“LITTLE BY LITTLE”: IN-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION ON SEXUALITY IN THE MANAUS MUNICIPAL EDUCATION SYSTEM

ABSTRACT:

This article is part of a doctoral research that analyzed the implementation of in-service teacher education on the topic of sexuality in the Department of Teachers’ Professional Development of the Municipal Secretary of Education in the city of Manaus, Brazil, from its creation in 2000, until the first semester of 2018. We sought to 1) identify the concepts of sexuality and gender that permeate the training and activities developed by teachers in the schools, 2) the impact of the disputes on local legislative power around the educational policies regarding sexuality on the practices of trainers and teacher(s), and 3) to check how both professional groups deal with this established tension. The qualitative study had an ethnographic perspective. We identified that the actions undertaken are permeated by several concepts of sexuality and gender that co-exist or differ depending on the interest at stake in each moment. To deal with the tensions and justify the work relevance, teachers use normative prescriptions and focus on bullying prevention and juvenile sexual violence. Regarding sexuality educational policies, there is a tendency to ignore what children and teenagers think about sexuality, which can show a role of guardianship that continues to linger in this context.

Keywords:
sexuality; conservatism; in-service teacher training

RESUMO:

Este artigo é parte de uma pesquisa de Doutorado que analisou a implementação das formações continuadas docentes em sexualidade na Divisão de Desenvolvimento Profissional do Magistério (DDPM) da Secretaria Municipal de Educação (SEMED) de Manaus, desde sua criação, em 2000, até o primeiro semestre de 2018, buscando identificar concepções de sexualidade e gênero que permeiam as formações e os trabalhos desenvolvidos por docentes em escolas, as repercussões das disputas em torno das políticas educacionais em sexualidade no plano do legislativo local, tanto sobre as práticas das formadoras como de professoras(es), e verificar como os dois grupos profissionais lidam com a tensão instaurada. O estudo qualitativo teve cunho etnográfico. Identificou-se que as ações empreendidas são permeadas por várias concepções de sexualidade e gênero, que convivem ou entram em dissonância dependendo dos interesses em jogo a cada instante. Para lidar com as tensões e justificar a pertinência do trabalho, educadoras(es) fazem uso de normativas e ênfases na prevenção do bullying e violência sexual infanto-juvenil. No plano das políticas educacionais em sexualidade, há a tendência de desconsiderar o que crianças e adolescentes pensam a respeito da sexualidade, o que pode denunciar o lugar de tutela que ainda ocupam no âmbito da questão.

Palavras-chave:
sexualidade; conservadorismo; formação continuada docente

RESÚMEN:

Este artículo es parte de una investigación de Doctorado que analizó la implementación de formaciones continuas de docentes en sexualidad en la División de Desarrollo Profesional del Magisterio (DDPM) de la Secretaría Municipal de Educación (SEMED) de Manaos, desde su creación, en el año 2000, hasta el primer semestre de 2018, buscando identificar concepciones sobre sexualidad y género que permean las formaciones y los trabajos desarrolhados por los docentes em escuelas, las repercusiones de las disputas alrededor de políticas educacionales en sexualidad en el plan legislativo local, tanto sobre las prácticas de las formadoras como de profesoras(es), y verificar como los dos grupos profesionales lidian frente a la tensión instaurada. El estudio cualitativo tuvo naturaleza etnográfica. Se identificó que las acciones emprendidas son permeadas por varias concepciones de sexualidad y de género, que conviven o entran en disonancia dependiendo de los intereses en juego a cada instante. Para hacer frente a las tensiones y justificar la pertinencia del trabajo, educadoras(es) utilizan normativas y énfasis en la prevención del bullying y violencia sexual infanto-juvenil. En el plan de las políticas educacionales en sexualidad, existe la tendencia de desconsiderar lo que los niños y adolescentes piensan a respecto del tema, lo que puede denunciar el lugar de tutela que todavía ocupan en este ámbito.

Palabras clave:
sexualidad; conservadorismo; formación continua docente

INTRODUCTION

The article seeks to analyze the process of continuing education in sexuality with teachers from the Municipal Department of Education of Manaus (SEMED) since its creation in 2000 until the first semester of 2018 in order to identify conceptions of sexuality and gender that permeated actions and discourses of the teams involved in its implementation, as well as to study the tensions that crossed the development of the actions, from the disputes around educational policies in sexuality at the local legislative level, and how they tried to solve them. The training on sexuality takes place at the Division for Professional Development of Teaching Staff (DDPM), also inaugurated in 2000 to meet the demands of teachers in the municipality for the creation of a space to promote the renewal of professional staff and investment in a profile of a reflective educator and producer of new knowledge, able to contribute to social transformation.

