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.”
Kaiser’s comments capture a belief gaining ground across Latin America: that laws introduced to protect women from violence have gone too far, leaving men vulnerable to malicious accusations. Now, politicians across the region are beginning to turn that argument into legislation.
In Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Peru, lawmakers have proposed bills that would toughen punishments and, in some cases, create new procedures for people found to have made false reports, with a particular focus on cases involving domestic, sexual or gender-based violence.
Individually, the measures are presented as safeguards against fabricated allegations. Taken together, women’s rights groups say they reflect a growing – and disturbing – narrative that women routinely misuse laws intended to...
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