#reality pedagogy

[myfutureelaclassroom]

Reflecting on the sessions I did for the Homework Hotline this semester, I recognized one overarching thought that I had after every session:

Students deserve an educator who can meet them where they are, no matter what.

I did a lot of great work with students over these sessions — helped with lots of math, taught a student how to identify tone, and in some cases I just sat with a student while they worked through the problems because they just needed some company. All of the sessions, however, inspired me to put this reality pedagogy into real action. They inspired me to learn Spanish.

For context, I am a native English speaker and only really know English. I’ve taken French classes since I was 14 years old, and even now am only conversationally fluent in it. I often found myself regretting that decision during the hotline sessions, because I felt I should’ve invested all those years of learning into Spanish rather than French. But, it’s never too late to learn!

Although I never had a student complain about my monolingualism, I couldn’t help but feel like I was doing them a disservice every time I had to be paired with a Spanish-speaking helper during a session. I felt like these students were going to great lengths to get their work done, and I couldn’t be bothered to help them in their language? It just didn’t feel fair, especially when I know that I have the resources to learn.

So, all of that to say that I have made it a personal and professional goal to learn Spanish. Although I don’t plan on getting my ELA certification before I start teaching, I do want to pursue learning the language to equitably reach my emergent bilingual students where they are. It’s the least I can do!

[nando161mando]

[theidealistphilosophy]

True philosophy entails relearning to see the world anew.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge Classics) (Volume 85).

[senigayungfatani]

IMACSSS dan GSMACC 2024: Laporan Komprehensif Tiga Hari di Putrajaya sebagai Platform Global Seni Mempertahankan Diri dan Budaya

oleh GM Prof Dr Mohamad Nizam Mohamed Shapie (IMACSSS) Pendahuluan IMACSSS dan GSMACC 2024 merupakan acara persidangan antarabangsa yang berlangsung selama tiga hari di Putrajaya, Malaysia. Dengan tema utama “Unity in Diversity: The Future of Combat Sports & Martial Arts Worldwide Through Cultural Diversity, Scientific Advancement & Professionalism in Governance”, acara ini menjadi platform…

[szczekaczz]

started a book about the post-ww2 and soviet trauma of poland and ouch that hurts

[txttletale]

niceys positive anon!! i don't agree with you on everything but you are so clearly like well read and well rounded that you've helped me think through a lot of my own inconsistencies and hypocrises in my own political and social thought, even if i do have slightly different conclusions at times then u (mainly because i believe there's more of a place for idealism and 'mind politics' than u do). anyway this is a preamble to ask if you have recommended reading in the past and if not if you had any recommended reading? there's some obvious like Read Marx but beyond that im always a little lost wading through theory and given you seem well read and i always admire your takes, i wondered about your recs

it's been a while since i've done a big reading list post so--bearing in mind that my specific areas of 'expertise' (i say that in huge quotation marks obvsies i'm just a girlblogger) are imperialism and media studies, here are some books and essays/pamphlets i recommend. the bolded ones are ones that i consider foundational to my politics

BASICS OF MARXISM

friedrich engels, principles of commmunism

friedrich engels, socialism: utopian & scientific

karl marx, the german ideology

karl marx, wage labour & capital

mao zedong, on contradiction

nikolai bukharin, anarchy and scientific communism

rosa luxemburg, reform or revolution?

v.i lenin, left-wing communism: an infantile disorder

v.i. lenin, the state & revolution

v.i. lenin, what is to be done?

IMPERIALISM

aijaz ahmed, iraq, afghanistan, and the imperialism of our time

albert memmi, the colonizer and the colonized

che guevara, on socialism and internationalism (ed. aijaz ahmad)

eduardo galeano, the open veins of latin america

edward said, orientalism

fernando cardoso, dependency and development in latin america

frantz fanon, black skin, white masks

frantz fanon, the wretched of the earth

greg grandin, empire's workshop

kwame nkrumah, neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism

michael parenti, against empire

naomi klein, the shock doctrine

ruy mauro marini, the dialectics of dependency

v.i. lenin, imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism

vijay prashad, red star over the third world

vincent bevins, the jakarta method

walter rodney, how europe underdeveloped africa

william blum, killing hope

zak cope, divided world divided class

zak cope, the wealth of (some) nations

MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES

antonio gramsci, the prison notebooks

ed. mick gidley, representing others: white views of indigenous peoples

ed. stuart hall, representation: cultural representations and signifying pratices