At the time, the National Curriculum Parameters (PCNs) — published at the end of the 1990s during a contradictory context of the implementation of neoliberal measures in education, but also of meeting the demands of various groups (indigenous, blacks, LGBTs¹, feminists), active since the redemocratization process of the country - demanded study and renewal of pedagogical practice, as well as a fairer and more democratic school (CÉSAR, 2009). Among the novelties brought by the Parameters were the Crosscutting Themes, among which was “Sexual Orientation,” a term adopted in the PCNs under the justification of differentiating the work undertaken by the school in sexuality (classified as intentional and organized) from that spontaneously developed in the family space. However, author(s) such as Xavier Filha (2009) observed that the adoption of the expression “sexual orientation” gave rise to confusion and misunderstandings, including in teacher training, since in the LGBT movement and academia this concept refers to the experience of desires and pleasures² .

From the beginning, the continued teacher training in sexuality was characterized as a “problem,” this because, according to one of the educators interviewed who participated in the movement for the implementation of the DDPM — the Division still did not have psychology professionals in its staff, a category considered to be the “most prepared to address such a complex theme”³ (2018). In this regard, for Foucault (2014), the knowledge of the area assumed the existence of certain professionals who were more qualified to speak on the truth of the subject, which constituted a field of knowledge-power. In a famous passage, the author refuted the idea of the incidence of repression on the discourse of sexuality. To him, on the contrary, never has so much been said about sex. Thus, the question to be formulated would not be why sex is not discussed but who can talk about it, to whom, in what spaces, and to what effect.

Over the years, the Division formed several teams to address the theme of sexuality, each with its objectives, related perceptions, and specific ways of developing the work. In the first moment, the training achieved prestige, especially because the concern with AIDS⁴ was central at the time. However, later on, they started to receive less attention, and there were times when, according to the characterization of a former trainer of the area, they were labeled as the “excluded duckling” of the DDPM.

Sexuality, however, came back to the forefront in 2014, when, during the vote on the National Education Plan for the decade 2014-2024 (Federal Law 13.005/2014), gender and sexual diversity were removed from the document. The importance of it also intensified at the local level with the vote on the Municipal Education Plan the following year, when the referred categories also suffered attacks. Also in 2015, the Bill (PL) 389/2015, by then-Councilman Marcel Alexandre — from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party — was presented to the Manaus City Council with the proposal to veto discussions about sexuality and diversity in municipal schools:

It is forbidden to insert pedagogical, political orientation into the schools of the city of Manaus, into the implantation and development of pedagogical activities that aim to reproduce the concept of gender ideology.

Art. 2

For this Law, gender ideology is the ideology according to which the two sexes, male and female, are considered cultural and social constructions⁵ .

In response to the bill, a group was formed by professors from Amazonas State and Federal Universities; by professionals from the State Department of Education and SEMED, particularly those linked to continuing education in sexuality; by professionals from the State Department of Justice, Human Rights and Citizenship; by class organizations, such as the Regional Council of Psychology and Social Work; and by entities that defend the rights of the LGBT population in the city. The group, later baptized “Ediversa: Education for Diversity Movement,” undertook several actions in order to make clear the unconstitutionality of the PL, which, despite all efforts, was instituted on March 3, 2017, through Law 439, which came into force on the 7th of the same month.

These events intensified the disputes around the educational policies on sexuality in the municipality and directly affected the teachers’ work at DDPM. This scenario made it important to conduct studies about the tensions established and how to deal with them.

THE PATHS OF RESEARCH

The doctoral research, funded by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), adopted a qualitative method and assumed the ethnographic perspective. The unit of study was the field of educational policies on sexuality under the jurisdiction of SEMED, related to the continuing education undertaken by DDPM in the area. As research strategies, we carried out: a) mapping and document analysis of local public policies, reports, and didactic material — such as slides produced and children’s literature books — adopted for the work with sexuality education in the trainings; b) participant observation in the meetings of the Ediversa movement (in which SEMED professionals linked to the theme of sexuality participated), as well as in continuing education groups in Early Childhood Education and initial series of Elementary Education and Socialization of Formative Practices⁶ ; c) semi-structured individual interviews with educators who participated in the implementation process of the municipal continuing education space, as well as with those who work/act in the municipal education network in teacher training projects in the area of sexuality; d) semi-structured individual interviews with teachers who developed sexuality education projects in the schools where they work. The decision to attend the Ediversa meetings was justified by the need to follow the repercussions of the tension created by PL 389/2015, especially on the work developed at DDPM.

SEXUAL POLITICS: A FIELD OF DISPUTES

The ground on which the investigation took place was that of sexual politics defined by Carrara (2015, p. 234), from the proposition of Weeks (1989), as “every type of intervention (through laws, health campaigns, educational programs or legal decisions) promoted by the state or under its seal. “The concept used highlights the coexistence of different and sometimes contradictory styles of moral regulation over erotic-sexual practices and gender expressions. For Foucault (2014), such a form of management is proper to the sphere of biopower and acts on sexuality not only in the form of censorship or disguise, nor does it focus on a single focus or assume a single guise. Biopower is not an institution or structure but a situation that adopts diverse forms; it is not hegemonic since it is confronted by points of resistance scattered in different social strata. In its sphere, there is a multiplicity of incessant confrontations and correlations of forces that support each other and form complex and contradictory systems and strategies. Thus, the power that silences is the same power that makes people speak, metamorphosed as examination, confession, science about sex, and recommended sexual practices.

