How we got through,
in nursery and elementary school,
of the “fight against discrimination”
to the “deconstruction of heteronormativity”
and the promotion of
"non-heterosexual orientations"

Here is the transcription of a conference given at the ESPE of the Paris Academy in 2019, as part of a round table, in the presence of the director of the ESPE and an Inspector General.

As the roundtable presentation page says:

This round table is aimed at all students who intend to go into teaching and are currently preparing for competitive examinations whose oral exams regularly raise these questions, as well as all trainees who are or will be confronted with these forms of discrimination in their establishments and classes and are looking for answers to provide.

https://www.inspe-paris.fr/contre-l-homophobie-et-la-transphobie-a-l-ecole

This conference “Teaching sexual equality: Thinking about teaching practices in terms of ruptures and dilemmas” is very instructive on the strategy of LGBT activism in schools:

– First, infiltration and the permanent challenge to authority, under the benevolent gaze of the authorities: the speaker criticizes the institution in front of the inspector general while saying that he agrees with the inspector general… (the speaker is a member of all the institutions he criticizes, he was a member of the High Council for Equality https://www.haut-conseil-egalite.gouv.fr/a-propos-du-hce/les-ancien-ne-s-membres/2015-a-2019/article/m-gael-pasquier). The main criticism concerns " the school of kindness »And« fight against discrimination", considered condescending while the speaker intends to deconstruct the norm of the dominants (that is to say " those who embody the norm, namely men, heterosexuals but also whites"), by developing at school a " critical pedagogy of the norm"

– Change of strategy, therefore: the “ fight against homophobia " was just a Trojan horse to bring LGBT issues into schools. This is totally assumed:

"to move from the fight against homophobia withequality between sexualities requires a reversal, a break, and the assumption that it is a question of promoting positive representations of sexualities other than heterosexual sexuality at school"

Now, it is no longer a question of fighting against discrimination (which would keep homosexuality in a " margin"), but of « deconstructing a social and ideological system, heterosexism », and to promote " all sexualities "to make them as well" enviable » one after the other to children… The speaker can no longer stand the memory of the deportation of homosexuals or the prevention of AIDS and suicide among LGBT adolescents: no, we must present all children with positive, joyful, light-hearted LGBT role models, role models that are desirable! At this stage, it is no longer a question of inclusion, but of conversion. If he wants to destroy the “ standards", it is to impose another, whether he wants it or not (cf. the rehabilitation of sexual relations outside the framework of a romantic relationship).

– Mind-blowing remarks about the law, which must be “ re-contextualized "with the students, so that they put it into perspective" in a democratic exercise". The concept of "democracy" that is thus taught to students is that they must demand that the law adapt to all their desires. Usage " paradoxical " of the law, as the speaker indicates: we must rely on the law to play against it, and make it evolve. We will appreciate the treatment of the question of pedophilia from this totally relativistic point of view...

– A stated desire to break with the following positions, held until now by the National Education system: not to discuss homosexuality with young children, and to consider sexual orientation as a private matter. That's wrong!, the speaker fumes, sexual orientation has a public dimensionHeterosexuals know this well, since they talk about it in their professional environment, and so on, in complete freedom, and in the books we read to children, it is regularly mentioned anyway.« 

– Last point, unfortunately cut short by the speaker due to lack of time: the educational use of homophobic insults. The insults “ are no longer insults", but by a " stigma reversal "They must be repeated ad nauseam to fascinate children, to excite them, to create a transgressive victimology (transgressive because these taboo words are suddenly authorized when they are put at the service of Good): it is a great classic of the workshop to raise children's awareness of homophobia: we make them write "faggot" or "dyke" on the board, in order to " deconstructing " homophobia. But in reality it creates a disturbing and fascinating obsession, it is a captatio benevolentiae for LGBT propaganda. It is very interesting to note that the speaker would like to renounce the ban on homophobic insults in schools, in order to instead trivialize their educational use. This is how LGBT ideology constructs a rhetorical trap in which schools lock children…

These ideas are presented by a lecturer in sociology, working at INSPE, in front of teachers in training and in front of those responsible for teacher training at INSPE of the Paris Academy. These ideas do not represent the "official" doctrine, but a very effective attempt at entryism to guide this doctrine, and in fact this colleague and others who follow his line are already training teachers: teachers currently in training who will be in post for more than 40 years...