gilles deleuze & felix guattari, capitalism & schizophrenia

jacques derrida, margins of philosophy

jacques derrida, speech and phenomena

michael parenti, inventing reality

michel foucault, disicipline and punish

michel foucault, the archeology of knowledge

natasha schull, addiction by design

nick snricek, platform capitalism

noam chomsky and edward herman, manufacturing consent

regis tove stella, imagining the other

richard sennett and jonathan cobb, the hidden injuries of class

safiya umoja noble, algoriths of oppression

stuart hall, cultural studies 1983: a theoretical history

theodor adorno and max horkheimer, the culture industry

walter benjamin, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

OTHER

angela davis, women, race, and class

anna louise strong, cash and violence in laos and vietnam

anna louise strong, the soviets expected it

anna louise strong, when serfs stood up in tibet

carrie hamilton, sexual revolutions in cuba

chris chitty, sexual hegemony

christian fuchs, theorizing and analysing digital labor

eds. jules joanne gleeson and elle o'rourke, transgender marxism

elaine scarry, the body in pain

jules joanne gleeson, this infamous proposal

michael parenti, blackshirts & reds

paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed

peter drucker, warped: gay normality and queer anticapitalism

rosemary hennessy, profit and pleasure

sophie lewis, abolish the family

suzy kim, everyday life in the north korean revolution

walter rodney, the russian revolution: a view from the third world

[kechiwrites]

pedagogy

best friend's brother!sukuna x f!reader kinktober day 6 (cum play)

synopsis: "Underneath him is the easiest place to study the family resemblance. Yuuji favours his older brother like crazy, but Ryomen is bigger, broader, older, and leagues more intimidating."

wc: 2.7k

cw: dubcon, fem + afab!reader, cum play, fingering, pulling out as a form of birth control, dirty talk, pet names (angel), semi public, jerking off, mentions of anal play, mdni.

author's note: ough sorry y'all, big developments going on unfortunately but im now on a cruise so we dusting shit off.

“Yuuji! We are supposed to be studying. You can't just sail through college like you did in high school.” You slap your open palm against the wood surface of his bedroom desk, prompting your childhood best friend to drop his phone back into his pocket. For the fourth time in an hour.

Yuuji hadn't the heart to tell you he almost failed high school twice.

“I know!” He shrugs, spinning a pencil in between his fingers while you transcribe his chicken scratch notes into a word document. Initially, you’d been ecstatic to share a handful of courses with your long-time neighbour and friend, especially since you’d attended different high schools. Now, however, with both of you approaching midterm exams, you’re struck upside the head with the reality that dragging Yuuji with you into the realm of academic success is an uphill battle. You finish off a paragraph and push your rolling chair away from his desk, covering both your eyes with the cool palms of your hands. 

“Maybe we should take a break.” you sigh, and Yuuji perks up, metaphorical tail wagging. 

“Okay!” He chirps and you turn, lightning quick, to glare at him.

“I’m sorry! I misspoke, I am going to take a break and you are going to review chapter 7 and 8, and make notes. And maybe if I feel generous, I’ll bring up a snack for you.” It looks for a moment like Yuuji is going to whine and protest, but another sharp look of censure convinces him to shut up. 

Finally, a wise choice.

He scoots to his desk and dutifully opens the textbook, burying his head in the pages. You only leave when you’re sure he’s actually reading, feeling more like a grade school tutor and less like the university study partner you were meant to be. You close the door quietly, now hyper aware of the noise you make in the Itadori household, lest the ghoul that haunts the halls find you.

He finds you.

“Ah, ah, ah. And where do you think you're going?” His voice reverberates through your bones, deep and teasing and so irritating. You can feel his stifling presence as he follows you down the hall, steps deceptively light.

“To the kitchen...? I just wanted to get some tea.” you mutter quietly, eyes pinned to the floor beneath your feet, turning the corner in the hallway to jog down the stairs.

Ryomen follows you down to the first floor, his body so close you can feel his heat against your back. You tried to descend faster but you're worried you'll fall. You're even more worried he'll try to catch you.

When you finally arrive in the kitchen you open the fridge door immediately, praying he'll just get whatever the fuck he wants and leave you alone.

“You letting him fuck you?”

“Excuse you?” you bluster, your temperature shooting up in record time. He looms over you, crowding in close, until he can hook his finger in one of the belt loops of your jeans. He yanks until your side is pressed into the heat of his body, your heart rate skyrocketing in apprehension. 