In addition, for Foucault (2014), sexuality is strategic for the state because it forges a specific type of subjectivity, regulates social relations, and (re)produces differences and hierarchies.

Thinking in terms of sexual politics, in this way, helps to understand disputes around what should or should not be worked on in schools, at what times, and what are the roles of this institution and the family in the matter. In the same way, it allows us to suppose those different ways of thinking about and regulating it coexist or collide in the elaboration and implementation of educational policies on sexuality and gender.

In the latter formulation, such coexistence allows different conceptions of sexuality and models of morality to be activated by different actors, which produces new alliances and dissensions according to the various convictions and interests at stake. The study of sexual politics must therefore account for a heterogeneous and dynamic field full of complex nuances.

GENDER AND SEXUALITY

From a perspective called ‘naturalistic’, the body tends to be thought of as a strictly biological element, formed by a collection of organs and divided into only two possible categories: men and women, according to differences in anatomy. Thus, biological sex imprints differences in the male and female segment in terms not only of the body but also behavioral, emotional, and affective. According to such a line of reasoning, bodies are universal elements that are felt, used, thought about, and experienced in the same way regardless of society, culture, and historical period (VANCE, 1995).

Likewise, this logic dictates the obligation of the family grouping based on the development considered “normal” of sexuality, in which a man perceives himself and behaves in a masculine way and desires a woman who, in turn, also perceives herself and behaves according to her feminine “nature”. About such imposition, Rubin (1984) observes that all possibilities of affection that escape from such a heterosexual model are considered to be outside the laws of nature, law, or God, which establishes a clear line that separates the “good” from the “bad sex” and excludes, silences, and proposes the cure of any divergence. Morever, for the author, society is organized in power systems that reward and encourage some while punishing and suppressing others. That is why, according to her, reducing sexuality to a biological phenomenon is to disregard that the production of knowledge is not neutral but marked by inequalities, modes of oppression, and differentiation more or less naturalized, which makes sex and gender always political issues.

Regarding the category gender, Piscitelli (2002) places the differences considered feminine and masculine in the social production field, which considers hierarchies established in this space. Following this logic, the concept aims to highlight that biological/anatomical sex does not “naturally” define our behaviors. It is the cultural and relational plane, marked by hierarchies and power struggles, which continuously produces and reproduces social patterns mechanically associated with bodies that are distinguished by their genital apparatus.

According to Pelúcio (2014), as of the 1980s, the concept of gender, which was born within the feminist movement, began to present itself as promising, both in terms of establishing reflections and as a field of struggles, since the category “woman,” widely used until then, did not account for the multiple experiences related to the feminine, which seemed not to refer only to the fact of possessing certain biological organs, but to be equally crossed by social elements such as race, ethnicity, class, generation, and religion, for example. Moreover, it also allowed thinking about men as possessors of gender.

Precisely because they are not natural, Louro (1997) clarifies that gender patterns are continuously reiterated in relations in various social contexts: the agents privileged by family structure, school, and religion, for example, determine and defend an idea about what it is and how it should be lived, covering up its political character and its multiple ways of being experienced. In this way, the school “manufactures” subjects, and diverse identities, including those of gender, in a scenario of relations of inequalities that can be subtly verified in the didactic materials and the conduction of curricular components.

In the execution of this disciplining work, Junqueira (2009) notes that prejudice and violence are directed against people who manifest a performance and/or expression of gender that does not follow the models imposed by the compulsory heteronormative norm, which, according to Butler (2003), requires consistency between biological sex, gender, and desire/practice, making invisible other ways of being and being in the world. Gender, in this case, is a performance based on a kind of socially constructed script, of a coercive, normatizing character that demands that each person’s body act according to dictates that link gender to biological sex and sexuality.

Throughout the research, several teachers, in interviews and continuing education meetings, reported scenes of homophobia⁷ in schools, even involving physical aggression against students. Thus, not only do teachers exercise control and surveillance over bodies, and students also constantly watch (in themselves and others) abilities, movements, gender expressions, and sexuality:

Students have previous baggage of beliefs, meanings, values, attitudes, and behaviors acquired outside school. Television, comics, the everyday speech, and attitudes of adults and groups of friends are full of gender stereotypes, beliefs about what it is to be a man or a woman in our culture (SOUZA; ALTMANN, 1999, p. 64).

Given this, it can be seen that the heteronormative socialization process normalizes sexuality and genderizes it while stigmatizing diversity. Araújo (2014⁄2015) raises the possibility of educators resignifying their beliefs in a process that involves changes in education policies and, inevitably, a personal journey of confronting the unknown, sometimes distressing.

GENDER IDEOLOGY” VERSUS GENDER STUDIES

In Manaus, as already observed, all references to “gender,” “diversity and sexual orientation” were removed from the Municipal Education Plan under the allegation of fighting “gender ideology.”

