Police violence: sexual political dehumanisation strategies used by Chilean gendered institutions

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Chile, the ‘social outbreak' that began on 18th October 2019, closely questioned the transitional processes of the last 30 years. In the context of a neoliberal society crisis, political mobilisation could problematise the country's democratic statute. One of the phenomena most worrisome to observe was the confirmation of a police vocation which, far from banning human rights violations, exerted cruel and systematic violence against social mobilisations. This was not new. In the past 15 years, social irruptions resulting from environmental, university, mapuche, and workers' revindications had already experienced the police voracity that trampled corporalities and subjectivities, reaching dehumanising extremes. These events became the anteroom for the violent practices from spring 2019 onwards. From the various expressions of police violence, this paper explores the ‘sexual political violence' aspect. This term encapsulates the inflicting of pain and suffering on a subject due to political motivations, via violence on the sexed body. The study ‘Institutional violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transexual individuals: a systemic view’ aroused interest in exploring police sexual political violence against LGBT collectives during mobilisations in 2019. Although direct physical violence is also present, this paper focuses on sexual political violence accompanied by psychological violence, insults, mockery, and threats of sexual suffering, thus highlighting the gendered aspects of this violence. Hence, evidence collected in this study makes it interesting to reflect on the presence of this violence and on how gender and sexuality concur with a disciplining strategy on the bodies that are driven back from the street.