By Violeta Alegre.  For days now, the Argentine media has been dramatizing the scandal surrounding pedophilia rings within football club dormitories, where the team and its colors pale in comparison to the story. A player in the under-14 league broke down in front of the dormitory therapist and recounted abuse and sexual exploitation. This immediately generated criminal complaints, hours upon hours of sensationalist television coverage, and public shaming of several journalists and figures in the entertainment world. Afternoon programs are drooling over the story, saying little about the victims and much about the alleged perpetrators, who are not trafficking networks but rather gay and transgender pedophiles. The message is thus redirected from the main problem—that of children sexually exploited and traded like commodities—and shifted towards a supposed perversion based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

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That's why the story was amplified that a deceased trans woman was—supposedly—one of those people who slept with the boys at the boarding house. And for that same reason, according to media reports, the victims had to undergo HIV testing. Not only have online news outlets referred to “a” transvestite (not respecting gender identity) but rather establish, as usual, links that stigmatize and criminalize trans identities, directly associating them with HIV and the world of sexual exploitation.

Our sociocultural drama

This scenario plays out in a multitude of unequal power dynamics: a world of adults stifling dreams in a sexist, patriarchal, phallocentric, binary, and heteronormative society. The major sociocultural problem we face is educating us to reproduce these kinds of disciplinary acts against those deprived of almost everything. Perhaps these bodies and identities still harbor some dreams. But they will always remain on the brink of marginalization, and we ALL have to take responsibility for that. The issue of class is also present. In most cases, we're talking about boys from humble families in rural areas who, out of necessity or aspiration, delegate their parental responsibilities to the world of macho Argentine sports.

And the Church, and the Army, and the Boy Scouts

But these situations don't only occur in sports. These kinds of power dynamics and exploitation also exist in the Church, the military, and the Boy Scouts: all spheres where, incidentally, homosexuality is taboo. When these cases of abuse surface in the media, individuals are held responsible, but never the economic and sociocultural system itself. In this way, they become isolated incidents (a certain priest, a certain political figure, a transvestite), and the bigger picture, which in this case is dark and sinister, remains hidden. Understanding this, I'm surprised not to have read any statements or protests from the feminist movement as a whole condemning this abhorrent situation. This means the debate is being steered by the media without any gender perspective. What's happening to us as a feminist collective? Would the response have been different if it involved the abuse and exploitation of girls and adolescents? Aren't pedophilia rings and the upper echelons of the sports world products of the same system of patriarchal oppression? Here we have minors, shattered innocence, and human rights violations. Our social and cultural future is at stake in these actions. Shifting the focus from the crime to a spectacle, or ignoring and silencing the plots behind these events, transforms us from passive news communicators and consumers into accomplices in a system where the same people always lose.