THE “MOVEMENT” ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, ITS EMERGENCE CONTEXT AND THE GENDERED BIAS

Escola Sem Partido is a “movement” that has existed since 2004 under the argument of addressing the “problem of instrumentalization of teaching for political and ideological purposes” (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018). Founded by lawyer Miguel Nagib, and with the motto of “education without indoctrination”, ESP has inspired several bills in all government instances.

Officially, at first, it was mentioned in two bills, PL 867/2015 (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 2016b) - presented by Congressperson Izalci Lucas, from PSDB/DF, on March 26, 2015, to the Congress - and PL 193/2016 (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 2016a) - presented by senator and pastor Magno Malta, from PR/ES, on 05/03/2016, to the Senate. Both intended to include, among the National Education Guidelines and Bases, the “Escola Sem Partido Program” - an ideological platform of values ​​and measures elaborated by the “movement” whose main objective is to “regulate from what the teacher teaches in the classroom to the composition of textbooks and exams for the entry into higher education”⁵ (^{FREITAS; BALDAN, 2017}, p. 1, own translation).

The “Escola Sem Partido Program”, configuring a legislative proposal for inclusion in a given education system (in this case in the state of Rio de Janeiro), came about at the request of, at the time, Congressperson Flávio Bolsonaro from the state of Rio de Janeiro, to the coordinator of the “movement”, Miguel Nagib. With this, the latter, using his legal skills as a lawyer, managed to articulate the Congressperson’s proposals in a PL, number 2974/2014, which was presented for the first time on May 15, 2014, to the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro.

The “movement” is spreading, however, with Nagib’s efforts, who brings the strength of the legal/legislative scope to support its assumption that, currently, all schools have “indoctrinating” characteristics, promoting, according to the coordinator from ESP, “on one hand, the political and ideological indoctrination in the classroom, and on the other, the usurpation of the right of the students’ parents to the moral and religious education of their children”⁶ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation).

In addition to the claims listed as constituting a network of discourses engaged in production, circulation and adherence to conservatism, ESP ideologists intend to obstruct the conquests about gender equity and cause obstacles in the recognition of sexual rights as human rights, through the main ESP flag, combating the so-called “gender ideology”, a syntagma presented as enunciative regularity potentially articulated by members of the “movement”.

It is a forged concept that comes to be used by the group as a strategy to distort the feminist theoretical framework based on the identity and performativity of the contemporary subject. It was even after the inclusion of the proposal to veto the gender debate that ESP came to gain greater popularity. According to the conservative nature of the “movement”, patriarchy and heteronormative social dictates should be preserved, a principle radically opposed by the feminist debate around the notion of gender.

According to ^{Penna (2016}), the term “gender ideology” has been used as a political form of fear manipulation based on false information and grotesque distortions of the practices that take place in schools.

When debating this perspective of inciting “moral panic” as a form of social control, ^{Miskolci (2007}) points out ^{Cohen’s contributions (1972}), which explains the process of social awareness in relation to a type of deviation with regard to a certain pattern. According to the scholar, the way the media, public opinion, among other agents of social control, accuse certain “deviants” lead to severe judgments and strong collective reactions. Thus, according to the assumptions of Cohen (1972), the “moral panic” consists of the strategy of pointing out, in a stereotyped and hysterical way, a subject or a group as a threat to social life and fostering a discursive web of rejection to that determined profile.

Using this strategy, the “movement” seeks to deconstruct the awareness that, by adopting a neutral stance, the State corroborates the perpetuation of inequalities between social places. The main target of this attack is the conquests of the feminist struggle on issues of gender and sexualities, as can be seen in the following proposition of PL 193/2016:

Art. 3. The Public Power will not interfere in the sexual orientation of the students nor will it allow any practice capable of compromising the development of their personality in harmony with the respective biological identity of sex, being especially prohibited the application of the postulates of gender theory or ideology.⁷ (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 2016a, own translation)

By means of such proposition, the group, then, demands a real setback in relation to the Constitution of 1988, since such legislation tries to establish a basic front, although still limited by the the boundaries of a bourgeois society, of combating discrimination and violence to “the Other”, thanks to the struggles of social movements as a whole, especially the feminist demands of the 1980s.

Last, but not least, it is important to observe, still, the context of emergence of such “movement”, which resulted from a moment in which several blows - of political, social and cultural order - hit the country causing a real setback. In line with ^{Paiva (2017}), we consider that this situation has generated:

[...] serious consequences in the educational area, demonstrating complete ignorance of it, in addition to bad faith (we would say, on the one hand, philosophical and, on the other, litigant, from a legal point of view), in addition to being based on legal and conceptual confusions.⁸ (^{PAIVA, 2017}, p. 2, own translation)

Still in relation to the situational context that permeates the emergence of ESP, we believe that we should not fail to problematize the fact that it was leveraged in a procedural sequence linked to the impeachment of the country’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, who, at the time, suffered several misogynistic attacks. It is worth noting that it was during her government that Brazil came to frame the crime against women based on their gender in Law No. 13.104, known as the Law on Feminicide, promulgated by President Rousseff on March 9, 2015.

THE “GENDER IDEOLOGY” AS A PEDAGOGICAL DEVICE IN THE DISCURSIVE WEB OF ESP

In line with the Foucauldian assumptions about how the discourses configure webs articulating themselves through knowledge common to one or more fields, we observe that the syntagma “Gender Ideology” works as a powerful statement, which binds different texts, institutions, practices and fields of knowledge, that is, it is a pedagogical device used frequently by the group in a persuasive character and in an attempt to standardize and fix the subjects in the apparatus of production and control of their existences.