“That how he's paying for your little tutoring sessions? Gotta say, I think you're lowballing yourself, teach.” He stoops down to hiss in your ear, and it’s just to intimidate you, you aren’t that short. His assertion, accusation, makes your skin itch, like his leering gaze is a physical sensation, one you’re eager to get rid of.

“Yuuji and I are friends, and you're fucking disgusting, Ryomen.” You pull away from him, slamming the fridge door closed, snacks forsaken in the interest of returning to the safe haven that is Yuuji’s room. He wouldn’t openly perv on you within view of his little brother.

At least, you hope he wouldn’t.

His grip shifts to your forearm before you can make your escape, and he doesn’t start speaking again until you turn to face him. 

“I told you to call me Sukuna.” He smiles, although it’s closer to a sneer.

You take pleasure in biting back, skin on fire where you're connected; “And I told you I’m not using that dumbass nickname, Ryomen.”

He rolls his eyes, and his grip on your arm tightens until it’s painful, before he lets go completely. “You used to be so cute.”

“You used to be…not a scumbag!” You bite, and it’s a weak comeback. But it’s true. He used to be nice, used to walk you and Yuuji from school, ice creams in hand for the two of you. Used to let you cry on his shoulders when you failed a taste or fell off the swing. Now he stares at you with a sharp leer, lips always curled in this infuriating smirk, like he knew something you didn’t, something about you.

It made your skin itch.

Ryomen places his hand on his chest, faux-affronted. “Ow. You know that really hurts my feelings, I thought teachers were supposed to be sweet. Y’know, pillars of the community and all.” He blocks your way when you try to leave, stepping side to side to intercept you.

“What do you want?” You snap, irritation shooting up your spine, making your throat tight. He whistles loud and somehow even that shit irks you.

“How much time do you have?” He brushes his fingertips along the neckline of your shirt. It’s nothing scandalous, it could be seen as modest, even. A simple baseball shirt, three quarter sleeves, clean, thin cotton, but the way Ryomen’s nail scratches at your collarbone makes your entire body shiver.

“For you, Ryo?” Your tone is sweet and sarcastic, drenched in black honey, “None.” You elbow past him, and bound up the stairs, tea and snack long forgotten.

He follows you still, taking the steps two at a time. “Well then I should make this quick.” When you reach the top of the stairs, the elder Itadori sibling snags you around the waist, wrapping his arm around your middle and pulling you down the hall towards his bedroom. You plant your feet, hoping the drag will slow you down to no avail. It takes your fingers in Yuuji’s bedroom door frame to make Ryomen pause. He scoffs, hiking you up and pressing you to the wall. “Fine, we’ll do it right here.” He pins you with an arm against your clavicle, using his free hand to deftly undo the button of your jeans.

“I will kick you in the nuts!” You dig your fingernails into his forearm and whisper, mindful to not let Yuuji hear you through the door.

“Try it, angel. I’ll make you soothe the bruise with your tongue.”

His hand slips into your underwear easily, deft fingers sliding between your folds, you’re only a little wet, (a shameful by-product of Ryomen’s proximity to you, his scent, his voice) but it’s enough that he notices, it’s enough to turn the smirk on his face into a full blown grin. He skates two fingers back and forth over your clit, pinches it every once in a while, until your hips buck forward, chasing his touch. He slides in between the lips of your pussy, rubbing against your hole insistent enough for you to feel it, light enough for you to crave more.

“I wondered for the longest time if you moaned or screamed. You ever been tongue fucked before?” Your head falls against the wall with a thunk, and you can feel a small moan build up in your chest.

“Yeah,” you pant, staring into Ryomen’s eyes, “about two weeks ago, how is Satoru by the way?” He stalls for a minute, squinting at you, you glare back at him, and he barks a laugh, sharp and abrupt and fucks three fingers into you at once. The force of his hand is so strong it drives you up and down the wall in short bursts, making your shirt ride up, exposing your stomach to him. He presses his lips to your throat, sucking and nipping at the skin there.

"That was funny." He whispers into your ear, but when he pulls back, his expression makes you think he didn’t find it very funny at all.

He fucks you faster, lifting his knee between your thighs, shifting your body further up the wall. He slips the hand keeping you pinned to the wall into the neckline of your shirt, and even through the fingerfucked, braindead haze he’s created in your mind, you’re pissed Ryomen is stretching out the collar of your shirt. His hand works quickly, yanking up your bra as best as he can with your closeness limiting his movement, so he can suck at your nipples through the white fabric covering your chest. You shudder at the sensation and your lips part around a miserable sounding moan, one you force yourself to swallow down so you don’t give Yuuji a reason to peek outside his door. You clench around Ryomen’s fingers, your abdomen tensing and relaxing in an effort to push him out of you, or pull him in? You honestly don’t know at this point because his mouth and hands and even the scent of his stupid fucking hair is turning your brain to scrambled eggs.

