Privilege, torture and non-killing by Richard Matthews

In this powerful article Richard Matthews expands our understanding and definition of torture. With this expanded foundation, he explores and describes the relationship between privilege, masculinity and torture, encouraging the reader to value a gendered analysis in proposing a “way out” of the mindset that recreates systems of domination.

Read the article online at this link,  Chapter 11.

Quotes of interest from this article: 

“Patriarchy is a system of male privilege. Violence, whether in the form  of torture or murder, is the central means for securing privilege, since in situations where advantages are conferred unfairly the dominated group cannot be expected rationally to accept the unfairness of their disadvantaging and so must have the unfairness imposed through force.”

“Torture is a skill. It is not something that human beings do by nature. It is not written into anyone’s genetic code. Rather, it must be learned and thus requires considerable training. This does not mean that it requires complex or sophisticated scientific knowledge.”

“Male (and occasionally female) perpetrators are conditioned to commit violence in hyper-masculinized environments.”

Reference: 

Matthews, R. 2013. Privilege, torture and non-killing. In: Non-killing, security and the state, ed. Joam Evans-Pim. Honalulu and Omaha: Centre for Global Non-Killing, 279-296. http://nonkilling.org/pdf/nksecurity.pdf