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GENDER PERSPECTIVES ON TORTURE: Law and Practice
challenges that legal systems face is the deconstruction of the male-female binary, and international
human rights is not shielded from this challenge. The chapter reinforces the need for human rights
to go beyond the binary with regard to the protection of individuals by analyzing how torture and
ill-treatment has played an intricate role in the lives of a whole category of individuals. For many
trans and intersex persons, torture and ill-treatment are a constant in their lives and this chapter
invites us to better understand what torture and ill-treatment means from the perspective of these
individuals.
The third chapter focuses specifically on deprivation of liberty, and the torture and ill-treatment
that often take place under custodial settings. Vulnerability increases in detention facilities, even
when the detention is considered lawful. In the cases of LGBTI individuals, who are at greater risk
of being in contact with the criminal justice system, once in custodial settings they are subject to
brutality and abuse by prison authorities and fellow inmates. This violence is usually underre
ported and tends to be ignored by State officials because of the underlying assumption that people
of diverse sexualities “deserve punishment” for not conforming to traditional gender roles. For
custodial settings to cease being places of torture and ill-treatment for LGBTI individuals, vio
lence must be understood from a gender and sexuality perspective. For prison officials, this means
not placing trans individuals, whose legal names may not correspond to the gender with which
they identify, in solitary confinement because they are unsure of where to house them—it simply
replaces one form of violence with another form.
The chapter also addresses how criminal justice systems are structured around the idea of a
male detainee. Incarcerated women—and their visitors—often endure invasive and humiliating
searches, where the women are forced to undress in front of unqualified male officers who may
also perform unnecessary body cavity searches. These techniques are not used with the legitimate
purpose of ensuring safety within the detention facility, but rather to dehumanize and assert power
over the already powerless. This is even more serious when it affects young girls. Criminal justice
systems are also not structured with families in mind; "ideal perpetrators" are not only male but
also single and with no dependents. Women detainees tend to be mothers with children and usu
ally in a position of vulnerability with nobody to care for their children. In these conditions, it is
not uncommon to find detention facilities and jails where children live with their mothers for some
time, increasing the incarcerated population to include children, who at a young age, develop their
first connections with the world through the prism of a detention facility. A gender perspective
requires legal frameworks that look at detained persons not as isolated beings, but as individuals
with dependents and family connections.
Chapter four considers torture and ill-treatment within the context of women’s health care and
reproductive rights. Women face mistreatment when seeking maternal health care, undergo forced
sterilizations, can face criminal repercussions for self-inducing abortions, and are often denied safe
and legal abortion services. It is not uncommon for women in custodial settings to deliver their
babies while in shackles, and this chapter explores how the lack of adequate maternal health care
can amount to ill-treatment or torture. Depriving women of their right to reproductive self-deter
mination is an additional example of how States have long-ignored the needs of women as citizens.
A traditional concept of torture does not allow for an understanding of the common experiences of
women, and this chapter expands on the idea that torture and ill-treatment not only occur in situa
tions where government actors themselves are the perpetrators of harm, but when the government
allows harms to occur out of a complete disregard for women’s bodies. To understand how the lack
of adequate maternal care or reproductive rights can be so severe that it amounts to ill-treatment