Personal explorations of the conditions that precede sexual violence in the context of the armed conflict in Colombia

Abstract

This article is the result of a process of revision and dialogue between the authors’ personal experiences regarding the construction of their gender identities and the investigation by the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica in its paper La guerra inscrita en el cuerpo (The war written in the body). As an outcome of this process, the next four approaches of analysis are identified and elaborated, in relation to the precedent conditions of sexual violence in the Colombian armed conflict: structural conditions that make sexual violence possible; warlike masculinities that prevail in gender hierarchy; femininities that are shaped within the context of coercion and gender arrangements, and the impacts of sexual violence inside the Emberá community amidst their insight of health and their connection with the territory. It became evident that in the armed conflict, sexual violence is possible because it is based on gender inequalities already present in the relationships and the communities, which result in a high social tolerance for it. Additionally, sexual violence is supported by masculinities and femininities that have normalized power relationships in which men dominate and demonstrate their violent actions, and women are taken as available bodies with limited abilities, whose ways of being respond to impositions of a patriarchal culture. The research invokes the use of literary tools (four short stories written by us) and states through non-academic language of the personal repercussions during the realization of this investigation.