Argentina: Milei’s Attacks on LGBTQ+ Spark Call for Huge Protests

Argentine movements, unions, LGBTQ+ organizations, and political groups have joined together to call nationwide anti-fascist and anti-racist protests on Saturday February 1 in response to Javier Milei’s repeated attacks on the Argentine people. 

In his speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos last week, Milei launched sweeping attacks on progressive ideas like feminism, environmentalism, and what he calls “gender identity,” and praised far-right leaders Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Viktor Orbán, and Giorgia Meloni. He also defended his harsh economic austerity policies, despite their impact on Argentina’s poorest communities.

His remarks shocked large sections of Argentine society with unions, LGBTQ+ organizations, and political groups condemning his rhetoric as divisive and dangerous. 

Mariana Mandakovic, adjunct secretary of the Argentine Workers’ Central Union-Autonomous (CTA-A) commented, “In response to the discourses of hate of Javier Milei in Davos, organization and struggle is the response that we will give as workers. We have to understand that it is not the economic discourse on one side and the cultural battle on the other. The battle is political, it’s social, it’s economic, it’s cultural, and it is important that today more than ever that we take to the streets in defense of our hard-earned rights. Today more than ever, the feminist movement should be in the streets changing this reality that is oppressing all of us.”

Trade union centrals such as the State Workers’ Association (ATE), the Argentine Workers’ Central Union-Autonomous (CTA-A), the Argentine Workers’ Central Union (CTA), and the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) will join human rights organizations like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and dozens of other political and social movements, in a historic mobilization in the streets on February 1.

Milei attacks feminism, environmentalism, and LGBTQ+ rights

“Radical feminism is a distortion of the concept of equality, which even in its most benevolent version is redundant, since equality before the law already exists in the West. Everything else is privilege-seeking, which is what radical feminism is really about,” said Milei in Davos.

He further stated that there is a close relationship between those who defend environmentalism and abortion rights advocates: “It is no coincidence that these same people are the main promoters of the bloodthirsty and murderous agenda of [the defense] of abortion, an agenda developed from the Malthusian premises that overpopulation will destroy the earth and that therefore we must establish some mechanism of population control.”

Milei also called LGBTQ+ people “pedophiles” citing the case of a gay couple from Georgia, United States, who were sentenced to 100 years in prison for sexually abusing their adopted children. According to the libertarian president “the two homosexual Americans, who, flying the flag of sexual diversity, were sentenced to 100 years in prison for abusing and filming their adopted children for more than two years. I want to make it clear that when I say abuse I am not using a euphemism, because, in its most extreme versions, gender ideology constitutes total child abuse. They are pedophiles.”

LGBTQ+ organizations and social movements will respond to Milei in the streets 

While a part of the Argentine population supports Milei’s opinions, another part has decided to mobilize in the streets, condemning his comments as “homophobic”. Several collectives and social movements, such as Madres de Plaza de Mayo, as well as some unions such as the CGT and the CTA, have announced that they will join the Federal March of Antifascist and Anti-Racist March,“You don’t need to be LGBTQ+,” that will take place in more than 30 Argentinean and other cities around the world on February 1.

According to Albu Rueda, a trans activist said they are marching because the violation of human rights in Argentina is evident. 

”We know the correlation of hate speeches with violence. After all, that was the society that created us and today returns with the organized fury of the State…We march to make ourselves visible, to stop the symbolic violence, to humanize ourselves, and to put a face to the dehumanizing words that Milei said. And also because we overcome fear, individuality, indifference when we are all together.”

For his part, Ese Montenegro, trans activist, and state worker, said that Milei’s comments are much more serious than they appear at first glance, as they express a deeper political agenda. He says that the president is making an enemy out of a minority group, but the harm is much broader than that, “what they are doing is making people’s lives precarious and generating what we call ‘drip genocide’ [i.e.] letting x number of retired seniors, people with disabilities, people living with HIV die, enabling hate speech against LGBTQ+ people. And there are indirect policies that are the ones that impose this narrative that fosters hatred and dehumanization of LGBTQ+ people, and that causes violence against us to escalate.”

The Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, Axel, Kicillof, told Radio 10 that Milei’s statements encourage a hateful relationship between Argentines. He asked how one could tell a student in the Province that insulting or assaulting someone for thinking differently is unacceptable when the President of the Nation does it regularly.“Comparing homosexuality with pedophilia shows tremendous ignorance,” he said. 

We will do what we know: take the streets!

Speaking to Peoples Dispatch, Belén del Huerto, a feminist journalist, explains that Milei’s statements express “a hatred and resentment from conservative sectors in the face of the advances we women and the LGBTQ+ collectives have had in our country and the world.” 

In addition, she stresses that when the struggle for the decriminalization of abortion began, the feminist movement already managed to identify that those who were most radically opposing this proposal were certain churches and neoconservative groups that mixed their discourse with libertarianism and hate speech. That is why Del Huerto points that out in the Davos speech. Milei expressed the idea that “their enemies are the LGBTQ+ collectives, which constitute a political subject to be persecuted and destroyed.”

Regarding the narrative that there is an equivalence between pedophilia and radical feminism and the LGBTQ+ community, Del Huerto emphasizes that the Argentine president presents one particular case as something universal. 

Ironically, as Milei attempts to draw this equivalence, he has simultaneously been undermining the Law of Integral Sexual Education, which provides tools and legal recourse to prevent and detect child sexual abuse, support child victims, and advocate for the legal punishment of pedofiles.

This measure, clarifies Del Huerto, is in step with the continuous defunding of public policies seeking gender equality by Milei’s government.

Concerning the upcoming anti-fascist march, Del Huerto points out that these types of actions are part of building a broad and diverse movement against Milei, whose growing influence worries the Argentine feminist movement. 

“What is going to happen on February 1 is that feminism and the LGBTQ+ movement are going to confront the discourse of cruelty that Milei outlines with his sayings and policies.”

Finally, the journalist emphasizes that Milei’s statements and actions endanger the democratic system. By defunding and disregarding Argentina’s commitments to national law and international organizations, he sends troubling signals. 

“Gays, lesbians, transvestites and trans are not second-class citizens; we deserve equal treatment before the law.” She explains that although Congress has done nothing about Milei’s attacks, the people will act by doing what they know: taking the streets. “The response to his discriminatory remarks will be a political response against the advance of fascism in Argentina.”