Jenifer Turpin’s Women Confronting War is a brilliant piece of writing that consists of veritable and profound facts , which render horrifying women’s part in war that may be foreseen not only in books but also in real life. More and more women became the victims of the war, so called “toys in another hands” in order to satisfy somebody’s needs or just to humiliate these poor women by making them pregnant. The author confirms these facts with the following words that I have found somewhat troubling: “ The idea that genocide could be accomplished by the mass rape of the women of the enemy’s ethnic group derives from a patriarchal definition of ethnicity..And because women are viewed as symbols of the family, and the family as the basis of society, the humiliation for women of giving birth to the enemy’s children symbolizes the destruction of the community” ( 326). To my mind, this statement cannot be considered as precise because the children do not inherit all the father’s traits and usually the simple upbringing can thrust on mother’s perspectives. Furthermore, it is true that these children were considered as a problem of the war time but definitely not as ethnic cleansing .The genes of mother can be much stronger than the father’s genes, than eventually means that a child may inherit both mother’s appearance and skills. But, in fact those genes may be passed to another generation, which may affect on skin ,eyes and hair color but definitely not person’s beliefs.
Discussion question
Do you agree that a child which was brought up by a raped woman may be even more nationalistic than the other “clean” not mixed children?