According to Foucault’s assumptions, the devices, thus, forge processes of identity subjectivation from where they circulate because they are a point of connection or nexus - although the effects of their incidence may come to extrapolate their lines of cohesion, and may lead to dispersions, when not contradictions, and demand reformulations - among heterogeneous elements: lessons, discourses, rituals, institutions, laws, regulations, government decisions, structural and architectural constructions, philosophical, moral, political, technological and philanthropic positions, scientific statements, what is said and what is unsaid.

Therefore, in addition to the Larrosian notion (^{LARROSA, 2001}) of “lesson”, it was essential for this text to work with the Foucauldian notion (^{FOUCAULT, 1977}) of “device”, in order to identify and understand the discursive articulations produced by ESP as tools of delegitimization of the gender device produced by the field of feminist knowledge.

We argue here that it is through this device that the “movement” inculcates the idea that such “ideology” is a threat to the “traditional family” and, still under this label, they also pose issues of sex, sexuality and sex education, reiterating sexism and inhibiting any proposal to promote policies to overcome social inequalities, especially those directly linked to issues of gender, sex and sexuality. And they do so through lessons, which we focus on in this study, seeking to select them and make them visible.

ANALYSIS OF GENDERED LESSONS EMERGING FROM THE DISCURSIVE WEB (RE)PRODUCED BY ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO

As a given statement is configured transforming memory, it is nevertheless based on it. It is, therefore, through the archeogenealogical method that we aim, to select in the chosen archives the statements according to regularities and dispersions coined within and between fields of knowledge in attention to the innumerable sets of pedagogical devices aimed at the standardization of gender identities, such as those fixed and pre-existing to the subject’s life context.

Aiming at emphasize to the statements produced by ESP, this session will reflect on archives produced by the “movement” based on the “gender ideology” and directed on the heteronormatization of identity of schooled subjects.

In an article published on the website of the “movement” already with the statement constituted in the title “De novo, a tentativa de criar o ‘homem novo’. Será que agora vai? E os pais? Será que estão sabendo? Será que estão de acordo?”,⁹ two data emerge in this perspective:

It is an article reproduced by the ESP as a “bad” example of what can happen in formal student education, placed as a disagreement with the moral principles of parents who fit the matrix model of the “traditional family”, a fact that does not comes to configure any arbitrariness. Originally, the text was produced as a story by Ocimara Balmant, published by Estadão on May 4, 2013, under the title “Bonecas são para meninos? Em algumas escolas, sim” and, according to what we have been able to analyze, the content of the journalistic article is “denounced” by the group simply because it addresses an experience in line with the feminist debate around gender and sexualities. According to the article:

In the pretend hair salon, João Pontes, 4 years old, combs the teacher’s hair, uses the hair dryer on a classmate’s hair and applies make up to the other, concentrating extremely on the function. Less than five minutes later, João is on the other side of the room, in a fighting round with his classmate Artur Bomfim, 5 years old, who recently played house. In the play corners of the Colégio Equipe, on the west side of São Paulo, there is no boy or girl toy. All kindergarten students - aged between 3 and 5 years - move from the doll to the little car without any ceremony. “The goal is to make all options available and not encourage any kind of sexist choice. We believe that by not making this gender distinction, we help to overcome this dichotomy between what is a woman’s task and what is a man’s activity”, explains Equipe’s pedagogical coordinator for Early Childhood Education, Luciana Gamero.¹¹ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

Although both the account of the experience already contains justifications for for this fact, and as the reporter herself comments in agreement, ESP does not diminish its “will to truth” nor abdicate the production of the illegitimate, as proposed by ^{Foucault (1987}, 2009), and the enemy according to ^{Souza (2013}) notes on the political use of sex.

In another statement, ESP criticizes the initiative with the following comment:

“Parents are entitled to their children to receive religious and moral education that is in accordance with their own convictions”. So says the art. 12 of the American Convention on Human Rights, which has the force of law in Brazil. Therefore, if the parents of these guinea pig children have authorized the behavioral experience that the school is doing with their children, it is their problem; nobody has anything to do with it. Otherwise, they can (and should) sue the school for moral damages.¹² (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

Through these statements, in addition to opposing the execution of pedagogical experiences capable of instigating the rethinking of lessons and rituals of gendered bias that populate the school environment, foster and disseminate the practice of threatening the process against the pluralism of ideas under the accusation of damaging the morality of the referred “traditional family”.

Another file found in our study has very similar content, but with the difference that the account of the experience “denounced” by ESP was, this time, thought and articulated based on efforts involving the entire school community, management, teaching staff, group of students and their respective families, as revealed at the beginning of the report:¹³

What kind of education will young people 10 years from now need to live in a society with such diversity? According to students and teachers, it is necessary to find a way for the plurality of people, engaging young people in the world of differences, preparing them to be complete citizens. On Saturday, the Paranoá High School Center 1 receives parents, students, teachers whoever else wants to praise the multiplicity of gender, sexuality, race and religion. There, a different June party will take place: the groom runs away with another man and all kinds of love are accepted.¹⁴ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2016, emphasis added, own translation)

It is an article produced and circulated by the Correio Braziliense, dated July 6, 2016, under the title: “Turma de escola do DF faz festa junina em que noivo foge com outro homem”. However, in spite of what is revealed right at the beginning of the report, both with regard to the fact that the experience was the result of a collective initiative and with regard to the motivations that were due to ideological issues common to the group, the ESP fires, as the title of the publication, accusations that are not proven with the content of the reproduced text: “In DF, teachers use the June party to attack Christian morality, and transmit their own values to the children of others”.