Like the French runny kind.

You need to come so badly.

“Hear that?” He goads, and you go ramrod straight thinking he’s talking about Yuuji. “Listen to how wet you are. I thought I was a scumbag? Thought you didn’t like me.” He makes you sound so immature, puts a melody behind the words like a stupid playground song, all while he talks about how loud you’re getting, how you cream all over his hand, your cunt leaking down his wrist. 

And maybe you’re sick, maybe all that fanfiction has rotted your brain, but his teasing makes you come fast, hard. You jerk your chin upward and grit your teeth and come, eyes to the sky.

“Oh, oh…There it is.” And lucky you, Ryomen is a chatterbox. He talks you through it, sucking on your earlobe and murmuring to you. “That feel good?” You shake your head and try to buck his fingers out of you. “No, no, don’t fight it. Soak my fingers. I know you can.”

The aftershocks are just as bad, and when he finally lets you go Ryomen brushes his dry hand over your head, sucks your taste off his fingers. Groans like he’s gonna come from that alone. He’s playing it up for your benefit (or humiliation, most likely), you can tell. 

“I am gonna beat my dick raw for weeks, thinking of that.” He smiles.

“You are so fucking-” You smack at him with both hands, leaning against the wall so your legs don’t give out.

“Sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m picturing your tits in my mouth again.” 

“Will you fucking go?” You point at his bedroom and thankfully, the older Itadori beats a hasty retreat, leaving you to right your clothes. And in the nick of time too. The moment you get your jeans back in order, Yuuji pops his head out, pouting at you.

“Where are the snacks?” And it’s not Yuuji’s fault. He didn’t tell his brother to accost you in their home’s hallway, but their hair colour is the same, and he looks like Ryomen did when you were a little girl with a crush and your body is still thrumming with energy you really wish you could ignore. 

“Get back in the fucking room Yuuji!” You shout, and only feel a little guilty about it.

To his credit, all Yuuji does is mutter something about you being a taskmaster who starves your workers before he plops back into his desk chair.

You finish the rest of the study session with your arms crossed over your chest to hide the wet spot Ryomen left. By the time you’re on your way back to your own home, Ryomen has blown your phone up with jeering, filthy texts. 

But it doesn’t matter.

That was never going to happen again.

HHH

Unfortunately, Ryomen had other ideas. Radically different ideas.

Underneath him is the easiest place to study the family resemblance. Yuuji favours his older brother like crazy, but Ryomen is bigger, broader, older, and leagues more intimidating.

Oddly enough, it's not fucking Ryo that makes it hard to look Yuuji in the eye. No, it's the weird, depraved shit he cheekily calls “extra credit” that earns that distinction. Like the time he stops you from sucking him off to completion so he could jerk off into your open hands while you knelt in front of him, lovely face contorted into a grimace below his hard dick. Or the time he dragged you away from another one of your study sessions, just to press you against Yuuji’s closed bedroom door while he slipped two already lubed fingers into your ass. Or the time he covered your ass in his seed after you’d begged him to pull out of you, only for him to snap clandestine photos of you with your face still in the pillow with his cell phone. 

He sends them to you occasionally. He called them “study aids”.

All of it makes Yuuji's unassuming, genuine grin hard to stomach, unbearable even. Makes you constantly want to come clean, to blurt, “I’m fucking your brother, and at first it was definitely a weird, not totally consensual thing but now I’m worried I’m fundamentally changing as a person and I’m scared that I’m forming a toxic dependency with his cock that will haunt me for years even after we eventually part ways.”

Or something.

It doesn’t make sex with Ryomen any less mind blowing, though,

The man takes you apart easily, lifts your leg over his shoulder and batters your insides with startling precision. “Nice and messy for me.” He mutters, eyes on your bouncing chest, every forward thrust he makes pushes you up his bed, and the headboard smacks noisily against the wall. 

‘Poor Yuuji.’

You squeeze the leg not brushing Ryomen's ear around his waist, rolling your hips against his, only stopping once your core becomes exhausted. Even then, Ryomen doesn’t stop, sliding your clit between his fore and middle finger rubbing at you with his thumb. “Tight as fuck, aren’t ya? Gonna make me-” His grits his teeth, and groans low in his throat. 

