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For months, activists have been warning that Javier Milei's government and its far-right allies were setting the stage to attack the Gender Identity Law. Unfortunately, this affront was confirmed yesterday. Representative Álvaro Martínez of the La Libertad Avanza party introduced a bill to prohibit minors from changing their registration. This would amend Gender Identity Law 26.743, a symbol of a diverse democracy that recognizes rights for all.

In recent weeks, Argentine officials have posted anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-trans messages on their social media. This adds to the government's systematic attack on diversity since taking office. The trigger was a conference on trans children organized by La Casita Trans, a Cordoba-based non-profit organization that works for the rights of trans and non-binary children and youth. 

The first to react was Ramiro Marra, a legislator from the La Libertad Avanza party. He posted a message on the social network X, where he shared the event's flyer, calling it an "atrocity." 

Let's remember that up to this point, the recognition of trans or NB children is a right developed under national regulations and international treaties with constitutional status. This is established by the Convention on the Rights of Children and Adolescents, which recognizes persons under the age of 18 as subjects of rights. It also safeguards the free development of the child, and above all, the best interests of the child and non-discrimination. 

The other congress

But Marra's nervous breakdown wasn't isolated. A few days later, on November 7, the Citizen Services Department—a department that works with social organizations, outlining demands useful to the current administration—organized the second seminar called "Gender and Identity: The Problem of Child Sexualization." There, journalist Claudia Peiró convened the organization Manada: mothers and fathers of adolescent children with "accelerated-onset gender dysphoria." This seminar took the same transphobic stance as Marra's on children and adolescents, but with nuances of pathologizing.

One of the focuses of this seminar was to promote "the early detection of accelerated gender dysphoria and the rights of minors and their parents in the context of the gender identity law," and the other was an accusation of "indoctrination" under the Comprehensive Sexual Education Law.

The organization has long been criticizing the Gender Identity Law. It seeks to ban it for all children based on a pathologizing view of trans children and adolescents. At Manada, they work with "families broken by gender ideology," "rescuing their children from these insanities," connecting parents of trans children with conversion therapies. They report having gender identity "detransitioners" and guidelines for parents: "acknowledge your mistakes," "set new boundaries," and "respect the name you gave your child at birth." "Then the improvements begin," they promise. 

The ESI, another enemy

These parents' interpretation is that their children are victims of a social demand for stereotypes, especially for girls. Growing up and having a developed body makes their daughters uncomfortable, so they wear baggy clothes and cut their hair the same way. This sensitivity to violence, plus "trauma," plus encouragement, leads them to "body ablation," says Patricia Galarza, a member of Manada.

In a poor performance, despite the approval and applause of Vice President Villarruel, they also took it upon themselves to criticize the Comprehensive Sexual Education Law. This controversy reached the mainstream media when major outlets reported that books containing pornographic and hypersexualized content were distributed by the Buenos Aires Province ESI (Comprehensive Sexual Education) program.

Sileoni clarified in a discussion with journalist Eduardo Feinmann that they are not pornographic, that they are meant to be read and accompanied by adults, that they are not given to children but to school libraries, and that they are complementary bibliography for teachers. He further clarified: "Schools do not deny the difference between men and women, they do not teach sexual practices, they do not encourage homosexuality or transsexuality, they do not teach abortion. They accept you as you are; in that sense, they are better than society. They do not discriminate, they do not persecute, they do not put them in jail." In the end, Feinmann agrees with what the Second Seminar seeks to say: "Isn't it better to leave this to the parents?"

Political and media setup

Without leaving the Gender Identity axis, we return to Córdoba for a few more days, partly due to a ruling issued on October 31st, but which only recently reached the national media. This is a woman who was detained in Bouwer in late 2016 for gender-based violence against her former partner. In 2018, she changed her gender and sex on the registry, which is why she was transferred to the women's ward of Bouwer prison. She was again charged with violence, threats, and sexual abuse against one of her fellow detainees.

This news provoked a reaction from Vice President Villarruel. Through her X account, she stated: "This is clear and simple: anyone who supports gender ideology is a degenerate, and anyone who supports sexualizing children is a potential pedophile. Our government will fight them until we have no more blood left in our bodies." Without mentioning the seminar "Gender and Identity: The Problem of Child Sexualization," the mishmash of issues related to gender identity that she expresses is incomprehensible. 

Argentine Vice President Victoria Villarruel shared an article from Infobae and said she will combat the "gender ideology" that "sexualizes children." This misinforms and stigmatizes diversity. pic.twitter.com/VPkjnqJ5mb

— Presentes Agency (@PresentesLatam) November 12, 2024

And for her part, Milei also takes advantage of X and reposts someone who says: “A convicted abuser said he saw himself as a woman to go to a women's prison and ended up raping his cellmates. An achievement for feminism.”  