The entire text is reproduced without the ESP presenting any direct and explicit counter-arguments to the points discussed. The only attack is nothing more than the pejorative way in which they label the experience in the title they give to the story, which is not new in the repertoire of derogatory strategies of the “movement”. The novelty this time, however, is that the discourse criticized by ideologists itself brings with it references from a field of knowledge common to the discursive basis of ESP, the psychoanalytic.

Through the statement “figures of authority, such as parents, religious leaders and educators, play a key role in consolidating advances, the pedagogy books say”¹⁵ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation), we perceive an update of the psychoanalytic discourse that proposes the need for an authority figure helping the advances in the subjects’ identity formation, but, according to this conception, this role can be extended to other guiding figures besides the parents, which configures an update. In this case, the nouns were also inflected only in the masculine form, which ends up giving greater importance to men. The dispersion found in the afore mentioned statement is that the authority figure is no longer called upon to make interdictions, but to stimulate the emancipation of the subjects.

Changing the focus of attack once again, the target of another file found with our research is sex education itself. Through a discourse articulated by Nagib, coordinator of the “movement”, the website publishes another text entitled “Ludibriando a audiência com a ajuda do UOL Educação”.¹⁶ From this statement, “denunciation” emerges about the sexual education consultant and media outlet that references it, in this case UOL Rádio, and its function of “deceiving” the public that consumes its ideas, taking, in this discursive formation, as they are in other discourses from the same web, the student subjects according to the ESP view, as mere “captive audiences”.

At the beginning of his discourse, Nagib highlights a consideration made by Marcos Ribeiro (sex educator to whom he refers) about the debate on sexual issues among children and reiterates the complaint previously made about the educator’s book Mamãe, como eu nasci?

Heard by the UOL Educação report team, the sexual education consultant Marcos Ribeiro was categorical: yes, the school is a place to talk about sex […] For those who do not remember, Marcos Ribeiro is the author of the book Mamãe, como eu nasci? Aimed at children from 7 to 10 years old, and from its 2nd edition we reproduce the following passages: “Look, he gets hard!”; “Okay! It happens every now and then”; “Does daddy’s penis get hard too?”; “Sometimes, and daddy finds it very pleasant. Men like it when their penis gets hard”; “Then the sperm get mixed up with a liquid called semen. This liquid, which is thick and sticky, comes out of the tip of a man’s penis. It feels really good”; “If you open your legs a little and look in a mirror, you will see better”; “Up here is your clitoris, which makes women feel a lot of pleasure/satisfaction when being touched, because it is good/pleasant”; “Now that you know what the penis and vulva are, it’s worth saying one more thing”; “Some boys like to play with their penis, and some girls like their vulva, because because it feels good”; “Big people say it is addictive or ‘it is not nice to touch it’”; “They only know how to open their mouths to ban. But the truth is that this game does not cause any problems. You just have to be careful not to get dirty or get hurt, because it’s a very sensitive place”; “But don’t forget: this game, which gives a very good tickle, is not to be done anywhere. It is better done that in a corner, with no one around”; “At this moment, the penis is hard (erect), much bigger than it normally is. And the vulva is also a little wet. They are very close, cuddle up tigh, and then the man puts his penis inside the woman’s vagina. The woman likes it a lot and the man too. The man moves the penis in and out of the vagina several times with the help of the woman”.¹⁷ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018)

Aware that this book has generated many controversies for containing, from the perspective of many people, “excesses of realism”, Nagib reproduces these passages in order to illustrate what they conceive as absurd approaches and, with this, foment moral panic according to theoretical contributions by ^{Cohen (1972}). The expectancy generated by his discourse is that such absurdities spread, leaving the paradidactic book for “the transmission of sexual themes in the compulsory courses of the school curriculum”, since Marcos Ribeiro is viewed “in tune with the MEC”.

Still in this perspective of spreading the “moral panic” (^{COHEN, 1972}), we analyze, from the following excerpt, the discredit attributed to the consultant by Nagib’s discourse, which supposes dissimulation in Ribeiro’s discourse granted for interview and infers that its coherence would be a strategy to “trick the unsuspecting”.

We did not have access to the 3rd and most recent edition of the work. It is said to have been revised and reformulated […]. We hope that the above passages have been deleted. But the fact is that Marcos Ribeiro may have evolved in his understanding of the role of parents in the moral education of their children, as seen in the following excerpt from the report: “School work must respect the different opinions and realities of each family, as your culture or religion. The values, the limits and what ‘can’ or ‘cannot’ is up to the father and mother”, says Ribeiro. Let us agree: for those who disqualified the parents’ guidance saying that “[the big people] only know how to open their mouths to ban”, and arrogated the right to tell the children of others what “the truth” is in terms of morals, no one can deny that there is an advance. Or rather, it would be an advance, if it were, as it is, just a simple attempt to deceive the unsuspecting.¹⁸ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, emphasis added, own translation)

Although they cite the position of the consultant in sexual education, they do so in a perspective of unworthiness, in a new attack that they call, with recurrence, “disprove”, another regularity produced by the ESP discourse. To do so, they point out the following excerpt from the reproached book: “Big people say it is addictive or ‘it is not nice to touch it’. They only know how to open their mouths to ban. But the truth is that this game does not cause any problems”. However, they disregard the fact that the author, in the aforementioned testimony, positions himself as an adult, while, in the book excerpt in question, seeks to position himself according to a child perspective consistent with the paradoxical game “adult-child”.

Finally, Nagib concludes his remarks by stating that “One cannot believe the sincerity of the author of Mamãe, como eu nasci? when he says that “the values, the limits and what ‘can’or ‘can’t’, it’s up to father and mother”. This and other statements, such as those mentioned previously, reaffirm the analytical clues that we have been discovering that the discourses of the ESP is formed by knowledge of monological orientation, thus not conceiving legitimacy in the critical formation process that considers the sharing of information concerning the public interest and mediation of moral values by those responsible.

