The recent national meeting of representatives from gender and feminism commissions of the Broad Front once again highlighted one of the most flagrant contradictions of the Uruguayan left. While the country records cases of sexual violence that shock any decent citizen, the leaders of the sector gathered to discuss agendas, intersectionalities, and “collective constructions,” but flatly refused to demand tough measures, harsher penalties for rapists, and a national registry of sexual offenders. This is not a mere oversight. It is an ideological position.
In these spaces, violence against women becomes raw material for discourse. There is talk of “patriarchy,” “power structures,” “toxic masculinities,” and the need for more state presence in care policies. All very correct within the manual. What does not appear, or appears only as a reactionary threat, is the concrete demand that anyone who rapes a woman or a girl serve years of effective prison time, without early benefits or ideological mitigations. Even less is the idea of a public registry that would allow potential victims to know who they are dealing with accepted.
The opposition to a national registry of rapists is neither new nor exclusive to this meeting. It is part of a logic that prioritizes the privacy of the offender over the safety of the victim. In the name of not stigmatizing, women are left in the dark. In the name of not “reproducing punitive logics,” the sanction is diluted. The result is predictable: relative impunity, recidivism, and a growing sense that the system is more concerned with not hurting sensitivities than with protecting those who suffer the aggression.
The FA has a long history in this matter. During its years in government, it promoted gender violence laws that, in practice, generated more bureaucracy, protocols, and commissions than measurable results in reducing serious sexual crimes. Trainings, observatories, and speeches on March 8 multiplied. What did not multiply with the same strength was the capacity of the penal system to detain, judge, and keep behind bars those who commit rapes. When the opposition or citizens propose increasing penalties or creating control tools like the registry, the automatic response is to accuse them of “tough on crime,” “penal populism,” or “fascist right.” As if asking that a rapist not walk free were an extreme position.
The meeting of the gender and feminism commissions of the FA did not escape this logic. Instead of turning the space into a clear demand towards the judicial and legislative system — more years of effective prison time, prohibition of benefits for serious sexual crimes, mandatory and accessible registry of convicted offenders — they opted for the safe ground of internal militancy: strengthening the commissions, mainstreaming the gender perspective, debating masculinities, and reaffirming the “feminist and popular” character of the political force. All of this may have symbolic value for those who experience it. For the woman walking alone at night or for the mother who fears for her daughter, it is insufficient.
