Two-finger test refers to the physical examination of female genitalia for the purpose of determining virginity. This colonial-era test is invasive and degrading, has no scientific basis, and can neither prove nor disprove allegations of rape. In 2013, the Indian Supreme Court emphasised that this archaic test violates the right to privacy, bodily integrity and dignity of the rape prosecutrix. This article assesses the use of these tests in 1,908 judgments of rape by studying district court judgments from Delhi and Kerala and high court judgments in India. The data analyses show that two-finger test continues to find a mention in some judgments, revealing a lack of respect for women’s bodily autonomy and exposing their unfair treatment within the legal system. Such an implementation gap exposes how even landmark Supreme Court precedents in India are not sufficiently powerful to dislodge the deep-rooted androcentric assumptions about ‘ideal’ rape victims.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers (FWS) in 2025 has created significant ripple effects for trans persons. Departing from dominant interpretations of the Equality Act 2010 (EA 2010), the Court decided that “sex” means “biological sex” under the EA 2010. By drawing on European equality and human rights law, alongside feminist and queer understandings of sex and gender, this article analyses how the Court reached its decision. It concludes that the Court largely failed to consider both the context in which the EA 2010 was adopted and the socio-political climate of its decision. This produced an abstract judgment, rather than one addressing structural inequalities, and disregarded the influence of European Union Law on the EA 2010. By ignoring the real-life effects of FWS on trans persons in the context of 2025, the Court also sidelined human rights analysis. It produced a judgment out of context.
Theories of risk in law and regulation often presume a universal, gender-neutral subject, obscuring how risk is shaped by intersecting structures of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Drawing on feminist and intersectional scholarship, this article reconceptualises risk as relational, systemic, and institutional phenomenon rather than an individual attribute. It argues that the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA, Regulation 2024/1689) adopts a gender-blind model of risk. While the AIA addresses discrimination, its tiered risk taxonomy and compliance mechanisms fail to engage meaningfully with gender-based violence, collective vulnerabilities and the disproportionate harms experienced by women, LGBTQIA+ people, and sex workers. This article critiques the epistemic monoculture (Rist et al. 2004) embedded in AIA and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which privileges technical and individualised assessments of harm while marginalising feminist and experiential knowledge. It proposes a feminist, relational framework for AI risk governance centred on structural inequality, institutional responsibility, and meaningful participation by affected communities.
This article offers a feminist socio-legal analysis of the Mazan case—the 2024 trial of 51 men for the rape of Gisèle Pelicot in France—and the 2025 consent law reform it inspired. Combining feminist legal theory, critical legal analysis, and situated reflection, it examines how patriarchal societies and legal systems convert gendered violence into narratives of protection and progress. Drawing on Iris Marion Young’s analysis of the logic of masculinist protection, the article shows how law, politics, and public discourse surrounding the case reproduced the patriarchal bargain that casts men and the state as protectors while shielding them from accountability. Through analysis of the myth of the “good man”, judicial responses to sexual violence, hierarchies of victims, and the structural affinities between patriarchal and security logics, the article argues that the Mazan case offered only the illusion of remedy, confirming the patriarchal system it appeared to challenge.
