scholarly journals “Beyond the Fifty Shades…”: Intersections of Sadomasochism and Sexual Torture

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 210-214
Author(s):  
Debanjan Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Torture

scholarly journals Incommunicado detention and torture in Spain, Part III: 'Five days is enough’: the concept of torturing environments

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Lilla Hárdi ◽  
Pau Pérez-Sales ◽  
Miguel Angel Navarro-Lashayas ◽  
Angeles Plaza ◽  
Benito Morentin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Misleading Information ◽  
Psychological Techniques ◽  
Sexual Torture ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
Istanbul Protocol ◽  
The Individual ◽  
False Accusations

Background: Torture is changing in western societies, evolving from pain-producing torture to more subtle mixed psychological methods that are harder to detect. Despite this, there is not an adequate understanding of the complexities of contemporary psychological techniques used in coercive interrogation and torture. Methods: The interrogation and torture techniques used on 45 detainees held in short-term incommunicado detention in Spain during the period 1980-2012 were analyzed. The list of torture categories set out in the Istanbul Protocol (IP) were assessed quantitatively. Software-aided qualitative analysis of the testimonies was conducted, using both inferential and deductive approaches to deduce a classification of torture techniques from the point of view of the survivor. Findings: The most frequent methods according to the IP categories used against detainees were isolation and manipulation of environment (100%), humiliation (93%), psychological techniques to break down the individual (91%), threats (89%) and forced positions and physical exercises until extenuation (80%). Additionally, with a frequency of between 51 and 70%, mild but constant blows, being forced to witness the torture of others, hooding (mainly dry asphyxia) and unacceptable undue conditions of detention were also frequent. Sexual torture was also widespread with sexual violence (42%), forced nudity (38%) and rape (7%). Qualitative analysis showed that most detainees were submitted to coercive interrogation using a wide array of deceptive techniques. This is often a central part of the torturing process, frequently used in conjunction with many other methods. It was found that giving false or misleading information or making false accusations was most frequently used, followed by maximization of responsibility or facts and giving false information regarding relatives or friends. Different patterns of harsh interrogation, ill-treatment and torture are described that appear to have been tailored to the profile of Basque detainees. Interpretation: The study shows the need to improve the conceptualization of psychological torture suggested by the IP. Key to this view is the idea that we must not concern ourselves with 'torture methods' but with Torturing Environments. The concept of Torturing Environments is defined and proposed as a focus for future study.

scholarly journals Risky dis/entanglements: Torture and sexual violence in conflict

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 1035-1058 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Gray ◽  
Maria Stern
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Sexual Torture ◽  
Political Form

Conflict-related sexual violence has become increasingly recognized in international spaces as a serious, political form of violence. As part of this process, distinctions between the categories of ‘sexual violence’ and ‘torture’ have blurred as scholars and other actors have sought to capitalize on the globally recognized status of torture in raising the profile of sexual violence. This move, while perhaps strategically promising, even already fruitful, prompts us to heed caution. What might we inadvertently engender by further pursuing such positioning? While torture and sexual violence have both been widely framed within the academic literature as strategic in recent decades, only torture, and not sexual violence, has emerged from elements of this literature as (potentially) legitimate, despite the slippages between them as categories of violence. This article offers one avenue for thinking through what an invigorated focus on sexual torture as a category of violence might unwittingly render possible, and thus for reflecting on the possible stakes of collapsing the categories of sexual violence and torture. Ultimately, we argue that we should perhaps resist the urge to frame sexual violence as torture and instead cleave to the sticky signifier of ‘the sexual’, despite the ways in which it has served to normalize, perpetuate and obfuscate grievous harms throughout history.

scholarly journals Marital Suffering in Sylvia Plath’s Poetry: A Feminist Reading

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-146
Author(s):  
Subrata Chandra Mozumder
Keyword(s):  
Sylvia Plath ◽  
Social Suffering ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
Sexual Torture ◽  
Suicidal Death ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
The Phoenix

AbstractThis article discusses marital suffering, as portrayed by Sylvia Plath from a feminist viewpoint, and claims that her delineation of marital afflictions is a tool of protest against patriarchal oppression. In a convention-ridden patriarchal society, a woman usually cannot express her voice and remains suffocated by her personal agony and ache. However, Plath tries to break the conventions in her poetry, by representing the unjust institution of patriarchal marriage, which treats women as commodities. Many critics have noted that Plath’s marital sufferings are responsible for her suicidal death, which is a means of protest against, and resistance to, patriarchy. Since her poetry represents both her psycho-social suffering and her fight against the margins set by patriarchal society, one may consider her poetry to be a weapon of setting her “self,” as well as other women’s, free from male-dominated psychological imprisonment. The article explores how Plath’s poetic persona emerges as the Phoenix, the libertarian spirit, by deliberately exposing her marital sufferings, psycho-sexual torture, husband’s infidelity, and the ultimate death resulting from conjugal unhappiness, which is interpreted as a protest against all kinds of patriarchal discriminations.

Sexual torture as an instrument of war.

1996 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-162
Author(s):  
Yael Fischman
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Torture

Prevalence of sexual torture in political dissidents

The Lancet ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 345 (8960) ◽  
pp. 1307 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Javier Meana ◽  
Benito Morentin ◽  
M. Itxaso Idoyaga ◽  
LuisF. Callado
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Torture

Prevalence and sequelae of sexual torture

The Lancet ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 336 (8710) ◽  
pp. 289-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
I Lunde ◽  
J Ortmann
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Torture

scholarly journals Sexual torture among Arabic-speaking Shi’a Muslim men and women in Iraq: Barriers to healing and finding meaning

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-76
Author(s):  
Christopher Einolf
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Treatment ◽  
Qualitative Interview ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
Torture Survivors ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Female Victims ◽  
Sexual Torture ◽  
Arabic Speaking

Introduction: Rape and sexual torture are frequent experiences among torture survivors, but relatively little is known about how victims respond to and find meaning in these experiences. Method: This study used secondary qualitative interview data from 47 male and female Shi’a Arab victims and survivors of sexual torture and rape in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to examine how sexual torture affected them, what were the barriers to healing, how they found meaning in their experiences, and how their experiences varied by gender. Results: Respondents experienced profound psychological effects that lasted for years, including: shame, feeling broken and prematurely aged, and wanting to isolate themselves from others. Most female victims who were unmarried at the time of sexual torture never got married. Many survivors found meaning in their experiences by defining their suffering as unjust, placing their experience in the context of a hopeful narrative of Iraqi history, turning to religion, and calling for vengeance upon their persecutors. Discussion: The results of this study show how survivors of sexual torture, most of whom did not receive psychological treatment, draw upon their own resources to find meaning in existential trauma.

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