This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Mendoza, K. R. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Freeing the ‘Slaves of Destiny’

TheLolas of the Filipino Comfort Women Movement

katharina-mendoza{at}uiowa.edu

The Japanese Imperial Army’s comfort system differs from other forms of wartime sexual violence in that it was a disciplinary institution that used sex not as a weapon of aggression but as a means to discipline soldiers into being more efficient tools for Japan’s imperial project. The Philippine comfort women movement employs discursive strategies that respond directly to the gender and race ideologies underlying imperial Japan’s practice of military sexual slavery during the Pacific War. As it seeks reparations for those wartime atrocities, the movement makes appeals to traditional notions of family and Filipino womanhood, a strategy that has done much to create awareness of and public support for comfort station survivors. However, these discourses carry within them the potential to reinscribe those very same patriarchal ideologies that made institutionalized rape possible.

Key Words: apology • comfort stations • Filipino comfort women • sexual violence • testimony

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?