The term “gender ideology” is an accusatory political category fighting against the postulate of gender as a social construction. Currently, it has been intensely mobilized both in internet videos, marches against sexual and reproductive rights and sexual diversity, and the religious preaching of conservative pastors, priests, and their followers. The term is advocated by a growing global movement (present in Europe, the United States, and Canada — and more especially in Latin America, in countries such as Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico), which consolidates and organizes a “conservative wave” that opposes gender equality and the rights of LGBT people, as well as discussions about sexuality in school because they threaten the natural social order (WILKINSON, 2017).

When talking about “gender ideology,” Almeida (2017) notes that it is necessary to specify what "conservative" means. According to him, the concept was constructed amid political clashes with the significant participation of the media. It emerged as an accusatory category that involves varied discourses, values, actions, and positions with interests of various groups that can come close and equal at times. The wave, for the author, does not represent a homogeneous, uniform phenomenon but is composed of different actors coming from various fields that may have divergences in some points but articulate themselves around common opponents. He warns that to understand the specific meanings of ‘conservative’, one must also be aware of what is negotiated at a given moment.

For Junqueira (2017), the most conservative religious sectors, their followers, and other groups (not explicitly religious, politicians, and public managers) that adhere to the discourse of “gender ideology” seem to find in it a way to combat the sexual rights of women and the LGBT community, affirming values of defense of the heteronormative sexual order, gaining political spaces and garnering more support, including in issues and territories that are not strictly religious or that, in secular societies, should not be religious. In all cases, the religious matrix of the discourse continues to exert significant influence.

The term “gender ideology” dates back to the 1990s. About its origin, Junqueira (2017, p. 26-27) states “that the nebulous syntagma ‘gender theory/ideology,’ with its variations, is a Catholic invention that emerged under the designs of the Pontifical Council for the Family and bishops’ conferences between the mid-1990s and early 2000s.”

Miguel (2016) notes that the gender category began to be felt as a threat, especially after two conferences sponsored by the United Nations (UN): the International Conferences on Population and Development, held in Cairo in 1994, and on Women, held in Beijing in 1995. In both, gender equality was put as a goal, which clashed with Catholic doctrine, which sees sexual diversity and women’s freedom, including in the labor market, as a threat to the traditional heterosexual family structure.

The discourse constructed by the Catholic Church, a constant participant in the design of educational policies in Brazil, exalts the complementarity of the sexes and the performance of traditional feminine roles (procreate, love, care, all of these taken as natural gifts given by God). Given this, the equality preached by feminism represents a debasement of women, and gender equality leads to a confusion of roles that is harmful to the preservation of the family and social order, and should be fought against for ethical reasons, including. Strategically, the Church saw in the attack on such equality the possibility of guaranteeing its authority over increasingly sexually liberated Catholics. At the same time, it depoliticizes the search for rights, placing the issue on the level of morals and “values”⁸ .

The construction of the attack on gender equality began during the pontificate of Pope Wojtyla (John Paul II), under the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger, who in 2005 succeeded Wojtyla in the papacy, adopting the name Benedict XVI. From the 2000s on, the adversary was clearly delineated: what in Brazil has been called “gender ideology,” but in France and Italy is usually called “gender theory” (“théorie du gender,” “teoria del gender”). Although gender has no univocal concept within feminism, its varied possibilities are ignored, which empties the richness and complexity of studies in the field.

In Brazil, the “gender ideology” has found a privileged space for diffusion in the legislative debates on education. Consequently, Junqueira (2017) and Cunha (2016) point to the dissociation of violence against women from socio-historical processes, which naturalizes inequalities through the essentialization of sexual binarism. In addition, the gender/homosexuality binomial becomes highlighted in a negative way, which is in dissonance with the debates and deconstructions encouraged in the scope of the sexuality training at the DDPM.

In a review of the “explosion” of “gender ideology” in the American continent, Wilkinson (2017) points to disputes between different moralities regarding sexuality in a terrain in which youth and sexual and gender diversity are articulated. These interfere with public policymaking (especially those in education, by the understanding that children are hampered in the consolidation of male or female identity) and jeopardize the continuity of debates about sexuality in schools.

The scenario outlined refers to Carrara’s (2015) observations regarding the successive clashes around sexual rights in Brazil, in which a new geography of evil is traced. In it, the anti-gender narratives postulate that the education of children should not suffer undue interference by schools, accusing such institutions (which would have become a space for “indoctrination”) of planning the implementation of the “dictatorship of gender”:

Inclusive, anti-discriminatory educational proposals aimed at valuing secularism, pluralism, promoting the recognition of difference, and ensuring the public and citizen character of school education, tend to be perceived and denounced by these movements as a “threat to freedom of expression, belief, and conscience” of those families whose moral and religious values (of a strictly private order) are, according to them, irreconcilable with the norms on human rights produced by institutions, such as the UN, “colonized by the gender agenda” (JUNQUEIRA, 2017, p. 44).

MORAL PANIC

The concept of moral panics, elaborated by Stanley Cohen in Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972⁄1987), characterizes exaggerated, disproportionate collective reactions in the face of what is felt to be a potential threat to social values and interests. From these, hostility develops toward characters or conditions that embody the cause of the problem. Influential groups, especially the mass media, share this consensus and reproduce the idea that there is a threat to be fought (which can even be used for political purposes). Another important characteristic of such panics is volatility: they erupt and dissipate suddenly, without warning.

