By MARIA ELISA MAXIMO*
Political gender violence against female teachers in Santa Catarina
Two years ago, the month of October brought back memories of pain and struggle because I dared to publicly criticize the aesthetics of the far-right Bolsonaro movement in the largest city in the state of Santa Catarina. The virtual lynching, the cancellation, the political persecution and a series of institutional violence culminated in an unfair dismissal from the private and community higher education institution where I worked for almost 16 years, as a teacher, researcher and manager.
It was the eve of the first round of voting and Joinville was preparing to receive the motorcade or motorcycle parade that would end the campaign. For those of us who, like me, have experienced the years that have passed since the 2016 coup at the limit of our resilience, mental health, and ability to organize our anger and resist, that election eve was particularly dramatic, almost cathartic. After all, we were on the verge of winning, albeit with many difficulties and challenges, those years of authoritarian, militaristic, armed and Nazi-fascist escalation that resulted in historic setbacks for Brazilian democracy.
And despite the repressive climate that prevailed throughout the electoral campaign, on that hot and sunny Saturday of October 1st, it was impossible to remain silent. I watched the city being painted green and yellow, with the face of the unspeakable one printed on towels and flags sold on every street corner. People gathered on the curbs of the main avenues, their costumes marked by the dangerous combination of nationalism and Christian loyalty. I felt the weight of those years of a government marked worldwide by scientific denialism, by disregard for the pandemic, and by systematic violence against everyone who did not adhere to its mythomania.
I arrived home and, deeply touched by the materiality of the political and aesthetic tragedy of local Bolsonarism, I wrote on my personal Twitter profile: “Joinville continues to be the sewer of Bolsonarism, where the final residue of the campaign of the unspeakable unshakable has flowed. There is no escape: there are ugly, tacky and fascist people everywhere”.
The moral judgment about the tweet doesn't matter, whether I should or shouldn't have published it, whether I could have written it differently, whether the words used were appropriate. What matters is that it was my right to do so. Freedom of expression, of thought, of political manifestation in a public space where everyone could and was expressing themselves in that electoral "fla-flu". For this very reason, I never imagined that, by exercising a right, I would live the worst moment of my life. The tweet went viral not because of my merit, but because of the action of the algorithms that, by stimulating and producing political polarization, delivered it mainly to the haters.
“Doctrinaire”, “leftist professor”, they said: “the dismissal is coming”. Retweets, replies e graphic works circulated tagging different profiles of the institution, amplifying the pressure for an “exemplary punishment”. At the height of the viralization, graphic works The tweet reached WhatsApp groups, including groups of my parents' friends, professional groups of close relatives and groups of mothers from my nephews' and children's school classes, overwhelmingly reaching my extended family. The wave of hate also arrived via private messages, making my social networks impassable.
City councilors, deputies and other political actors – almost all men – entered the scene. They used spaces in the legislative tribunes and their large audiences on the internet to fuel political persecution. This action constituted an orchestration by public agents in positions of power who, benefiting from the infrastructure of digital platforms, produced yet another “enemy” to be eliminated.
And the institution, ideologically and economically aligned with the local far right, responded to all the pressure by forcing me to leave and, fifteen days later, announcing my dismissal. Between the leave and the dismissal, my fate was in the hands of white men who, based on structural and institutional machismo, tried to avoid major media repercussions. They kept constant surveillance of my actions and controlled public displays of support and solidarity, especially from students.
There was no way around it. The dismissal came and, with it, the protest of students and former students on the institution's campus, located on a central street in the city. The fake news The far right quickly tried to frame a peaceful and just demonstration as vandalism and disorder. The media coverage was inevitable, reaching national dimensions. It is clear that this was not an isolated case.
We were living the election that recorded the most cases of electoral harassment, in a state that, ten years ago, was already a laboratory for political and ideological persecution of teachers. These educators insist on preserving the core of all teaching activity: provoking critical thinking and promoting social emancipation, collaborating in the construction of historical subjects, aware of their realities and capable of carrying out transformations.
The violence, persecution and judicial harassment suffered by Professor Marlene de Faveri, between 2013 and 2014, inaugurated a model of authoritarian action.
This model led to the legislative assembly of a young deputy, a protégé of Olavo de Carvalho. This deputy's political platform is exclusively guided by attacks on education, schools, and teachers. Since then, Santa Catarina has had a veritable anti-education militia. This militia uses the very structure of the State to act.
They are political figures and digital influencers whose focus is to discredit the educational structure – from basic education to university. At the same time, they sell their courses and books and benefit companies and platforms that profit from the crisis of legitimacy of educational policies.
They encourage students to record classes without prior authorization, maintain “reporting” offices against teachers, and present legislative proposals to censor or limit teaching activities and school management in various areas. By provoking moral panic in their large audiences spread across the internet, they maintain a permanent crisis in the educational field.
So we have the Marlenes, the Márcias, the Maria Elisas, the JulianasThe Ibrielas, Medianeiras and Carolinas. Teachers harassed, prosecuted, removed or dismissed in the full correct and ethical exercise of their teaching activity.
The stories are different, the outcomes are varied, but they are all women who had their rights violated. They are women who suffered attempts to silence and eliminate them. They are women who had their professional positions and skills questioned. They are women persecuted by a sexist and misogynistic power structure.
And when it is not the teachers – women – who are the victims of attacks and persecution, it is the efforts to bring into the classrooms themes related to sexual and gender diversity, human rights and social inequalities, quickly framed under labels of “gender ideology” or “ideological indoctrination” by the teachers of the no party school.
We are dealing with a phenomenon that, in Santa Catarina, finds fertile ground, nourished by the hegemony of an extreme right-wing “bbb” (beef, bullets and bible) that celebrates shooting clubs while despising schools. In the wake of a growing commercialization of education, the precariousness and delegitimization of teaching activities are advancing. This serves the political and economic interests of business sectors and educational foundations.
These groups see the weakening of public, democratic and socio-referenced education as an opportunity for profit. They take advantage of this to sell “new” management models, considered more “modern”, “efficient” and “responsible”. However, all of this occurs to the detriment of teacher training, the quality of teaching and an education guided by science and principles of citizenship.
Thus, in the week in which Teachers' Day is celebrated, thinking about the challenges of teaching in our state, especially for us women, implies addressing the violations of academic freedom and individual freedom association and political demonstration of education workers.
This must be seen in its collective dimension and as a responsibility of the whole society. broad confrontation of these violences, with a gender perspective, must be at the center of the defense of education as an essential pillar of democracy.
*Maria Elisa Maximus She holds a PhD in social anthropology from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and is the regional secretary of the Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC).
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