In Argentina, hate speech has experienced a notable increase, driven by the recent political polarization between the extreme liberal right and progressive or leftist currents, as well as by the rise of personalities of the current government administration. These figures promote distorted and discriminatory narratives against individuals or groups, based on social and identity factors such as gender, sexuality, class, nationality, ethno-racial origin, and religion, among others whom they hold responsible for current economic and social problems. An example of this was the recent participation of President Javier Milei at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he used stigmatizing and disqualifying language directed at women, migrants, and the LGBTQ+ community. His statements linked “gender ideology” to pedophilia, called feminism a “distortion of the concept of equality,” and described these groups as part of a “woke epidemic” that must be “extirpated like a cancer.”
In addition, the country is experiencing an upsurge in xenophobic, racist, and homophobic discourse against identity, diversity, and gender policies, among others. This phenomenon is part of an economic, political, and social context marked by the loss of jobs—both formal and informal—the decrease in purchasing power, the high cost of living, and structural poverty, which by the last quarter of 2024 reached 49.9 percent, increasingly eroding the social fabric of the middle and working class.
Discriminatory expressions are spreading in a global environment characterized by the rise of liberal, conservative, far-right, neo-fascist, neo-racist, and extractivist governments and political figures in countries such as the United States, Germany, and Italy. This scenario weakens democracy, violates human rights, and deepens social polarization, inciting violence.
The normalization of these discourses represents a danger to democratic coexistence and the protection of fundamental rights. Faced with this situation, trans and anti-racist activism face complex and urgent challenges: how do we reorganize the struggle in a context of rights regression and advance of hate speeches? How do we build alliances and effective strategies within feminist agendas to counter the conservative, neo-fascist, and neo-racist onslaught?
Minority Rights in Dispute
The echoes of President Javier Milei’s statements in Davos resounded in the media. His association of the LGBTQ+ collective with pedophilia generated indignation and concern in organizations such as “Orgullo y Lucha” and La Comunidad Homosexual de Argentina (CHA). At the same time, the executive branch implemented modifications to Article 11 of the Gender Identity Law (26.743/2012) through the Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) under Article 61, which prohibits the transfer of persons deprived of their liberty for reasons of gender change and Article 62, which prohibits minors from undergoing hormonal and surgical treatments. To this is added the announcement of the repeal of the Trans Labor Quota Law, which guarantees access to formal employment for travesti, trans, and transgender people. These measures distort the essence of these laws, limiting access to fundamental rights for travesti and transgender people.
Their historic struggle resulted in obtaining the Identity Law and the trans labor quota. “We are the scapegoat of this government for all the poverty and cuts in diversity, gender policies they have been making. We are not a danger, we are in danger”, expresses Ruiz, an Indigenous-Brown trans activist, a delegate of the State Workers Association Union (ATE), founder of 7 Colores Diversidad, and member of the Identidad Marrón collective.
The presidential announcement of the possible elimination of the concept of femicide from the Penal Code and the repeal of the Micaela Law, which promotes mandatory training in gender violence for public administration, generated a climate of uncertainty and fear. In contrast, the regulations that facilitated access to employment, educational training, and housing for women in situations of poverty and gender violence, such as the Ellas Hacen Program (2013) and the trans labor quota, represent a significant advance. According to Maru Vieyra, member of the Simón Bolívar group and Secretary of Culture of the Union of Civilian Personnel of the Nation (ex-Ministry of Social Development), “access to employment for them means a generational change.”
Against this backdrop, on February 1, The LGBTQ+ Antifascist and Anti-racist Pride March was held under the slogan “Life is at risk, enough! To the closet we never go back,” gathering close to 1.5 million people in defense of acquired rights and in repudiation of the government's discriminatory and oppressive policies. These actions were echoed in 25 cities around the world, raising a global voice of cross-border and collective resistance.
In turn, at the request of activists and LGTBQ+ collectives, on the 13th of the same month, in the Chamber of Deputies of the Argentinean Congress debated the modification of article 11 of the Gender Identity Law and the danger it poses to the travesti-trans community. In this sense, it was requested to the political arc the nullity of these articles. However, at present, this situation has not been resolved. The LGBTQ+ community and human rights activists are on alert against these measures, which represent a setback in the struggle for equality and respect for diversity.