“P-pull out!” You stutter, beating your closed fist against his arm. Ryomen tenses and has the audacity to look inconvenienced, still, he slides out from your pussy, fisting at the soaked length of his cock, pushing himself towards his peak. You slide two fingers into yourself, not willing to let your orgasm fade away because Mr. Sure Shot had to nut early. Ryomen grunts above you, pulses of his come landing molten hot against your abdomen. From your vantage point, you can see his eyes become glassy and unfocussed, watch him sink his teeth into the soft, pink flesh of his lower lip. He eyeballs the mess he’s left on you, rubs some of it into your skin with his fingertips, smearing his seed into what you suspect are the characters of his name.

Men.

“Move.” He grunts, pushing at the hand you use to frantically fuck yourself, sandwiching his still wet dick between his thumb and your slit, rocking his hips slow and steady. 

His head nudges your clit, the fat tip of his dick sliding over your cunt, using his come to ease the glide. It’s filthy and slick, makes the inside of Ryo’s room sound like a goddamn porno, but your whole body clenches and relaxes everytime he almost slips back inside you. 

“Come on, come on, c’mon.” He urges, and the flush on his face, the heavy set of his eyelids and the rapid rise and fall of his chest all broadcast how overstimulated Ryomen is getting, trying to shove you over the edge. 

You come mercifully quick from it, your body ceding to the sensation, your clit throbbing near painfully. Ryomen grunts from his exertion, and you’d laugh if you weren’t so busy digging your nails into his shoulders, marking him with raised red welts that end in ten tiny crescent moons.

He pants into your ear as you both come down, making the entire side of your face unbearably warm. It takes a handful of shoves at his shoulder to get him to move off you and when he does, your whole body shivers without his warmth, his come cooling on your overheated skin.

 “I don’t know about you, but I think that was worth an A.”

You muffle your scream into his pillow.

support city girls who queue posts incorrectly. reblog what you like.

find the rest of the masterlist here.

[old-school-butch]

What do they think Hamas wants? What do they think Israel is supposed to do? Do they seriously think Israel is supposed to be like sure here you go we are all going to leave Israel and you can have everything? Do they think that would bring about peace? I’m serious. Like really do they think there is anything Israel could do that would stop any of this? Do they think Israel should’ve done nothing and this situation would’ve just disappeared? Americans are the dumbest fucking people on the planet. Hamas wants compliance or death, that’s how terrorism works, that’s war.

Whoever is running the information warfare at Hamas is truly brilliant. The ideology of Islamists has been run through some kind of autotuner so it sounds like it came from a chapter in Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Western liberals are eating it up. While liberals are still catching up on which river and which sea the chant refers to, they still don't grasp that the end goal here is the elimination of the state of Israel entirely. And while 20% of Israelis are Arab Muslims, there are zero Jews in Gaza. The PR people are saying Zionist these days instead of Jews, so maybe it doesn't sound too bad when they say Kill All Zionists but that's just the English translation. Zionism is the creation of a Jewish state. Hamas will call it the 'Zionist entity' because they don't recognize it as a state. They don't recognize it because all states should be Muslim. Israel is occupying territory that should be Muslim. When they say 'end the occupation' it sounds like a call for liberation of an oppressed people, instead of the desire to destroy Israel, kill or expel the Jews and create a Muslim state in its place.

Yemen's Houthi rebels (who are currently attacking Israel) have a slogan "God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam" and I think it says a lot that they take the time to double down on how much they hate Jews/Israel instead of a single 'Houthis are great!' thrown into their own slogan.

The Islamists have noted the 'anti-colonial' rhetoric in Western universities and capitalized on it by positioning Israel as a proxy for the West and thus a scapegoat for the West's sins of imperialism. It does rely on some very old anti-Semitic tricks - because Jews assimilate fairly well (because they don't have an evangelical aspect to the faith) they are both within a culture and othered from the culture - the perfect scapegoat. Many liberals shrugged when the Nazis marching in Charlottesville chanted "Jews will not replace us" but the suspicion that Jews control the media, capitalism, also socialism, Hollywood (and any other center of power you can imagine) runs very deep in Western cultural anxiety. Imagining Israel as a prowerful villian is all too easy when you're primed to believe that.

