Authors

Discussion

Latvian writer Nils Sakss (1983) debuted with collection of short stories “Serious Purposes” (Nopietnie nolūki, 2008) and Anton Lavey’s “The Satanic Bible” translation. He immediately gained fame as a scandalous and provocative writer. Nowadays, he is the head of “Adolescent and Youth Psychotherapy Center”. He spreads controversial anti-gender mobilization messages on social networks. His views have been condemned by the Latvian Psychotherapists Association. 

His latest prose work “Higher: Stories and Poems About Growing Up” (Augstāk: stāsti un dzejoļi par pieaugšanu, 2025) is centered around a formation of young person’s personality. The text is analysed through discursive hybridization lens, noting author’s merging of right-wing conservative values with his own marginal identity. The author’s prose supports and simultaneously complicates an anti-gender discourse. 

The protagonist is raised by a superstitious grandmother and mother in the early nineties, and the absence of a rational-thinking father is seen as grounds for the child’s issues. Later, the teenager’s “innocence” and “purity” are threatened, when his best friend takes him to LGBT+ nightclub, which is seen as a scary experience of attempted moral degradation. Author constructs an image of an ethically masculine teacher-psychotherapist. Despite public-school reforms, the young man takes on an emotional role of sacrifice towards a child with special needs. 

The presentation offers an analysis through an anti-gender mobilization perspective, noting the moral panic around the (homo-)sexualization of teens, thus increasing the polarization of public discourse, and maintaining a male role based on care and sacrifice often encountered in right-wing and conservative messages. This prose work is not exactly an anti-gender manifestation, but rather places of contradiction, hybrid and mixed discourses further complicated by the author’s sexual orientation.