Film Analysis: An Invisible War

Neoliberal Law and Sexual Violence

The film “An Invisible War” by Kirby Dick delineates the struggles of victims of sexual violence within the US military to seek compensation for their discharge, and often the expenses caused by the resulting trauma, within existing neoliberal legal framework. Lise Gotell’s article is a critical review of dominant neoliberal policies and discourses, and their manifestation within a series of gang rapes that began inside the middle-class Edmonton neighbourhood of Garneau in 2008. Existing neoliberal policies serve to obstruct the recognition of sexual violence as a systemic issue, as evidenced by the bureaucracy and law enforcement agents faced by the women in both of the aforementioned pieces.

Sexual violence is one of the ways femininity is subjugated, it also serves as a means to “masculinize” the perpetrator and “feminize” the victim. It is an idea rooted within the fabric of heteronormative familial structures which seek to exploit the labour product of “feminized” bodies without meaningful compensation. This exploitation can be carried further to the idea of a woman's sexuality, which is also exploited and leads to a culture of rape. Furthermore, the law merely acts after a crime has occurred and all preventatory insights

it offers are tailored to individuals, and how they can (read: must) practise respectable citizenship to avoid being the target of a crime. These tactics fall within a larger description of risk management technologies. This preoccupation with a universalized victim obscures the larger factors in place and successfully degenders, and deraces a victim. When the law does come into effect for sexual violence victims it serves to universalize their experience with other victims who require a generic service as someone who has been targeted by crime; interestingly neoliberal policies of law must carefully maneuver the binary of the individual citizen with the possibility of victimhood, and the universalized victim.
It is this very binary that makes it hard for victims to use the law as a way to address sexual violence. The law will often blame a victim for their own crime because as individuals they must all part take in risk management procedures to minimize the possibility of acquired victimhood, this is demonstrated in both pieces. In the Edmonton serial rapes, as women who were targeted for being alone in dark areas or failing to properly secure possible entryways into their houses. In invisible war one of the victims is chided for “allowing herself to be alone” with hundreds of drunk men. these tactics of victim blaming further derail the narrative from not only the larger dogma which frames rapability as a part of a feminized subject but also from the perpetrator who embodies these beliefs, it reduces rape to an act that can be managed- if not controlled, by practising corrective pre-sanctioned behaviour against a faceless and ubiquitous threat. As mentioned earlier this response to sexual assault serves to obscure overarching sociological issues within these institutions that allow rape to occur. Within the military survivors have said socialization plays a factor in these incidences (and even their tendency to be underreported); one went so far as to say “When a gunnery sergeant tells you to take off your clothes, you better take off your clothes. You don't ask questions”1. By deflecting blame to individuals, the possible examination of a culture based on and steeped in violence is overlooked.
The idea of victim blaming is not simply a central discursive part of neoliberal law and policies, it is further enacted upon every representation of neoliberal law.

It plays a pivotal role in the training provided for law enforcers. They are taught to approach all cases of reported sexual assault as false accusations. This concept is demonstrated by the incredulity of a commanding officer, and his further repudiation of three female soldiers who reported sexual assaults to him in the film. These reactions cannot be attributed to individuals but rather the law as Police Officers in Edmonton expressed similar disbelief when two sexual assaults were reported within the same house and in a narrow

time-frame.
Prevalent neoliberal discourse seeks to relegate the responsibility of sexual assaults to victims, by correlating crimes with a failed self regulation. The serves to conceal dominant ideas used to justify and proliferate the subjugation of femininity. Therefore, use of law as a means to address sexual violence will always serve as a hinderance to the large scale societal action required to enact meaningful changes on the issues presented.