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Sex and Dissent: Stories of Feminist Resistance in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Spain
A New Yorker Best Book of 2026
"Revelatory. . . . At a time of great backlash and regression, North American women should indeed look to Latin America for a new way forward.”—Sarah Weinman, author of Without Consent
Four electrifying and hopeful accounts of feminist uprising that have swept through Latin America and Spain in the wake of #MeToo—and what we can learn from these protest cultures in a fraught moment for democracy in the US
As women’s rights have faced alarming rollbacks in the United States over the past decade, mass feminist movements beyond our borders have achieved historic victories. Award-winning journalist Meaghan Beatley takes us to the frontlines to tell inspiring stories of resistance and political imagination that will be a vital roadmap in the years to come.
In Argentina, a national reckoning over abortion—sparked, in part, by an unholy alliance with a popular gossip show—ignited a nationwide movement that led to the legalization of abortion. Across the Andes, young feminists in Chile fueled a constitutional rewrite to confront deep structural inequality. In Spain, a high-profile sexual assault case cracked open a fierce public debate, redefining the meaning of consent. And in Mexico, balaclava-clad student protesters occupied a government building to force the epidemic of femicide into the national spotlight.
The product of a decade of immersive reporting, Beatley captures the urgency and creativity of these movements and the women who led a motley crew of former guerrilla fighters, student occupiers, and mothers standing down narco violence. At once intimate and politically electric, Sex and Dissent reframes the global struggle for equality—and offers a model for building power, solidarity, and radical democratic change.
"Revelatory. . . . At a time of great backlash and regression, North American women should indeed look to Latin America for a new way forward.”—Sarah Weinman, author of Without Consent
Four electrifying and hopeful accounts of feminist uprising that have swept through Latin America and Spain in the wake of #MeToo—and what we can learn from these protest cultures in a fraught moment for democracy in the US
As women’s rights have faced alarming rollbacks in the United States over the past decade, mass feminist movements beyond our borders have achieved historic victories. Award-winning journalist Meaghan Beatley takes us to the frontlines to tell inspiring stories of resistance and political imagination that will be a vital roadmap in the years to come.
In Argentina, a national reckoning over abortion—sparked, in part, by an unholy alliance with a popular gossip show—ignited a nationwide movement that led to the legalization of abortion. Across the Andes, young feminists in Chile fueled a constitutional rewrite to confront deep structural inequality. In Spain, a high-profile sexual assault case cracked open a fierce public debate, redefining the meaning of consent. And in Mexico, balaclava-clad student protesters occupied a government building to force the epidemic of femicide into the national spotlight.
The product of a decade of immersive reporting, Beatley captures the urgency and creativity of these movements and the women who led a motley crew of former guerrilla fighters, student occupiers, and mothers standing down narco violence. At once intimate and politically electric, Sex and Dissent reframes the global struggle for equality—and offers a model for building power, solidarity, and radical democratic change.
384 pages, Paperback
Published August 4, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
2026
February 18, 2026Non-fiction November TBR
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Books
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Books
August 14, 2026
"To some extent, my generation was conditioned to see sex as an experience to consume and accumulate. Men have been doing this for a long time already, and women were expected to follow suit as a form of empowerment," or what the author later calls the Americanization of sex.
This book is fire. I hope I can teach this one day. It comprehensively details case studies of radical feminist action in pursuit of reproductive rights in Argentina, against sexual harassment, legal and social gender parity in Chile, gender violence and rape in Spain, and government corruption's deeply entwined relationship to missing and murdered women in Mexico. Thoroughly researched, deftly positioned in historical and contemporary intersectional contexts (poverty, neoliberalism, tyranny, queerness, gender identity, fascism, patriarchy, on and on), and bolstered by the powerful testimony of women who have and continue this essential, demanding work, it is a revolutionary tour de force.
The "Ni una menos," Argentinian movement honoring murdered women as victims of, "Domestic violence, but also the violence of the market, of debt, of capitalist property relations, and of the state," from which we see the imbrication of violence and power with capital and toxic masculinity. While this book outlines the undeniable the truth that, "Fear functions as a disciplinary force in itself, shaping not just women's lives, but entire societies," it ultimately drives home how, "Feminism [is] not a niche struggle over bodily autonomy, but [can] be a unifying force at the heart of broader progressive battles".