A few days before 7M, the Day of Lesbian Visibility, and 8M, International Women’s Day and the International Strike, it is crucial to remember that the struggle of these movements and collectives during the last 15 years achieved cutting-edge progress in human rights for women, LGTBQ+ individuals, and migrants in the recognition and expansion of Rights. Examples of these are: The Migration Law that went from equating “migrate with crime” to “migrate as a human right”; the Comprehensive Protection Law to prevent, punish, and eradicate violence against women; The Law of Gender Parity in areas of Political Representation, and The Law of Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy that guarantees the termination of pregnancy in the health system as a right for any pregnant person who so wishes. In relation to this last point, the challenges and the continuity of this initiative “will depend more and more on local activism, since the situation could worsen next year” comments Martina Ferretto, member of the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion and researcher at CONICET.
This is based on the current political, economic, and social panorama of the government, which during its first year in office, dismantled and eliminated programs, institutions, and state agencies created for the care and assistance of this population. Among them are the elimination of the Ministry of Gender and Diversity, the elimination of the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism, the closure of the Memory Spaces, the elimination of educational content on Sexual and Reproductive Health, the degradation of the National Ministry of Social Development to a secretariat, the elimination of emergency and comprehensive programs for the care of women and trans-travestis, among others.
Narrating Transfeminism and Anti-Racism Towards 8M
Under these conditions, the struggle and resistance of travesti-trans activism acquires a crucial relevance. Above all, their presence challenges the place they occupy in the agenda of feminism and LGTBQ+ in the country and complicates the way to build strategies of resistance and access to rights. Thus, their participation brings an intersectional perspective that makes visible the multiple forms of oppression and proposes alliances to build a transversal, transfeminist, representative, and anti-racist future.
The origins of this collective struggle are found in the first march, “Plurinational against Travesticides and Transfemicides” held in 2019, which was framed with the modification, in that same year, of the name “National Women's Encounter (1986)” to “Plurinational Encounter, from Women to Women, Lesbians, Trans, Travestis, Bisexuals and Non Binaries,” requested by Indigenous, Brown, peasant, migrant and Afrodescendant women and dissidents, from different territories and political spaces of the country who did not see themselves represented. Since then, this march has invited hegemonic and institutional feminism to reflect. In this regard, Daniela Ruiz mentions, “our voices were not heard. We began to bring this agenda of structural racism that is rooted in a Eurocentric view. In the 2015 and 2019 assemblies, we met with Indigenous and Brown women, and we said enough of speaking for us without us.”
Alluding to the assemblies of Ni Una Menos (2015) and the Plurinational Meeting (2019) that were characterized by the inclusion and political representativeness of the demands of trans-travesti, Indigenous, Brown, peasant and working women from popular sectors in the agenda of feminism. In this regard, Ruiz points out that “the consolidation of a plurinational and anti-racist feminism was possible thanks to our insistence that feminism must be transfeminist and anti-racist, since, without our participation, there would be no significant advances.”
Collective Challenges and Taking Care of What Has Been Acquired
This 8M is presented with pressing challenges: the dismantling of gender, diversity, and identity policies, labor flexibilization, and the restriction of rights in a context of poverty and indigence that has reached unprecedented levels in the last decade. The slogans for this march and mobilization resound with urgency: “Against the adjustment and the plundering of rights,” “Against the shrinking of the state,” and “For a democracy without hate and violence.” At the same time, the rise of hate speeches forces the collective struggles of women and LGTBQ+ communities to defend the rights acquired and to confront the escalation of political and social violence. Further questions arise: How do we reorganize the collective when its very existence is at stake? What strategies are possible and viable in the face of the criminalization of social protest?
So in a period where the survival of racialized women and LGTBQ+ is in dispute not only in terms of rights but of life itself, it resonates, will feminism finally be transfeminist, anti-racist, and socially just?
Chana Mamani is a social worker, teacher, and decolonial and anti-racist writer. She is an Aymara migrant, two spirits. She coordinates the area of feminism and anti-racism in the collective Identidad Marrón. Author of articles and poems on Indigenous eroticism.
