victim. The significance of this lies not only in the fact that a woman may be found guilty of aggravated indecent assault and sentenced as if the offence were rape. Where a man is subjected to coerced anal intercourse, this falls within the definition of “aggravated indecent assault”, whereas, in the case of a woman victim, the same act falls within the definition of rape, and would be charged as such. The reluctance to include the anal rape of a man within the definition of rape, defining the same act (which would constitute rape in the case of a woman) as aggravated indecent assault, once again suggests that patriarchal considerations inform the content of the statute. In patriarchal terms, rape is a metonym of feminized victimhood which must not be allowed to etiolate masculinity – thus only women may be categorised as “victims” who can be raped. Of course, male anal rape is often perpetrated with the precise intention of undermining the victim‟s own sense of masculinity - in crude parlance “making him into the bitch”. Thus, paradoxically, while excluding coerced male anal intercourse from the definition of rape, this attenuates the “feminization” of the victim as it requires the adoption of the tropes of an unacceptable and primitive patriarchal paradigm to do so, and which may have informed the motivation for the rape. There have been reports of men in Zimbabwe who have claimed that they were forced to have sexual 20 intercourse with other men as punishment for supporting the MDC . The perpetrators would thus be charged under Zimbabwean law with aggravated indecent assault. The establishment of a definition of rape under International Law came about in the International 21 Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia Trial Chamber (ICTY) in Prosecutor v. Kunarac where a clear definition of rape was adopted. This definition had previously been discussed in Prosecutor v. Furundzija.22 It was also further explored in the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR) in 23 the case of the Prosecutor v Akayesu, developing to assume the status of customary international law. This definition of the specific crime of rape was based upon definitions found in the common law of some of the world‟s major legal systems including Sweden, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. However, even after Akayesu and Kunarac, rape is only an international crime if it occurs in the context of war or a systematic military campaign, although there is hope that, after Kunarac, its future application may expand beyond that of situations of armed conflict. In its Kunarac judgment, the ICTY presented its definition of rape as; …a form of aggression [whose] central elements cannot be captured in a mechanical description of objects and body parts… [and whose ] variations may include acts which involve the insertion of objects and/or the use of bodily orifices not orifices not considered to be intrinsically sexual. [It is] a physical invasion of a sexual nature, committed on a person under circumstances, which are coercive. Sexual violence which includes rape is considered to be any act of a sexual nature which is committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive. 24 This definition emphasises a context of aggression and coercion, and it allows for the reformation of the standards of rape prosecution which may also „assist in the creation of generally accepted international standards on the adjudication of sexual offenses.‟ The Explanatory Note of the Rome Statute, which binds the International Criminal Court, identified incidences of rape as including where: 20 Amani, „Preliminary Report of a Survey on Internally Displaced Persons from Commercial Farms in Zimbabwe‟ 2002 page 11 See Prosecutor v. Kunarac, Judgment, and Nos. IT-96-23-T & IT-96-23/1-T (Int‟l Trib. for the Prosecution of Pers. Responsible for Serious Violations of Int‟l Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991 [hereinafter ICTY], http://www.un.org/icty/ind-e.htm.(Accessed 9 October 2010). 22 Prosecutor v. Furundzija, IT-95-17/1-T (Dec. 10, 1998), and Prosecutor v. AkayesuICTR-96-4-T http://www.ictr.org/wwwroot/ENGLISH/cases/Akayesu/judgement/akay001.htm (Accessed 10 October 2010) 23 Prosecutor v Akayesu Case No.ICTR-96-4-T. 24 See Prosecutor v. Kunarac, Judgment, No s. IT-96-23-T & IT-96-23/1-T 21