Argentina
"'No sex without dessert'-- pleasure seeking through sex and food was one of the greatest emancipatory forces for women."
Luciana Peker, a journalist who advanced the national conversation around abortion. Argentina was the first Latin American country to legalize gay marriage, and was the first country in the world to remove legal barriers to gender recognition. However, these extremely progressive stances contradict their legal and social relationship to rape, and abortion.
The first section of this book details the journey of Argentinian women from the propulsion of underground communism, to encuentros that host over 70,000 women supporting each other through coordinated mutual aid, and culminating in an intersectional fight across gender, class, and racial lines in pursuit of reproductive rights is nothing short of inspiring. That the confluence of Catholics for the Right to Decide and a gossip show like Inclusos have functioned in strange concert as megaphones for the national movement is no less incredible, advancing the message, "sex education to decide, contraception to prevent abortion, legal abortion to not die". These actions were especially brave after the downfall of the dictatorship, which practiced the covert kidnapping of dissidents and was sanctioned by the Catholic Church. These so-called rebels were injected with a tranquilizer, had rocks tied to their ankles, and were thrown out of planes into rivers and the Atlantic ocean, effectively wiping them out of existence. The incredible bravery that it would take for citizens and expats to return and reform political organization, and continue to espouse "the audacity" of dissent in the aftermath of such overt violence is actual heroism, one result thereof was tangible policy change for women's reproductive rights.
Chile
"Smells like an occupation."
I wonder if people like Milton Friedman and other economists actually believe(d) that exercising consumer choice in a free market is truly a radical act, that free enterprise is the hallmark of a free society, or the strongest defense against totalitarianism; from my seat in American modernity, and the wealth disparity that dictates so much of how the U.S. functions and who controls it, those tenets seem inherently farcical from anywhere beyond the seat of the ruling elite. I understand the tenet that the consumer should dictate what the market provides, and the price point thereof, but in learning about the U.S. influence and subsequent spread of neoliberal, capitalistic ideas in Latin America amid the cold war, I can't help but imagine the ethos of American consumption as a faceless mouth, gently coaxing new victims into its gaping maw. I genuinely believe privatization is the intentional enemy of a healthful society, and the more I read and learn, the more I feel that the United States is at the heart of all global insidiousness.
"Women spent their whole lives using their imaginations to relate to men."
"Women understood how potent imagination was as a political women precisely because they had seen exactly jow it could be used against them."
From occupying the universidad de Chile's law school to protest sexual harassment of students who identified as women and other marginalized genders, to taking the streets to reform the entire constitution, Chilean women are a force of nature. "A rapist in your path" was performed at the government seat by thousands of women, critiquing sexual violence by the police up to the president, they insisted upon reclaiming narrative control, and gender parity in reforming the constitution: a chorus of women indicting, "the rapist is you," moved me to my core. Chilean feminism was born in universities by highly intelligent women, negotiating parity and uniting women across class lines, embodied by "the theatricality and aesthetics" of queerness / queer feminisms and held men accountable at all levels of power. "Subversion dipped in beauty is revolution."
Chile was the first country in the world to form a constitutional convention with gender parity, and in that revision, attempted to mandate gender parity in all institutions and bodies of government. This revision also attempted to redefine Chile as plurinacional, honoring its indigenous peoples and heritage. Its attempt was so radical, and steeped in equity; despite all of this, ultimately, it fell victim to divisive rhetoric, and fear, failing. "It redefined who counted as a political subject... broke from the fiction of a universal, neutral citizen. True equality under the law required recognizing the different people living under it." This work remains ongoing, and the women committed to doing it never let their fangs dull.
