In a world for big people, what can small bodies do?

Abstract

The text is part of a masters research presented to the Postgraduate Program in Institutional Psychology of the Federal University of Espírito Santo, presented in 2019 and that proposed to work with the children, the relations and negotiations made with the norms of gender and sexuality. The children approach was in different situations and places but often on two neighborhood squares, where most of the research took place. The dissertation was not intended to use developmentalist theories, describe and classify children into categories, because it was understood that these would also be the replication of adultcentered logic. Childhood movements and cleverness were considered in their power to exist by themselves and through this autonomy it was possible to visualize how they can make a point about the places and identities that adults insist on reaffirming about their bodies through sexual difference. The research results indicated the children can act tactically within gender issues, subverting the logic of strategies that focus on their bodies and constantly place them in the position of an adult in the making. From research, we think about how children can indicate, in various fields of human experience, other ways to relate and be in the world.