A wild example of this is how Westerners view Israel as a colonialist power rather than a gathering point for religious refugees. The reality that Jews originated from the land of JUDEA should not be hard to grasp, but is conveniently ignored. The fact that they've negotiated with colonial powers like Britain and the UN is viewed as a sign of political power, even though the main goal of those colonial powers was to prevent Jewish refugees from flooding their own countries. And the memory that the post WW2 boost in political heft came at the price of the Holocaust in Europe, seems to have been lost. The reality that most Israelis are Jewish refugees expelled from Muslim countries, is conveniently ignored. There are enough white faces and dual citizens in Israel for guilty Westerners to find a convenient scapegoat to do all that decolonizing and let themselves be destroyed for our sins. Not that anyone is thinking that hard about it, it just feels right, because it's safe and convenient to accept blame and then shift it to someone else - no matter how many land acknowledgements they crank out.

I guess Westerners think colonizing is something only white people do, and they are blissfully unaware of the size and scope of the Arab Islamic Empires of the past. And also apparently unaware that Islamists explicitly say they want to recreate that empire. Zionists want a single state - and I have a lot of issues with the idea of a religious state at all, but no one can accuse Jews of ever having or wanting to create an Empire. Israel might be criticized for not having a more liberal democractic state, but Hamas isn't even trying to create one. It wants a single Muslim state occupying their entire region, where Jews are killed or expelled and Islamists can consolidate regional power - that's their goal. But the slogan is 'end the occupation' which sounds way nicer than 'end the occupation of land of Israel by Jews so we can make an Islamic state in its place and kill all the Jews who don't run away fast enough.'

Maybe it's that most Westerners don't live in a theocracy, and have no sense of just how controlling and energetic theocratic societies can be, that they can't grasp the idea of global jihad and what that really means. "The Caliphate is the answer" is written in Arabic on protest signs, flying under the radar of English-speakers and certainly not seen as hate speech, but when people tell you they want to establish a global world order under Islamic rule, and are actively coordinating their efforts between states and regions - you should believe them. Moderation is apostasy, punishable by death. Anyone negotiating with Israel faces opposition from more radical Islamists ready to take their place. This is why Islamists spend most of their time attacking more moderate Islamic states and leaders. And by 'moderate' I mean the Taliban, which can barely set up a state in Afghanistan - because it means diverting resources from expanding and conquering other areas. A group called ISIS-K is trying to overturn the Taliban to bring back the glory days of the Khorason, an entity so sprawling it would involve invading China, Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, which would undoubtedly spark a global conflict. That doesn't phase them. Hamas can barely control the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which rejects any peace accords with Israel including the Oslo accord. Dying as a martyr is the highest achivement - eternal war is not a problem. The Islamic world is failing to contain radical movements it created and supported for its own interests.

The Palestinians are a good microcosm of this. When Israel declared independence in 1948, the region was invaded by its neighbors. The war ended with Jordan occupying the West Bank and Egypt occupying Gaza and normally the people living there would have been absorbed into these countries, or created a self-governed state. Instead Palestinians, as a group, were created as a stateless people. They didn't want to form a state within the boundaries determined by the war, but instead remain as refugees from a war and promised the 'right of return' i.e. that Israel would be returned to them. Importantly, the war didn't have a declared end. It's still happening, which is how they are still refugees 75 years later. And they live in 'refugee camps', otherwise known as buildings and towns, but it's all temporary in this narrative. Does no one wonder why the pro-Palestinian rallies call for a ceasefire and not for peace? Peace is not desired, just a pause in fighting until they can regroup and try again.

A separate reality was created where the 1948 war is still happening, Israel is not real, it's a 'Zionist entity' occupying the land and that refugees includes everyone displaced by the 'ongoing' war, and all their descendants are refugees too because they have nowhere to live - because where they are living is just temporary. And ‘all they want is to go home’ (but not their current home for 3 generations, the home back in Israel ofc). In this world, they all have to right to live in the region that the zionist entity is occupying, where their duty is to establish a Muslim state. The purpose of this fiction is to create a perpetual problem for Israel, a stateless population whose entire existence is focused on them eventually overthrowing Israel. But it's had unexpected effects.