This week, the newspaper La Nación also published a story about a drug lord who reportedly requested to change his gender identity in prison.

In this way, trans people are stigmatized based on specific cases, and the gender identity law is also presented as a tool for criminal use rather than for what it is: an instrument to guarantee the human right to identity. 

The context since Milei's assumption

The Argentine government has been attacking the LGBTIQ+ population since taking office, both through its speeches and its policies. 

Examples: the closure of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity, the virtual closure of INADI, the prohibition of the use of inclusive language, the prohibition of sharing cultural content on sexual diversity, the representation of LGBTIQ+ policy abroad, layoffs due to trans quotas, the minimal or no reduction in the ESI and Micaela laws, and the total closure of policies with a gender and diversity perspective, although there are still areas that provide attention to gender-based violence, although all of them are reduced in staff and resources and serve almost exclusively cis people. 

The transfer of this anti-rights agenda to Congress is neither surprising nor new at this point in the year. From the outset, the Millennium Movement has sought to reach agreements with center-right parties to achieve governability in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

But in Congress, we also saw LLA's constant flirtation with genocide perpetrators from the beginning. Unfortunately, this year saw a period of impunity for representatives advised by genocide perpetrators, with no further rebukes from those who hold convictions about human rights and the role of our society in demanding memory, truth, and justice.

This point also needs to be addressed because this year we saw how broad sectors of Argentine society are comfortable with cuts, blackmail—if we don't take away rights from some, then there's no money for others—and retaliatory measures, looking on with indifference at a government that's pushing poverty to more than 50%. Those of us who live in urban areas painfully see the poverty hidden under the city's Macri-led carpet.

False freedom

Milei's anarcho-capitalism does not seek freedom but rather the economic redistribution of a small sector of society, destroying other sectors, such as the closure of some ministries, public policies, and their workers. It develops this position from within the State itself, in the sum of the power granted by the democratic vote, allowing it to distribute those resources to areas that benefit the most powerful sectors. An example of this redistribution is the increased budget at the SIDE (National Intelligence Service), which uses undeclared funds, allows for internal investigations, and governs by scrutinizing the case. Or policies like the RIGI (National Institute of Statistics and Geography), which directly benefit large transnational business groups, leaving nothing for the State. 

In foreign policy, at the OAS General Assembly, they promoted conversion therapies, refused to implement the 2030 Agenda with development goals, and systematically voted against the rights of women in all their diversity. 

The persecution of the LIG

Regarding what follows, I think the last few months have been quite eloquent, especially regarding the Gender Identity Law. On the one hand, in terms of public policy, the government has not sent the specifications for the purchase of hormones for next year. Several provinces are using what they have, but without national purchases, compliance with Article 11 regarding access to comprehensive health care by 2025 will likely not be possible. 

Along the same lines, social security systems gained discretion because their state oversight body, the Superintendency of Health Services, stopped issuing opinions related to the Gender Identity Law for health insurance companies. Therefore, we can expect a further deterioration of public policies related to diversity. 

Unfortunately, neither grassroots feminists nor trans women are defending our rights in Congress. Surely, trans senators or representatives would not only be educating their colleagues, but events like the Second Seminar would not be held with impunity, silence, or indifference. And this brings us to a question about partisan politics.

An urgent debate

We've long needed a debate within progressive parties, because the LGBTIQ+ movement isn't in Congress defending our rights and Argentine democracy. This is problematic because we can't come and go for electoral gain. It's not all the same; cis-hetero people aren't at stake in their vitality or urgency. The impunity of Milei and those who vote with them reflects the ignorance and absence of social movements in democratic institutions. Marra's fear of the Congress of Trans Children in Córdoba is dismantled when this group and others maintain a dialogue, a presence, in the institutions that represent all the people.

Finally, the resistance of social movements, marked by the era of TikTok, takes turns in the sequence of events, acts, and mobilizations that seek to break the isolation and indifference of the media. The exceptions are undoubtedly the student movement and the mobilization of retirees. But with many loss of political issues and agendas, that is, of rights, such as the demand for the recovery of lands that constitutionally belong to Indigenous nations, the environment, the rights of people with disabilities, among many vital issues.

Within this more florid scenario, Argentine democracy thrives, with poor institutionality violated by the government, violating fundamental rights. A striking fact about the libertarian agenda is the repulsion they feel toward the real exercise of freedom, understood as a fundamental right for all.