Like this radicalism, we found another file on the movement’s website, entitled “Prova de concurso público em Goiânia é mais um caso de estupro coletivo”.¹⁹ In it, Sandra Ramos, in a text referenced by ESP, confers herself the authority to speak properly about the Brazilian educational process, an enunciative act through which she intends to strengthen the ideologists argument about an allegedly alarming existence of indoctrination in our education system.

My 35-year teaching experience has given me the privilege of teaching at all levels of education, from pre-school to post-graduate, with special dedication to teacher training. This trajectory gives me conditions to make more accurate analysis of the Brazilian educational process. A finding that I make and embarrass me is the problem of indoctrination in the education system.²⁰ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

Still in Ramos’ words, it is “an outrageous ideological indoctrination that has been implanted in universities and schools in the country. An open and tireless attempt to entice Brazilians to redefine concepts and and traditional conceptions. A true ideological rape”²¹ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation).

Articulating statements of the type, the author produces a discourse of frank contribution to the dissemination of the “moral panic” explained by ^{Cohen (1972}). With the adjectives “displaced”, “wide open” and “tireless”, it establishes the strengthening of the motivation for opposition, objectified by ESP, and with the expression “collective rape” reinforces the idea of ​​“violation” and “taint” attributed to the debate and and its questioning bias in relation to the status quo.

It is worth mentioning that the use of the term “rape” dialogues with the potency of the power attributed to the phallus or the macho culture (also named in this context as “rape culture”) to fetishize oppressive practices of objectification and non-consensual penetration of fragile or abject bodies, unmanly or belittled by patriarchal society. In this case, the author labels as “rape” the “fact” of, according to her impressions, the public selection exam in Goiânia - promoted by the Municipal Department of Education and Sports, Education Professional II, from the City of Goiânia, and applied in 19 June 2016 - presents “issues [...] of explicit ideological indoctrination. After all, the candidate fails if does not respond to what was predicted by the ideological template”.

Still in accordance with her considerations regarding the analysis of the exam content,

Right in the first text “‘Disney princesses’ goal is no longer marriage, study reveals” we find Gender Ideology in action and its attempt to convince society for the fact that Disney leads back its approach to concepts of family, marriage, the role of woman, femininity and masculinity. An inductive text to lead the reader to accept these changes as social evolution, which is actually indoctrination [...]²² (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

In other words, the agendas of debates addressed to the educational scope, when they are ideologically contrary to the assumptions of ESP, are taken by ideologists as indoctrinators, which is analyzed here as a reaffirmation of the production of the enemy discussed by ^{Souza (2013}). In addition, the direct articulation between underestimating the institution of marriage and opening up to new conceptions about family and gender roles and “gender ideology” are regularities in the field of religious discourse that downplays and represses scorn for the conservatism of hegemonic standards.

In this sense, even, in the following allegations, the author even mentions that the perspective of the queer debate only “claims to be scientific” and attributes such demand for social reflection to “LGBT groups”, but her assumption is that, because it is based on knowledge constructed in a field of dissonant knowledge of the biologicist, another quite revived in the ESP discourse, it does not deserve credibility and/or social legitimation.

In the text below, we can identify the defense of “Queer Theory”, defended by LGBT groups, with the statement that people are born without a defined gender. According to this theory, biological sex is not decisive for the definition of man or woman, since they are constituted by society and culture. This theory, which is said to be scientific, conveniently disclaims the contributions of natural sciences such as biology and genetics, for example.²³ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

Last but not least, and in line with the practice of referring to conservative knowledge emerging from the religious discursive field, it accuses the debate about religious “fundamentalism” of “spreading the culture of hatred to Christians” and, without presenting many elements of textual coherence between one argument and another, compares the “gravity” of the ideological transits presented in the exam referring to the representation of misogynistic practices, stating that it is “an attitude much more shameful than to reject women in a job interview simply because they are women”.

And, as an outcome of his manifesto, Ramos (2016) still produces a call for candidates who submitted to the selection, urging them to take the content of the assessment as criminal and, as well as the group, to legally manifest a disapproval of the debates that bring such questions posed in the repertoire of the “indoctrinating enemy”.

The Goiânia race is no exception. This type of evidence, impregnated with ideological indoctrination, spreads in competitions throughout Brazil. Candidates for teaching in the schools of the City of Goiânia, harmed by this doctrinal abuse, do not allow this collective rape of their freedoms of thought. Demand the cancellation of this contest. The war against you who defend the traditional and Christian family has been declared. Stand up against this massive ideological indoctrination. We must defend Brazilian education against this crime against freedom.²⁴ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

Also from the perspective of attacking people adept at the feminist gender debate, Nagib comes to disparage a letter written by two teachers as “Direito de resposta ao artigo ‘Conteúdo Imoral na Escola’”²⁵, published in Gazeta do Povo. According to reproduction of excerpts from the letter contained in the file, the teachers protest for the following reason:

I read the report published in the newspaper Gazeta do Povo, on November 18th, by lawyer Miguel Nagib. I was shocked, disgusted, outraged by what the lawyer wrote about the profession I chose. It is one thing to be disgusted with facts, which I say isolated, it is another thing to generalize.²⁶ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

The author of the discourse articulated in the archive in question, then, responds defending himself and his own ideas. He begins by arguing that he does not actually refer to teachers since his criticisms are aimed at “indoctrinators disguised as teachers”.

