Battle grounds: the female body as a site of war
| dc.contributor.author | Mironas, Alexandrina | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-08-13T17:13:47Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-08-13T17:13:47Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024 | |
| dc.description.abstract | On February 24, 2022, Russia escalated the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war to a full-blown invasion of Ukraine. As a war tactic, Putin endorses gender-based violence by employing rape rhetoric to frame Ukraine as a powerless woman, and to demand the submissiveness that he believes is owed to him. To elucidate the socio-political forces behind gender-based violence as a war tactic, I reveal the relationship between traditional gender roles in Eastern Europe and how they establish the female body as the property of a nation. Through the examination of relevant literature, I draw a theoretical perspective that identifies the female body as nationalized, objectified as property, and inscribed as a site of violence. Applying this lens to the invasion of Ukraine, I identify the social and political forces that allow Russian soldiers to objectify the Ukrainian female body as a battle ground on which national wars are fought. Further, I discuss how gender-based violence, while apparent during peacetime, becomes amplified during conflict, and how this violence physically inscribes the Ukrainian female body as “Other.” To conclude, I discuss how the lived experiences of Ukrainian women become embodied through fear, yet silenced through the ongoing nature of this war, and I pose several questions that aim at creating space for women to share their painful experiences as an act of liberation. | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Battle Grounds: The Female Body as a Site of War. (2024). MacEwan University Student EJournal, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.31542/r04kmh65 | |
| dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.31542/r04kmh65 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14078/3683 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.rights | Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) | |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ | |
| dc.subject | gender-based violence | |
| dc.subject | gender roles | |
| dc.subject | Eastern Europe | |
| dc.subject | Ukrainian women | |
| dc.subject | war tactics | |
| dc.title | Battle grounds: the female body as a site of war | en |
| dc.type | Student Article |
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