Spain
Spain's integral law is a radical framework for the prevention of and response to gender violence. In what can only be described as an extreme departure from deeply ingrained historical patriarchal values, this framework encompasses not only the penal system, but mandates embedded, wraparound social services. The rationale for this seems obvious, and yet was unprecedented; at the time (2004), it the only system in the world that argued prevention, public education, victim services, and institutional reform were necessary components to addressing gender violence, because legal protection alone are not enough if the institutions meant to enforce them fail victims. A law intended to protect victims of this violence would not do very much if social and cultural narratives dictate that it was her fault, or she was asking for it; as such, education and cultural change are crucial to ensure that judges, doctors and nurses, lawyers, and citizens, alike share the same ethos around human dignity. It also required explicitly naming gender-based violence as derived from structural inequality. The government created systems to collect statistics on femicide, sexual assault, and others gender based crimes, and make them available to the public. While other countries have adopted similar legislation (including Argentina), in the 20+ years since this landmark framework in Spain, the United States still has nothing remotely resembling it. Still, its big flaw is that the law could only be invoked between people who were considered romantic partners, or former partners, rather than for random acts of violence or one night stands, relegating those crimes to a state of "legal indefensiveness."
The last decade has seen this law under attack by men who feel left out of and maligned by the legal system amid increased emphasis on gender violence, while 60% of women in Spain identified as feminists, calling for a consent-based law ("only yes means yes"), regardless of the relationship or history between participants.
"In a world in which men's status is increasingly precarious, where they are no longer seen as masters in the home or at work, violence, including sexual violence, becomes a surefire way of reclaiming their dominant status," making rape a means of performing virility to each other; a "primal brotherhood,"; a "structural expression of patriarchal power."
It's true that when we target sex through the legal system, it tends to disproportionately negatively impact the most vulnerable or marginalized, groups deemed as "moral threats" (e.g. sex workers, queerness). Confronting structural inequality, from poverty to transphobia, is necessary to address power imbalances in sex; as Clara Cera (sp) states, confronting "the neoliberal fiction of the self-made individual" (beautifully put; the individual concept of self as unique, distinct, the entitlement begotten by a culture of ownership, of consumption).
Mexico
(I read this section all at once so the recap is sparse, sorry.) The loudest narratives still imply that violence against women is dominantly perpetuated by countries in the global south because of concepts like masculinity or machismo, even as the U.S. uses their (our) own murder stats as fodder for true crime, traffics weapons into Mexico and drugs and women out, and lines its own pockets from the benefits of corrupt governmental structures it aided in establishing. The U.S. excels at gesticulating with one hand as it condemns with its mouth, so its other hand is free to juggle its hypocrisy. "Blaming machismo for gender violence allows the U.S. to ignore its own role in creating the conditions that sustain it."
This book is an education, even for those among us who already identify as feminists, socialists, or intersections thereof. As someone who is from the United States, I think it is especially necessary and insight for for an American audience to more clearly see the limitations of our social, cultural, political, and legal frameworks around intersectional feminism and justice; the deeply embedded patriarchal values that still dictate expectation, violence, and notions of permissibility around gender and sexuality; and the intersections thereof with poverty, capitalism, consumerism, and class, from inequality to exploitation. These harms are inextricably linked through the systems built to maintain and reinforce them. The women in these countries are building intersectional movements that have borne dictatorships, death flights, and fascism, earned incredible victories, and are now fighting for sustenance in the face of neoliberalism, late stage capitalism, and the resurgence of deeply repressive conservatism. The powerful play that is our lives goes on, and these stories are wildly inspiring, reifying the necessity of commitment to radical acts in the name of liberation, equity, and freedom for women and dissidents who have and continue to insist on being heard.
This book is fire. I hope I can teach this one day. It comprehensively details case studies of radical feminist action in pursuit of reproductive rights in Argentina, against sexual harassment, legal and social gender parity in Chile, gender violence and rape in Spain, and government corruption's deeply entwined relationship to missing and murdered women in Mexico. Thoroughly researched, deftly positioned in historical and contemporary intersectional contexts (poverty, neoliberalism, tyranny, queerness, gender identity, fascism, patriarchy, on and on), and bolstered by the powerful testimony of women who have and continue this essential, demanding work, it is a revolutionary tour de force.
The "Ni una menos," Argentinian movement honoring murdered women as victims of, "Domestic violence, but also the violence of the market, of debt, of capitalist property relations, and of the state," from which we see the imbrication of violence and power with capital and toxic masculinity. While this book outlines the undeniable the truth that, "Fear functions as a disciplinary force in itself, shaping not just women's lives, but entire societies," it ultimately drives home how, "Feminism [is] not a niche struggle over bodily autonomy, but [can] be a unifying force at the heart of broader progressive battles".
