Binary discursivities in educational policies on gender and sexuality in Chile

Abstract

Policies produce and reproduce certain value systems which reflect certain definitions of reality; they are therefore discursive activities that help to seat/objectivise/institutionalise some expressions as correct, obvious or normal. We question this normalization, seeking to politicise orders of gender and sexuality tied to sex-gender binarisms. We analyse, from a post-structuralist perspective, the discourses of educational policies on gender and sexuality in Chile during the present decade, studying four documents produced by the Chilean Education Ministry. Our analysis reveals the existence of normativities expressed in an ideal sexual dimorphism anchored in biology, perpetuating the man/woman-boy/girl binarism and heterosexuality as the accepted and respected path for the expression of desire. Our object is to encourage reflection on and deconstruction of discursive formations on sexed bodies, problematising the norms constructed in the past and still sustained; and to eliminate the binarisms that persist in the texts reviewed.