- Convenors:
-
Claudia Liebelt
(FU Berlin)
Monika Baer (University of Wrocław)
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Panel
- Networks:
- Network Panel
Short Abstract
Amidst the rise of anti-gender movements and authoritarianism, queer sexual education is increasingly under attack. This panel asks how to analyse and confront attacks on sexual education from a queer anthropological perspective. What is the role of sexual politics for affective polarisation?
Long Abstract
Across the world, queer and queer-feminist activists have been on the forefront of creating more inclusive sexual education, especially for youth, to facilitate access to support and empower people about their gendered, embodied and sexual wellbeing. In an increasingly polarised political climate and with the rise of right-wing nationalism and authoritarianism, queer sexual education is more and more under attack: In many countries across Europe and elsewhere, ultra right-wing, religious, and anti-gender groups, such as "La Manif pour tous" in France or "Concerned Parents" in Germany mobilise against what they see as attacks on traditional family values or the "early sexualisation" of children through sex education. Sexual education laws, in the US or Argentine, are defunded or changed to promote conservative values and stigmatise LGBTQ+ identities, rather than provide access to sexual and reproductive well-being, health and services. In digital spheres, queer activists and sexual educators are increasingly subject to hate speech or confronted with conspiracy narratives that see inclusive and queer sexual education as a foreign import or ideology.
On this background, we wish to ask: What happens when anthropologists engage with queer sexual education? How do we analyse and confront the multifaceted attacks on sexual education from a queer and queer-feminist perspective? Focusing on the emotions and affects produced by inclusive and queer sexual education and the mobilisation against it, we also wish to reflect on the role of gender and sexual politics for affective polarisation and its effects on gender and sex nonconforming youth as well as queer and queer-feminist educators and activists.
We look forward to both ethnographic and conceptual contributions on queer sexual education from a wide range of regional and political contexts.
Accepted papers
Session 1Paper short abstract
This article analyzes school safety for trans youth in Portugal after Law 38/2018, highlighting scarce official data, persistent discrimination, and the negative influence of a conservative government discourse on “gender ideology,” calling for reforms, studies, and action.
Paper long abstract
Although Portuguese legislation regarding minors in gender diversity within the educational context is recent, it is understood that the presence of inclusive policies is associated with the quality of school experiences for trans youth. Through this article, we aim to explore the safety of the school environment for trans children and youth following Law No. 38/2018, enacted on August 7, in Portugal. The analysis of various indicators, based on documentary research of secondary data such as reports from Queer associations, research studies, and statistical data from the National Institute of Statistics, between the years 2019 and 2022, allowed us to verify that there is limited data demonstrating the impact of the law on the school safety of trans youth, and the few available data come from civil society institutions. It was also evident that discrimination persists in education, exacerbated by the conservative political argument of "gender ideology" in schools. It is concluded that the law itself has some gaps and that more national studies are needed to measure its impact on school safety, including an assessment of the current issues faced by these young people, as well as a revision of discriminatory school curricula, without absolving state governments of this responsibility.
Paper short abstract
Queer-feminist academic activism in Czech universities confronts the entanglement of neoliberal governance and illiberal anti-gender backlash. Delegitimised and misframed as cancel culture, scholar and student activists' affective labour resist from below by imagining and doing academia otherwise.
Paper long abstract
Across Europe, organised anti-gender mobilisations increasingly target (gender) education as a key site of their affective polarisation. Post-socialist Central/Eastern European universities, often falsely depicted as politically neutral, have become arenas where struggles over gender and legitimate pedagogy unfold with particular intensity. This paper examines queer-feminist academic activism in Czech universities as a practice that provokes both anti-gender backlash and neoliberal governance by proposing a culture of care, solidarity, mutual aid and transformative justice.
Drawing on ethnographic interviews, digital ethnography, and multimodal analysis of student and scholar initiatives addressing gender-based violence, the paper conceptualises this activism as informal education beyond the classroom. Through testimony-sharing, peer support, artistic interventions, and public critique, students and scholar teach how to recognise gendered power, articulate consent beyond romantic or sexual relationships, and relate ethically within academic institutions. These practices break institutional silence around gender inequality, and transform frustration into hope.
The analysis also shows how anti-gender actors respond by framing queer-feminist academic activism as ideological indoctrination, “cancel culture,” or a threat to academic freedom or national values. These affective repertoirs function to delegitimise this activism, intersecting with neoliberal academic norms that privilege "masculinist culture of science" based on individual resilience, excellence, and competition, creating rather hostile environment for queer-feminist activism and pedagogy. These neoliberal-illiberal mobilisations in European universities target queer-feminist academic activism because it teaches to imagine and do academia "otherwise". To update the theory of "masculinist culture of science", this paper frames academic activism as queer-feminist culture of science and knowledge production.
Paper short abstract
Although Polish sex educators have successfully developed inclusive curricula and teaching methods, sex education has often been presented as coming 'from abroad'. This paper demonstrates how ideological boundaries are built, but also crossed in local educational discourses and practices.
Paper long abstract
Although sex education has been present in Poland for over a century and Polish sex educators have successfully developed innovative and inclusive curricula and methods, the subject has often been presented as coming 'from abroad'. In the context of ongoing heated debates surrounding the introduction of a new curriculum to Polish schools, sex education is frequently portrayed by right wing nationalists as a means of 'demoralizing' Polish children by exposing them to 'gender and LGBT ideology', thereby supposedly facilitating the destruction of the Polish nation and family at the hands of ill-defined foreign powers. This paper draws on archival and ethnographic research on the history of sex education and the current implementation of sex education in Polish schools. It demonstrates how ideological boundaries (Fassin 2011, Haukanes and Pine 2021, Buchowski 2025) around sex education are built, but also crossed or even destroyed in everyday educational discourses and practices.
Paper short abstract
Argentina's sexual education law ESI emerged through feminist struggles. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Buenos Aires spanning the 2023 elections, this research examines how its destabilization was experienced affectively, making visible infrastructures sustaining queer life beyond the state.
Paper long abstract
In the months leading up to Argentina’s 2023 presidential elections, queer people held their breath. I conducted research in Buenos Aires to explore the entangled intersections of queer communities, feminist activism and Argentinas national sexual education law (ESI), which emerged from activist struggles in 2006. Over time, the ESI had become a symbol for queer feminism and, as such, a target of escalating right-wing attacks. During five months of ethnographic fieldwork, I encountered the ESI as more than policy: a feminist infrastructure that oriented everyday life. It sustained pedagogical labor, political imagination, and precarious queer livelihoods, and was embraced and embodied in public events such as the Buenos Aires Pride (Marcha de Orgullo), where it appeared through chants, signs and drag performances. Following Berlant (2016), infrastructure is understood as a connective tissue that holds social worlds together materially and affectively. After the elections, feminist and queer public policies were placed under explicit threat. Drawing on Ahmed (2014), this analysis traces how this rupture was experienced affectively: through anxiety, shock and mourning. Focusing on the Trans Day of Remembrance that followed the election, queer grief emerged as a collective practice in which bodies assembled, named their lost ones and recognized each other in defiance. As state-backed infrastructures were destabilized, everyday life glitched: an interruption, that made other relations of dependencies visible, revealing how queer life persists through affective ties, shared vulnerability and collective presence beyond institutional support.