Locating Victimhood: Sexual Violence and Institutional Gaslighting in the British Military

This article examines how the British military responds to sexual violence experienced by its servicewomen. Drawing on observations of 15 hearings at a British military court center, it argues that the logic of operational effectiveness saturates the material and conceptual foundations of military justice. The article shows how the institution is imagined as the victimized subject within the military courts, in turn creating the conditions for the institutional gaslighting of the victim-survivors of sexual violence. This paper is the first in-depth, qualitative study of the British military courts, and provides an important new empirical contribution to the study of sexual violence within militaries.