« Teaching sexual equality: Thinking about teaching practices in terms of ruptures and dilemmas« 

Speech by Gaël Pasquier (UPEC, ESPE of the Créteil academy) during the Round table of Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at the ESPE of the Paris Academy, introduced by Alain Frugière (Director of the ESPE of the Paris Academy), Robin Bosdeveix (IGEN SVT) and Nassira Hedjerassi (Equality Officer of the ESPE of the Paris Academy).

(Video available on https://youtu.be/gSEInTJVQnI)

My research focuses on teaching practices in favor of gender and sexuality equality in primary school, namely nursery school and elementary school.

When I started, the teachers I met paradoxically appeared to be activists, I say paradoxically because in reality, they were only implementing the official texts of National Education, even if they did not do so with this motivation, but these texts were not applied and, in a certain way, I would tend to say that if these teachers today are undoubtedly more numerous, the situation has not really changed overall.

I am going to give a speech here that is a little more critical of the institution than, well not that one, uh... there you go, but that one, necessarily, that the General Inspectorate can give, uh..., nevertheless I find myself in the presentation that was made [by the General Inspector]. If I speak, myself, of "equality of sexualities" and not of "fight against homophobia" as the National Education does, it is because this term "equality of sexualities", even if it has a certain number of drawbacks that we can come back to, describes in my opinion more precisely what is at stake. It is not only about opposing manifestations of violence and discrimination against gays and lesbians, in the sense that students should be taught to respect differences in a caring environment. These formulations have now become leitmotifs of National Education: "respect for differences", "caring school", whether it concerns learning rhythms or the fight against discrimination, and ultimately one can wonder if they are not understood as a request to be addressed to those who embody the norm, namely men, heterosexuals but also whites, to respect those who are considered different, that is to say LGBTQI people, non-whites, girls and women, and for the latter in a perspective which can often go as far as complementary representations of the sexes, which are still found in certain tools which are offered by the institution.

We wrote it with two of my colleagues in a recent manual, Naïma Anka Idrissi and Fanny Gallot [Teaching gender equality, Paris, Dunod, "La Boite à Outils du professeur", 2018] it is important for us to oppose what we could call the "pedagogy of tolerance", which claims to acknowledge the diversity of individuals, but to do so puts in place circumstantial adaptations or palliatives that are supposed to compensate for the inequality of positions. This pedagogy of tolerance does not take the trouble to look at the very way in which this difference is produced, within unequal power relations, which should nevertheless allow us to ask the question: who tolerates, and who is tolerated?

So, the expression "fight against homophobia" also tends to lead National Education staff to assume that it is a fight against violence that is the work of isolated individuals who personally do not like homosexuals, whether men or women, even though it is a question of deconstructing a social and ideological system, heterosexism, which stipulates the inequality of sexualities and sexual orientations, and which is still evident in France today through the inequality of the rights granted to them. It also seems revealing that, to my knowledge, the terms "homosexuality" and "bisexuality" are never written as such in official texts of the National Education system: programs, circulars, as if it were still difficult for the institution to develop a positive discourse on the subject, and that it could only consider them from their negatives, that is to say the discrimination and violence of which these people, homosexuals, bisexuals or those who are supposed to be, are victims.

So, for me, Moving from the formulation "fight against homophobia" to that of "equality between sexualities" therefore requires a reversal, a break, and postulating that it is therefore a question of promoting positive representations of sexualities other than heterosexual sexuality at school, that is to say homosexual, bisexual, asexual sexualities which would be equivalent to it.. It is about recognizing their equal value, and therefore that the lives of non-heterosexual people constitute equally desirable lives, equally enviable than the others.

The consequence of this assumption is that it is necessary from the first years of nursery school to diversify the representations offered to students in terms of family, sexual or sentimental arrangements, which does not necessarily imply speaking explicitly about sexuality. It is therefore a question of breaking with three representations that have been identified by Aurore Le Mat, and which are still very often those of the institution, that is to say that:

• “Homosexuality is a reality that is still potentially disturbing for young children "It is quite revealing that in this new circular on sex education, not only is there no mention of nursery school, but in addition there is only mention of sexual orientations, in the plural anyway, from middle school and high school onwards.

• Another break: this was unfortunately recalled in the SVT programs of first ES and L, “non-heterosexual orientations are considered as private matters." This is false! Sexual orientation has a public dimension. Heterosexuals know this well, since they talk about it in their professional environment, and so on, in complete freedom, and in the books that are read to children, it is in any case regularly discussed.

