Share

Share

Share on Facebook Share on Facebook Tweet Share on Twitter Share on WhatsApp Share on WhatsApp

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER

The justice system that ruled against Cristina is the same one that revictimizes women and LGBTQ+ people. It's the same justice system that minimizes or outright ignores gender-based violence, that imprisons and punishes according to class criteria. It's a justice system that is far from listening and providing redress.

The legal attack on Cristina, the attack on the people by denying them a female candidate, comes three months after the assassination attempt and after a dozen impeachment proceedings. The December 6th ruling sends a clear message: the proscription from political life of the only woman to have served two terms as president, a seat in the Senate, and who is currently the elected vice president. Today, Cristina Fernández is banned from political life.

The rise of so-called hate speech in the public sphere has become visible in concrete actions. This ruling must also be interpreted within the context of the regional and global advance of right-wing discourse with strong misogynistic content, which seeks to confine women to the home and LGBTQ+ people to the closet.

We transvestites and trans people know about this judicial persecution

This condemnation and persecution seeks to discipline everyone. They want us docile, they want us domesticated, they want us out of politics; "we don't look prettier when we're quiet." Transvestites, trans people, and trans women know all about this.

The ways in which patriarchal power is constructed are through the disciplining of our lives and our bodies. The impunity we see reflected in the judicial system is the same impunity and asymmetry from which we come.

We grew up experiencing the complicity and negligence of prosecutors and judges, the silence or validation they gave to institutional violence against trans women. We grew up fighting for a sliver of democracy that would allow us to be named , embraced by popular governments that reclaim the Latin American notion of good living and human rights, embraced by the struggle of the Mothers and Grandmothers.

Why we urgently need a transfeminist judicial reform

This year at the 35th Plurinational Meeting of Lesbian, Trans, Transvestite, Intersex, Bisexual and Non-Binary Women in Huarpe, Comechingón and Ranquel Territory (San Luis), which began with an indigenous ceremony with the cry of "Marichi wew", an indigenous Mapuzungun word that means "ten or a thousand times we will win", there was also an invitation to think about a judicial reform from a transfeminist perspective. 

Our country has a long history of feminist and LGBTQ+ movements that have been able to build a clear agenda from thousands of voices of liberation against the oppression that this capitalist, racist, patriarchal and colonial system has historically imposed on us. 

In response, we must defend our agenda. The agenda of intersectionality, encompassing activists, community leaders, diverse groups, Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, migrants, women, lesbians, transvestites, trans and intersex people, bisexuals, and non-binary individuals. We urgently need a transfeminist judicial reform . We need it urgently, even knowing that many comrades within the judiciary are already fighting to transform it.

We need our social and political movement, responsible for the most important transformations in feminism and the national political agenda, to lead at this moment. It must place this web of judicial violence within the urgent and certain context of protecting Cristina's life. What are the ways to confront this? 

During the years of popular governments, we were present, supporting, and building an architecture of fundamental rights. This included the Law on Respectful Childbirth (2004), the Comprehensive Sex Education Law (2006), the Law on the Prevention and Punishment of Trafficking in Persons and Assistance to its Victims (2008/2012), the Comprehensive Protection Law to Prevent, Punish and Eradicate Violence against Women (2009), the Equal Marriage Law (2010), the Gender Identity Law (2012), the Assisted Fertilization Law (2013), the Special Employment Contract Regime for Domestic Workers (2013), and the Pension Inclusion Law (2014), which granted retirement benefits to homemakers.

Also with the creation of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity (2019). With Decree 721/20 on Transvestite and Transgender Employment Quotas (2020), Law No. 27,636 on Access to Formal Employment for Transvestite, Transsexual and Transgender People "Diana Sacayán-Lohana Berkins" (2021), Decree 476/21 for non-binary documentation (2021), among many other measures and programs with a feminist perspective. 

We are not pets of power.

What kind of organization can we create to build an alternative to such a power? It's with feminists, with diversity, with the LGBTQ+ movement. It's with a grassroots agenda for expanding rights and redistributing wealth. With grassroots organizations that emerge from the community. And with feminist leadership, open to all women and free from "gentlemen's agreements" and sexist practices.

It was the girls educated in those years of expanding rights - not only in Argentina, but throughout our region - who came out with the green scarf to say "instinctively" and without any doubt "my body my decision" and to defend the Law of Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy. 

The year is about to change and the 2023 campaigns will begin, including the presidential election, and we wonder what will happen to the political agenda? Here, the methods matter, the timing and the purpose. 

We are not pawns of power; our strength lies in the vitality we collectively gave ourselves. They cannot overcome so much love.