ROME – Topless protesters assailed the cathedral of La Plata, Argentina, this weekend, hurling Molotov cocktails and human excrement at the church building while demanding legalized abortion.
The “tetazo,” or topless protest, was a spin-off from Argentina’s annual “National Encounter of Women” taking place Sunday in La Plata, home to one of the world’s largest Catholic cathedrals.
The activists called for “legal abortion now, unobstructed, safe, and free in the hospital” while also shouting insults against the Catholic Church.
Chanted slogans included: “Abort your heterosexuality,” “‘Death to the macho’ is not a metaphor,” “The only church that enlightens is the one on fire,” “Keep the Church out of our lives,” and “lesbianize yourself.” One of the most popular chants was reportedly a profanity-laden slur against Christ the King.
One group of adolescent girls marched carrying a banner that read: “My favorite sexual position is with me on top and the patriarchy under me.”
The rally was sponsored by the Workers’ Socialist Movement (MST), Argentina’s leading left-wing party, with the stated goal of shining a spotlight on the “violence of the patriarchal system.”
When the protest grew more violent and demonstrators threw fire bombs at the church, which was guarded by 100 female officers, police responded by firing water hoses and tear gas into the crowd.
The three days of meetings included workshops on “women and cannabis,” “women and sexual work,” “women and deconstruction of feminized bodies,” “women, pleasures and free time,” “women, political militancy and resistance,” “women and unemployment,” “feminization of poverty,” and “women and bisexuality, pansexuality and polysexuality,” reported Crux, an online Catholic news outlet.
Next year, the women’s rally will be renamed the “Plurinational encounter of women, lesbians, trans, transsexuals, bisexuals and non-binaries.”
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