Gender punitivism: Queer perspectives on identity politics in criminal justice

PÉREZ, MOIRA; RADI, BLAS

Criminology & Criminal Justice

Sage

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2020 vol. 20 p. 523 - 536

1748-8958

In June 2018 in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Criminal Court no. 4 sentenced the murderer of renowned travesti activist Diana Sacayán (Jenner, 2018; López, 2018). The sentence was celebrated by a large portion of the local LGBT community, which found in it two important breakthroughs: on the one hand, the court considered it a case of hate crime moved by gender violence, and used the term ?trasvesticide? for the first time in the history of Argentine Justice; on the other, the verdict seemed to acknowledge the gravity of the case, as the defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment.In this article we will engage in this case, and more broadly in the Argentine context, to examine the convergence of identity politics and punitivism, two tendencies that give shape to numerous experiences in LGBT activism and State criminal policies. It is our contention that a Queer criminological perspective can provide a particularly fertile framework to develop such an analysis, mainly due to its critical perspectives on identity, on the one hand, and justice, punishment and reparation, on the other.