Slavic nationalism alive despite underlying ethnic divisions. What became Serbia was determined to prevent the loss of territory and national sovereignty which loomed with the separations of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo. These tensions remain in the news today. (Macedonia declared independence with no retribution.)
Throughout the war(s) that followed, Serbian forces targeted "battle-aged" men in Kosovo and Bosnia. Women were also targeted during these genocidal campaigns, but men were specifically targeted, en masse, and murdered or placed in concentration camps where they offen suffered sexual abuse and mutilation. Of special note is the Srebrenica Massacre, which I have also mentioned before in this journal ( 1 and 2).
Many of the men were killed in the school gymnasium in Bratunac that had already served as the site of a gendercidal massacre in the Bosnian war. Many hundreds more were massacred at a football field near Nova Kasaba, the worst killing ground of the entire five-day slaughter. Human Rights Watch recorded the testimony of one eyewitness to the gendercidal massacres at Nova Kasaba. The Serbs, he said,
picked out Muslims whom they either knew about or knew, interrogated them and made them dig pits. ...During our first day, the Cetniks [Serbs] killed approximately 500 people [men]. They would just line them up and shoot them into the pits. The approximately one hundred guys whom they interrogated and who had dug the mass graves then had to fill them in. At the end of the day, they were ordered to dig a pit for themselves and line up in front of it. ... [T]hey were shot into the mass grave. ... At dawn, ... [a] bulldozer arrived and dug up a pit ..., and buried about 400 men alive. The men were encircled by Cetniks: whoever tried to escape was shot." (Quoted in Mark Danner, "The Killing Fields of Bosnia", New York Review of Books, September 24 1998.)
A great many of the men who had sought to flee through the hills to Tuzla were doomed as well. The Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Radivoj Krstic, in a radio transmission intercepted by western eavesdroppers, told his forces: "You must kill everyone. We don't need anyone alive." (Mark Danner, "Bosnia: The Great Betrayal", New York Review of Books, March 26 1998.) Serb forces took special pleasure in isolating trees where men had sought to hide, and riddling them with shrapnel from anti-aircraft guns.
...
The Red Cross lists 7,079 dead and missing at Srebrenica. Other estimates range as high as 8,000 or 10,000. David Rohde notes that the massacre "accounts for an astonishing percentage of the number of missing" from the brutal Balkans conflict as a whole. "Of the 18,406 Muslims, Serbs and Croats reported still missing ... as of January 1997, 7,079 are people [men] who disappeared after the fall of Srebrenica. In other words, approximately 38 percent of the war's missing are from Srebrenica." By any standard, it was one of the worst and most concentrated acts of gendercide in the post-World War II era -- and the worst massacre of any kind in Europe for fifty years.
The reality of the targeting of men in this genocide is often glanced over, but it is no less terrifying.
The genocide in Rwanda is becoming more and more well-known. The gender-based offenses of it are still often ignored, even in field literature. While people of both genders were killed, maimed, sexually abused, and mutilated, men were generally targeted for death and women were generally targeted for rape. Men of all ages were viewed as potential soldiers, and died for it, while Tutsi women were viewed as temptresses for marrying Hutu men or as the progenitors of Tutsi offspring and were punished sexually for it.
There are strong indications that the gendering of the Rwandan genocide evolved between April and June 1994, with adult males targeted almost exclusively before the genocide and predominantly in its early stages, but with more children and women swept up in the later stages. (For somewhat similar trends, see the Armenia and Jewish holocaust case studies.) In a comprehensive 1999 report on the genocide, Alison Des Forges wrote: "In the past Rwandans had not usually killed women in conflicts and at the beginning of the genocide assailants often spared them. When militia had wanted to kill women during an attack in Kigali in late April, for example, Renzaho [a principal leader of the genocide] had intervened to stop it. Killers in Gikongoro told a woman that she was safe because 'Sex has no ethnic group.' The number of attacks against women [from mid-May onwards], all at about the same time, indicates that a decision to kill women had been made at the national level and was being implemented in local communities." (See Human Rights Watch, "Mid-May Slaughter: Women and Children as Victims," in Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda.)