For Lancaster (2011), moral panic combines the archaic and the postmodern. For it to operate, the taboo issue is central because, for him, nothing seems to cause more fear and incite collective censure more quickly than issues considered forbidden, impure, and sacrilegious. The idea of scapegoating is important here, insofar as the moral threat is projected onto certain figures.

In another analytical key, Irvine (2006), when studying what he calls the “local sex panic” promoted against the sex education curriculum in hundreds of school districts in the United States in the 1980s, observes that this is not a spontaneous eruption of outrage and hostility, but rather a political event, fueled by emotional scripts —rhetoric strategically crafted to produce emotional responses (such as fear, disgust, and anger) that are intense, yet volatile. Such mobilized emotions are neither irrational nor simply spontaneous but produced in the social context, being a means by which moral entrepreneurs attempt to reinforce a particular sexual morality at the expense of others.

Irvine describes that local sexual panics have arisen regularly in the United States since the 1960s and characterizes them as a kind of political strategy leveraged by conservative national religious organizations to reduce civil liberties and sexual rights through controlling sexual knowledge. For Irvine, in most cases, the opposition to the presence of sexuality in curricula is composed of a minority of people. However, despite this, opponents wield enormous power under their ability to rally emotions around the taboo of childhood sexuality. Fear and anger sustain the panic over sex education, gaining intense local media coverage, and advocates for its permanence in schools are often attacked with rhetorical stigmatization.

Compounding the Brazilian scenario of gender insults in education in recent years, there is PL 7.180/2014, known as the School Without Party Movement (MESP). Founded in 2004 by lawyer Miguel Nagib, it was “a joint initiative of students and parents concerned about the degree of political-ideological contamination of Brazilian schools, at all levels: from basic to higher education.⁹ “If at first its focus was restricted to fighting Marxism in education, a fear already present in the period of the dictatorship, currently, for Miguel (2016), the popularity of the movement was given by the repulse to “gender ideology” — from the attacks on the School without Homophobia Project.¹⁰

At the time, the controversy came from the idea that the state was funding a project that incited homosexuality and promiscuity, being an access route to pedophilia and child deviancy. Such an argument once again denounces a link between homosexuality and the threat to the protection of childhood, as noted by Carrara (2015).

The defamation of the School Without Homophobia Project was mobilized especially from three educational videos, pejoratively nicknamed the gay kit, which pointed to the possibility of positive experiences of LGBT identities in school by adolescents. From there, according to Leite (2014), conservative actors on the rise in Congress acted as a network to disseminate distorted versions of these materials through social networks, TV, the press, printed pamphlets, and parliamentary debates. The discourse conveyed warned about the danger of children being exposed to pornographic material that could lure children into homosexuality, making them easy prey for pedophiles. For the author, the repercussion of the case illustrates how sensitive educational policies are to the sexuality taboo, less permeable to affirmative discourses than the health field, in which the paradigm of the right to sexual diversity has been assimilated from AIDS prevention policies.

From the analysis of the crusade against the project, Pentecostal parliamentarians, accompanied by allies, were the main protagonists. As for the activation of the category “gender ideology,” Carvalho and Sívori (2017, p. 24) point out that there was the collaboration of “Catholic leaderships with greater relative weight than in the first, but that triggered a more extensive alliance, which also incorporated a secular base” through the participation of the MESP.

In this way, the notion of the primacy of the family over the school gained space¹¹ , the former trying to prevent teachers from transmitting content contrary to the values cherished by the parents, whether in the field of sexuality or in terms of partisan and religious positions. Thus, schools had to bow to the dictates of the families that wanted to use such prerogatives.

The slogan “my children, my rules,” which made sarcastic mention of the slogan “my body, my rules” of the feminist struggle, was used repeatedly by the MESP, denying both the republican character of the school (which starts from the understanding that education prepares for the coexistence between different worldviews, inherent to a pluralistic and democratic society) and the condition of children and adolescents as subjects of rights, including the right to know the world and form their ideas, in the face of parental authority. Similarly, the representation of the family as a divine creation would give it, according to Moura (2016), superior rights to those of the State and its members, especially women and children. The latter would have access to information restricted only to those allowed by the family, thus disregarding children and adolescents as subjects of rights.

More recently, Silva (2000, p. 144) signals that the moral panic was also triggered in the process of construction of the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) of Kindergarten and Elementary School, “which, in its latest version, approved without popular participation and behind closed doors in the Ministry of Education, removed all mentions of gender and sexuality issues, and promotion of citizenship of LGBT people.”

The BNCC, which aims to be a permanent document to guide skills and competencies to be achieved by students, should be — according to the PNE approved in 2014 — a document built by many hands and that contemplates the interests of various actors in the educational field. However, this is not what happened. According to Silva (2000), the pressure of right-wing movements and those linked to Christian churches opened the margin for the attack on dissident sexualities. Thus, the document's approval process in 2017 was crossed by erasures, which gave room for the National Education Council, through guidance from the MEC, to disregard suggestions from public consultations present in previous versions of the document. As a result, the enacted BNCC even removed skills that proposed to discuss sex, gender, and sexualities.

In 2018, the BNCC was updated for high school, and, according to Silva, Brancaleoni, and Oliveira (2019, p. 1,544), “the document focuses on the biological dimension of sexuality, as well as silencing gender issues. “Still on sexuality, they emphasize that this was restricted to the 8th grade of elementary school — in the curriculum component of Science — alongside content related to anatomy and physiology of human reproduction, pregnancy, and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs),¹² which may reinforce the body-health-disease triad, something that already happened in the PCNs, as well as signal that discussions about sexuality in the field of education have not advanced over the decades that separate the two official documents.

Not mentioning gender issues in the BNCC will guide the development of curricular matrices for basic education throughout Brazil, in addition to representing an erasure that translates into the concealment of differences and of an official project that excels in heteronormativity, also sets precedents for not including them.

THE RESEARCH FINDINGS

Our findings identified that the continuing education policy on sexuality for teachers of DDPM was articulated, in its first years, to the “Sexual Orientation” fascicle of the PCNs. At the same time that this dealt with the promotion of more egalitarian gender relations, conceiving sexuality in its character as a historical, social, cultural, and political phenomenon, on the other hand, it contradictorily adopted a perspective of emphasis on biological and preventive aspects, focused on risk and control, which was justified by the context of the advance of AIDS and other STIs,¹³ as well as adolescent pregnancy, considered a “problem” to be combated. According to interviews conducted with teachers who worked at the time, even with study modules in which sexuality was discussed from a historical and cultural perspective, in many of the meetings with teachers, the emphasis fell on STIs and the need to use condoms.¹⁴

The interviews with several educators who have played the role of sexuality trainers over the years showed that the training has undergone many changes (such as in the constitution of work teams and workload), either due to changes in leadership or in response to new norms about the approach to sexuality and gender at school. Throughout the research, it was identified that the attacks on training in sexuality were as much representative of the reality of the national and local politics of the moment as - not dissociated from - the clashes between different ways of thinking and managing sexuality, already pointed out by Foucault (2014) and Carrara (2015). An example of this is that both the analysis of the materials prepared for the trainings and the statements of the educators interviewed indicated that, from the beginning, the work was based on the principle of the existence of sexuality in all stages of the life cycle, as well as the adequacy of the school as a space to conduct educational actions around it, something not always admitted by teachers and family members. In the same way, not only in the most recent years but throughout the course of the trainings, we observed that teachers' and family members' personal beliefs and religious values acted as obstacles to the work on sexuality at school.

In the first years of the continuing education programs, the female oppression present since the colonization process in Brazil was discussed, although with scant reflections on the various social hierarchies and forms of oppression that cross the gender category. In these meetings, there were also debates about the predominant presence of women in the teaching profession for Kindergarten and the early grades of elementary school and the subtle ways in which the teachers dribbled male domination in their daily lives.

After the first decade of the DDPM, the analysis of the material prepared for the meetings with teachers and the interviews with trainers showed that the work in sexuality began to be influenced by the debates around human rights. Around this time, more precisely in 2012, the area of sexuality became part of the training axis of the diversity field, alongside themes such as religious and ethno-racial diversity. In this context, the defense of sexuality education as a right of children and adolescents gained strength. Aspects such as the discovery of the body, the possibility of pleasurable experiences, and the different ways of being a boy and a girl were highlighted, as well as the view of sexuality as a complex and diverse phenomenon. Prejudices against those who do not follow the heteronormative referential started to be discussed. Thus, when the LGBT category was referenced, the violence directed at it was usually highlighted.

We also identified the intention of promoting reflections, questioning, and deconstructions with the teachers about the diversity in family groupings, gender identities, and desire orientations, which, in some moments, appeared in the speech of the current pair of trainers as a frustrating job, since evidence of changes in the teaching process are not so clear, especially when there is only one annual meeting of the team with the teachers.

Although the understanding of sexuality and gender as constructions crossed by culture constitutes the main axis that organizes the training in sexuality as a policy after the first decade of its existence, it coexists harmoniously with Freudian psychoanalytic theory — even though the reading of the “phases of psychosexual development” is anchored on essentializing and universalizing conceptions of sexuality. Throughout the trainings’ trajectory, the teachers’ concern about homosexuality was remarkable. For the older teachers, questions about the theme were frequent in all meetings, ranging from questions about how to deal with it in class to whether it would be possible to reverse it. The interviewees observed the frequent association between homosexuality and pathology and deviation.

The participant observation of training meetings - between the years 2016 and 2018 — allowed us to identify in the teachers’ speech the use of a certain “pedagogy of correction” to fit children to the expected gender performances, as shown in the following record of a teacher’s speech: “if a boy in my class wanted to dress as a princess, I would try to convince him to wear princess clothes because there are masculine and feminine. To show his wrong choice, I would also ask him if, by any chance, he would be a woman like mommy, intending to have children and marry a man” (2016).

