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Christopher Chiasera
Feminist Political Theory
Prof. Terwiel

Final Paper: Feminist Theory and the

“Parental Rights in Education” (“Don’t Say Gay”) Bill

I. INTRODUCTION

Intuitively, it may seem as though there is minimal overlap between the interests of

feminist theorists and advocates of LGBTQ+ issues. The former camp seeks to secure the

liberation of women by advancing their rights on the grounds of sex/gender; the latter, to liberate

gay people by advancing their rights on the grounds of sexuality/sexual orientation. Indeed, over

the course of feminist history, this latent incongruity in theoretical focus and political agenda has

concretized into ideological opposition, at times boiling over to the point of open hostility:

lesbian women in the late twentieth century, for example, were often the targets of immense

scrutiny from advocates of (particularly liberal) feminism, dismissed as male-identified sexual

threats to other women or as deserters in the fight against patriarchy and oppressive male-female

social relations (Srinivasan 79).

While there is undeniably greater solidarity between feminists and lesbian women today,

it is still natural to think of the activities of feminist and gay activism as, if not in opposition to

one another, at least operating in the separate spheres of gender issues/sexuality issues. I

contend, however, that for feminists to allow for such a division of labor—i.e., to ignore

sexuality and the gay struggle, and effectively leave such concerns to other disciplines, such as

queer studies—is to blunder massively. In truth, the issues faced by members of the LGBTQ+

community are often every bit as theoretically relevant to feminists as they are to gay/queer

theorists and activists. To elucidate this in the modern context, this paper will consider the 2022

“Parental Rights in Education” (dubbed by opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay”) bill recently
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signed in the United States by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. I aim to demonstrate how the

implications of such a bill are highly antagonistic to the feminist political agenda, and,

accordingly, that feminists ought to support gay activists in demanding that it be overturned.

II. WHAT IS “DON’T SAY GAY”?

The Parental Rights in Education bill was signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on

February 24, 2022. Essentially, it is an amendment to the powers and duties of district school

boards in the state of Florida which aims at “reinforc[ing] the fundamental right of parents to

make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children in a specified manner”

(“Parental Rights in Education” 1). The bill would abolish procedures that “prohibit school

district personnel from notifying a parent about his or her student’s mental, emotional, or

physical health or well-being,” guarantee that parents be able to “withhold consent or decline any

specific [healthcare] service” offered by the school district, mandate that “student well-being

questionnaire[s] or health screening form[s]” administered to kindergarten students be reviewed

and approved by parents beforehand, and so on (“Parental Rights in Education” 4-5). What has

made this bill particularly controversial, however, and from whence its gets its polemical name,

is its third paragraph: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual

orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that

is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state

standards” (“Parental Rights in Education” 3-4).

Concern with the bill, then, is a consequence of this third paragraph. Education about and

informal reference to LGBTQ+ issues, as well as sexuality and gender altogether, have been

banished from the lower levels of Florida elementary schools. An already underrepresented and

stigmatized minority has been further severed from representation and stigmatized; queer
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teachers and faculty are no longer able to feel comfortable in their classrooms, for fear of

referencing their partner of the same sex or requesting to be referred to by preferred pronouns

and being punished for it. The ambiguous language of the bill (what constitutes “classroom

instruction”; what kind of content is “developmentally appropriate” for children?) precludes

instructors from cultivating supportive environments where they are able to address important

civil rights issues regarding homosexuality and transgender identity. Though certainly alarming

for activists of gay rights, the negative implications of this, as I will show, should not be lost on

Floridian feminists (or feminists in general) as they hope to advance their own emancipatory

movement.

III. THE COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE: INTERSECTIONALITY

Perhaps the most obvious rationale for feminist interest in the Parental Rights in

Education bill is the simple fact that lesbian women exist. “Woman,” the feminist subject,

sustains itself not as an abstract archetype for mono-variable, single-axis political theorizing, but

rather is perpetually entrenched in other modes of coinciding identity. In other words: insofar as

feminists talk about “women” who are nothing but “women,” they are talking about nobody and

nothing at all. There are only concrete, human women—women who are not just women, but

human beings with complex, multifaceted political and social realities.

