University Program of Sexual Diversity
Created by RECTOR RESOLUTION N° 2744/2008-5329/2012
Coordinator: Violeta Jardón
Members: Javier Gasparri, María Eugenia Martí, Natalia Cocciarini, Federico Abib, Adrián Zanuttini, Diego Terre, Virginia Esparza, Guillermo Robles.
:: RATIONALE: Since its origins, the University Program of Sexual Diversity of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEI-UNR) has sought to generate changes in the way of thinking about Diversity, both in terms of gender identities and different sexual orientations, within the university academic field.
Thinking in terms of diversity allows us to contemplate not only the generation of inclusive and egalitarian spaces for the LGTBI population of our university communities, in turn generating tools and knowledge that allow us to build an equality that does not erase or dismiss differences, but also to fight against situations of discrimination and covert violence from which university faculty and curricular programs are not exempt.
Expanding the political and vital empowerment of identity pluralities within the University is presented as an urgent and indispensable task. We work so that academic life and education are developed primarily from the recognition of members of the LGTBI population as subjects of rights, trying to deconstruct the naturalized assumptions that circulate in the daily life of our classrooms and our society, relegating these subjects to the terms of “unnaturalness” or “abjection” (to say it with Judith Butler). That is why our political actions are oriented in two complementary directions: towards the elimination of current rights that are restrictive (or even violent) for the social life of the population, and towards the expansion of already existing rights that, due to a historical heterosexist hegemony, and heteronormative, they do not admit or contemplate access for reasons of sexual orientation or gender identity.
The University, like any state public sphere, must sustain the social, political and educational commitment to participate in the struggles for the rights of gays, lesbians, transvestites, transsexuals, intersexuals and bisexuals, becoming a space that generates education of equal quality. At the same time, policies must be generated whose objective is to provide solutions to the problems of exclusion, discrimination and social violence that LGTBI communities suffer in society in general and in educational settings in particular.
Consequently, within the framework of the achievements obtained so far by the LGBTI community, but above all in the recognition that there are still multiple pending problems that limit, damage and violate the guarantees, rights and freedoms of the community, the Program attempts to generate a space for discussion and reflection that opens new lines for debate and actions (cultural, social, political, educational, legal, etc.) around equal access to education and academic life but without that idea of “equality” erases differences but, on the contrary, integrates them within the framework of respect for diversities together with their visibility. To this end, the members of the University Sexual Diversity Program coordinate different academic interventions in order to introduce the problem through the critical reformulation of traditional knowledge and discourses, and the inclusion of new theoretical approaches, seeking to: encourage research in diversity sexual, include the problem in an updated and democratic way in the study plans of each faculty, rethink heterosexist forms in the different spaces of the university environment and carry out outreach activities to the environment in relation to problems linked to sexual and gender diversity.
:: CONTACTS: diversitysexual@unr.edu.ar /diversitysexualunr@gmail.com
Facebook: DS Program / Web: www.puds.unr.edu.ar