Palestinian refugees have been more than willing to bring violence to any country that has taken them in as immigrants. Their nationalists have a long list of assassinations of anyone who supports a peace treaty with Israel, including the King of Jordan, the former prime minister of Lebanon, Robert F Kennedy and more. They've also started a civil war in Jordan until they were expelled to Lebanon, where they hijacked a series of international flights and started a civil war there that lasted for 15 years. Palestinians living as refugees in Kuwait aided Saddam Hussein's invading army until they were expelled when his regime fell. These are the reasons none of Israel's neighbor's will accept any more Palestinian refugees, but the Islamist problem remains for any country in its path. What I have found most disturbing among feminists on Tumblr, however, is the complete wilful ignorance about Islamist ideology and its relationship to women. You think you’re ok with the Quran? Read it. There aren't many religions founded by a conqueror who wanted to rule the world. Read what it says about conquest, murder, torture, raping and enslaving non-Muslim women. Arab slave traders castrated men and bred female slaves who were kept as captive wives. Using sexual violence as a tool of war and as a reward for Islamic fighters is long documented and continues today. The birth rate in Gaza is about 5 children per woman and frequently exhorted to be higher. Why? Arafat said it most clearly ‘the womb of the Palestinian woman is the weapon that will defeat Israel.' Population and fertility are part of the political landscape and Islamist strategy. It's how Lebanon went from being a Christian majority country to a Muslim majority country today. There is no reason whatsoever that feminists - who have not shied away from criticizing the sexism of Christianity or Judaism - should mince words when it comes to criticizing Islam in the strongest possible terms. Islamists - who combine Islam with a goal for global dominance - should ring every alarm bell we have.

[communist-ojou-sama]

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world

-Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

[recomvery]

GET TO KNOW ME

About me

My name is Caroline and I am 28 years old. I live in France with my fiancé Raphael (who is the love of my life) and his family on the countryside. I am currently finishing up a bachelor degree in early childhood and pedagogy at Uni and want to do a Masters in counseling. My biggest dream is to one day be a licensed counselor, have an office at home and my own business counseling people online, which lead me to create this blog and spread positivity and encourage people to be gentle to themselves. My passion is helping people accept and love themselves ♡ My biggest hobby is reading fluffy little romance books (about cowboys) on my kindle and relax at home with my cat Ursa. My favorite tv shows are Gilmore Girls, Jane the virgin, adventure time, and silly dating reality tv shows. I am neurodivergent & queer, I like to draw, film youtube videos, and make friends online.

Fun facts:

- I always wanted to get back into Taylor swift as I loved her as a child but I keep putting it off

- I don't like sad media of any form

- I am scared of Zeppelins and how big the Eifel tower is

- I love stardew valley

- pink roses are my favorite

- I'm literally incapable of doing math

- I like reading children's books

Links

YOUTUBE CHANNEL

[gothhabiba]

As noted in post-colonial and gender studies, there has long been a pattern of homogenizing and victimizing discourses, particularly in international agencies and NGO’s, that highlight the need of Western nations to intervene on behalf of “third-world women” and “save” them (Spivak 1988; Wood 2001). Robinson-Pant [notes] that it is common for women’s literacy programs, in particular, to become the gateway for other development interventions such as family planning or child nutrition. Collins and Blot note that literacy projects are not power neutral and argue that,

the interconnectedness of literacy, power and identity formation are unavoidable in thinking about relationships between colonizers and colonized. Colonized discourses often emphasize the “inherent” goodness of bringing education, enlightenment and civilization to formerly savage peoples – literacy becomes a legitimizing narrative for other colonial projects (2003:21)

Such positions were evident in U.S. government discourses about literacy and development during the time the Passerelle program was being developed [in Morocco]. This can be seen for example, in a speech made in 2006 by Dr. Paula Dobriansky, the former U.S. Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs, in which she advocated for better education for adult women in developing contexts. In her speech, Dobriansky argued that women and girls should be viewed as “untapped resources” and “vital sources of human capital” for future economic and social growth (Dobriansky 2006).

Thus, in addition to gender, of central importance to understanding the power structures and ideologies underpinning USAID’s Passerelle methodology[] is a consideration of how discourses about literacy often link it up to notions of social and economic development. Collins and Blot (2003) identify these discourses as forming the “Literacy Thesis” [...]. They explain that,

the central claims of the [literacy] thesis are that writing is a technology that transforms human thinking, relations to language, and representations of tradition, a technology that also enables a coordination of social action in unprecedented precision and scale, thus enabling the development of unique social and institutional complexity (Collins and Blot 2003:17)

Numerous critiques of the literacy thesis [...] have since questioned whether literacy can in fact be viewed as a universal, unitary skill that is determinate of social realities or if it is rather embedded in and shaped by the particular, historically contingent cultural contexts in which multiple literacies can occur. [...] Despite [...] challenges to the literacy thesis, its pervasiveness in academic literature, development agendas and the pedagogy of local literacy programs in Morocco is striking.

