(Adolescent Sexuality as a Right? The Perspective of Public Policy Makers)
Authors: Vanessa Leite
ISBN: 978-85-7511-276-2
210p.
Presentation Text
Adriana Vianna*
This book, originally the result of Vanessa Leite’s master’s research, is built around a question that is anything but simple to answer: how (and if) adolescent sexuality has been conceived and constructed as a right. Starting from this inquiry—which is, in itself, extremely complex—the author traces a disquieting panorama, woven through the intersection of themes that are dear to us for various reasons, ranging from the naturalization of life phases or stages to our political utopias and tools for transforming the world. The title of the work reveals, in truth, numerous intertwined concerns, showing that not only the combination of the terms haunts us, but that each of them—sexuality, adolescents, rights—is, in itself, an entryway into labyrinths of uncertainty.
At times opting for a genealogical perspective—such as one that seeks to show the tortuous and conflict-ridden processes through which the current policy for children and adolescents was shaped—the author brings to light deep contradictions around who the rights-bearing subjects of Brazilian democracy truly are. The shift from “minors” to holders of rights in special situations did not occur without tensions and deep gaps, partly the result of the ongoing dispute between principles of protection and autonomy, individuality and responsibility, and partly due to deeper political, social, and moral implications, according to which these individuals “belong” partially to their families and domestic units and cannot be considered fully trustworthy. The former “minors” continue to haunt, spectrally, the current “adolescents” who are said to hold “rights.”
This rich and necessary genealogical or process-oriented attention, present throughout the book, does not, however, obscure another equally fruitful investigative plane, centered on the synchronic contours offered by a specific body responsible for the formulation and implementation of policies for children and adolescents: the rights councils. The result of the same redemocratization process that gave rise to the Statute of the Child and Adolescent—and aligned, like the legislation, with not only national models of governance—the councils reveal themselves to be loci permeated by other tensions, stemming from the positioning and insertion of the councilors themselves, but also from the inscription of life histories, trajectories, and diverse perspectives.
By focusing her investigation on issues surrounding adolescent sexuality, Vanessa Leite exposes and advances all these contradictions in an exemplary manner. On the one hand, she precisely identifies the existence of a dominant framework through which the issue seems condemned to be evoked: as risk, problem, drama. When sexuality and adolescents are mentioned in the same sentence, it seems to strike a single chord, composed of fear, distrust, and the need for control and vigilance—or, should those fail, of consternation. During her research, however, Vanessa Leite did not settle for simply pointing out the gaps in this discourse. By exposing herself during interviews or public presentations—which became part of the research process itself—she posed to her interlocutors (and here the term is apt, going beyond trendy jargon) the same questions she asked herself. Why not speak in terms of pleasure, choice, desire, autonomy? In response, she encountered silences, hesitations, discomfort. But also productively curious glances, confessions, sincere dialogues. She reaped the best of a well-executed ethnography: the record of a shared process, in which the researcher’s authorship is clear, but where those who participated in the research appear as reflective, questioning, anguished people full of uncertainty.
The choice of this way of conducting and narrating the process allows us, the readers, to see how the concrete management of adolescent bodies and experiences has a fundamentally moral character, revealing in backlight the not-always-explicit conceptions, procedures, and practices of those who work in the formulation of policies and programs for these young people. It is worth noting that the author is able to do so without any form of arrogance and with rare skill, precisely because in this process she also confronts her own trajectory. Far from portraying herself as “outside the field,” she allows us to reflect on this generation of researchers and activists who lived through attempts to combat tutelary perspectives regarding children and adolescents and who seriously engaged in debates on social and rights-based inequality that doubly affected a portion of the population—due to broader social markers and the condition of legal minority. In certain passages, she discusses the difficult process of relatively distancing herself from this field in order to analyze it, guiding us through her passion, her commitment, and her competence toward the most challenging zones of this discussion. She thus reveals how adolescents emerge as a kind of unthinkable character in the context of sexual rights, navigating our most naturalized boundaries, such as those that supposedly separate morality and politics, public and private, adult freedom and youth protection-control.
Despite the richness of the research and the density of the arguments, the book is less a definitive answer to the concerns presented here than a provocation, urging us to leave the comfortable position of not discussing such boundaries. We end its reading with the uncomfortable and productive awareness that there is no easy answer to the plural process of constructing “rights,” and that, as integral participants in this process, we must confront our own assumptions and moralities with honesty, in search of alternatives that are both politically and existentially liberating.
Adriana Vianna is a historian and anthropologist, PhD in Social Anthropology from the National Museum/UFRJ, and professor at PPGAS/MN/UFRJ.
Author: Leite, Vanessa Jorge