Book Comment
By Leonie Fach & Tamia Brito
On 25th February 2021, Philipp Schulz presented his book “Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence – Perspectives from Northern Uganda” (2020) at an event organised by the Gender Centre of The Graduate Institute. Through this publication, Schulz disseminates the seldom-heard marginalised voices and perspectives of male survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), thus shedding a light on gendered harms, agency and justice.
This comment enlightens the material content of the publication, starting with the prevalence of sexual violence against men in Northern Uganda, to then elaborate upon the gendered harms and vulnerabilities and disclosing male survivors’ need for justice. Throughout this comment, there are reflections and observations addressing Schulz approach and publication. These of personal nature and do not necessarily reflect the Centre for African Justice, Peace and Human Rights’ position.
Sexual Violence Against Men
“Why did these crimes occur? Why are they seldom discussed locally and internationally? What characterizes the lived realities of male survivors? How do survivors experience the silencing of their harms for more than twenty years, and how do they want these crimes to be redressed?”[1]
To address sexual violence in conflict against the male gender, these types of questions aid in the awareness and understanding of the issue. Schulz’s research was underpinned by these enquiries. His research approach was embodied by the Ugandan (Acholi) proverb “Odoo mabor pe neko twol”, which translates to “a long stick cannot kill a snake”.[2]He follows an epistemology-from-below method – using a short stick (metaphorically) – by attentively listening to survivor’s viewpoints and experiences and by getting closer to the problem to be able to contribute to a solution.[3]
Schulz’s book rests on three pillars. The first pillar puts sexual violence against men in context, globally and in Northern Uganda, to display sexual violence against men and boys as a painful reality, committed more frequently than commonly assumed. The second pillar unpacks and theorises the layered impact on survivor’s gender identities and highlights multi-faceted harms and vulnerabilities. The final pillar tackles agency and justice by analysing pathways towards justice, recovery and social repair for male survivors.
Prevalence of Sexual Violence Against Men in Northern Uganda
“(…) it was almost only men during that time who were raped”[4]
Schulz’s research shows a widespread and common practice of sexual violence against men in Northern Uganda between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Focusing on that perpetrated by government soldiers, like the National Resistance Army (NRA),[5] Schulz exhibits the crude realities of the early stages of the conflict in Uganda, where there is a struggle among the government, the Lord Resistance’s Army (LRA), the Acholi LRA and the wider Acholi population.[6]
At those early stages of the conflict, the civilian population suffered from a widespread and prevalent practice of sexual violence. Schulz highlights the practice committed against male victims through the explanation of how a specific term was conceived to refer to male rape. “Tek-gungu”,[7] which combines the action “to bend over” (gungu) with “forcefully” or “hard” (tek),[8] was not a term commonly used in Uganda. Between the late 1980s and early 1990s however, a period known as the “gungu period,” [9] the conflict enhanced thus deteriorating the civilian population’s situation, and CRSV became the rule rather than the exception.
Schulz’s research details how NRA battalions used alleged anti-insurgency measures to insert the practice of tek-gungu. They would even use NRA militarily strategic locations to execute sexual violence against males, which gave them the colloquial name of gungu battalions.[10] The NRA used sexual violence acts as policy, as “integral components of punishment and retaliation attacks against the civilian population.”[11] Schulz’s research emphasises the motives behind such punishments and retaliation through victim’s stories. Survivors mentioned they were sometimes accused of supporting the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) by “being a father to the rebel”, as well as being from a specific origin and thus subjected to the actions directed at “finish[ing] the Acholi people”.[12]
Schulz highlights the need to analyse the motives behind tek-gungu policies as they may elucidate the nature of how the practice is executed. Male rape would be intentionally executed to infect the Acholi with HIV/AIDS;[13] boys and men that were part of the LRA were forced to have sex in the context of forced marriages or with family members as retaliation for their affiliation, Acholi men and boys were raped in manners designed to humiliate them, and others were forced to witness their mothers, wives, daughters or sisters being raped.[14] CRSV is not only limited to the acts themselves, but to the context under which such acts are intentionally committed. Schulz also emphasises the relevance of the location in which the attacks take place because it shapes how the male survivors experience the direct harm and the aftermath of the violation.[15] Survivors attested that sometimes men were raped by “small groups of two to four soldiers in the bushes or even in the men’s own homesteads” (…) “out of sight of the rest of the community”. Yet, many other survivors illustrated instances where men were raped in public, and “many people from here knew about it because they witnessed it.”[16]
Schulz further describes the physical, psychological and physiological consequences of CRSV for the survivors. Male survivors faced insurmountable social, structural and security barriers, in addition to stigmatization. According to one survivor, “it was not possible for you to go to the clinic with this violation and explain what happened. They would have laughed at you, called you a homosexual or even reported you to the government.”[17] These barriers aggravate the physical and psychological distress of the survivors, often catapulting them into isolation. “People are calling us the wives of the government or homosexuals because of what happened to us and that is really stigmatizing”,[18] said another survivor.