Argentina
"'No sex without dessert'-- pleasure seeking through sex and food was one of the greatest emancipatory forces for women."
Luciana Peker, a journalist who advanced the national conversation around abortion. Argentina was the first Latin American country to legalize gay marriage, and was the first country in the world to remove legal barriers to gender recognition. However, these extremely progressive stances contradict their legal and social relationship to rape, and abortion.
The first section of this book details the journey of Argentinian women from the propulsion of underground communism, to encuentros that host over 70,000 women supporting each other through coordinated mutual aid, and culminating in an intersectional fight across gender, class, and racial lines in pursuit of reproductive rights is nothing short of inspiring. That the confluence of Catholics for the Right to Decide and a gossip show like Inclusos have functioned in strange concert as megaphones for the national movement is no less incredible, advancing the message, "sex education to decide, contraception to prevent abortion, legal abortion to not die". These actions were especially brave after the downfall of the dictatorship, which practiced the covert kidnapping of dissidents and was sanctioned by the Catholic Church. These so-called rebels were injected with a tranquilizer, had rocks tied to their ankles, and were thrown out of planes into rivers and the Atlantic ocean, effectively wiping them out of existence. The incredible bravery that it would take for citizens and expats to return and reform political organization, and continue to espouse "the audacity" of dissent in the aftermath of such overt violence is actual heroism, one result thereof was tangible policy change for women's reproductive rights.
Chile
"Smells like an occupation."
I wonder if people like Milton Friedman and other economists actually believe(d) that exercising consumer choice in a free market is truly a radical act, that free enterprise is the hallmark of a free society, or the strongest defense against totalitarianism; from my seat in American modernity, and the wealth disparity that dictates so much of how the U.S. functions and who controls it, those tenets seem inherently farcical from anywhere beyond the seat of the ruling elite. I understand the tenet that the consumer should dictate what the market provides, and the price point thereof, but in learning about the U.S. influence and subsequent spread of neoliberal, capitalistic ideas in Latin America amid the cold war, I can't help but imagine the ethos of American consumption as a faceless mouth, gently coaxing new victims into its gaping maw. I genuinely believe privatization is the intentional enemy of a healthful society, and the more I read and learn, the more I feel that the United States is at the heart of all global insidiousness.
"Women spent their whole lives using their imaginations to relate to men."
"Women understood how potent imagination was as a political women precisely because they had seen exactly jow it could be used against them."
From occupying the universidad de Chile's law school to protest sexual harassment of students who identified as women and other marginalized genders, to taking the streets to reform the entire constitution, Chilean women are a force of nature. "A rapist in your path" was performed at the government seat by thousands of women, critiquing sexual violence by the police up to the president, they insisted upon reclaiming narrative control, and gender parity in reforming the constitution: a chorus of women indicting, "the rapist is you," moved me to my core. Chilean feminism was born in universities by highly intelligent women, negotiating parity and uniting women across class lines, embodied by "the theatricality and aesthetics" of queerness / queer feminisms and held men accountable at all levels of power. "Subversion dipped in beauty is revolution."
Chile was the first country in the world to form a constitutional convention with gender parity, and in that revision, attempted to mandate gender parity in all institutions and bodies of government. This revision also attempted to redefine Chile as plurinacional, honoring its indigenous peoples and heritage. Its attempt was so radical, and steeped in equity; despite all of this, ultimately, it fell victim to divisive rhetoric, and fear, failing. "It redefined who counted as a political subject... broke from the fiction of a universal, neutral citizen. True equality under the law required recognizing the different people living under it." This work remains ongoing, and the women committed to doing it never let their fangs dull.
