In the spirit of the Gender Identity Law, AboSex offers free legal services to ensure its full implementation. They fight against private health insurance companies that do not respect the law and work to guarantee the rights of children. “We are a team of legal activists committed to the rights of sexual diversity,” say the members of AboSex, a project that offers free legal services and was born out of the spirit of the Gender Identity Law, passed in Argentina (in May 2012). AboSex's scope of action ranges from guaranteeing respect for the rights of transgender children to pursuing health insurance providers that avoid covering genital surgeries, as well as addressing cases of violence and discrimination in all its forms. Currently, they operate in the cities of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, La Plata, and Santa Fe.

"The law lacks creativity."

“Our activism is legal, critical, and creative. We incorporated the latter after a conversation with Marlene Wayar, a trans woman and member of the Futuro Transgenérico group. She said that the law lacks creativity, and we then considered the possibility of combining theories,” said Emiliano Litardo, a founding member of AboSex and one of the leading activists on the team that drafted the Gender Identity Law. In their search for that creativity, they found that “the doctrine and jurisprudence we cited weren't what the judicial system expected, but rather theories and principles specific to the trans movement, which are within academia and are often rendered invisible,” Litardo explained. Iñaki Regueiro de Giacomi is part of the legal team at the Network for the Rights of People with Disabilities and, along with Litardo, is one of the founders of AboSex. “For a while we were part of the Argentine Homosexual Community and then we actively participated in the drafting process of the Gender Identity Law. When we formed AboSex, other women joined us – sometimes for specific cases in other parts of the country – and we always aimed to expand it,” she said.

For children's rights

AboSex also works to promote inclusive sex education for children and young people, in conjunction with schools, school counseling teams, and sexual and reproductive health groups. Within the network, Gabriela Spinelli specializes in cases involving minors. “We had the case of a trans girl in primary school. She didn't want to do physical education with the boys at school, nor did she want to change the gender marker on her ID until she turned 18. This prompted an intervention at the school where they recognized her registration under her chosen name, even though she hadn't changed her ID,” she recounted. In the area of ​​early childhood, AboSex seeks to “promote the role of the child's lawyer, which has been in place in the Argentine justice system since 2005,” Spinelli explained. And she asserted that “children’s rights have been and continue to be disrespected, especially their right to autonomy, their right to have their opinions considered, their right to be heard, and their right to access justice. Children have always been excluded from the possibility of expressing their opinions in the name of protection.” websiteAboSex expresses what can be read as its manifesto: “The law is constitutive of many cultural, economic, political, and social exclusions that make people's lives hostile. Considering this, we advocate for critical thinking that allows us to influence such exclusionary practices, devising solutions to concrete problems through the use of our critical creativity.”   The article was written by Matías Máximo and the photos are by Leo Vaca. It was originally published in Infojus Noticias, the judicial news agency of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights of the Nation (Argentina), which operated from March 2013 until early 2016, when the agency was dismantled and most of its archives deleted. It is one of the articles we want to recover in order to keep Infojus Noticias' materials on sexual diversity accessible. ]]>