ABSTRACT

Terms such as “gender-based violence” are connected with a range of evolving discourses that are not merely descriptive, but interpretive and political in nature. Yet, what makes violence “gender-based” is often implicit rather than explicit. In this Debates we argue that there needs to be greater specificity about what is gendered about gender-based violence, while allowing for the continued elasticity of the concept for application across diverse contexts and forms of violence. Drawing on international scholarship and key insights from the evolving sociology of gender, we outline a framework for locating and defining the “gender” in “gender-based violence”. This framework, we suggest, makes for a clearer starting point for mapping the connections between gender and violence, by examining these connections at the three levels of identity, interaction and structure. As such, it invites a more comprehensive picture of gender-based violence, one that includes women, men, and non-binary people while still accounting for the ways gender-based violence disproportionately affects women. We argue that the rich contextually-specific scholarship being produced in South Africa and elsewhere in the global South reflects gender as operating at these three levels, and adds further layers and complexity with a genuine attention to intersectionality that is often lacking from international scholarship.

摘要

诸如“基于性别的暴力”之类的术语与一系列不断发展的话语有关，这些话语不仅是描述性的，而且本质上是解释性的和政治性的。然而，使暴力“基于性别”的原因往往是隐含的而不是明确的。在本次辩论中，我们认为需要更加具体地说明基于性别的暴力的性别化内容，同时允许该概念在不同背景和暴力形式中的应用具有持续的弹性。借鉴国际学术研究和不断发展的性别社会学的关键见解，我们概述了一个框架，用于在“基于性别的暴力”中定位和定义“性别”。我们建议，该框架通过在身份的三个层次上检查这些联系，为映射性别与暴力之间的联系提供了一个更清晰的起点，相互作用和结构。因此，它提出了一个更全面的性别暴力图景，其中包括女性、男性和非二元性人群，同时仍然考虑到基于性别的暴力对女性的影响不成比例的方式。我们认为，在南非和全球南方其他地方产生的丰富的特定于情境的奖学金反映了在这三个层面上运作的性别，并增加了更多层次和复杂性，真正关注国际学术往往缺乏的交叉性。