‘Defend our men!’: fears for women’s rights in Latin America over plans to counter gender violence laws

A protester in a ‘Not One Less’ march in Buenos Aires in June, when thousands of women took to the streets across Argentina to denounce femicides. Photograph: Luis Robayo/AFP/Getty

The Chilean senator Vanessa Kaiser is on a mission. In her view, men are under attack and need to be protected from the wrongs that feminism has brought about, including a barrage of false accusations of gender-based and sexual violence. “I want to be the first minister in the history of the west to defend men,” she says.

“I want to defend you against the idea that, simply for being born male, you are guilty,” she said in July, speaking about a proposed bill that would create sanctions for falsely reporting domestic violence and sexual assaults. “Because now, on top of all the burdens we already had, thanks to those horrible ideologies called feminism and the gender perspective, we have to defend our men.”