The Importance of Gender Training for Lawyers to Prevent Offensive Speech and Promote Women’s Rights

The judge of Family, Childhood and Adolescence No. 4, Dr. Carolina Macarrein suggested that a lawyer carry out adequate training in gender and respect for women’s rights, for endorsing the offensive and humiliating speech of a man towards the mother of a child in the framework of a filiation process.

The magistrate considered that the man’s expressions respond to historically validated patriarchal practices, but that are currently not endorsed.

Within this framework, in a letter written after the child’s filiation was confirmed, which was done in record time prioritizing the best interests of the child, Dr. Macarrein warned and suggested to the father that in future presentations he refrain from expressing stereotyped expressions that they do not “do” their “right to defense”, on the contrary, they reflect an offensive and humiliating speech towards the woman.

offensive sayings

In his presentation, the boy’s father used a series of totally discriminatory terms towards the mother that had no relationship with the cause and that did not add up to anything.

For example, the following: “… If it is true that I know plaintiff XXX, since we had a “sneaky affair”… we saw each other sporadically and as a result of those “accidents that happen, the plaintiff became pregnant.” And he added: “… I have never taken the circumstance seriously, because I did not believe that this pregnancy could be mine, (…) until the production and result of the genetic sample has given paternity compatibility and given that, I acknowledge and take charge of the affiliation”.

Given this presentation, Dr. Macarrein considered that the terminology used reflects and evidences a clear contempt for the mother of her son and it was his decision to relate to her.

“This position is androcentric, which becomes intolerable in the times that pass especially and personally for this magistrate; and constitutes an assumption of symbolic violence enshrined in art. 5 inc. 5 of Law 26,485 on the Comprehensive Protection of Women”, stressed the magistrate.