Citation

Ericsson K. Theor. Criminol. 2011; 15(1): 67-82.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1362480610387894

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article discusses how war rapes and consensual sexual relationships with enemy soldiers are framed and understood, with special emphasis on the consequences for the women involved. It war rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Balkan war and Danish and Norwegian women’s sexual relationships with German occupant soldiers during the Second World War. I argue that the conception of women’s sexuality as national property is central to understanding the attitudes towards both categories of women. To preserve their dignity, war rape victims may profit from a collective, political discourse. Women having had consensual relationships to enemy soldiers, however, have to extricate themselves from the collective and political discourse and interpret what happened to them as strictly personal.