Judging Sex in War

Drawing on legal and literary wartime accounts, Engle argues that wartime rape should not be viewed as a fate worse than death by feminists and humanitarians because it robs women of their sexual, political, and military agency. Reads For Whom the Bell Toll’s Pilar and Maria as unconventional, though at times stereotypical, challenges to the dominant narratives told about women in war that traditionally reduces them to the role of victim. Concludes that “Overstating gender differences through the universalizing of harms experienced by women in war is likely to lead to the proliferation of legal rules and popular understandings that further entrench the power dynamics we often seek to combat.