Please note: this event has passed
Speaker: Dr Jelke Boesten, Reader in Gender and Development, Department of International Development, King’s College London
Chair: Dr Andrea Ellner, Defence Studies Department, Society, Culture & Law (SC&L) Theme Lead
Abstract
This paper explores the role of sexual practices in shaping violent masculinities in the Peruvian military. Drawing on unique data gathered through a co-production of knowledge, the paper analyses interviews with twenty Peruvian veterans who fought against Shining Path in the 1980s and 90s, known as the internal armed conflict. The paper argues that the dual experience of receiving and enacting violence and abuse is central to the experiences and practices of sex while serving in the military, and that social contexts and learning processes such as institutionalised peer pressure and existing cultural messages about gender and race, sex and violence, facilitate a blurred line between sex and violence.
Bio
Jelke Boesten is Reader Gender and Development at the Department of International Development at King’s College London. She has written extensively about gender, violence, and policy in Peru, amongst which: Intersecting Inequalities: Women and Social Policy in Peru (PSU 2010) and Sexual Violence in War and Peace: Gender, Power, and Post-conflict Justice in Peru. (Palgrave 2014).