The Higui case is a brutal reminder of the oppressions that sexual dissent must still suffer

How many powers does Higui -Eva Analia De Jesús- cartonera, footballer and 47-year-old lesbian resist? How many powers until hours ago and how many since the very day he was born? How many powers does a poor woman from Bella Vista face, whose expressions are interpreted by the official detector of possible aesthetics as signs of an execrable desertion? The recent acquittal of the victim of an attempted corrective rape in October 2016 at the The Lomas del Mariló neighborhood not only nourishes relief for his due freedom after six years of judicial torture, but also imposes attention to how alevously diverse a “cake of the suburban” can be today. What “degrees” of lesbianism are possible and which are still automatically criminalizable.

As in an Argentinean film from the 80s, the institutional imaginary in force places lesbians in a filthy and lascivious prison, an immoral reserve of traitor women for whom the only possible justice is an orderly warden who - abuses through - punishes daring. What treason, what daring? The betrayal of insisting on an escape. Like that of millions, Higui's existence is seen as a danger capable of demolishing the vertebra on which the repressive apparatus of the State is based: gender binarism. There is no presidential decree on non-binary DNI that manages to neutralize that imperceptible gendarmerie that identifies “disloyal” women. Higui is not a non-binary person. However - like Mariana Gómez, imprisoned for kissing her girlfriend in Constitucion in 2017 - when sexual orientation assumes forms that the ordinary policeman cannot decipher, an identity conviction appears. The eight months that Higui had to spend imprisonment after defending himself and mortally wounding one of his attackers refer to this film tradition. His experience in a cell does not respond to the fact that he likes women: it is because their lesbianity and class do not fall within the instagrammable canons of the legal manual of difference.

Thus, the acquittal comes after a powerful social demand and - fundamental to emphasize it - despite a prosecutor's office that until the last moment asked for ten years in prison for the victim. Why? Among other ideological reasons, because as the transvestite activist Lara Bertolini pointed out, it is that from the very beginning of a similar trial the dissident perspective prevails. Otherwise, there will be a fanciful equality before the law, according to which subjectivities historically violated by the honourable Members will have “the same guarantees”, but the greatest suspicions. Until very recently, the Argentine judiciary was the executing arm of “normality” and if it is about choosing the “right lesbian”, it is clear that the tribulans still suck.

Higui's overwhelmingly unfair experience illuminates the extent to which oppressions are simultaneous and economic injustice is sung correlate of sexual domination. In this sense, the point of view of the Argentine philosopher María Lugones, who died in the United States in 2020, is quite enlightening: “Your map was drawn by power,” she says in Pilgrimages. Theorizing a coalition against multiple oppressions (Editions of the sign, 2021). As a lesbian transformed by American black feminisms, Lugones insists on identifying the spatial limits of power, what does and doesn't allow and for whom: “Your life is spatiality mapped by power (...) where you can, should or shouldn't live and move.” Increasingly, to think about dissent is to think about the crosses of submission. Decline the verb to obey until unknown conjugations are obtained. Higui could not help but play tricks, play goalkeeper and go as unnoticed as possible in a territory of stalking men. For them, raping her was not just trying to “correct” her: it was to remind her wildly and fatally how unnoticed she had to go. As muffled as possible. Rape always affirms the walls of an original hiding place.

What and how far can it look like who he seems to be and is? What appearances - and at what temperature - can each person show? Where? At what time? There is no universal lesbian, full-time lesbian that the red notebook links to a family structure and thus appease the annoyance it represents. Among other effects, Higui reopens the chapter on a right that is as forgotten as it is essential: the right not to be alike.

The author is a journalist and activist. He hosts the program “Can't Live From Love” on Radio de la Ciudad. His first fiction book, “They tear your head off”, will be published at the end of April by Editorial Mansalva.