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In times of crisis, certain dissident bodies — trans, queer, migrant — return as incarnations of the internal enemy. This time, in the guise of the “sexual monster.”

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Viviana Canosa is a controversial Argentine TV host known for her sensationalist and right-wing commentary. This time, she didn’t report anything: she accused. On national television, and without a shred of evidence, she suggested that two well-known and beloved public figures — Lizy Tagliani and Costa — were involved in child trafficking and sexual abuse networks. She did so with a tone of moral certainty and ethical panic, as if revealing some divine truth. The scandal, of course, was immediate. But the logic behind the accusation is nothing new. In fact, it’s very old. In times of crisis, certain dissident bodies — trans, queer, migrant — return as incarnations of the internal enemy. This time, in the guise of the “sexual monster.”

Meanwhile, President Javier Milei goes to Davos and claims the left defends (Homosexual) pedophilia. His strategy is clear: to link human rights, feminism, sexual diversity, and progressive politics with moral corruption. It’s the same argument Putin uses to persecute the LGBT community — only this time, spoken in a libertarian accent. Within that framework, Canosa operates as part of a broader apparatus: this isn’t about protecting children, but about disciplining the bodies and desires that disturb the new moral-mercantile order.

Viviana Canosa (the journalist) operates as part of a broader apparatus: this isn’t about protecting children, but about disciplining the bodies and desires that disturb the new moral-mercantile order.

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The mechanism is as familiar as it is effective: a moral panic is mobilized, operating both as political distraction and symbolic cleansing. Proof doesn’t matter; what matters is that there’s a queer body in the wrong place. And that body — trans, popular, without protectors — becomes the scapegoat. The focus isn’t the crime, but the body that can be criminalized.

Genealogy of a Suspicion

The figure of the sexual deviant — whether homosexual, invert, onanist, or degenerate — didn’t emerge with mass media or contemporary paranoia. Its genealogy goes back to 19th-century Europe, when France and Germany became the juridical and medical laboratories of modern sexuality. In texts like Psychopathia Sexualis by Krafft-Ebing or Tardieu’s reports on sexual crimes, what was built was not just a taxonomy of desire, but a mode of state intervention upon bodies that could no longer simply be punished — they had to be classified, corrected, documented.

This medico-juridical knowledge took shape in institutions (prisons, asylums, hospitals) and discursive forms that did not describe but prescribed conduct. The subject became a problem to be administered — or better yet, had to learn to self-regulate, to respond to the call of the liberal state with efficiency, self-care, and responsibility. Whatever didn’t fit into that regime — excess, non-reproductive desire, queerness — became suspect. And society needed counterexamples to crucify. The Inquisition has returned, and it has some proper bitchy Mata Haris like Canosa, who pretended to be anti-Milei but now plays for the Trump-Milei-Putin team.

The subject became a problem to be administered — or better yet, had to learn to self-regulate. Whatever does not fit into that regime — excess, non-reproductive desire, queerness — becomes suspect.

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Suspicion is inherited. The moral judgment falls upon those who embody a sexuality that cannot be absorbed by normative structures of affection: neither mothers, nor wives, nor discreet consumers. Hatred of difference is disguised as protection of childhood. Criminalization operates as collective pedagogy: “this is what happens if you don’t behave.”

Suspicion is inherited

In this context, it becomes clear that not all trans bodies are treated the same. The mainstream Argentine media celebrity Flor de la V, also a trans woman and media figure, was not targeted by Canosa. Why? Because she has built — or had to build — a public identity that presents itself as assimilable: family mother, wife, Christian. Her dissidence becomes tolerable insofar as it doesn’t interrupt the gender order or threaten the fantasy of affective and moral stability. Her image doesn’t challenge governance — it reconciles with its inclusive version.

Queer dissidence becomes tolerable insofar as it doesn’t interrupt the gender order or threaten the fantasy of affective, moral stability and does not challenge governance.

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Very often, promises of happiness — romantic love, family, stability — become affective traps. We cling to ideals that harm us but still function as social validation. Flor is protected because she upholds that contract: difference doesn’t disturb when it becomes respectable.

The contrast with Lizy and Costa is stark. Both figures embody a kind of festive, queer, popular excess that never quite fits in. They’re not dangerous, but they’re not “family friendly” either. You can invite them to a show, but not to Mirtha Legrand’s table. We have that in common. And that makes them vulnerable: they are exposed because their difference hasn’t been domesticated. Just like mine.

Governing Desire

Contemporary societies — apparently liberated and permissive — still construct sex as a threat. It’s not desire that is persecuted, but what escapes the productive narrative of desire. Queer sex, non-reproductive, amoral, with no guaranteed future, is intolerable. And that intolerance manifests in media lynchings, judicial processes, institutional silencing. Such hatred is ultimately of what cannot be managed.

Queer sex, non-reproductive, amoral, with no guaranteed future, is intolerable. And that intolerance manifests in media lynchings, judicial processes, institutional silencing. Hatred of what cannot be managed,

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That’s why those who commit crimes are not the ones persecuted — it’s those who overflow the mold. The judicial, media, and police structures function more as a system of moral containment than a pursuit of justice. Within that framework, the figure of the ’sexual monster’ is instrumental: it sustains a narrative of permanent threat that justifies punitive intervention on dissident bodies.

It’s no coincidence that calls for evidence, demands for due process, or even the most basic rights are suspended when the accused are queer. Sexual terror imposes itself as an ethical exception: justice is not sought — exemplarity is.

What Bodies Matter

Jasbir Puar, in Terrorist Assemblages, offers the concept of homonationalism to think about how certain dissident identities are co-opted by the state to display tolerance, while others are abandoned, persecuted, or even eliminated. The former become ambassadors of monitored inclusion; the latter, sacrificial flesh.

The acceptable queer subject is one who reproduces national values, defends capitalism, adopts children, and doesn’t protest too loudly. Those who don’t fit that mold — many trans people, queers, migrants, or the poor — continue to be seen as risks. Domesticated queerness is applauded. Radical, uncomfortable, desiring queerness is punished.

Domesticated queerness is applauded. Radical, uncomfortable, desiring queerness is punished.

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In this context, the cancellation of queer figures, the selective tolerance of others, and the spectacle of the “sexual monster” are all part of the same governance apparatus. What’s pursued isn’t those who commit abuse, but those who refuse to be governed by the language of decency. That’s why, instead of defending ourselves from the place of the “good gay” or the “respectable trans,” the response must be different: to defend the right to desire without apology, and to exist without justification.