• And then, third rupture, "homosexual practices are considered as specific practices, considered on the margins of a more general discourse on sexuality", that is to say that we have a discourse which is posed, and then, at the bottom of the page, we have homosexuals, intersexes, trans people, and we cannot integrate them into the main narrative.

For me, and for us, it is therefore a question of implementing inclusive pedagogy, that is to say that it is really a question of everyone in the discussions that are held at school, and a pedagogy that we will call “criticism of the norm” (I am using Élise Devieilhe’s qualifications here).

So, to implement this reversal of perspective that equality of sexualities implies, it is a question of implementing a certain number of simple principles, that is to say taking into account sexual diversity in the school context, therefore in administrative documents and communication to families, this was discussed in the law currently called "trust", and therefore with a solution that was proposed of "parent 1" and "parent 2", which does not seem to me to be necessarily very satisfactory, nor the one that will probably be retained in the end, that is to say doubling the names "father" and "mother", because if we really take into account sexual diversity but also family diversity, we know that there are a certain number of children who are not raised by their parents and that we could therefore put, as we propose with Fanny Gallot and Naïma Anka Idrissi, quite simply "father, mother or legal guardian".

It is therefore a question of thinking differently about communication with families, it is also a question of thinking differently about daily interactions with adults and children in establishments, by not assuming in principle that they are or will be heterosexual.

It is also a question of making other sexual orientations visible in school materials and knowledge, and then naturally by prohibiting and questioning denigrating or violent attitudes, and by establishing a certain number of distinctions which are quite important, that is to say (they have been recalled) between sexual orientation and gender role, between sexual orientation and what is considered "feminine" and "masculine", between sexual orientation and pedophilia, between sexual orientation and parenthood.

So these entries raise extremely concrete questions, practical and educational questions, that the staff of the establishments must face. I will speak here more of the first level, you have understood. The first case is the one that you began to mention, that is to say of questioning the representations or working on school disciplines, that is to say that, in my research, I realized that from the moment we wanted to work on these questions, children's literature generally became a privileged tool. But it was used in such a way that in fact, we read a book and then afterwards, we organized a debate to know if we could, if uh..., if boys could like boys and girls like girls for example, but in a situation the book became secondary, as if the theme it addressed ultimately came to empty it of its didactic potential, and which means that at a given moment at school, we study literary works. So, one of the challenges facing school teachers is to succeed in holding these two dimensions together. I have made other proposals in this sense in some texts that I have written with Cendrine Marro or Laurence Breton, I will not talk about it here, but it seems to me that it is an extremely important dimension, because otherwise we end up with a situation that becomes a pretext for something, and not something more.

Another very concrete question that arises, in history for example, is to avoid the question of anachronisms. We know that there have always been sexual relations between people of the same sex, in all times and in all societies, nevertheless they are not always approached with the conceptual categories that are ours today, and it is one of the important issues to know how in history, we are going to be able to talk about these issues, uh…, and as a result, this fear of anachronism generally pushes school teachers or even secondary school teachers to choose entries that are rather contemporary entries, but which mean thatWe tend to associate homosexuality with deportation, the AIDS virus, harassment since we have clearly seen that what initially justifies taking into account the fight against LGBTphobia is a policy of public health and prevention, so inevitably always pariah figures, figures linked to misfortune, there you go, linked to suicide, in short, something ultimately that we don't necessarily want to be.

Finally, one of the dangers that this education in the equality of sexualities presents, and the integration of certain figures into school knowledge, is to come to value certain ways of being and living one's homosexuality that would be considered more estimable than others, that is to say, rather being in a couple than single, having children than not having them, having lasting and exclusive relationships rather than having relationships that are not, and then if we move on to secondary school, rather making love, uh..., or at least having sexual relations, when we are in love, which would be better than having them when we are not. And it seems to me that these distinctions are really important to keep in mind because very quickly, otherwise, we fall into pitfalls.