This latter kind of “woman,” as a site of many concurrent political and identity features,

is famously spotlighted in the Black feminist lesbian socialist organization Combahee River

Collective’s (henceforth CRC) Combahee River Collective Statement. For the CRC, feminism

cannot possibly be reduced to the situation of the female sex/gender, because many of these same

female subjects face “racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression” (CRC 15). The proper

feminist, therefore, aims to develop an “integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that
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the major systems of oppression are interlocking,” insofar as she realizes that “[t]he synthesis of

these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives” (CRC 15). To construe a woman’s identity

in terms of her sex is too reductionistic. She is always a woman of a particular sexual orientation,

occupying a particular status in the hierarchy of classes, afforded a body of a particular color and

level of ability/mobility, living in a community that corresponds to a particular degree of

environmental health and safety, and so on. When the feminist uses it, the signifier “woman”

ought to refer to each and every one of these real, particular human beings.

In light of this, I would argue that, when we consider the sexual/romantic freedom of

even a single lesbian woman, we have entered the territory of feminist concern. To act as though

she is somehow able to be distilled into her constituent, characteristic parts—that the feminist

ought only to be worried about the “woman” part of her, and leave her lesbianism to the side, for

the queer theorists—is mere idealistic fantasy. Likewise, insofar as the Parental Rights in

Education bill harms even a single lesbian teacher or student, it falls on the feminist to work with

her to overturn it.

IV. GAYLE RUBIN: SEX-POSITIVE FEMINISM AND SEX NEGATIVITY

It is not exclusively on the grounds of intersectional commitment that feminists should

stand in opposition to the Parental Rights in Education bill. While obviously diverging in

concrete sexual practice, queer individuals and straight women alike have an intimate

relationship to sexuality, and have struggled historically to achieve adequate sexual expression.

The bill in question stands in the way of both groups’ freedoms in this area.

Before further explanation can be given to this latter point, it might be helpful to briefly

recount the historical and theoretical relationship between feminism and sex-positivity. Sex-

positive feminism emerged as a central camp in the sex wars of the late 1970s and 1980s, as an
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alternative to anti-sex and self-proclaimed “pro-woman” feminism. While anti-sex feminists saw

sexual activity and promiscuity as conceding to and shaped by the perverted interests of

patriarchy, and pro-woman feminists regarded sex as a strategic tool for the reclamation of

political power and economic security from men, pro-sex feminists “insisted that women were

sexual subjects in their own right, whose acts of consent—saying yes and no—were morally

dispositive” (Srinivasan 81). Gayle Rubin’s “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the

Politics of Sexuality,” from Culture, Sexuality, and Society: A Reader, written in the wake of the

sex wars, is a preeminent work of feminist sex-positivity. In it, she criticizes what she calls the

ideological formulation of “sex negativity”: the notion that sex is “a dangerous, destructive,

negative force,” is “inherently sinful,” “presumed guilty until proven innocent,” “unless a

specific reason to exempt it”—such as marriage, reproduction, or love—“has been established”

(150). Sex-positive feminists like Rubin are critical of the puritan cultural tendency, clearly

influenced by Christian moral traditions, to regard the act of sex and sexual expression as things

which are “bad,” shameful, or deserving of being somehow “kept away” from others.

How does all this relate to the Parental Rights in Education bill, a piece of legislation

concerning homosexuality? Precisely by virtue of the fact that it is not explicitly concerned with

homosexuality—rather, the bill prohibits all serious, educational conversations about sexuality in

general, even in its most abstract and innocuous form. Here we see an inkling of the sex

negativity about which Rubin had warned us. Of course, it is problematic that the bill precludes

teachers from being able to discuss gay issues, or matters of gender identity—but it is also

worrisome insofar as it inhibits the preliminary sexual understandings of children, who, despite

being constantly bombarded with imagery and depictions of war, criminality, violence, profanity,

and death in popular media (just consider video games, for example), are somehow “too
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innocent” to be educated about sexuality. This is by no means to suggest that children ought to

graphically learn about sexual intercourse/sex acts or receive a comprehensive sex education as

part of primary schooling. But it is to point out that the harmless, perfectly familiar concept of

human sexuality—of men loving women, of women loving men, of men loving men, of women

loving women—is arbitrarily treated as something “dirty” from which the youth must be

“protected,” and that this impulse stems from the same traditionalist, conservative perspective

that fuels the dogma of sex negativity. Thus, as a corollary (or perhaps as an antecedent) to full-

blown sex-positivity, pro-sex feminists are impelled to encourage safe and healthy dialogue

about the spectrum of human sexual possibility.

V. CATHARINE MACKINNON: THE DECONSTRUCTION OF SEXUALITY

Finally, I argue that feminists, alongside gay activists, are obliged to oppose the Parental

Rights in Education bill because the subjects each club purports to represent—women and gay

people, respectively—are variously harmed by the heterosexually-affected/heteronormative

character of modern sexuality.

