2023-09-24 06:57:00
On September 11 and 12, the Second Extension Conference of the Network of Provincial Universities, “RUP”, was held in the Patagonian University Institute of the Arts (IUPA), whose eloquent theme: “Research, Extension and sovereignty of knowledge for regional political and economic independence through 40 years of the definitive return to democracy”, focused on the current events of a particular historical moment. This significant event for our city brought together more than 80 exhibitors, including teachers, students and researchers, offering a great contribution to the local, regional and interprovincial community. I will refer to the panel whose theme was “Human Rights, Gender Policies and ESI”.
The exhibiting table was outstanding. Coordinated by Dr. Marcela Cena and had the presence of a great national reference, researcher and feminist activist the sociologist Dora Barrancos; together with the sociologist and political scientist Mario Pecheny; and the Dr. Reference in ESI, Facundo Boccardi; who began by speaking about “The post-pandemic. “the new emerging practices in sexuality and digital environments, the re-emergence of sexual abuse and new punitive dissemination practices such as escraches and judicialization of schools.”
Raising the value and meaning of ESI as part of public policies. and even a space for intensified disputes when the object is sexuality and school education, in childhood and adolescence. As an axis of tension, the intervention of voices that challenge adult-centric norms. It states that feminist criticism of patriarchal practices within institutions has been increasing with reports of sexual harassment of teachers or fellow students, making visible deep-rooted sexist logic.
He assured that ESI is often considered a right that has no meaning, as an “empty shell or something abstract, that does not represent a great incarnation when it is precisely the senses that are at play.”
Rights in dark times
Secondly, we listened to Mario Pecheny, whose topic was “Human Rights, gender and sexuality policies in times of darkness.” His work evokes German philosopher Hannah Arendt’s expression of Bertolt Brecht in the “dark times,” regarding uncertainty in the context of life, citing: “…uncertainty poses a problem for democracies.” (N. Lechner, 1986).
Pecheny brought this idea coined in Europe in the 1930s, establishing similarities with the current present, where this uncertainty is accentuated by an incongruent reality for the majority. Interpreting that it is a favorable and fertile environment for totalitarianism, relating it to Arendt’s concept of “the banality of evil”: “people capable of committing great evils or atrocities can be apparently and perfectly normal people.”
Pecheny gave an example of the banning of a mural about ESI, which occurred at a University in San Juan. From this experience the questions arose: do we have the right to Comprehensive Sexual Education? Pecheny wondered if the problem is ESI or the notion of Rights. The Law as something basic. The Right of young people to paint a mural, expressing the need to recognize those Rights that continue to be seen in 2023 as something intolerable. The ESI provides information, knowledge, and necessary tools to children, adolescents, young people, and adults to avoid or report abuse, mistreatment, and sexual assault that violates their rights, not to be touched, or to have their genitals removed. clothing and even the right for those who do not identify with the gender assigned at birth to exercise their self-perceived identity. “This produces panic and problems that are framed in an idea of negative rights,” said Pecheny.
“Right to have rights and 40 years of democracy the question would be: who has the right to have rights? Who has the ownership of having rights? The material and symbolic conditions to exercise rights are not distributed equally. On the contrary, they are systematically biased, especially those related to gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, gender identity, and corporality. That is why we have to think about it in terms of citizenship, politics, sex, gender, body.” He goes on to say that the attack comes towards the Universe of identity, gender, and sexuality. “There is uncertainty on the planet and apparently, population categories. People who are in the world, but are not in the world. Experience that we have already lived.” The idea of superfluous people. Those who might not be there and it is indistinct.
“It is an assumption for any totalitarian, neo-fascist policy of dark times where there are individuals, categories of population, native peoples, cultures, rivers, waters, animal and plant species, minerals, landscapes that could not be there, that is, they become superfluous and when this happens, we are wrong because that is clearly the basis for any policy that tolerates extermination. Therefore, we are obliged to make ethical decisions at all times and in all types of relationships.”
“Democracy in danger”
The circulation of fake news is common. Tendentious discourses are installed that promote invalid reasoning and with it the installation of fears, anguish and madness. These invalid ways of thinking and reasoning make debate impossible and are horribly effective, Pecheny added. The lack of approval of the Media Law is linked to this circulation of “fake news”, being a fundamental Law and even a suspended precautionary one, expressed, in turn, Dora Barrancos, who began her presentation by reaffirming: “It is the threatens a democratic State!” What have been the advances that women have achieved in these 40 years, thanks to the feminist channel and sexual-gender diversity organizations? “I have counted more than 35 important laws that restructure the legislative branch thanks to that demand.”
