Thursday, May 04, 2006

gender wars in Argentina

I'm still editing my thesis and while looking over the bibliography for the hundredth time I had the horrifying realization that I had dissed Jean Franco by only citing a book she wrote in 1969 and nothing since. I think it is too late... but anyway in looking up Franco's work online I came across this:

The Gender Wars

In July of last year, several members of the Argentine planning committee that had drawn up the guidelines for a nationwide curriculum resigned when they discovered that changes to their proposal had been made, apparently by the Minister of Education under pressure from the Catholic Church. Mention of Darwin and Lamarck had been eliminated, references to sex education had been erased, and the word "gender" had replaced by "sex."


"Gender" rather than sex (in this case género and sexo) was especially controversial.

its use "intended to provoke an ideological shift and to generate a new conception of the human person, of subjectivity, marriage, the family and society. In short what is proposed is a cultural revolution." Using the word gender "as a purely cultural construct, detached from the biological," he warned, "makes us into fellow travelers of radical feminism."


Then he quotes Shulamith Firestone. Ha. Kind of ha. Not really funny when you think about it.

Wow.

Absolutely fascinating... I am going to have to at least mention Franco's later work and I feel really dumb for not looking earlier.

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2 comments:

Gabby De Cicco said...

Hi Liz! July of what year??
Everything related with sexual education is made following the guidelines of the Church in this country.
The quote of Shulamaith maybe comes for the quote made by Ratzinger in his f*cking famous letter where he called us: femnistas polimorfas".

Abrazos, Gabby

Liz said...

It was 1996 and Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires, Hector Aguer.

Polimorfa y orgullosa! viva feministas polimorfas!!!! etc. ;-)