1 - I didn’t write anything about the profession you chose. After all, teaching other people’s children what blowjob, anal sex, and the like is not part of a teacher’s job. On the contrary: if you do this without being authorized by the students’ parents, the teacher will be violating art. 12 of the American Convention on Human Rights. 2 - You cannot claim that the facts mentioned in my article are isolated. The book Mamãe, como eu nasci? from where the phrases highlighted in the next paragraph of her message were taken, was adopted, for example, by the municipal school system in Recife. I don’t think it’s a small thing. 3 - In addition, as it is impossible to know what happens at all times in all classrooms, we have an obligation to assume that these facts may be occurring in many schools, mainly because there is no shortage of ‘specialists’ with the mentality of Mr. Marcos Ribeiro , author of the book Mamãe, como eu nasci?. I repeat what I said in the article: ‘by ‘the leaks ’we can estimate the volume and quality of the moral sewage that circulates through the pipes of the education system’. 4 - In any case, you yourself recognize that ‘a large part of the education of values that children have received, the school ensures them’. That is, it recognizes that the violation of rt. 12 of the CADH is a reality in Brazilian schools; and that’s what matters.²⁷ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

In a later excerpt, he says he recognizes the the academic freedom, as we saw in: “teachers cannot be forced by anyone to transmit to students content that clashes with their own moral conscience: that is why there is a constitutional guarantee of academic freedom”²⁸ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation). However, such recognition is paradoxical to the censorship that so many other discursive formations presented by ESP confer to teaching praxis.

In the following counter positioning, the statement articulated by Nagib generally criticizes the questioning positioning of teaching and utters irony to teachers who present ideological divergences in relation to his categorical discourse about what would be supposedly immoral in the school environment, as we can see in the following passage:

On the other hand, families have every right to not want these issues to be addressed in the classroom. The attempt to disqualify this choice with the “taboo” label, in addition to being clearly prejudiced, reveals how much you, enlightened educators, consider yourself superior to your students’ parents.²⁹ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, emphasis added, own translation)

Regarding the claim presented in the letter that “currently, much of the education of values that children have received, the school ensures them” (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018), the lawyer produces an articulated statement in order to “disprove” the defense, of other discursive formations contrary to the ESP ideology, that the school does not interfere in the education of students’ values, refuting the teachers’ attempt to deconstruct the myth of the “perfect traditional family” with the statement: “Ensures”? Do you think the school is doing children a great deal of good by usurping their parents’ moral authority?” (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018).

In a later part of the letter, the teachers defend the importance of sex education as a tool for clarifying and strengthening the citizenship of school subjects, especially those found in situations of vulnerability:

In the daily life of public schools, what we find most are unstructured families, and I am not referring to the lack of a nuclear family model (father, mother, children). I refer to the lack of health, hygiene, social conditions, lack of family structure, where for your knowledge, dear lawyer and for those who are not from the area, it is not uncommon to find children who are an audience during their parents’ sexual act [ ...] In this way, do you propose to remove the discipline (or content) of sex education? [...] It is at this moment that children can clear their doubts, since at home, even watching the sexual act, they are prohibited from touching on the subject.³⁰ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

Regarding this defense, however, Nagib comes to deny what was presented as reality, without presenting, however, data that prove his opinion. In addition, it emphasizes the importance attributed to content driven and technicist education, neglecting sexual education in opposition to the idea of learning such issues in practice. This data reveals, then, that the “movement” ignores and/or underestimates the function, above all preventive, of sexual education in relation to abusive practices and relationships. Contrary to the teachers’ arguments, the ESP coordinator presents the following discursive formation:

Do you really believe that children need a teacher to answer this question? I would say that they need a teacher to teach them Portuguese and Mathematics, and that information about sex they will get in one way or another, as we did. You argue as if 9 out of 10 children regularly witnessed sex scenes at home, and needed to be clarified about it, which obviously does not correspond to reality.³¹ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

Another analytical clue that we managed to pin down comes from a statement that gives continuity to this answer given by Nagib. We observed, from the discursive formation that follows, that issues of identity and biological self-knowledge do not, for the group, have the same weight depending on the area of knowledge about the human being.

Furthermore, not all children have the same type of questions or curiosity at the same time in their lives. Thus, when dealing with these subjects in the classroom, the teacher is leveling everyone’s knowledge by the demand of some, and this, in addition to characterizing a violation of art. 12 of the CADH, constitutes a disrespect for the individuality and the maturation process of each student, which offends the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente.³² (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

Against the argument of abuse of the judicialization of issues related to becoming of teaching and claiming compliance with family duties, the lawyer does not present a direct counterpoint, but repeats the discursive perspective that “it is a matter of limits” and reaffirms only the rights of parents, as noted in:

But, it is very easy, practical, and profitable for some, to propose lawsuits and fines. If we are going to sue we begin with parents who are negligent about their children’s health, with their education ... For when parents are 100% present, they take their children to the dentist because of that toothache that has been reported for two weeks at school, to the pediatrician when they are informed about lumps with bad smell in their children’s heads, then think about suing the teachers/schools for something that has been said, or done in the classroom. Especially because, if every teacher who was offended in our country opened a case, there would certainly be a lack of respected lawyers to represent and monitor these processes.

[Answer:] It is not a question of good or bad professionals; it is a matter of limits. Parents have the right to give their children a moral education that is in accordance with their own beliefs. Teachers cannot usurp this right.³³ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

Regarding the insistence on the part of the teachers to report the absences and issues of negligence on the part of the families, Nagib advocates about the right of the family to commit such faults, as we can see from the following excerpt from the file:

Or, will we teachers, start filing lawsuits against the parents of our students, for negligence in several aspects, proposing fines for not taking their children to school, for not taking them to the doctor, for not taking them to the dentist, for not taking them to the psychologist, neurologist, speech therapist, ophthalmologist ... And so on. It would be fair, since, we will be prosecuted and/or fined for teaching what parents refuse to do at home.

