With a critical vision of the judicial use of the gender perspective, valentina ortizactivist and influencer, gives an account of the details of the murder of pike dupuy, awaiting the sentence that will be known next Thursday. He says that “there is an evident power relationship between mothers and fathers over their sons and daughters”, which is overlooked and that there are other similar cases, about which almost no information circulates because the “media does not follow the claims of people, but they replicate what is on the agenda”.
—You are one of the few communicators who speak emphatically about the Dupuy case. Also, you have a very critical position of what happened at the institutional level and of the use of the gender perspective. Could you summarize what you know?
—The most problematic thing about the case of Lucio Dupuy, beyond the filicide itself, which is in itself an aberrational act, is that it is a gender crime. Let’s remember what gender violence is: According to UN Women, it is one that occurs for a gender reason, and not from one gender to another. The UN also specifies that women, men, girls and boys can be victims of this type of violence. We can only classify as femicides those in which it can be demonstrated that there was a gender component in the motivation for the crime, but violence, especially partner violence, is multicausal. There are substance abuse problems, problems linked to mental health, educational problems, people who replicate the violence they suffered at home or restrictive religious education, among other reasons that have been studied by criminal scientists for years. Today, however, every murder of a man against a woman who is part of his more or less close circle is classified as femicide.
The case of Lucio Dupuy, as I was saying, showed a clear gender component. The tests confirm it. The assassins had mutilated his penis. The greatest representation in a boy of his condition as a man. WhatsApp conversations between them have been leaked, where they talked about how, in reality, it would have been better to be able to violate Lucio’s father and not him. That they “had” to do violence to him for not being able to attack his father. Both of their sex toys had Lucio’s DNA. He had been beaten, burned with cigarettes, bitten, sexually assaulted, and tortured in ways that would be hard for anyone to even imagine.
At first, Lucio lived with his mom and dad. All together they moved to Luján for a job from Christian, his father. Soon after, Magdalena cut off the relationship and took Lucio with her. The child then came under the care of the paternal grandparents and his mother visited him from time to time. During this period Magdalena began her relationship with Abigail and shortly after she took Lucio back. The paternal grandmother was beginning to see signs of abuse in him. One day, Magdalena calls Lucio’s paternal uncle (her father’s brother) and tells him to go look for Lucio urgently. The actual words were: “You love Lucio. I came to look for him today.” At that moment, Lucio was left under the care of his uncle and his wife, until April 2020, when a judge surely restored custody to Magdalena, the mother who would also be his murderer, who had been traveling backpacking. with his new girlfriend. That is where the gender perspective plays a fundamental factor. It was not the best interest of the child that was taken into account, but Magdalena’s condition as biological mother. The analysis would not have been the same in the face of a father who decided to ignore his son to go on a trip with his girlfriend and who, later, sees custody of him restored due to the mere biological fact of being the father. In this process there was another person responsible: The magistrate who is in charge of the Family Court, Girls, Boys and Adolescents No. 1 of Santa Rosa. The one that, after complaints from Lucio’s father and his paternal family, denied them custody of the minor, the same one that is being denounced by many obstructed parents in La Pampa. Marches are organized annually against her actions…
Why choose to abandon such a complex and unpopular subject?
—I am an activist who is also an influencer, but above all, I am an activist for the rights of men and their children who uses her arrival on social networks to shed light on what seems to be inconvenient for anyone. Seven years ago, in 2016, I began my journey in social networks focusing on the criticism of feminism. At that time there were channels in English with similar topics and I wanted to start filling that gap in communication and activism for the same problem, but aimed at Spanish-speaking countries. I realized that although women could be harmed by feminism (by being infantilized, used and collectivized) the damage suffered by men and their children was not discussed. When we monopolize an experience as exclusively feminine (be it mistreatment, sexual abuse or vicarious violence or parental interference), we are condemning to the shadow and silence all those victims who do not fall within the standard taxes for a particular sector. Where are the men victims of abuse at the hands of their partners? Alejo Oroño, for example, was murdered by his girlfriend, after making repeated complaints. Where are the male victims of sexual abuse? Even “pioneering” laws, such as the “Only Yes is Yes” law in Spain, exclude male victims from their protection measures. But these are unfortunately not the worst cases. The worst cases have places where minors are involved. Where a father and his family fight for months or years for custody, in many cases, because the minor is a victim of abuse at the hands of his mother, and where the institutions, applying a necessary “gender perspective”, not only allow Custody remains in the hands of the aggressor, but custody is withdrawn from the father.
—Why do you think there is less media commotion around this case than in others?
—The media in many cases, do not follow the claims of the people, but instead replicate what is on the agenda. We can compare the minutes that have been dedicated on television to the trial of Fernando Báez Sosa (also very serious), with those that are being dedicated to the trial of Lucio Dupuy. We can compare the publications of certain platforms, such as, to give just one example, the Sudestada Magazine. Their analysis of the Báez Sosa case is very different from that of the Lucio Dupuy case. In the case of Báez Sosa, the editors point to the personal characteristics of those involved. They were rugby players. They were white. They were male. They were more or less upper class. He told Fernando ‘black shit’. With the case of Lucio Dupuy they do not dare to do it, because they would have to say that they were feminist women, that they were lesbians. That one of them had on her Facebook profile picture ‘I was born to be free, not murdered’ and she ended up murdering her own son. That he was sexually abused with their sex toys. That the expert report confirms a hate crime against man.
—And how do the gender perspective and power relations play out then, according to your opinion?
—Murdering a woman, without any extra context, implies a different typification: It is a femicide. A filicide does not carry more than the label “aggravated by the bond”. It is not the visibility of the cases where there are female victims at the hands of men that bothers many of us, but rather the double standard that exists in these cases. Whenever crimes involving women or perpetrated by men are reported, the media make it a priority. It is based on the fact that there is a relationship of power between men and women, which makes these crimes worse and that women are especially unprotected. But there are specific protection laws for female victims, making state resources available. That these measures, in some cases, have failed, has more to do with the poor functioning of state agencies than with an intention to condemn women to suffering. However, where there is a much more evident power relationship is in the relationship between mothers and fathers over their sons and daughters. They are subject to your care and decisions. They do not have the ability to navigate on their own and ask for help. They cannot go out to march for their rights. We have to do that ourselves.
—You said that Lucio’s case is one among others, which ones?
—Lucio’s was the most notorious case in our country, but soon after it was Milo Derto. Later it was that of Zoe Rodríguez. A few weeks ago, before Christmas, that of Renzo Godoy. And this week Milena, age two, murdered by her mother and her new partner. Between Zoe and Renzo there was another, which was so little known that we don’t even know her name. What we do know is that her mother was a police officer and she also wanted to kill the child’s father, but they didn’t change it. They had all agreed on the same thing: a paternal family desperate to care for minors, a Justice that did not focus on their well-being and a story that systematically makes them invisible.
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