Identity politics and human rights: perspectives on the Argentine Gender Identity Law

RADI, BLAS; MOIRA PÉREZ

New Haven

Conferencia; Identity politics and human rights: perspectives on the Argentine Gender Identity Law; 2016

Department of Comparative Literature y Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Yale University

In Argentina, the right to identity has a strong presence in discourses on human rights. Understood as genetics, it plays a key role in the struggle to identify people kidnapped during the last military dictatorship, and relate them to their biological families. As a result, discourses on identity are strongly marked by blood ties. However, it is in this same context and its human rights framework that the Argentine Gender Identity Law was made possible, in which although the right to identity plays a key role, its emphasis is not on biological truth, but on self-perception.This Law, hailed as "the most progressive in the world", is due, to a large extent, to the work of the trans* collective legislating for itself. However, discourses around the Law relate to this trans* genealogy in varied and nuanced ways. On the one hand, those who acknowledge its virtues tend to reduce trans* agency in the process and attribute it to (cis) political public figures, resulting in the denial of agency for the trans* collective both locally and globally, an in an unrealistic portrayal of its complexities. On the other hand, local queer perspectives often criticize the Law for its choice to maintain the M/F categories in administrative procedures, most notably in IDs, and thus may represent trans* people as normative.In this discussion, after a brief introduction on identity politics in the Argentine context, we will focus on the Law and address some of the main debates it has raised. We will address these critiques, its limitations and possibilities, as well as some thoughts on the representations of the process that led to its passing. We are interested in working towards theoretical (and historical) understandings of the Law and the activism that led to it, in terms that will push forward trans* agency and solidarity worldwide, including the perspectives and specificities of the South, which are often lost in translation.