Spain
Spain's integral law is a radical framework for the prevention of and response to gender violence. In what can only be described as an extreme departure from deeply ingrained historical patriarchal values, this framework encompasses not only the penal system, but mandates embedded, wraparound social services. The rationale for this seems obvious, and yet was unprecedented; at the time (2004), it the only system in the world that argued prevention, public education, victim services, and institutional reform were necessary components to addressing gender violence, because legal protection alone are not enough if the institutions meant to enforce them fail victims. A law intended to protect victims of this violence would not do very much if social and cultural narratives dictate that it was her fault, or she was asking for it; as such, education and cultural change are crucial to ensure that judges, doctors and nurses, lawyers, and citizens, alike share the same ethos around human dignity. It also required explicitly naming gender-based violence as derived from structural inequality. The government created systems to collect statistics on femicide, sexual assault, and others gender based crimes, and make them available to the public. While other countries have adopted similar legislation (including Argentina), in the 20+ years since this landmark framework in Spain, the United States still has nothing remotely resembling it. Still, its big flaw is that the law could only be invoked between people who were considered romantic partners, or former partners, rather than for random acts of violence or one night stands, relegating those crimes to a state of "legal indefensiveness."
The last decade has seen this law under attack by men who feel left out of and maligned by the legal system amid increased emphasis on gender violence, while 60% of women in Spain identified as feminists, calling for a consent-based law ("only yes means yes"), regardless of the relationship or history between participants.
"In a world in which men's status is increasingly precarious, where they are no longer seen as masters in the home or at work, violence, including sexual violence, becomes a surefire way of reclaiming their dominant status," making rape a means of performing virility to each other; a "primal brotherhood,"; a "structural expression of patriarchal power."
It's true that when we target sex through the legal system, it tends to disproportionately negatively impact the most vulnerable or marginalized, groups deemed as "moral threats" (e.g. sex workers, queerness). Confronting structural inequality, from poverty to transphobia, is necessary to address power imbalances in sex; as Clara Cera (sp) states, confronting "the neoliberal fiction of the self-made individual" (beautifully put; the individual concept of self as unique, distinct, the entitlement begotten by a culture of ownership, of consumption).
Mexico
(I read this section all at once so the recap is sparse, sorry.) The loudest narratives still imply that violence against women is dominantly perpetuated by countries in the global south because of concepts like masculinity or machismo, even as the U.S. uses their (our) own murder stats as fodder for true crime, traffics weapons into Mexico and drugs and women out, and lines its own pockets from the benefits of corrupt governmental structures it aided in establishing. The U.S. excels at gesticulating with one hand as it condemns with its mouth, so its other hand is free to juggle its hypocrisy. "Blaming machismo for gender violence allows the U.S. to ignore its own role in creating the conditions that sustain it."
This book is an education, even for those among us who already identify as feminists, socialists, or intersections thereof. As someone who is from the United States, I think it is especially necessary and insight for for an American audience to more clearly see the limitations of our social, cultural, political, and legal frameworks around intersectional feminism and justice; the deeply embedded patriarchal values that still dictate expectation, violence, and notions of permissibility around gender and sexuality; and the intersections thereof with poverty, capitalism, consumerism, and class, from inequality to exploitation. These harms are inextricably linked through the systems built to maintain and reinforce them. The women in these countries are building intersectional movements that have borne dictatorships, death flights, and fascism, earned incredible victories, and are now fighting for sustenance in the face of neoliberalism, late stage capitalism, and the resurgence of deeply repressive conservatism. The powerful play that is our lives goes on, and these stories are wildly inspiring, reifying the necessity of commitment to radical acts in the name of liberation, equity, and freedom for women and dissidents who have and continue to insist on being heard.
September 6, 2026
Incredible, inspiring and heart-wrenching
September 1, 2026
Very informative book. I really enjoyed reading about the experiences of women from other countries.
August 27, 2026
Chilling, heartbreaking, propulsive, inspiring. This book is well researched and at the same time, the stories contained about women resisting abuse and demanding change are told with the propulsion of the best narratives. Important stories that illuminate the real, human act of feminism on the ground, in our streets, in our courthouses and that show why a new vision of democracy and capitalism must be one that acknowledges how our current system enables—almost requires— violence against women.
November 1, 2026
A fantastic book. Extremely well researched and well written. If non feminists read this and don't come out a feminist, they didn't read it. If a feminist reads this and doesn't come out an even stronger more passionate feminist, they also didn't read it. The personal stories/narratives are extremely well done and do a fantastic job tying the issues that matter, modern and antiquated. One of the best feminist works I have ever read, and that's a high bar.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews