Gender, sexuality and education: appointments toward an “epistemology”

Abstract

The combination of sexuality and education goes backward to the beginnings of the brazilian educational institution. Many projects and initiatives concerning sexual education have pervaded Brazil’s educational history, but facing gender perspectives has always been a troublesome matter. During the 90’s, after the appearance of the National Curricular Parameters, both sexuality and gender themes have more frequently inhabited Brazil’s educational discourses and practices, although not in a less conflicting manner. The present text discusses the “epistemological” paths that have characterized discourses about sexuality in Brazil’s school system throughout the XXth century. Those discursive and institutional productions concerning sexuality were analyzed by means of Foucault’s concepts of sexuality dispositive and biopolitics. Contemporaneously, I try to demonstrate some (mis)understandings concerning sexual diversity by means of some concepts from queer theory, which seemed fit to discuss some docent speeches as well as some official documents related to the matter of gender and sexuality in Brazil’s schools.

Keywords: sexuality; gender; school practices; sexual diversity; queer theory.