‘Gendered Harms’ Experienced by Male Survivors of Sexual Violence
In Chapter 4, Schulz brings to light the impact of sexual violence on male survivor’s masculinities. He exemplifies the situation through the story of a village called “Coo-Pee,” translated as “men are not there,” where men were targeted, tortured, killed and raped. The village’s name was conceived from the fact “that men were thought not to be there, because of this thing of tek-gungu.”[19] Men were absent, “turned into women,” as a result of having been raped.[20]CRSV disgraces the socially constructed expectations surrounding masculinities, thus enhancing men victims’ suffering. The belief that being raped “feminizes” is unfortunately widespread. Schulz exemplified with “Coo-Pee” sexual violence in Northern Uganda, which is “predominantly experienced, theorized, and perceived as compromising male victims’ gendered identities.”[21] Acholi men, for instance, have gender identities rooted in a “model of normative hegemonic masculinity” that not prevails in Northern Uganda, but to “the majority of men are taught to aspire.”[22] The ideal of Acholi hegemonic masculinity is dominated by heteronormativity, patrilocality and patrilineality and characterized by men’s responsibilities to protect and provide for their families.[23] Schulz explains that, during the conflict, multiple masculinities ceased to exist, leading to a manifestation of the hegemonic form of masculinity in Acholiland.[24] From a young age, boys are taught to strive to achieve this definition of masculinity. Under this model, Acholi men judge and evaluate themselves, their families, communities and the wider society.[25] In Acholiland’s patriarchal, heteronormative and patrilocal society, women are considered “weaker, incapable, subordinate and a burden.”[26] Women cannot perform to the level of men and, after marriage, they are considered subordinated or part of the husband’s property. In comparison, men are supposed to be stronger, richer, knowledgeable, more capable, skilled, responsible, serious and effective, as well as reproductively and sexually active. Schulz’s empirical findings show that the cardinal roles and responsibilities of Acholi men “are to provide and to protect and defend the family,”[27] as well as being “strong, wise, knowledgeable and respected.”[28] Due to the prevailing model of hegemonic masculinity, male rape has repercussions far greater than what is visible and imaginable. Rape causes complex long-lasting physical and psychological trauma capable of shaping, not only the individual victim’s future but also their family, community, wider society and state. Rape unhinges relationships, fractures social bonds between family members and shatters societies.
Schulz criticises that most scholarship regarding the gendered effects of sexual violence against men emphasises the subordination of male survivors through different forms of sexual acts. He argues that his fieldwork findings “evidence that survivors’ displacement from their gendered personhood frequently is a layered process, revolving around myriad intertwined gendered harms rather than a one-time event solely linked to penetrative rape or other sexual crimes.”[29] In his attempt to show the layered harms, Schulz focuses on the experienced realities of male survivors. For instance, a male survivor explained that “admitting the violation would admit that I have not been able to protect myself, which means I am no longer a man.”[30] This perceived inability to protect themselves and their families has often been referred to as “powerlessness” or “helplessness.”[31] Since the protection of the household is deemed as a central responsibility, men who are raped in their own homestead are viewed as having failed in fulfilling their role. Both the men and the impenetrable and secure centre of family life are violated. Similarly, another survivor explained “I am not a real man anymore because ever since the violence, I cannot do any work anymore and I cannot dig in the gardens so I cannot provide for my wife and my children and my family. I cannot raise enough money to pay my children into school. So that is why I am now no longer a man.”[32] Other survivors enlightened that Acholi men, and especially elders, are culturally and socially expected to attend and actively participate in community meetings and consultations. Yet, survivors have refused to attend these meetings because they fear stigmatisation.[33] Another layer of the process of gendered harm is men’s ability to become erect and procreate. Male survivors have often been left by their wives due to the physical consequences of their unaddressed trauma, further stripping them of their manhood according to the hegemonic masculinity model.[34]
Schulz argues that the sexual and gendered harms he identified are “never static but fluctuate over time and are malleable by different socioeconomic and political interventions.”[35] He distances himself from the existing scholarship by arguing that “wrongly freezing dynamic experiences into time and space, which the commonly employed conception of ‘emasculation’ often does,” fails to reflect the lived realities of male survivors of wartime sexual violence and hinders their recovery.
