“Sexual Propaganda Can Confuse Children.” Psychologists on Gender and Sexuality in the Context of Hungarian "Child Protection" Policies

Abstract

In the anti-gender campaign of the current Hungarian politics and government-media, psychology and psychological experts are often used as a reference point for justifying normative ways of gender and sexuality, especially referring to children. In my paper I explore the public/media statements of influential Hungarian conservative and “progressive” psychologists and psychological associations regarding the 2020 book A Fairytale for Everyone and the 2021 “child protection” law. I’m interested in how psychologists reflected on the politicized issue of child protection and on the appropriate times and ways of talking about sexual diversity for kids. I explore the developmental discourses certain influential psychologists have deployed to debate the thematization of (queer) sexuality for children, and the ways in which these discourses are intertwined with implicit or explicit gender ideologies and heteronormative approaches. I situate the discourses in the current political context of Hungary, in which the division of psychologists come about not so much along professional attachments but rather along political or ideological affiliations.