The teachers always problematized this kind of questioning during the meetings. They took the opportunity to emphasize the need for children to experiment with different roles and question whether, behind such prohibitions, there might not exist a fear of homosexuality. In this situation, even other teachers at the meeting confronted the teacher, citing that in today’s society women wear pants and shorts, clothing previously considered masculine, and men in certain countries can wear skirts without their sexuality being questioned.

Throughout the participant observations, it was also registered that, at the same time that child sexuality is recognized as being different from adult sexuality - without “evilness,” which brings the child closer to angelic innocence, this same sexuality frightens the teachers of Early Childhood Education when it manifests itself, as illustrated below by the speech of a former member of the training team in sexuality, who continued working at DDPM, but in another area:

The other day someone came up to me during one of these formative meetings and said: “Teacher, for God’s sake, can you believe that so-and-so was undressing someone else’s panties? They are so tiny”. I say: “Yes, and what did you do? He realizes that the other person may have something similar to what he has or different. So he wants to discuss this. Are we promoting education in this sense? He has the right to know about his body. We need to build a different education. I told you that one day I saw a situation like this, in a school, where the teacher came running and screaming, saying: “Oh, my God! The boy is in the bathroom doing this.” So she publicized to the whole school the scandal, the horror, in the greatest dread. However, she did not talk to the child, which was the most important thing. To clarify. (2018).

Moreover, the expressions of childhood sexuality at school, the following speech of a teacher, a participant in one of the training meetings on sexuality in 2016, revealed a possible association of such manifestations with events of abuse, as well as the feeling of not being able to work on the theme:

[...] we see some scenes and don’t know what is happening: is it something spontaneous? Was it abuse? You get worried that you’ll let it go and then, if it’s something serious? I would feel guilty for not helping. I myself have a two-year-old daughter who wants to touch herself at home, and I tell her that she can’t. But I myself don’t know if she can.

Especially since 2015, with the appearance of PL 389/2015, by then-councilman Marcel Alexandre, which intended to veto discussions about sexuality and diversity in municipal schools, the training on sexuality started to clash with the legislative speech and with that of the students’ families and educators who defended the “gender ideology” speech, even within the scope of the DDPM — which guaranteed to the team the feeling that, of all diversities, sexual diversity is the most difficult to be accepted and worked with.

With the participation of DDPM’s trainers in sexuality with Ediversa, it was observed the articulation of these with universities, LGBT movement, and class organs, among other actors, which allowed the organization of actions such as events, the construction of web pages and documents to be delivered to the Public Ministry, all in order to denounce the unconstitutionality of PL 389/2015. Such alliances also promoted greater awareness about the conservative forces operating in the country and at the local level, not without sadness in the face of contact with the reality of attacks on sexuality education policies.

During this context, the development of sexuality projects at school was experienced by the professionals of the Division as a difficult job, triggering distress. Even so, one of the trainers, in an interview conducted in 2016, reinforced that it was necessary to persevere in the fight against prejudice and entrenched values, which she considered a true “ants’ work”:

[...] it is very difficult to work on sexuality and gender issues, but we see that it is possible. We continue with the same passion. And it is happening, even with the PL. But we feel this difficulty more and more. Sometimes it is exhausting. But then we stop, breathe, get stronger, and come back: it is like ants’ work.

Since the promulgation, on March 7, 2017, of Municipal Law 439/2017, which, by evoking the “gender ideology” sought to prevent any guideline or pedagogical practice that aimed to “reproduce” this “concept” in municipal schools, the defense of work on sexuality by the DDPM gave prominence to the argument of the protection of children and adolescents in the face of the threat of sexual violence, as a mechanism of resistance. Similarly, the BNCC itself, based on the set of competencies and skills to be developed with the students, was used as a defense for the continuity of work on sexuality. In this sense, the team stressed that, even with the removal of references to sexual orientation and gender, it was still possible to see, throughout the document, the defense of diversity. For this very reason, it would be important, according to the coordinator of training in the field of diversity, to continue charging schools to enable actions in this direction: “if we don’t hit the nail on the head that the curriculum proposal must be complied with, it’s no use, the manager and the teacher won’t care about diversity”¹⁵ (2018).

Months later, in July 2017, the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) issued Recommendation no. 08/2017 to the Municipal Secretariat and the State Secretariat of Education, through which it permitted for the DDPM to continue with the trainings on sexuality, as well as for teachers in the network to continue to develop the theme of sexuality. Even so, it was identified the weariness of the team of trainers, who reported a great sense of fatigue: “it gets tired to talk, talk, do and in the end be misunderstood. “

In the same way, among teachers, there was fear and doubts about how to proceed concerning work on sexuality in schools because, on the one hand, they had to comply with determinations (based on legal norms) of the Department of Education, on the other they received threats of punishment from parents and managers, such as in the face of the slightest movement around the theme. As a teacher participating in one of the sexuality trainings that took place in May 2018 reported: “it is difficult to work on the topic because there is a gag law around and SEMED telling us not to forget the topic: it is a crossfire and there is no one to protect us.”