Male-directed sexual violence during armed conflict thus strikes at multiple levels of what it means to be a man. The compromising and reifying of male survivors’ masculine identities must therefore be understood as an evolving and unfolding process, rather than an event, necessitating the more fluid and dynamic understanding of the ‘displacement from gendered personhood’ frame.[36]
Replacing “emasculation” with “displacement from gendered personhood” may grant the issue with the flexibility and fluidity much needed to encapsulate the wide array of actions that constitute CRSV. However, it also provides a concrete description of what such violence entails: someone forcefully displaced from their gender identity, yet also capable of returning and rediscovering their identity.
In collaboration with the Refugee Law Project, an initiative has been established to provide peer-to-peer support to male survivors in Northern Uganda. The groups provide survivors with a forum to tell their stories, a haven and a community. A male survivor said that “before we came together, we had a lot of feelings of being less of a man, but since being in a group, the feelings (…) have reduced.”[37] Groups often engage in collective economic activities, like gardening or beekeeping, which can “economically empower [them] and psychologically rehabilitate [them].”[38] Because of the groups’ income-generating activities, male survivors are reenabled to provide for their families, thus pursuing a long-term and multifaceted process of restoring gender identities and self-worth. By addressing gendered harms, support groups aid in the process of mitigating the displacement from gendered personhood, thus opening the path for healing.
Male Survivors’ Needs Related to Justice
However, Schulz underlines survivors’ need for justice. “Groups are one way [for us] to get justice, but in the future other measures are also needed.”[39] Most Acholi male survivors define justice as ‘a better future,’ where they can “regain a minimally functioning life, fully participate in community activities and renegotiate their impacted masculine identities.”[40] Reflective of a common global trend, there is a vacuum of post-conflict assistance for male survivors of CRSV in Uganda.
Schulz mentions two pathways to address the issue in the future. First, he welcomes the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2467 (2019) that advocates for a survivor-centric approach towards preventing and responding to sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations. The resolution recognises “the need for survivors of sexual violence to receive non-discriminatory access to services such as medical and psychosocial care to the fullest extent practicable and need to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and that violations of the obligations on the treatment of victims can amount to serious violations of international law (…)”. Schulz hopes that the recognition of male survivors of sexual will result in more effective efforts towards ending the impunity for sexual crimes committed against men. Second, Schulz advocates for an informal, every day and survivor-driven approach to address the aftermath of sexual violence against males. He draws from his experience with the Refugee Law Project and Men of Hope, Courage and Peace, and argues that, while they are still certain constraints, a microlevel survivor-centred approach can get closer “to restoring minimally functioning lives for survivors, to gaining redress or justice, and ultimately to remaking a world.”[41]
The devotion, knowledge and empathy of Schulz for male victims of sexual violence can be drawn throughout the book. The poignant observations as well as a compassionate approach towards the most sensitive issues, make this a mandatory read for everyone interested in conflict-related sexual violence.
His book has been published by University of California Press and can be accessed here: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520303744/male-survivors-of-wartime-sexual-violence
[1] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 15.
[2] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 12.
[3] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 13.
[4] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 58.
[5] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 75.
[6] See, for instance, International Crisis Group, ‘Northern Uganda: Understanding and Solving the Conflict’, 2004, available at https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/uganda/northern-uganda-understanding-and-solving-conflict; and Lomo, Z. and Hovil, L., ‘Behind the Violence: The War in Northern Uganda’, 2004, Monograph No 99, Institute for Security Studies, available at https://gsdrc.org/document-library/behind-the-violence-the-war-in-northern-uganda/.
[7] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 56.
[8] Ibid. Alternatively, Tek-gungu is also understood as “the way that is hard to bend.”
[9] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 60.
[10] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 57.
[11] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 65.
[12] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 64.
[13] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 65.
[14] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 61.
[15] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 62.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 68.
[18] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 69.
[19] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 76.
[20] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 76.
[21] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 77.
[22] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 82.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 85.
[26] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 84.
[27] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 88.
[28] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 88.
[29] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 96.
[30] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 96.
[31] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 96.
[32] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 98.
[33] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 99.
[34] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 99.
[35] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 100.
[36] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 100.
[37] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 119.
[38] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 119.
[39] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 130.
[40] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 162.
[41] Schulz, P. (2020). Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda, at 167.