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This paper advances the argument that in the process of naming, and in particular, in the process of legal naming through categories, we should differentiate between the meaning of an interpellation directed to a person or group, usually addressed to impose a definition or to force an identity, and the meaning of those categories used by individuals or groups to self-define in an autonomous gesture of identification. This distinction, similar to the already coined definition of bias crimes (ADL.org) as “a violent conduct motivated by a real or perceived characteristic of the victim”, sheds light on the ways in which the law might transform or reproduce gender and sexual violence and discrimination by shaping the content and meaning of categories. As an illustration to this argument, I explore Atala Riffo and Daughters v. Chile (2012), the landmark Inter American Court of Human Rights’ decision, to show how that the judges in the Chilean Courts created a particular meaning of the utterance ‘lesbian’ and this meaning was different from the one that Atala, a judge herself, applied to name her experience as a lesbian