The Kindergarten and Primary School teachers themselves requested, for the year 2018, trainings focused on other issues, such as autism, which provided the team of sexuality trainers with a feeling described as “relief,” in the face of a context considered delicate. Throughout the year, the theme of sexuality continued to be worked only in the 4th and 5th grades of elementary school, with emphasis, this time, on the prevention of sexual violence, a subject that seemed to make sexuality more palatable, but that reinforced the negative agenda of work around it in education, as observed by Leite (2014).

In February 2019, when the survey had already been closed, the full Court of Justice of the State of Amazonas (TJAM) voted unanimously for the unconstitutionality of Law 439/2017; and, in January 2020, the Supreme Court confirmed the TJAM’s ruling, after the Manaus City Council filed an Internal Appeal against the decision.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Reflecting on the process of continued teacher training in sexuality in Manaus constituted the possibility of thinking about the scope of such training, its achievements, and obstacles in building a more democratic, integral education that intends to recognize and welcome the sexual diversity that emerges in the school space. The study identified that thinking of children and adolescents as subjects of sexuality policies in the scope of education is a challenge in the face of the recurring practice of activating discourses of victimization and desexualization that reinforce the place of guardianship of these subjects. Carrara and Heilborn (2009) also believe that when one talks about sexuality at school, children are not recognized as subjects with rights, which causes the exclusion of the theme in the curriculum, which is restricted to the private space of the family. For the duo, this view must be contested because the silence in relation to discrimination due to prejudice and gender violence contributes to the reproduction of inequalities and injustices.

The research also allowed us to think of family members and educators as coming from a process of socialization that standardizes and generifies, which in many moments imposes obstacles to the development of the theme of sexuality in schools. Thus, the need to rethink and denaturalize what seems unquestionable increases the challenge of the educators who develop the theme, which, in turn, seems to have been intensified by the emergence of the “gender ideology” discourse and by the adherence of a certain part of the population to it.

However, even in the face of attacks on sexuality education, the school insists on revealing itself as a space in which different ways of being a boy and a girl, a man and a woman, of perceiving and thinking one’s gender, and of experiencing diverse possibilities of orientation towards affections are expressed, although not always accepted and recognized by the very people who go there.

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• 1
  The choice of the acronym LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Transsexual) was made because it still guides the development of many policies in recent years. It is known, however, that other acronyms have emerged in recent decades (Facchini, 2005), also with the proposal of being more inclusive.
• 2
  To mark this distinction, whenever we refer to the use of the term in the PCNs, "sexual orientation" will be used (in quotation marks).
• 3
  The predominance of female psychologists as trainers in the area after the first ten years of DDPM drew attention throughout the research. Before that, the number of professionals in the area of biology was significantly higher.
• 4
  Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.
• 5
  MANAUS CITY COUNCIL. Bill No. 389/2015, of November 24, 2015. Prohibits in the curriculum of schools in the city of Manaus the pedagogical activities that aim to reproduce the concept of gender ideology. Manaus, 2015. Available at: http://www.cmm.am.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/PL_389_2015.pdf. Accessed on: 01 Dec 2015.
• 6
  The DDPM holds such socializations every year and teachers and the manager the of the municipal schools participate in them. On this occasion, there is an exhibition and discussion of the projects (in the most diverse areas, including sexuality) developed during the year by teachers in the schools.
• 7
  Understood in the sense used by Junqueira (2009), according to which the homophobic reaction is part of a social process of production of differences within power relations that aim to reinforce the binary regime of sexuality, and that produces, therefore, homosexuality as deviation, disease, sin, and defect.
• 8
  It is interesting to observe, as Rosado-Nunes (2008) noted, that although in Brazil the Catholic Church has played an important role in confronting the military dictatorship, in the constitution of a culture of rights stimulated by Liberation Theology, and in the Base Ecclesial Communities movement, acting in causes related to social justice, when it comes to sexual and reproductive rights, its actions tend in another direction.
• 9
  Available at: http://www.escolasempartido.org/quem-somos. Accessed on: 21 Sep. 2018.
• 10
  Articulated with the launching, by the Federal Government in May 2004, of the Brazil without Homophobia Program — to Combat Violence and Discrimination against LGBT and Promote Homosexual Citizenship — and supported by the Ministry of Education through the Secretariat for Continuing Education, Literacy, Diversity, and Inclusion.
• 11
  This theoretical position is based on the Portuguese professor, living in Paraná, Armindo Moreira, who in the book "Professor is not an Educator,” argues that the role of the school and the teacher is to pass on content in a "neutral" and objective way, while the role of the family, the church, and society is to educate (WURMEISTER, 2018).
• 12
  In the document, the nomenclature used is Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) .
• 13
  At the time still called STIs.
• 14
  At that time, the greater number of Biology graduates and the partnership with the Municipal Health Department seemed to contribute to this emphasis.
• 15
  Despite this belief, there was recognition that if states and municipalities across the country did not have a team that advocated working with sexual and gender diversity, not mentioning them in the BNCC would make the topic unfeasible.

DECLARATION OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST

• 33
  The author declares that there is no conflict of interest with this article.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  20 Mar 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  18 May 2020
• Accepted
  03 Dec 2020