Institutional Violence and Sexual Panic Directed at Poor Young Women and Trans Persons in Buenos Aires

ELIZALDE, SILVIA

Women and International Development (WID) Publications Series

Center for Gender in Global Context, Michigan State University

Lugar: East Lansing, Michigan, Estados Unidos; Año: 2008 vol. 293 p. 1 - 19

0888-5354

This article analyzes some of the ideological effects and practices implicated in the current construction of “sexual panic” surrounding young women and “trans” persons as a form of sexual and gendered violence by specific public institutions involved in the assistance of adolescents experiencing homelessness, poverty, and prostitution in the City of Buenos Aires. In order to do so, it provides historical frameworks of experiences and struggles of gender and sexual social movements in Argentina from the point of view of gender and sexual rights in developing countries. All data and arguments submitted throughout the text are based on extensive ethnographic research that I have been developing since 2002 concerning gender and sexual violence, class, and discrimination in the context of increasing poverty and social exclusion in Argentina and Latin America.