Machos or Divinas? A Quandary in Argentinean and Spanish Gay Activism

DIETER INGENSCHAY; KERMAN CALVO BOROBIA; GRACIA TRUJILLO; ÓSCAR GUASCH ANDREU; JORDI MAS; ALFREDO MARTÍNEZ-EXPÓSITO; ALBERTO MIRA NOUSELLES; RAFAEL M. MÉRIDA JIMÉNEZ; ELENA MADRIGAL-RODRÍGUEZ; JORGE LUIS PERALTA; JUAN VICENTE ALIAGA; RICHARD CLEMINSON; CARLOS PONS

Hispanic (LGT) Masculinities in Transition

Peter Lang

Lugar: New York; Año: 2014; p. 137 - 157

At the end of the 1970s, Héctor Anabitarte and Ricardo Lorenzo, members of the Homosexual Liberation Front (Frente de Liberación Homosexual), left Argentina -where the military dictatorship initiated in 1976 led to the disappearance of that movement- and  went into exile in Spain, where they continued participating as activists in defense of sexual minorities. This article analyzes the configurations of masculinity in various articles and books written together by the authors. It is our personal content that they manifest a strong interest in contesting traditional conceptions of sex and gender and in finding alternative models to those imposed through various stages of power. This valuable vindication entails, however, the risk of new exclusions, for the figure of the effeminate homosexual, the fag (la "loca"), is understood as an example of submission to the hegemonic values and not as a legitimate option of identitarian auto-construction. Anabitarte's and Lorenzo's essays illustrate, ultimately, the contradiction regarding the gender performances that marked the activism of the period on both sides of the Atlantic.