»Hands off our women!« – Masculinity, the Extreme Right and Sexualized Violence

Abstract

This article addresses far-right takes on sexualized violence and analyzes this topic's functions for the extreme right. Using the example of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), it is demonstrated that the far right's treatment of the topic can be characterized as instrumental and paternalistic. Sexualized violence is being fit into a cross-cutting politics of ethnicizing social ills in order to, on one hand, substantiate the claim of non-integratability of certain migrant communities. On the other hand, the problem is externalized in order to promote the apologia of au­toch­thonous masculinity, which is being construed as the supposed negation of migrant (marginalized) masculinities. Both manoeuvers are aimed at retaining privilege: at the preservation of one ethnicity's hegemony over others and of patriarchal dominance of au­toch­thonous men over »their« women, who are portrayed as vulnerable and in need of protection. The ostentatious advocacy for women is meant to obscure the claim to control over their bodies and reproductive capacity.