Conference Program

Italian schools are increasingly reflecting a plurality of identities and backgrounds, however this growing visibility of non-cis-hetero and non-white subjectivities clash with a parallel rise in oppressive, discriminatory and violent acts (Burgio, 2022; Biemmi, 2023; Di Grigoli, 2023; Rinaldi, 2023; Chiappelli & Bernacchi, 2024). In this scenario, Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) could play a significant role in preventing gender-based violences (GBV) through the promotion of self-respect and respect for others, the expression of consent and enabling to seek support when needed (Bonvini and Demozzi, 2024; Demozzi and Ghigi, 2024; Nimbi, 2025). However, despite almost 50 years of attempts of entering the topic into Italian public policy-making (Bruno, 2024), CSE’s structural integration in Italy is not ensured, leading to fragmented, inconsistent and often non-inclusive educational initiatives among the Italian regions (Goldfarb et al., 2021; Chinelli et al., 2024).

Drawing on the concept of participatory action research (Orefice, 2006; Cammarota et al, 2008; Demetrio, 2020), this contribution examines the youth-led path that created the campaign Piacere di Conoscerci, launched in Palermo in 2024 to ask the Municipality to engage in the promotion of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) programs in local schools. The campaign, emerged from a qualitative data collection among students’ organisations, educators and parents on their experiences of GBV, was launched in the attempt not to limit their intervention to protest or awareness-raising, but engaging in a participatory process aimed at producing situated knowledge capable of informing local public policy: the research phase informed the development of a public Manifesto which reached 70+ subscriptions from NGOs and CSE experts, and a petition which collected +6000 signatures addressed to the Municipality of Palermo asking to commit to a publicly supported, holistic, compulsory and intersectional local program of CSE.

By positioning students as epistemic subjects and policy interlocutors, Piacere di Conoscerci may challenge normative hierarchies that traditionally exclude young people from shaping educational agendas, as well as heteronormative, binary, and moralising framings of sexuality that limit its discourse to a private sphere where young people cannot enter. Ultimately, the case invites a rethinking of CSE not as curricular content alone but as a transformative infrastructure for democratic coexistence: by situating CSE within broader struggles over normativity, structural inequalities and the control of bodies in contemporary Italy, the paper argues that youth-led, intersectional approaches can contribute to renewing democratic cultures and repositioning schools as sites where intimate life and democratic culture are co-constructed.