[Answer:] Did it ever occur to you that if parents refuse to teach their children certain things, is it because they think they shouldn’t?³⁴ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

The discourse, then, of the teachers adds, as a conclusion of what they enunciate in the text in question, that it is thanks to the teaching effort and commitment that respectfully addresses issues with intersecting identities that the citizenship of the subjects can fully develop itself, as we verified in the statements:

What our society is forgetting is that in order to train all existing professionals, and so that people can reflect and write what they want on a sheet of paper, it needed the help of a teacher who, without any appreciation, was offended daily by parents , students and societies, which carries the responsibility for a society that is in chaos and living in a time of barbarism, but that despite all this, with a lot of dedication, love and respect, makes it possible to acquire this knowledge [...] It is registered here not only mine, but the indignation of many professionals who do the possible and the impossible for the education of that country.³⁵ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

In spite of the manifesto, Nagib reinforces the disdain given to the teaching category on the part of the group, as we can analyze in the way he finishes his discourse of rejection of the teachers’ manifesto:

I confess that your words do not move me. I am not especially grateful for the teachers’ work. To my knowledge, he is paid. I had good and bad teachers. More bad than good, unfortunately. My children too. Socially speaking, the result of your work is shameful, to say the least. I mention just one thing: almost 40% of Brazilian university students “do not master basic reading or writing skills. In other words: they are functional illiterates”. I repeat, teacher: if you really want to help your students, especially the poorest, teach them to read, write and do math. And let the rest of them learn on their own or with their parents.³⁶ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, emphasis added, own translation)

In addition to spreading discredit to Brazilian teaching, they also discredit the bodies and entities designed to think about education, as we can see through the discursive formation of “Quem deve aprovar a BNCC”, a file that configures another enunciative act that envisions becoming authority to legitimize its own “truth”.

In this sense, the discourse is initiated by a frank bias of producing the “enemy” according to the considerations of Soares (2013), as we can see from the following discursive formation:

The Brazilian educational system is like a gigantic building, whose structures have been eroded from top to bottom by ideological termites. From time to time, a wall or a slab collapses, and the rumble ends up attracting the attention of the general public.³⁷ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

In subsequent training, continuing the analyzed onslaught, they first seek to delegitimize the capacity of professionals whose positions are aimed to national educational guidelines, then associate decolonial guidelines with what they call “gender ideology”, as it leads us to reflect on whether greater resistance on the part of conservatives is not in relation to overcoming/deconstructing patriarchy, one of the most striking fronts of oppression in contemporary relations. From these statements, a new reiteration of the rejection for not accepting the exclusion of the gender debate from the educational scope also emerges, as we can see from the following excerpt:

The last collapse was caused by the proposal of the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC). Days ago, historian Marco Antonio Villa demonstrated, in an article published in the newspaper O Globo, that, if the MEC proposal is approved, Brazilian students who want to learn something about ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece; the Roman Empire and the birth of Christianity; the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution and even the French Revolution will be forced to fend for themselves. In the classroom, they will have to study the Amerindian, African and Afro-Brazilian worlds; interpret black and quilombola social movements; to value and promote respect for African and African-American cultures. It’s horrendous. Less talked about, but no less important, is the presence of the notorious gender ideology. As already guessed, the gender perspective - whose inclusion in education plans has been vehemently rejected by almost all of our legislative houses - runs through the entire MEC proposal.³⁸ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

Furthermore, disparaging people that are able to debate educational guidelines, that thought and elaborated the BNCC, creating the material, as well as counter-arguments to the veto attacks to the gender debate based on legitimate fields of knowledge, they state that:

Who do these servers report to, anyway? To the people surely not; or they would not have issued, last year, a public note of censure addressed to legislative assemblies and city councils - and, implicitly, also to the National Congress - for having excluded the gender ideology from state and municipal education plans; nor declared, in the same note, in a defiant tone, that the National Education Guidelines, to be elaborated by them, will be “aimed at respecting diversity, sexual orientation and gender identity” - which concludes, gentlemen and senators, depending on the CNE, “will have gender” at BNCC.³⁹ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

More than being morally superior to the subjects who do not conform to conservatism, they are numerous and believe that, articulated, they are able to approve the agenda(s) that “morally” appeal to them, as we can see from the enunciative formation presented as a conclusion of the file:

This is not possible. In a democracy, if someone should have the power to decide what tens of millions of individuals will be forced to study throughout their school life, let it be the parliament, and not a handful of public officials appointed by the chief executive. It is therefore up to the National Congress to call upon you, as soon as possible, this immense and historic responsibility.⁴⁰ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

From this fascist movement we managed to specifically select another file from the ESP website, whose discourse, as stated in the title, comes to propose “A ideologia de gênero no banco réus”.⁴¹ The content of this training now turns to Nagib’s reflections on the representation of ^{Butler (2003}) for the gender debate, on the occasion of the philosopher’s coming to Brazil⁴² to participate in the 2nd International Seminar “Undoing Gender”, and on the event itself.

Confessing his own ignorance and stating that “until yesterday, I had never heard of Judith Butler, an American philosopher, radical feminist, who came to Brazil to participate in a mega event on sexuality, feminism and gender issues”⁴³ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation), Nagib, despite his lack of in-depth knowledge on the matter, produces a discourse of opposition from the beginning of the title he writes.