Among them, it lists: Binding Divorce, Shared Parental Power, Humanized Childbirth Law, Gender Parity Law in areas of political representation. Quota Law, Equal Marriage Law, Comprehensive Law and adds that not all Latin American countries have a Comprehensive Law against gender violence, without going any further, neither Brazil nor Chile. Humanized Childbirth Law. Micaela Law, which establishes mandatory training in gender and gender violence for public service workers. The ESI Law, which guarantees the right to receive comprehensive sexual education in all educational establishments in the country. The Trans Quota Law, which is unique in the world. The Abortion Law, which has meant a quantum and extraordinary leap in terms of the right to autonomy, to not die clandestinely, signifying an inversion of historical meanings, according to Barrancos
He continued by saying that the planet is experiencing an emergency, due to the validity of a hegemonic order that the extreme right is taking over in the world, which does not appear with anything called neoliberal, being that it is liberal, it is the sacralization of the market, therefore, the rest , a complete abdication of the liberal mode. “They don’t read liberals! And for tests, we have some candidates who are out there… They are neo-fascist forces!”
Genre: changes and advances
She highlighted the changes in these 40 years in universities regarding the gender perspective, mentioning the University of Comahue as a pioneer of the “Days on women’s history and gender studies”, the “National Women’s Meetings” and the creation of a Protocol, which was replicated in the majority of the country’s public universities.
He listed the progress made by the struggles of feminist and gender channels, with the creation of Ruge (Interuniversity Network for Gender Equality and Against Violence), in 2015, and continued, emphatically: “The university is being outraged, insulted by the impacts and the conditions of possibility of the birth of the neo-fascist extreme right, producing a synergy between fear and insecurity where everything becomes darker.”
He asserted that uncertainty is a way and a claim that insecurity has, where uncertainty ensures insecurity. He reflects that what is happening is a planetary circumstance. A question on the agenda of the neo-fascist right that he worries about, but also occupies, so that he cannot defeat the idea of voluntary servitude, where the monster scares, but so does voluntary servitude.
He pointed out that there have always been reactionary and anti-rights people, but today they have organized themselves into programs to combat dissidence with pre-social discourses, with the exacerbation of individualism that obscures the entire capacity of the species. “It is the Species, finally, that is being renounced by these discourses, I would say, prehominids”…and universities have a fundamental role in making youth understand this. Who would think that a human being can be human if he is not a social being at the same time? Who thinks that the human being is only a repertoire of goods, which can be sold on the market? Who might think that the human condition is the condition of inexorable sociability? We couldn’t speak without others at our side. Do not allow what happened in Brazil to happen, where people wanted to convince themselves about Bolsonaro saying ‘he is not going to do what he says, he just says it,’” Dora Barrancos concluded by expressing.
Now, and thinking out loud about the impact that the speakers’ words on the topic of Human Rights, Gender Policies and ESI had on the capacity, I allow myself to reflect that, as an innovative Law that addresses historical needs, it continues to be resisted, denied and attacked by those who fear losing possession of that precious object that is identity. Identity as the possibility of deciding about oneself, autonomously, and autonomy as a symbol of sovereignty. A risk, apparently exponential and expansive, for a hegemony of power and, quoting Pecheny, “we have already experienced this.”
I dare to think that identity is a territory of individual but also collective power that is not suppressed, is not transferred, is not a material good therefore it cannot be bought or sold. It is of its own nature. A good legacy of history and dynamic construction, then, a right that is no longer in discussion because it is a historical struggle, which had a very high price: the lives of 30,000 missing people, grandchildren to recover, the war of Malvinas and an economic plan for delivery and emptying, mutilated families and stolen identities! So: can we think of an identity without history? What are the real reasons why they attack the right to our identity and the suppression of our history?
José Saramago in his book “Essay on Blindness” as a literary metaphor, describes us. Therefore, from our humble spaces we act, repudiating any intention or expression that is linked to oblivion or ignorance of a tragic history that we identify as our own, in the hands of the last civic, military, ecclesiastical and business dictatorship, therefore, we do not We want to repeat it again.
We appreciate, celebrate and support the commitment of our intellectuals who help us think and renew hope. We have time to notice what they reveal to our eyes. Because, as Dora Barrancos told us here: “Democracy is in danger!”
Maria Laura Balmaceda
Specialist in Communication and Contemporary Cultures.
1695539284
#Thinking #human #rights #gender #policies #CSE