Q: Has (women's violence) been a main area of your study?
A: It's kind of half of what I do. The other half of what I do is feminist theories of international security, and this is the empirical stuff that proves why the theoretical stuff is necessary.
Q: This lecture series is being put on by the Women's Center and women's studies program; do you often work closely with this department?
A: I'm an affiliated faculty with women's studies. This is my second year here, so I'm really just really starting to get involved, but I think that it is a very important part of the academic life on campus.
Q: Now what is the most important focal point of your lecture, if you could possibly sum it all up?
A: The focal point for the lecture is that violent women are treated in the media and scholarly accounts as if, first, they don't have any agency in their violence and, second, that violent women are no different from real or "normal" women who are still innocent and peaceful and pure.
Q: What do you feel is something that can relate to women on campus?
A: My sound bite for women on campus is that this matters to you, and it matters to you because it shows that even though the spectrum of what we think women can do has widened. They can work outside the home, they can go to college, but the boundaries are still there and you can see that when you look at how we treat women who commit political violence.
Q: What are some of examples of this political violence?
A: The lecture is based off of a book that we published last year, and there are four empirical chapters. One is based on women who commit war crimes as soldiers in the military, for example in the women in the prison abuse scandal in Iraq. The next is suicide bombers in Palestine and Iraq. One is on women suicide bombers in Chechnya. Then the fourth chapter is on women who lead or participate in genocide and genocidal rape, and it focuses on two examples, one in Rwanda and one in former Yugoslavia.
Q: So, you're touching on these women who have been involved in this type of violence, and are not being looked at the same as the men who have been involved in this type of violence?
A: Yes, people think that the men did it for politics. But the women did it because their husband left them, or because she can't have children, or because their husbands told them to. So there is no emotion in the men and there's no politics in the women. And I want to deconstruct that for reasons of both understanding gender and gender equality better. Also because I don't think that you can understand violence unless you break down that rational/emotional dichotomy.
Q: Are there any major points that you would want people to know about this topic?
A: I would say that kind of the important thing to know is that one of the things I've learned about violence from studying women's violence is that sometimes gender separations may sometimes exist where you can't always see them and where you wouldn't think. And who would want to defend a woman suicide bomber, you know? On the other hand, by letting people characterize a woman suicide bomber as a depraved or killed herself because her husband told her to; that, as opposed to any interest in the political reasons for which she died. That also lets people categorize you, and I think that that is something important to pay attention to.
You might be interested in... women's studies, women's violence, sjoberg