It is also interesting to note that, in the reference used by the group, the fact that Butler produced one of the main contributions to the gender debate is not visibilized. In addition, we point out that the movement’s coordinator states, at the end of 2015, that he did not know such a reference to the feminist debate, even though the most fervent mobilizations of the “movement” against the “gender ideology” have started since 2014. Another important fact to remember is that it was exactly in the same year as the philosopher’s first visit to Brazil, a moment of great expansion of the feminist debate, that the group articulated the aforementioned Requerimento de Informação S/Nº, 2015,⁴⁴ as a way to legitimize the exclusion of the gender debate from the Brazilian Parâmetros Nacionais da Educação.

Regarding his observations about the event, Nagib describes it as follows: “the 2nd International Seminar ‘Undoing Gender’ is a CUS accomplishment. That’s right: CUS is the acronym of the research group on Culture and Sexuality that works at the Faculty of Communication at UFBA”⁴⁵ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, emphasis added, own translation). With this statement, they call attention to the acronym of a research group that articulated the seminar reported in Nagib’s discourse. The observation is made without explanations within the text, however, in a contextual perspective, we can infer that it is an allusion between the pronunciation denoted by the acronym and its approximation with an informal word used to refer commonly to the anus of the human body, an orifice that, in addition to being linked to the excretion function, is also considered an erogenous zone, often associated with the pleasure of homosexual intercourse.

As a result, as the ESP’s discourse is one of non-acceptance of homosexual relationships, intertextually, a relation of transference from non-acceptance is also configured to the debate and mobilization fostered at the Seminar. In fact, the following statement also presents this type of intertextuality. “In four days, promises the event coordinator, ‘we will produce many reflections, ruffles, screams, confusions, affections, ties and ruptures’. All with our money, of course”⁴⁶ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, emphasis added, own translation).

With the emphasis given to the excerpt of the discourse of the coordinator of the event, where terms associated with the universe gendered as gay also appear, we perceive the same discursive tone of disapproval. This is also evidenced by the construction that follows these terms: “all this with our money, of course”, expressing disregard for the motivation of public spending.

The following excerpt from Nagib’s discourse reiterates the group’s conception of alleged ideological onslaughts on the part of those involved in the gender discourse web according to the feminist theoretical framework. At the end of the passage, even, the ideologue exempts parents and teachers from the “fault” in order to show disapproval especially to people who study gender as an identity, as we can see in the following discursive formation:

The theme of this event has been repeated ad nauseam [sic] in thousands of congresses, seminars, meetings, symposia, round tables, etc., held every year by universities and state and municipal education departments. The target audience is almost always made up of basic education teachers; and the objective - which is being fully achieved - could not be more clear: to hammer these subjects into the heads of the teachers so that they hammer them into the heads of the students. The obsession of this group, as we know, is the so-called gender theory (or ideology). Indifferent to the sovereign decisions of the National Congress and the vast majority of Legislative Assemblies and City Councils - which refused to include gender ideology in their respective education plans - the teaching bureaucracy continues to use the state machine to promote its own convictions, inducing unsuspecting teachers to violate students ‘parents’ right to moral education for their children. By falling into this conversation, and treating their students as guinea pigs of gender theory, these teachers are taking a very high risk.⁴⁷ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

However, we analyzed, in this statement, certain vacillations regarding the coherence between the ideas presented by Nagib’s discourse. The claims made by the ideologue about “indoctrinating” teaching are paradoxical, for at times “innocent”, proposing it intellectually fragile, suitable for people liable to “fall for it” (expression used to refer to the possibility of ideological agreement in relation to the debate proposed by the event), and at other times proposes it as a harasser (capable of indoctrinating students according to their own convictions) and, therefore, as a legal defendant, reiterating the possibility of conviction.

Further, it encourages parents to act against the alleged indoctrination, pointing out “accessible legal sources” for this, as we can see in the following excerpt:

The law makes it much easier to file these claims to repair the alleged damage. Cases whose value does not exceed 40 minimum wages can be filed with the special civil courts; in these actions, it is not even necessary to be assisted by a lawyer (if the amount of compensation claimed is equal to or less than 20 minimum wages - R$ 15,760.00). In addition, there is no collection of court fees or, if the claim is dismissed, no payment of fees to the lawyer of the opposing party [...]⁴⁸ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

Finally, Nagib concludes his discourse by intimidating, once again, the teacher, as we noted in: “The teacher is personally responsible for the damages he causes in the exercise of his duties. So it is better to stay smart and think twice before following MEC’s ​​recommendations. When in doubt, it is worth consulting a lawyer”⁴⁹ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation).

It is worth noting that, although it is clear that the radical opposition on the part of ESP is in relation to gender whose study approaches presents a feminist orientation, in addition to investing in the delegitimization of the theoretical framework originating in the “gender ideology” in the legislative sphere, they also seek to convince parents and teachers to strengthen the fight, often appealing to the field of threats to those who may visiblize the critical and emancipatory perspective against gender oppression in the face of youth.

Still regarding the manifests of ideologists who produce discoursees in this perspective of delegitimization, in addition to these archives, we find testimonies exposed on the website and social networks of the movement, and noting that the group claims to protest about what they take as general practices of “indoctrination”, we analyze, however, that practically none of them fails to mention the so-called “gender ideology” - which is an enunciative regularity within the discourse of the ESP as a whole -, as if, in fact, the focus of the accusation about ideologization was around the gender debate in line with the feminist theoretical framework. However, we note that they all make far more statements about the assumption of ideological harassment than about “ideology” itself.

With regard to the debates articulated specifically with the content elaborated by the feminist discursive field on gender, we found few files, they are: the “Requerimento de Informação, S/Nº 2015”;⁵⁰ the “Modelo de Notificação Extrajudicial”; and the “Agenda de gênero: redefinindo a igualdade”, on which we present analytical clues in the following considerations.

