Safe Schools and Family Values in an Age of Gender Backlash

Safe Schools and Family Values in an Age of Gender Backlash: Queer Stories, Social Reproduction, and Contested Futures examines the backlash against Australia’s Safe Schools program through an autotheoretical and Marxist lens, situating international struggles over gender and sexuality as rooted in crises of social reproduction and the defence of the heteronormative family under capitalism.

Readers will gain a rigorous framework for understanding contemporary moral panic and backlash about gender and sexuality as historically grounded struggles over social reproduction rather than isolated political disputes. Through autotheoretical analysis, historical case study, and Marxist theory, the book traces the Safe Schools controversy in Australia from the legacy of Section 28 in the UK to contemporary anti-gender mobilisations, offering conceptual tools for analysing moral panics and the structural necessity of ‘defending the family’.

This book is intended for scholars and students in education, gender and sexuality studies, sociology, political theory, and cultural studies, as well as educators, activists, and policy practitioners seeking a structural account of contemporary conflicts over inclusion, schooling, and family life.