ABSTRACT
Over the last decades, feminist interventions in transitional justice have made strides in recognizing harms against women and advocating for a gender (qua women) analysis. Building upon these gains, the 2010 Ecuadorian Truth Commission’s final report presents a gender approach that names and interrogates the heterosexual system as the traditional sex and gender social norms that reinforce a binary understanding of male and female, masculine and feminine, and assumes opposite sex coupling as the only acceptable sexual orientation and behavior. Paired seamlessly with the divide between the public and private spheres, this heterosexual system upholds patriarchal social control and obligates individuals to conform to rigid identities and roles. The report evidences the way a feminist movement–informed gender approach frames the impact of sexual and gender-based violence against women, men, and people of non-conforming genders and sexualities in relation to each other, all mutually reinforcing manifestations of a heterosexual system that goes hand in hand with authoritarianism. By understanding the varied violent manifestations of the heterosexual system as all coming from the same root, then transitional justice can expand its epistemic parameters to identify and address the systemic dynamics underlying these harms.