As the document entitled Requerimento de Informação, the modelo de notificação extrajudicial, available on the website of the “movement” as mentioned above, which is exposed in the civil inquiry promoted by the Public Ministry of Goiás against the supposed “ideologizing” school of Goiás, the “Gender Agenda: redefining equality” was also produced as a way to synthesize references from the theoretical feminist framework around gender, in attacks of deconstruction/invalidation/delegitimization of the knowledge articulated in this discursive field, so much so that the last file mentioned here presents considerations by an ideologist recommending the dissemination of the material as a way to better clarify those sympathizers who still ignore the theoretical framework of gender articulated by the feminist discourse field, but which will be presented according to the “will of truth” of the “movement”:

Message from the Christian activist Júlio Severo: Guys, I am sending, in an attached PDF file, the document Agenda de gênero, summary of a book on gender ideology. The book was written by Dale O’Leary, with whom I have had contact for almost 20 years. I can say that it is the best book on the subject. Now that classes are starting, this book is very important for the clarification of students and especially teachers. Gender ideology is infecting all of Brazil’s education. What can you do to defeat this evil? Send this book, Agenda de gênero, to all the teachers you know. Encourage them to read. Encourage them to review the clarifications in this book. If you want to understand the danger of gender ideology, Dale O’Leary’s book is the best source.⁵¹ (ESCOLA SEM PARTIDO, 2018, own translation)

The contents of these files, taken as a discursive reference, are quite repetitive both in the textual perspective (concerning, in this case, the gathering of ideas) and in the counter-argument presented by the movement. However, we believe, in our analysis that the efforts of the “movement” do not go beyond the theory because they have not managed to build another one. What we present here, however, are files that configure a discursive web, which, like all, has potency, which should not be disregarded. Therefore, vigilant to the discursive scope articulated by ESP in order to undermine, above all, the gender debate, we seek to map the knowledge that constitutes the files presented and to specifically select the lessons that emerge from them.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

In order to visibilize the roots of the confrontations that colonize subjects through totalitarian discourses, imbued with monological and anti-democratic lessons, we resorted, in this study, to some Foucaultian insights in the methodological field when we approach archeology and genealogy to analyze the discourse of the “movement” Escola Sem Partido, which aims to criminalize the political bias of education, censor freedom of expression and silence debates arising from gender issues in Brazilian schools.

We understand that the Foucauldian methodological path of discursive mapping is a potent field to “account” for the objectives of the study, since, according to the author’s definition: “archeology is the proper method of analysis of local discourse, genealogy is the tactic that, based on the local discourse described above, activates the knowledge freed from subjection that emerge from that discourse”⁵² (^{FOUCAULT, 2016}, p. 270, own translation). Therefore, we find, in the Foucaultian theoretical framework, clues to deal with the emergence of the generalized statements linked to the ESP.

In order to understand the archaeological and genealogical biases of the discourse underlying the Escola Sem Partido “movement”, we understand that analyzing files linked to their articulation, as well as files produced by the group’s supporters, would be essential insofar as the investigative path would allow to observe the emergence of statements and analyze the “will to truth” that they bring with them, since, for ^{Foucault (1977}), truth is a concept located in time and space, historically elaborated according to a certain ethical code.

We then returned to our analysis to identify gender lessons, in order to perceive to visibilize the interferences of/on the ESP discourse in relation to schooled subjects.

In our analysis we understand that, by denying the gender debate and even the conception of gender from a feminist perspective, Escola Sem Partido refers to knowledge and discursive fields that are not new as the specific manifestations of the organization itself, thus self-named from the 2004.

In addition, we observe that, in the name of morality and family, they stratify subjects through certain behaviors agreed by the patriarchy, condemn sexualities not consistent with heteronormative parameters, dis(re)criminalize subjects whose identities do not conform to Christian and/or conservative values, institutionalize roles, usurp rights (especially that of women), among other forms of attacks on full citizens, free from stereotyping. In this sense, we observed, even, discursive emergencies that show inference, on the part of the ESP, poorly articulated between the inclusion of the gender debate in the feminist perspective and the supposed will of destruction of the family.

As analytical clues to this finding, we had the electoral process involved in the latest presidential contests. From the political coup that led to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and its misogynistic nature, to the mutual support, expressed through campaigns, between the PSL, the political party of the current president Jair Bolsonaro, and the, at the time, the first state congressperson, Flávio Bolsonaro, advancing the umbrella of “movement” propositions as PL.

We must, therefore, recognize that we are facing discourses and mechanisms that reverberate in the subjects’ schooling processes in a nothing subtle and modest way, as pointed out by ^{Foucault (1987}), reaching the triumphant dimension of the rituals of large State apparatus. In addition to the statements emerging from the discursive web in question, we are facing a government that elects as the Minister, said, of Human Rights a lady who intends to dictate what girls and boys should wear, determining in a pronouncement the color of the “appropriate” clothes for each kid; public school managers defending militarization rites in schools; a media marked by the concentration of radio and TV concessions under the power of religious and conservative groups that forcefully reproduce their ideologies disregarding the principles of State secularism; and the very dissemination of anti-gender media spreading from the legislative to the educational sphere, such as the umbrella of proposals and onslaughts by Escola Sem Partido.

In view of the above, we consider that ESP ideologists are, in practice, what they recriminate: “indoctrinators”. Thus, we share the results of our study in order to contribute to the confrontation of policies based on discourses derived from these conservative, prejudiced, exclusionary roots, which diminish identities and forms of expression of being through normative processes, especially those related to gender, which invade the most intimate aspects of identities, aiming to predetermin the subjects’ behavior, experiences and situationality.