from protection to instruction: practical-discursive mobilizations around childhood in debates about gender and sexuality in education

Abstract

This article discusses how some childhood senses have been triggered in the confrontations about the legitimacy of gender and sexuality themes in education, considering the contemporary scenario in the country. For this, we aim to analyze two practical-discursive pitfalls that have been consolidated. The first, forged by the actors of the anti-gender offensive, consists of the narrative construction of vulnerable children, to be protected, and triggers moral panic against discussions about gender and sexuality in schools. The second, more subtle trap, concerns the place of the passivity of students in the school context, which are the subject of instruction by teachers - including when gender and sexuality issues are addressed in the classroom. The image of a child-prisoner of the “gender ideologues”, passive and in danger, populates the statements analyzed in the first session, and allows us to discuss the political uses mitigated by the hyperinflation of this idea of child vulnerability. However, even in educational practices that focus on working with issues of gender and sexuality in school contexts, we observe that minority can be thought of in conservative perspectives and without agency, as discussed in the second session. To tension these logics, we point out the dimension of playfulness and play as conceptual and methodological tools that can contribute to a non-pedagogical approach to sexuality and gender in the field of education.