I highlighted this subject because it is so often ignored. But, at the heart, gendercide is genocide. It is not wrong because it targets a specific gender; it is wrong because it is the victimization of human beings. But, we must watch for the systematic assault and murder of members of a certain gender, because what we are seeing is not discrimination, it is genocide, and it must be acted upon.
It's Gendercide.
I've linked first to Wikipedia for a basic introduction. Gendercide is targeted, systematic attacks against a single sex group. Generally, it refers to killing members of a single sex, but, truly, it, like genocide, includes other forms of attack as well.
Femicide, the targeted, systematic killing (or attack) of women, is a much more well-known concept, if not a well-known term. The foundational texts of gendercide tend to discuss femicide only, as the study of these atrocities was formed out of the feminist movement. While it is important to study femicide--and work to end it--we cannot forget that women are not the only targets of this form of gender-based victimization.
Gendercide Watch is an organization out of Alberta, Canada dedicated to raising awareness of the crime of gender-based killing. One of their projects, which you can see on their website, is to increase the visibility of gender-based killings of men so that their suffering can be included in the field of study. Gendercide Watch is led by Adam Jones, a well-known scholar in the field of genocide studies and the author of several books on the subject.
The best known act of gendercide is female infanticide, that is, the killing of female infants, generally in preference for a male offspring. This pracatice has been occurring around the world for millenia. Currently, India and China are scrutinized for this practice. Why India and China? They are the two most populous nations, and have some of the poorest people, in the world. For decades, there has been international pressure on India and China to reduce their populations, and, as a result, they have each instituted population control policies. I have posted about these policies before. But, I think it is worth discussing again, in this context. Both countries' population policies have discouraged high parity births (second, third, fourth children), while this discouragement has been instituted in different ways. China's infamous "One Child Policy" codified a demand for fewer children, while the population programs in India (run by both the government and international non-governmental organizations) "merely" provided "rewards" for villages that saw lower population growths and fewer births and often reduced or eliminated aid to villages which failed to participate in the programs. While China has seen increased legalization of and access to contraceptives and abortions, India has seen mass sterilization camps. I am, in no way, congratulating China on better implementation. There have been plenty of reports of abuses, including forced abortions, coming from China. However, China has made strides in improving women's health and economic access that India has not. Kerala, a state on the southwestern coast of India, made a great effort to improve the economic and social rights of women, and, in turn, saw the birth rates fall, as women were empowered to a higher position than simply the producers of offspring. This effort is documented in the literature and demonstrates part of what ought to be the solution to the "problem" of population.
But, female infanticide remains a problem. Around the world, women earn less and have less agency (social power and access) than men. To have a son means you have a secure provider for your old age, the promise of heirs, the reassurance that your child will succeed. To have a daughter is to worry about her safety, to worry about your future, to fear economic ruin. In countries where women have even less agency and standing, such as those with more traditional cultures, this is even more true, and fatally so. Where births are restricted or discouraged, and a family is permitted fewer children, they will make the very real economic choice to have a son. While this choice is wrong, it is enforced by a culture that itself victimizes and subjugates half of humanity and reinforces this in its policies. How do you choose to have a son? You kill any daughters you have until you have a son. It is not rich people who make this choice, but those trapped in poverty. The solution to this practice is not punishment, or at least not punishment alone. To prosecute female infanticide while ignoring the culture that produces it will only continue to criminalize the poor who are already viewed as the source of the evils of overpopulation. The solution is to improve the position of women until it is no longer a burden to raise a daughter.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the former Yugoslavia was breaking up after the death of Tito who had managed to keep a Slavic nationalism alive despite underlying ethnic divisions. What became Serbia was determined to prevent the loss of territory and national sovereignty which loomed with the separations of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo. These tensions remain in the news today. (Macedonia declared independence with no retribution.)
