Evocative language describing rape as a ‘weapon of war’ has become commonplace. Although politically important, overemphasis on strategic aspects of wartime sexual violence can be misleading. Alternative explanations tend to understand rape either as exceptional — a departure from ‘normal’ sexual relationships — or as part of a continuum of gendered violence. This article shows how, even in war, norms are not suspended, nor simply continue. War changes the moral landscape.
Drawing on ethnographic research over 10 years in northern Uganda, this article argues for a re-sexualization of understandings of rape. It posits that sexual mores are central to explaining sexual violence, and that sexual norms — and transgressions — vary depending on the moral spaces in which they occur. In Acholi, moral spaces have temporal and spatial dimensions which help explain the occurrence of some forms of sexual violence and the rarity of others.
