Crushing the “Ideal Victim”

Amid the recent Amnesty International report on genocide in Palestine and the ICC arrest warrants, it is to be hoped that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) will now receive increased attention as a weapon of war. Yet, the impact on male victims remains largely invisible in legal and societal narratives of ‘ideal victims’. By highlighting the pressing current circumstances of Palestinians and using Christine Schwöbel-Patel’s concept of the “ideal victim”, this article argues that through disregarding male victimhood in SGBV, courts and societies reinforce incomplete narratives of gendered violence, hence perpetuating the harm against women by overlooking the gendered hierarchies that sustain SGBV as a tool of domination.

“Welcome to Hell” – Male Survivors of SGBV

In recent decades, SGBV in armed conflicts has justifiably gained more focus. Correspondingly, amid the ongoing genocide investigation in Palestine and the latest ICJ order of May 2024, important outcries over SGBV against women occurred. However, the majority of discourse remains centered on female victims. Yet, in March 2024, a male Palestinian survivor of SGBV recalled being taken to an Israeli prison, where a soldier greeted detainees with “Welcome to hell”. The human rights organization B’Tselem collected his report among many other testimonies of mass rape (pp. 21 ff). Despite its prevalence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (pp. 71-73), male victimhood remains largely invisible (p. 4) in international criminal law (ICL) and in societal narratives.

International Law’s Limited Lens: Lack of Recognition Despite Inclusive Legal Definition

The Rome Statute acknowledges SGBV against women and men in conflict as war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. Rule no. 85 of the ICC Rules of Procedure and Evidence defines a “victim” regardless of the sex/gender as any “natural person who has suffered harm as a result of the commission of any crime”. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia interpreted Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention as a duty to protect prisoners’ dignity, including a prohibition against sexual violence in Delalić (para. 543). Efforts to acknowledge male victims have also advanced with the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2106 of 2013 (preambulatory clauses) and the UNSCR 2467 of 2019 (para. 32), but remain insufficient (p. 238). While the legal formulation appears inclusive at first, it may not fully address male victimhood.

Drawing on feminist theories like Sharratt’s “eternal female victim“, (p. 29) it becomes clear that the nature of SGBV against men is inherently rooted in the underlying power dynamics that historically center on women’s oppression. All further analysis would fail if the very basic stereotypes of “weakness as feminine” (p. 81) and “strength as masculine” (p. 89) are not being considered. Although the legal definitions and formulations are not in themselves discriminatory, in practice they often fall short of a comprehensive application, leading to unjust prosecutions. Thus, the focus should shift from legal wording in frameworks to the legal significance of real cases where stereotypes hinder recognition of male SGBV victims.

The ‘Ideal’ Victim as an Incorporation of Feminized Stereotypes: Weak, Dependent and Grotesque

Christine Schwöbel-Patel’s concept of an “ideal victim” in ICL theorizes victimization, focusing on features constructing the archetype of said victims within what she calls the “attention economy” (pp. 721 ff.).

Victimhood not only describes the experience of individuals who have encountered gender-motivated crimes but also imposes a standard for how they should react. While the figures of the victim can be flexible, there remain certain immutable elements. Schwöbel-Patel carves out three characteristics of the ideal victim: weakness/vulnerability, dependency, and grotesqueness. These features merge into a feminized stereotype, as women are most likely to be perceived as ideal victims.

Palestinian Men as Non-“Ideal” Victims

Applied to the situation of Palestinian male detainees, the first characteristic of the ideal victim, physical weakness and vulnerability, is rather not applicable. Physical weakness is often attributed to a harmful environment where victims are rendered vulnerable by overpowering circumstances, like physically stronger perpetrators. In Gaza, men were detained during military operations for being “men of fighting age”, hence clearly on a gendered ground as a basis for targeting that presumed them to not be weak, as their inability to resist detainment or SGBV is reframed as failure.

The dependency criterion characterizes the “ideal” victim as helpless, passive “sufferers” in a simple “perpetrator-victim” dynamic. This portrayal is contradictory for Palestinian men who are often detained for their prior political engagement. They are considered as “ideal offenders”, having a strong-minded and independent approach to their environment. It might unsettle public perception to witness the typical perpetrator in a victim’s role.

