For female sexual minorities, the challenges faced are much different: Article 204 has never been applied to women. Most lesbians are not as visible as gay men or transgender people. In Nicaragua, it is difficult for women to be independent and find ways of supporting themselves. Clara says it is hard because Nicaraguan women are dependent on their families.

Ivania's dog sleeps on the cold dirt floor in the front of their home in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua.

“You don’t learn in this culture to be independent, economically or psychologically if you are a woman. You don’t have permission to go out into the street, to be independent or to study, although that is changing now,” Clara says. “Women are working more, but there is still this pressure from your family that you have to have kids…It is horrible not to be able to express your needs to your family and to live a way that doesn't come out of you naturally.”

This has also made it difficult for some NGOs to organize support for female sexual minorities. “It is hard for women to leave their homes and form these [support] groups,” Clara explains. They may have a family that they are responsible for or a restrictive job. “Women who do work, for instance, in the zona franca work Monday through Sunday. They don’t have time or money to come.”

Men are more visible and free to move about. Female sexual minorities are constrained by cultural attitudes about women. On the other hand, there is no organized movement of transgendered people. The presence of transgendered people can be seen everywhere—on the buses, in the marketplaces, in the clubs.

The houses in Managua are short with roofs of corrugated metal and fences to guard from the nightlife. Children stand in the streets, playing with each other or the many dogs that roam the city. Families lean and sit in doorways watching the taxis and the day go by. Among the houses is a white church. We walk through the gate, past a study, say buenas tardes to a woman in the kitchen and continue on to the back room to what is actually a church.

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