On this date, we commemorate the anniversary of one of the many hate crimes perpetrated by the heterocispatriarchy . On March 7, 2010, in the province of Córdoba, Pepa Gaitán was murdered, shot dead by her girlfriend's stepfather for being a lesbian. Today we remember Pepa, Marcela Crelz, and all our fallen comrades, who have experienced multiple forms of oppression under the heterocispatriarchal system throughout their lesbian lives.

Today we are organizing ourselves to make visible these forms of violence that this system tries to impose and normalize, disciplining our bodies, pleasures, desires, genitals, languages, and gender expressions.

We are here, in the streets, in the marches, in the meetings, trying to build a trans-tortilla feminism that fights to blow up the cis-hetero-patriarchy.

We , the lesbians, are here because we are not going to stay in the place assigned to us by compulsory heterosexuality, that which believes that we must be available for cis men, that which sends us to wash the dishes while others make the “important decisions”, that which tells us that we have to be thin and young and teaches us to hate our bodies, that which tells us that our destiny is to be mothers or that we depend on a boyfriend to be happy, that which wants us demure, quiet and with our legs closed.

Because we claim our right to defend ourselves; because we know the power of our lesbian existences; because we believe in collective organization as the way to reaffirm our modes of resistance; because the defense of our ways of existing is never an individual solution but the capacity to strengthen ourselves from the collective; we reclaim ourselves, we call ourselves, we celebrate ourselves as lesbians, trans women, lesbians, chongas, machorras, femmes, bomberos, tortones, camioneras, tortilleras, deviants, degenerates, workers, precarizadxs, unemployed, weirdos, migrants, abortionists and all the names in which we have reinvented ourselves.

In this precarious and austerity context in which the large landowners, bosses and businessmen who govern us persecute, criminalize and violate us, we urgently need to build networks, forge alliances and articulate struggles.

Higui was criminalized and imprisoned for defending herself against an attempted corrective rape, a type of sexual violence that sought not only to discipline and subdue her, but also to "correct" her into becoming heterosexual. The lesbian and feminist movement secured Higui's release from prison, but we have not yet been able to get her acquitted.

Higui, a political prisoner of the patriarchy, is just one more lesbian from the most vulnerable neighborhoods, who has suffered multiple forms of violence throughout her life because of her lesbian identity and poverty. We advocate for self-defense, just as we advocate for the many strategies that lesbians in these neighborhoods create and recreate to survive under this oppressive system.

We make our kisses, our pleasures, and our tongues visible, just as we make Mariana and Rocío's kisses visible. Today, Mariana Gómez is being prosecuted because her kisses at Constitución station were not for heteropatriarchal consumption. Today, Mariana is being prosecuted because she resisted being discriminated against for being a lesbian, for being a "chonga" (a derogatory term for a lesbian). Today, Mariana is being prosecuted for the hypocrisy of this moralistic and essentialist society. Today, Mariana is being prosecuted for the abuse of power by the security forces of this government that persecutes us, violates us, and represses us.

We reclaim our tools of struggle and resistance. We organize because survival is not enough, because organization arises from necessity, and because struggle arises from organization. We take to the streets, the plazas, the beds, the neighborhoods, the communes, the unions, the institutions, and the public spaces. We construct ourselves as political subjects, recreating and transforming traditional forms of struggle with joy, celebration, and rage.

As lesbians, we believe that during the March 7th and 8th protests last year, as well as during the December demonstrations, the government of Mauricio Macri focused its persecution and raids on lesbians and bisexuals who take to the streets to fight for their rights. The persecution of our movement is nothing new; it not only disobeys biological and essentialist mandates, but also the labor, pension, education, and healthcare reforms that the current neoliberal political system wants to impose on our communities.

We weave solidarity, building affection and support for older lesbians from a place of love. Lesbians are aging, and many of us are without family and without a home. The precariousness of our lives intensifies in old age and becomes visible in the housing crisis, which violates our rights to housing and a life free from prejudice and social expectations.

Norma and Cachita are our role models, the driving force behind our dreams. Dreams of living together, in a space where we can spend our old age. Together with them, we demand the continued operation of El Socavón cultural space, which serves as housing for our fellow residents and as a hub for local cultural activity. We denounce the Rodríguez Larreta administration for trying to evict them to profit from their property.

We demand that the State guarantee medical assistance to our dissident bodies, respecting our identities and bodies; we demand proper appointment in institutions and we repudiate those who reproduce any conduct that threatens our integrity and, even more so, an archaic and pathologizing idea about our bodies and identities.

We demand that educational and healthcare institutions provide proper and mandatory comprehensive training on gender-diverse bodies, and guarantee that this training is applied to the healthcare practice of all registered professionals and other healthcare workers; that it be implemented as a strict policy of the educational system, under the Ministry of Education, respecting the rights already won and recognizing the legitimacy of our existence. We also denounce the budget cuts and reductions in medication for people living with HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, as well as the obstacles to the approval of the new HIV/AIDS Law.

Finally, we demand the urgent passage of a law guaranteeing legal, safe, and free abortion for all people capable of becoming pregnant. Free Abortion NOW!

We denounce the State for its lack of will and its failure to allocate sufficient resources for the implementation of the National Comprehensive Sex Education Program, Law 26.150. We understand that this program aims to apply, in a cross-cutting and specific manner, content that promotes the education of students at all levels regarding gender perspective and sexual diversity. We maintain that it is essential to ensure the transmission of relevant knowledge, geared towards the practice of responsible, caring, and free sexuality for oneself and others. It is the right of students to receive this education and the duty of the State to guarantee it.

We reject the agreement signed by the National Ministry of Education with the Conin Foundation, headed by Dr. Abel Pascual Albino, to “improve the educational conditions of preschool students.” Albino has referred to homosexuality as an illness and to the free enjoyment of sexual pleasure as an act of tyranny and atrocity. Albino is also the one who formally promotes romanticized ideas of love within the Ministry. We believe that these actions are a direct affront to the entire LGBTQ+ community and limit our progress in our struggles and hard-won rights.

Trans children are constantly violated in clinics and schools. If access to these and other spaces is granted with an ID that does not reflect their self-perceived gender identity, the biological and discriminatory treatment is even greater. We denounce the Civil Registry of the Province of Buenos Aires, which in La Plata, Quilmes, and Punta Indio denied the Right to Identity to children guaranteed by Law 26.743 and which planned to pathologize their experiences by attempting to examine them with interdisciplinary teams in a clear violation of the law.

Since taking office in the City of Buenos Aires, the Macri administration has tirelessly churned out "inclusive" policies for sexual diversity that reek of neoliberal pinkwashing. These policies seem to guarantee certain rights to privileged white gay men (especially those who conform to the parameters of the traditional family and capitalist consumption), while simultaneously further jeopardizing the lives of migrants, precarious workers, retirees, trans people, and all those excluded from the consumer market. That is why we say to Macri: NOT IN OUR NAME. Rather than being called diverse, we prefer to identify ourselves as dissidents and deserters from any place that a right-wing government seeks to grant us in order to legitimize itself. Because we reject this perverse inclusive game played by the PRO party, we also repudiate the LGBT protocol, with which Patricia Bullrich attempts to paint the repression, detention, and violation of our right to demonstrate in pink.

We want a country where the right, as the protocol states, not to suffer during arrests "serious physical or mental pain or suffering for the purpose of obtaining information" is guaranteed by democracy for everyone, whether or not there is a pink protocol.

We denounce this protocol and its implementation as yet another attempt to socially legitimize state violence and repression.

Furthermore, we know that the protocol disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable members of our community. In other words, it criminalizes poverty and protest once again—a real hit from the 90s. In any case, if this government's concern is placing us in the "right cell," they would be better off ensuring compliance with the Gender Identity Law in all institutions under their administration.

From our lesbian existence, we advocate for a feminism free from biological prejudices that define a person's identity by the genitals between their legs. We organize as lesbians, but we know that all activism based on identity risks building walls and creating new norms that exclude and discriminate against many paths. That's why we're coming together this March 7th to make ourselves visible as lesbians, but also to recognize ourselves in all our differences, in all our variations, which are our power to dismantle this oppressive and violent system. We don't want to create a new norm that excludes those who don't conform to it. We are lesbians, we build networks, and we forge alliances with many actors in dissent and feminism because we don't believe in essentialism. We also understand, because we have suffered different kinds of violence against our bodies, that the fight to dismantle patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality cannot find us divided. We urgently need the feminist movement to speak out against the biological determinism that targets trans and travesti people. To think that the word "woman" includes lesbians and excludes trans people is to deny our subjectivities.

The reality of trans and travesti lives hits us hard: in our country, their average life expectancy barely reaches 36 years. Excluded from the education, healthcare, and employment systems, they face a life marked by multiple forms of violence, which severely impacts their quality of life. So far in 2018, at least 15 people have died, either murdered or from preventable illnesses. We denounce the State's abandonment and the hypocrisy of a society that turns a blind eye to these injustices that strike us daily. We demand the recognition of Diana Sacayán's murder as a transphobic hate crime, and we cry out for JUSTICE, for her and for all the comrades we have lost today. Not one more without trans and travesti people!

#WeStrike #WeTransStrike

We stop to make visible our joys, our pleasures, our bodies and our languages, we weave networks, we gain complicity, seeking to organize rebellion and disobedience

We are striking because survival is not enough. In this context of austerity and repression, lesbians are building ourselves as political subjects. We are striking to take to the streets, public spaces, and parks. We are striking to sow resistance and allow dissent to flourish.

Endorsed by: Permanent Lesbian Assembly, Tortas de Barrio – FOL, Grupo Malezas, Actibanda Frente Popular Darío Santillán, Feminismo Popular y Disidente~MP La Dignidad, Varones Antipatriarcales, Frente de igualdad de Género Descamisadxs, Casa Brandon, Quimeras DS, CORREPI, Mala Junta.