NEOCONSERVATISM AND GENDER ISSUES: SCHOOL AND BODY AS TERRITORIES OF DISPUTES AND RESISTANCES

Abstract

The present article arises from a scientific initiation research, which aimed to identify teachers' representations of the body and how these representations influence their positioning and intervention regarding gender issues in school, as well as to verify possible inclusive actions developed to accommodate dissident bodies in school. Data collection was based on semi-structured interviews with a cisgender female teacher who teaches in elementary school and a non-binary trans coordinator, both working in the public network of the city of São Paulo, and a cisgender gay male teacher from the private network. The reports point to an invisibility of dissident bodies in the school space, in addition to the intersections of far-right federal policies with the educational policies of the schools involved in the research. Thus, it is concluded that the school remains a space for disciplining bodies and (re)producing differences, being the stage for the unfolding of neoconservatism, which directly and indirectly impacts educational policies and proposals aimed at the debate on gender issues and the inclusion of dissident bodies in school. On the other hand, practices of resistance and subversion of this macro-dynamic of exclusion were observed, revealing the existence of possible paths of resistance and subversion, sustained by teachers, against the devices of power and knowledge. The concept of body-territory and the pedagogy of differences is presented as a possible way of articulating these fields.