Dangerous Subjects and Discourses of Childhood: 'Child as Method’ for Analysing Section 28 (1988) and LGBT and Trans Action Plans (2011, 2018)

Childhood has become, in past years, the centre of polemic disputes on LGBTIQ+5 rights, especially regarding inclusive education and trans healthcare – all threatening the cisheterosexual matrix and, therefore, crystalised ideas of sex and sexuality. However, children have been the object of those discussions for a long time. With this paper, I seek to show how discourses of childhood, fear, gender, and sexuality are connected through ideas of risk and danger. Children are presented as potential victims of what I call here, ‘dangerous subjects’, as inspired by Foucauldian and Butlerian analysis. I am interested in showing how abstract images of child and childhood can justify discourses of protection, conditioned inclusion, and exclusion, according to different political goals and agendas6 . If nowadays inclusive education and healthcare are challenged, these discourses have precedents and grounds in Section 28 (1988) and LGBT Action Plans (2011; 2018). As we will see, the figure of a child has been framed as an alleged victim of dangerous adults or from themselves, therefore needing protection for an improved future. Nonetheless, images of childhood are used whether they or adults are objects of regulation.