Post-communist countries have experienced of late a kind of inverted sexual revolution. You've heard about the appalling new law against "homosexual propaganda" in Russia, or perhaps the law banning civil partnerships in Croatia, but have you heard of the "war on gender" in Poland? This European Union poster boy, commonly presented to aspiring "Europeans" in Ukraine as the example to follow, has faced a storm of controversy over the issue of sex education. In Poland, the word "gender" has become a giant catch-all term, conflating anything that diverges from the conservative, patriarchal norm – it is on this threat that the church and its many allies in politics have declared war. According to a church official, "gender ideology" is worse even than communism.
The controversy was sparked by "gender workshops". These are basically sex education classes – still hardly available in Poland – which were organised in pro-equality nurseries and schools, where children are shown alternatives in a context where getting married to a member of the opposite sex while a virgin is deemed the only acceptable solution. They were immediately smeared by the church and rightwing press, in a moral panic. "They are paedophiles, perverting our children," it was claimed. The episcopate released a "letter on gender" to warn the faithful, read out in every parish over Christmas. There's now also a special commission in the sejm (parliament), founded by the rightwing Law and Justice party, to "fight gender ideology".
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