Is sexual violence different? Perceptions of exceptionalism

Lecture organized by the Institute of International Affairs, Institute of Administrative Studies and Politics, Department of Political Science.

Lecturer: Anne-Kathrin Kreft.

Media reports, policy discourses but also academic studies frequently depict sexual violations as an exceptional form of political violence. In particular in global efforts to “stop rape in war,” sexual violence is portrayed in ways that suggests it stands out from other violence in its egregiousness.

Indeed, prior research has shown that both international actors and western publics are more likely to support intervention in armed conflicts in response to sexual violence, regardless of overall conflict intensity. What role perceptions of violence itself play in such processes, and whether people indeed attribute exceptionalism to sexual violence within a typology of violence remain unanswered questions, however.

In this paper, we take a first stab at addressing these questions in the context of state repression, leveraging the instrumentality of sexual violence as a weapon that dominates policy discourses and media coverage. In a survey experiment of the U.S. public focused on a protest-policing scenario, we find strong evidence that threats of sexual violence by security actors are perceived as exceptional along two dimensions: injury and illegitimacy. One implication of these findings is that common perceptions might serve to bolster the idea of sexual violence as a useful strategic tool, whether in war or in the context of repression.