Laura Poy Solano
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, November 14, 2024, p. 11
Schools, despite regulations and protocols, are not safe spaces for children and young people. The violence remains because some practices in these schools remain intact, said Jesús Torres Hernández, president of the Mexican Network for Educational Research on Sexual Diversity (Remieds), which brings together specialists in education and sexuality.
At the first International Congress on Sexual Diversity and Gender in Education: Naming and making diversity visible, convened by the IPN and Remieds, Torres Hernández pointed out that in teacher practice and training There is an enormous challenge to make visible and recognize gender diversity in the educational field, where a heteronormative discipline is still imposed that encourages and justifies homophobia, misogyny and bullying.
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Despite the official discourse that educational centers have to become safe spaces, he stated, they are not, as they remain. various violent practices based on ethnic, age and social class aspects, as well as gender identity or expression
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He considered that a first step to combat these practices, It is not only about naming them and highlighting them, but also about the highest authorities of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) recognizing that schools have long ceased to be safe spaces, and not only for students, but also for teachers. , because there are diverse teachers and we face the same violence that children face from classmates and even from parents.
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Beyond the regulatory and protocol advances that are important, there continue to be increasingly sophisticated practices of violence, through language, very subtle, that try to go unnoticed, but cause the same damage. Schools would have to do a critical exercise, reflecting that each one has a severe problem in that aspect.
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Daniel Hernández Rosete Martínez, researcher at Cinvestav’s Educational Research Department, highlighted that the discipline in schools that is applied to high school students results in practices of heteronormative surveillance that become a gaze that seeks social practices that go beyond the heterosexual parameter.
It is a symbolic form, whose efficiency lies in its persecutory function of students who transgress the parameters of sexual identity considered normal, and it is very evident when the practice of sexuality does not coincide with gender stereotypes.
he indicated.
He stressed that control over the bodies and appearance of students, particularly women, through strict control of how the uniform should be worn, the haircut that is accepted for men and women, and the rule of prohibit all forms of makeup for female students, ends up reinforcing a heterosexual and Catholic sexual matrix that generates new violence
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