f Body of the other: Constructing gender identity in anti-acid violence campaign materials in Bangladesh

This article examines representations of the female and male bodies in the Acid Survivors Foundation's (ASF) campaign materials and the assumptions of femininity, masculinity, violence and vulnerability underpinning these representations, in relation to the issue campaign strategies. It finds that women survivors are represented in ASF's campaign materials as victimized, discriminated and vulnerable in every aspect of their life. Women survivors' bodies are represented as defaced, helpless mothers and marked women. Thus women's identity is constructed in the framework of victimhood and disfigurement, helplessness and motherhood, further normalizing female victimization. Active women involved in life struggle and exercising agency are also represented, but not in the posters the most public campaign material. In contrast, men are presented as actors be it as perpetrators of violence, as law-enforcement agents or as activists against violence. Thereby, women are mainly represented as objects of violence, and only secondarily as agents, while men are portrayed as subjects be it violent or protective. ASF's materials show how painfully women are affected by acid throwing. However, lack of gender sensitivity reinforces dominant gender stereotypes, undermining feminist transformative politics and reinforcing patriarchal focus on the body of the women as the body of the disfigured, victimized Other.