Gender Ideology in Chile

Since the early 2000s, Latin America has witnessed the rise of a new concept, the ideología de género (gender ideology.) Though every culture and society is inevitably defined by a gender ideology—that is, what differentiates each gender from the others—the gender ideology is as much a political tool as it is an actual ideology.

Much like the “radical gay agenda” that served as the boogey-man of US politics for much of the 90s and early 2000s, “gender ideology” is a “catch-all” term that—in Chile, where I conduct my ethnographic research with trans activists—encompasses positions surrounding everything from abortion, to gender identity recognition, to same-sex marriage and adoption rights. The small but growing Evangelical Christian population in the historically Catholic country has, in the last decade, become the single loudest voice against the expansion of LGBTQIA+ rights in Chile. They have framed these initiatives as potentially harmful to children, understood as the most “innocent” members of society. These children are, paradoxically, understood as both corruptible—able to be “turned” trans or gay by exposure to this ideology—and definitively, “naturally” sexed and gendered from the moment of their birth according to biological markers like genitalia and chromosomes.

During my long-term dissertation fieldwork in 2017 and 2018, the Chilean Congress was in the final stages of the five-year process of debating (and ultimately passing) a Gender Identity Law, guaranteeing trans people the right to change their names and gender markers on all official documents, further alarming anti-gender ideology voices and spurring them to action. The prominence of the ideología de género in contemporary Chilean politics has forced trans activists to toe a difficult line. In their internal programming, they remain committed to the idea of gender as a construct, and one that exists along a spectrum. However, in reaction to the public discourse about the ideología de género, their outward messaging—especially in the context of counter-protesting—has shifted to center the experiences of trans children, reinforcing the idea that gender is inborn (though not tied to biology), while also challenging the idea that they are unable to define their genders for themselves.