Throughout the war(s) that followed, Serbian forces targeted "battle-aged" men in Kosovo and Bosnia. Women were also targeted during these genocidal campaigns, but men were specifically targeted, en masse, and murdered or placed in concentration camps where they offen suffered sexual abuse and mutilation. Of special note is the Srebrenica Massacre, which I have also mentioned before in this journal ( 1 and 2).
Many of the men were killed in the school gymnasium in Bratunac that had already served as the site of a gendercidal massacre in the Bosnian war. Many hundreds more were massacred at a football field near Nova Kasaba, the worst killing ground of the entire five-day slaughter. Human Rights Watch recorded the testimony of one eyewitness to the gendercidal massacres at Nova Kasaba. The Serbs, he said,
picked out Muslims whom they either knew about or knew, interrogated them and made them dig pits. ...During our first day, the Cetniks [Serbs] killed approximately 500 people [men]. They would just line them up and shoot them into the pits. The approximately one hundred guys whom they interrogated and who had dug the mass graves then had to fill them in. At the end of the day, they were ordered to dig a pit for themselves and line up in front of it. ... [T]hey were shot into the mass grave. ... At dawn, ... [a] bulldozer arrived and dug up a pit ..., and buried about 400 men alive. The men were encircled by Cetniks: whoever tried to escape was shot." (Quoted in Mark Danner, "The Killing Fields of Bosnia", New York Review of Books, September 24 1998.)
A great many of the men who had sought to flee through the hills to Tuzla were doomed as well. The Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Radivoj Krstic, in a radio transmission intercepted by western eavesdroppers, told his forces: "You must kill everyone. We don't need anyone alive." (Mark Danner, "Bosnia: The Great Betrayal", New York Review of Books, March 26 1998.) Serb forces took special pleasure in isolating trees where men had sought to hide, and riddling them with shrapnel from anti-aircraft guns.
...
The Red Cross lists 7,079 dead and missing at Srebrenica. Other estimates range as high as 8,000 or 10,000. David Rohde notes that the massacre "accounts for an astonishing percentage of the number of missing" from the brutal Balkans conflict as a whole. "Of the 18,406 Muslims, Serbs and Croats reported still missing ... as of January 1997, 7,079 are people [men] who disappeared after the fall of Srebrenica. In other words, approximately 38 percent of the war's missing are from Srebrenica." By any standard, it was one of the worst and most concentrated acts of gendercide in the post-World War II era -- and the worst massacre of any kind in Europe for fifty years.
The reality of the targeting of men in this genocide is often glanced over, but it is no less terrifying.
The genocide in Rwanda is becoming more and more well-known. The gender-based offenses of it are still often ignored, even in field literature. While people of both genders were killed, maimed, sexually abused, and mutilated, men were generally targeted for death and women were generally targeted for rape. Men of all ages were viewed as potential soldiers, and died for it, while Tutsi women were viewed as temptresses for marrying Hutu men or as the progenitors of Tutsi offspring and were punished sexually for it.
There are strong indications that the gendering of the Rwandan genocide evolved between April and June 1994, with adult males targeted almost exclusively before the genocide and predominantly in its early stages, but with more children and women swept up in the later stages. (For somewhat similar trends, see the Armenia and Jewish holocaust case studies.) In a comprehensive 1999 report on the genocide, Alison Des Forges wrote: "In the past Rwandans had not usually killed women in conflicts and at the beginning of the genocide assailants often spared them. When militia had wanted to kill women during an attack in Kigali in late April, for example, Renzaho [a principal leader of the genocide] had intervened to stop it. Killers in Gikongoro told a woman that she was safe because 'Sex has no ethnic group.' The number of attacks against women [from mid-May onwards], all at about the same time, indicates that a decision to kill women had been made at the national level and was being implemented in local communities." (See Human Rights Watch, "Mid-May Slaughter: Women and Children as Victims," in Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda.)
I highlighted this subject because it is so often ignored. But, at the heart, gendercide is genocide. It is not wrong because it targets a specific gender; it is wrong because it is the victimization of human beings. But, we must watch for the systematic assault and murder of members of a certain gender, because what we are seeing is not discrimination, it is genocide, and it must be acted upon.