Though the grotesqueness criterion might generally be met given that the international community is confronted with the brutal and abnormal, yet empathy-inducing images of victims in dystopian landscapes, the public eye often lacks a specific focus on male bodies’ harm. Existing depictions of lifeless bodies are scarce and further “feminized” by showing them carrying children (p. 715). This lack of attention renders it challenging for the public to fully empathize.

Masculinity as a Weapon: Demasculinization and Domination in SGBV

Masculinization theories try to explain the phenomenon of SGBV against men in armed conflict as a violation of their sexual bodily autonomy that triggers specific, socially constructed consequences tied to gender norms. According to these theories, SGBV against men during conflict is not “isolated aberration, but a gendered means of domination” (p. 96). The rape of men during war is generally not about sexual desire (p. 270). As Jones points out, perpetrators often seek to feminize (p. 453) their victims through humiliation and domination. One can therefore conclude that the accompanying deprivation of societal attributes linked to masculinity (p. 6) and a subsequent degradation to the status of “feminized men” (p. 973) strips them of their heterosexuality and the power associated with it. Without the link between heterosexuality, power, and strength associated with the male gender, the perpetrator’s physical involvement would be paradoxical in societies where homosexuality is stigmatized (p. 1278).

Consequently, male victimhood conflicts with the social construction of masculinity (p.74), which demands men to be strong, dominant, and heterosexual. That, in turn, creates a stigma of effeminacy due to their alleged inability to protect themselves, families, and communities, repositioning them as powerless victims (p. 81). It therefore comes as no surprise that cases such as Prosecutor v. Tadić revealed significant gaps in understanding the nature of male victimhood (para. 206). Though male detainees suffered from forced oral sex and genital mutilation, the court found these acts amount to inhumane acts (para. 730), not rape. Similarly, in Kenyatta, the ICC misclassified men’s forced circumcision, treating them as inhumane acts rather than sexual violence under Article 7(1)(g) of the Rome Statute (para. 27).

Why Male Survivors Remain Unseen

In addition to the challenge of male SGBV survivors to compete with the perception of „ideal victims“, further social and legal factors discourage (p. 36) men from reporting violence, such as a societally rooted stigma around seeking help for emotional distress (p. 25). Laws like Gaza’s Section 152(2), British Mandate Criminal Code 1936, that constitute homosexuality as a criminal offense, prevent them from reporting incidents for fear of being accused of violating the law (p. 36). Hence, their ability to tell their own story is limited in what can be called the “marketplace of representation” (p. 1599).

This aversion to report instances of SGBV against men, in connection with the evident disproportionate impact of SGBV on women, results in lower numbers – both in relative and in absolute terms – of reported cases (p. 9), and contributes to the invisibility of such crimes. However, underrepresentation arises not from a lack of victims but from the ICC’s reluctance to acknowledge underlying gendered logics.

Some organizations contribute to the reluctance, fearing that recognizing male victims would detract attention and resources from female victims, and thus allow men to “eat a chunk of the cake that has been baked for women”.

The Marketplace of Representation: Expanding the Narrative – Whose Pain Counts?

In “today’s visual society, if you are not seen, you do not exist”. Personal experiences of suffering, whether physical or psychological trauma, often resist the generalized narratives demanded by the public gaze, as reflected in insufficient legal applications to such cases. Male survivors of SGBV are hence hindered in their ability to narrate their own experiences and to seek justice.

A comprehensive understanding of SGBV requires integrating the experiences of male survivors into a broader legal and societal context. Ignoring this underestimates SGBV’s impact as a war tactic. The weaponization of rape to feminize male victims underscores how deeply rooted the association between weakness and femininity remains. Including male survivors’ experiences should not be seen as taking away one group’s experience, but rather as contributing to the collective fight against patriarchal suppression and gendered stereotypes, aligning with feminist principles. By dismantling these constructs, we can strip this form of violence of its symbolic power, advancing the pursuit of gender-sensitive justice.