Andrea Rivas
23 de out. de 2025
Session summary
What happens when populist leaders and anti-rights groups use LGBTQ+ language not to protect us, but to take our rights away? In this session, we expose a growing political strategy: the systematic hijacking of LGBTQ+ narratives by populist actors to push regressive agendas. These actors frame themselves as defenders of human rights while using our words like freedom, care, or diversityto justify policy rollbacks, institutional infiltration, and the erasure of our identities. We focus on a case study from Argentina, where a group of parents aligned with anti-rights discourse aimed they were protecting their children from so-called gender conversion by LGBTQ+ activists. This fabricated narrative gained institutional support and was later echoed in a presidential decree that restricted trans minors access to gender recognition. The same actors were publicly celebrated for defending human rights. Through this case, we explore the cultural control, narrative inversion, and legal dismantling of progress. Participants will engage with real examples and reflect on how these tactics appear globally, beyond Argentina. This workshop is for those who want to understand how symbolic violence precedes legal and social regression and how to resist it. Together, we will discuss strategies to recognize, disrupt, and reclaim our narratives through activism, memory, policy, and communication.
Biography
A Human Rights Defender from Argentina and a lawyer holding a Masters in Geopolitics and Strategy, Andrea has built a legal career in strategic litigation advancing LGBTI+ rights. Their work has focused on the recognition of the Gender Identity Law, inclusion of LBQI+ women in Assisted Reproduction Laws, and legal recognition of procreational will as a form of filiation. Andrea also served as a Legislative Advisor in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, working on consumer rights policies with a focus on access for LGBTI+ populations. In 2015, Andrea became the first National Director of the Consumer Prior Conciliation Service at the Ministry of Economy. They are co-founder and President of Familias Diversas, an NGO promoting LGBTIQA+ rights. Andrea co-chaired the Argentine Civil Society participation during the 2020-2022 Equal Rights Coalition (ERC) mandate and currently co-chairs the International Diplomacy Working Group of the Eside ME Chile. They are a 2021 Fellow of the OutRight Action International UN Religion Fellowship, and part of the LGBTI+ UN Stakeholder Group.