One of the examples I will take, which seems quite telling to me, is that of Jean has two mothers, one of the first books that was addressed to three-year-old children to talk about homoparenting. The problem of Jean has two mothers, you see it when reading, so I read the text, it starts like this, third person: "Jean has two mothers", and then we move to the first person: "My two mothers love each other like a father and a mother", and everything that is done, that is to say that the mother who carries the child, she will do sewing and she will do cooking, and then the mother who did not carry him will be a handyman and like to go fishing... In absolute terms, we could say, and this is the case for a certain number of teachers that I meet, that we should ban it, and that this heteronormativity would mean that it would be a good idea not to use it. I would tend to question this representation. Indeed, I agree that this should not be the only representation, and here we come across the lack of tools, even if there are a few other works, a few works like that, in English, for the same age, which can be used. But, some of you probably know, when Judith Butler writes gender problem, it is initially to revalue discriminated identities among discriminated identities, or denigrated identities among denigrated identities, in particular the couple that could form women considered as masculine and women considered as feminine, women who form couples that are completely, there too, estimable, equivalent and enviable than others, and of which we have no reason to suppress, precisely, the representations that can be proposed. So, it is problematic if it is the only one, but it is not if we manage to put others. The other thing, that is to say that "my two mothers love each other like a father and a mother", it must be remembered that this work can be read in classes which mainly welcome children who do not come from homoparental families, and the possibility of allowing them to establish equivalences between their experience and the experience which would be lived here by a character of literature seems to me, there too, very interesting.

So, what I'm getting at is that it seems to me that we need to think about these concrete questions raised by the desire to educate about equality of sexualities, not as alternatives between which we have to choose, but rather think about them in terms of a dilemma (I'm borrowing this expression from Philippe Perrenoud) or a paradox, that is to say that we don't have choices to make but that we need to think about things that are usually presented as contradictory together, or that can be thought of as contradictory together.

First, problematize the articulation between gender equality and sexuality: we tend to take it for granted today. I'll give you an example, that of Eric: he works in his school on sex education, he describes himself as homosexual and in a certain way he intends to fight against homophobia. Nevertheless, Eric says: "I am in a ZEP where at least 80% of the population is of Maghrebi origin. I systematically show them an excerpt from a choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. What motivates me is that he is someone of Maghrebi origin and that alone is an electroshock for the kids. Just telling them: "this person of Maghrebi origin is a choreographer and does dance"; to put it quickly, it's more of a gay thing, eh, to be clear. So suddenly, electroshock allows for discussion and we can enter into the exchange. It also allows certain children to do things that they might not have allowed themselves to do so easily." You see where I'm going with this, that is to say that the concern of wanting to disconnect the practice of an activity (dance), with a sexual orientation is entirely laudable, and goes in a certain way into something that we can completely defend. The problem is that it is used here by Eric by mobilizing a figure that is that of the Arab boy, who would necessarily be the quintessence of virility, and by implying that not only when you are Arab you cannot be homosexual, but that in addition being homosexual, ultimately, is still less good than being heterosexual, including when you do dance.

Another point that seems important to me is: question the use that can be made of the law and the right, who are paradoxical allies for me for teachers. One of the examples that I really like is a teacher who, in his Life and Earth Sciences program, begins to study the sexuality of animals, but since just before he had studied that humans were animals, well all the questions he has in his class are about human sexuality, and everyone, uh…, panics, that is to say: what is uh… pedophile, and bestiality etc., homosexuality, uh… transsexuality since that is the term that is used by the students, etc. And in the emergency, this teacher, whom I will call Jérôme, decides to sort out what is authorized by law and what is not. Which is undoubtedly a solution that is quite appreciable at that time. Simply, in the interviews that I have, which for the most part date from before 2013, but I think that we could continue the reasoning today with the discriminations that persist, other teachers tell me that ultimately, when they are in class and they say that, uh... homosexual and heterosexual are equal, they find themselves faced with a certain number of children who are quite smart and who say: "yes, well, sir or madam, you tell us that, but the fact remains that in our country, people of the same sex cannot marry." So now it is no longer the case, but overall we know that in terms of filiation, of presumption of parentage for example, the rights are not the same, and so we can see that this leads to having to ask questions about: how law can be a tool and how at a given moment it must also be re-contextualized, in a democratic exercise which means that it is not the solution to everything either..

I think I have to finish, so I'm not going to dwell on the insults, just to say that to me it seems that Banning is not the only solution, that is to say that at the same time we must prohibit because we have no choice and nevertheless, here again, I will refer to Judith Butler, it is important to assume that words will not always have the same effectiveness, that is to say always set the establishments on fire and blood from the moment they are used. And because of this, we must deconstruct the representations that are behind it, and in particular because we also know that on the side of the minority groups, the dominated groups, this reversal of the stigma, this reappropriation of the insult has been a tool, at a given moment, to fight against discrimination and stigmatization. And it is this paradox that we must also think about, in questioning the representations linked to insults, which should make, in a certain way, that insults are not uh… are not insults anymore. So, it is never done overnight in a school context, but nevertheless one must always keep this potentiality in mind. I will stop here.