Gendercide and Genocide

This collection of essays is also the first to explore systematically the targeting of non-combatant "battle-age" males in various wartime and peacetime contexts. The contributors explore themes and issues outlined by editor Adam Jones in the book's opening essay. In that article, Jones argues that throughout history and around the world, the population group most consistently targeted for mass killing and state-backed oppression are non-combatant men of roughly fifteen to fifty-five years of age. Such males, Jones contends, are typically seen as "the group posing the greatest danger to the conquering force." The subsequent essays expand, diversify, and criticize this framing of gendercide. They range from a sophisticated theoretical analysis of gendercide to in-depth treatments of such topics as the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the gendercidal oppression of young African American males, the predicament of gays and lesbians in the face of increasing biotechnological manipulation of human behavior, and the psychology of shame and humiliation underlying generdercides against both sexes.