As for the harm done in queer communities by heterosexual manifestations of sexual and

romantic custom and practice, this is effectively self-evident. The entire plight of the homosexual

in society is a product of either heteronormativity itself or societal inflexibility regarding

heteronormativity. If opposite-sex relationships were not the normative ideal of sexual

association, then same-sex relationships would be free to flourish without scrutiny; if

heteronormativity were easy to subvert, then, frankly, gay activists would have done it by now. It

is precisely a straight-centric, queer-exclusionary conception of human sexuality that justifies so

much homophobic rhetoric and argumentation, and which is so pervasive in the way we

commonly conceive of sexuality.

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In terms of the relevance of heterosexual hegemony to feminists, it is not so readily

apparent. However, one possible formulation seems latent in the work of Catharine MacKinnon,

namely in Chapter 7, titled “Sexuality,” of her book Toward a Feminist Theory of the State.

Here, MacKinnon problematizes contemporary sexual conventions that emphasize differentials

in power between men and women, and does so by turning to pornography as a reflection of

men’s sexual desire. Accordingly, for her, sexuality is revealed as a matter of force. “From the

testimony of pornography,” MacKinnon writes, “what men want is: women bound, women

battered, women tortured, women humiliated, women degraded and defiled, women killed. …

[W]omen sexually accessible, have-able, there for them, waiting to be taken and used” (138).

These findings reflect the very real correlation between the predominant (read: heterosexual1)

conceptualization of sexuality and the use of violence. Insofar as two sexual agents entertain

sexual attraction or engage in sexual activity with one another under the social conditions of

heteronormativity, they thereby unavoidably enter a heterosexual dyad of submission and

domination. For cisgender couples, these roles are signified “man” and “woman”; for lesbians,

“butch” and “femme”; for gay men, “top” and “bottom” (135). It would seem as though the

enterprise of sex itself is tainted by the violent propensities of contemporary constructions of

heterosexual sex, inspired by men’s misogynistic fantasies. Such constructions are exactly what

the feminist, through her political theory, seeks to unsettle.

By challenging the basic heterosexual axiom of same-sex relations, it might be possible

for feminists to subvert heteronormativity at its foundations and pave the way for new forms of

romantic and sexual connection between consenting human beings that are not characterized by

force and violence (e.g., a purely homosexual lesbian relationship, in which the “male desire,” as
1 I suggest that, because her disapproval of sex centers around its glorification and unproblematic acceptance of
male sexual desire towards women, there is ample room for an anti-heteronormative reading of this text, even
though MacKinnon herself does not explicitly level her criticisms of sexuality to heterosexuality/-normativity in
particular.
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MacKinnon calls it, is excluded, and heterosexual norms do not structure behavioral

expectations). The Parental Rights in Education bill, however, by prohibiting curricular talk in

early education of diverse sexual identities, makes this exceedingly difficult. Feminists have a

vested theoretical interest in ensuring that it does not stand.

IV. CONCLUSION

While the theoretical domain of queer studies and political textures of the gay struggle

may at first have seemed quite far removed from feminism, an imaginative synthesis of eclectic

ideological contributions from the Combahee River Collective, Gayle Rubin, and Catharine

MacKinnon reveals the worlds of feminist advocacy and LGBTQ+ activism to be substantively

overlapping. In particular, such an analysis demonstrates how the Florida Parental Rights in

Education (“Don’t Say Gay”) bill poses a threat to the intersectional, sex-positive, anti-

heteronormative feminist project, and thereby underscores the urgency with which feminists

must work in concert with gay activists to overturn it.

Works Cited

Combahee River Collective. “The Combahee River Collective Statement.” How We Get

Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, edited by Keenga-Yamahtta

Taylor, Haymarket Books, Chicago, IL, 2012, pp. 15–27.

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MacKinnon, Catharine A. Towards a Feminist Theory of the State. Harvard University

Press, 1989.

“Referred Committees and Committee Actions.” CS/CS/HB 1557 (2022) - Parental Rights

in Education | Florida House of Representatives,

https://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?

BillId=76545&SessionId=93.

Rubin, Gayle. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality.”

Culture, Sexuality and Society: A Reader, edited by Richard Parker and Peter Aggleton,

UCL Press, London, 1999, pp. 143–178.

Srinivasan, Amia. “The Right to Sex.” The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First

Century, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021, pp. 73–122.