Queering Gender-Based Violence Scholarship: An Integrated Research Agenda

Abstract

Research on armed conflict's gender dynamics has expanded significantly in the past decade. However, research in this field pays little attention to sexual orientation and gender identity. Moreover, where scholarship focused on violence against sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals during war exists, it is largely divorced from work on gender-based violence (GBV) in conflict-related environments and from sexuality studies. In this article, we integrate these bodies of work and argue for the theoretical expansion of GBV as a conceptual, empirical, and analytic category to study and explain targeted attacks against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise queer individuals. We suggest two theoretical interventions to better equip existing GBV frameworks to explain violence perpetrated against SGM people. We argue, first, that violence targeting SGM communities is GBV, as sexuality and gender identity are integral components of gender, and second, that analyzing gender dynamics adds to our understanding of when, how, and why targeting SGM individuals composes part of an organization's regulatory “repertoire of violence.” We examine violence in Colombia's civil war as an illustrative application of our approach and we identify future, fruitful research avenues with important policy implications for studying and responding to GBV during war.