Given the 2004 Free Trade agreement between the U.S. and Morocco, the emphasis on relationships between literacy and economic forces by U.S. officials, such as [...] Dobriansky, is not unexpected. Prendergast (2003) for example, has argued that since literacy is usually acquired in relation to institutions, it is necessary to consider what other functions these institutions serve. A significant portion of American financial and pedagogical support for adult literacy education in Morocco is funneled through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), as illustrated by the Passerelle program. Among USAID’s “strategic objectives and goals” in 2006, was the goal of “Democracy and Economic Freedom in the Muslim World,” a plan, which “[confronts] the intersection of traditional and transnational challenges… [combining]… diplomatic skills and development assistance to act boldly to foster a more democratic and prosperous world integrated into the global economy.” Thus, any literacy promotion by USAID in Morocco should be considered in light of its broader mission statements and how increased literacy in Morocco is being imagined to align advantageously with them. USAID’s role and interest in promoting literacy in Morocco, can also viewed as a form of literacy sponsorship (Brandt 2001). Brandt explains that sponsors of literacy should be understood as “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold, literacy – and gain advantage by it in some way” (19). [...] Furthermore, Brant notes that, “in whatever form, sponsors deliver the ideological freight that must be borne for access to what they have” (20). In addition to transmitting ideological freight, perhaps indirectly, regarding language varieties and scripts, USAID also explicitly imposes ideological frameworks regarding notions of gender roles and human rights through the inclusion of Moudawana [Moroccan Family Legal Code] content in the Passerelle classroom.

— Jennifer Lee Hall, Debating Darija: Language Ideology and the Written Representation of Moroccan Arabic in Morocco (PhD dissertation), 2015, pp. 76-9.

[solarpunkbusiness]

In a time marked by crises, learning to be one with the world is increasingly essential. In many ways, our everyday lives are linked with all other life on Earth. People are constantly connected to their surrounding reality through, for example, the food they eat and the air they breathe.

The current political strategy for a sustainable future emphasises economic and technological progress, but that is not enough. Learning is needed, too. A learning society relies on changes in its citizens’ values, beliefs and worldviews.

“How we become aware of our everyday connection to other people and nature at the level of our emotions, body and mind stands at the core of the sustainability transition,”

Having an experience of belonging to and being part of the world strengthens people’s sense of meaningfulness and their agency needed in building a sustainable future.

A sustainable future is not about life becoming more miserable – it’s about life becoming richer and more meaningful as hope for the future grows stronger.

Science says so

Arto O. Salonen, Erkka Laininen, Juha Hämäläinen, Stephen Sterling. A Theory of Planetary Social Pedagogy. Educational Theory 73 no 4 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12588

[probablyasocialecologist]

“Race” as a biological concept may not be real, but the racism it cultivated is very much so — and its persistence is not a function of failed pedagogy, but the tenacity with which certain groups guard their power. Race, after all, created whole hierarchies of humanity, doling out both privilege and oppression. It continues to allot and restrict. The atrocities committed in the service of maintaining racial hierarchies not only implicate ancestors, they indict current privileges, too. ‍ And yet I see no indication that any real accounting, any true reckoning, is underway. Science may march forward, but in too many ways we remain mired in the bigotry of the past. And as much as I want to believe it possible, I am no more aware of a pedagogical path to racial enlightenment and racial egalitarianism than Du Bois was generations ago — at least not by way of science. We already know enough. The evidence is plain. Ignorance is not the impediment. Something else is in the way. ‍ The failure to abandon the concept of race in this country is not rooted in a lack of knowledge. It is rooted in a persistent urge for dominance. And until we reckon with that urge, science is unlikely to deliver us. 

[sonicismyboyfriend]

"The sectarian of whatever persuasion, blinded by irrationality, does not (or cannot) perceive the dynamic of reality—or else misinterprets it. The rightist sectarian… wants to slow down the historical process, to “domesticate” time and thus to domesticate men and women."

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire

[historicalfightingguide]

"Fighting is one of the most unpredictable, chaotic sports on the planet yet you have coaches that think the tire drill is effective because they saw it in a Rocky movie. A lot of gyms outside of the ones producing good to great competitors treat fighting like it is a closed sport when in reality, the best knowledge I have gained for my training and coaching has come from basketball drilling & conditioning methods and not methods I’ve received from coaches who focus exclusively on combat sports because many combat sports have almost no extensive theory or pedagogy and treats fighting like a multiple-choice exam. The way many participants view combat sports is entirely wrong because they completely undervalue how much environmental factors play a large role in one’s fighting ability regardless of how they look on the pads or in the gym. Even at the highest level of fighting, you’ll have athletes get paid to fight under a certain ruleset such as in a cage, and never train once inside a cage throughout their whole fight camp leaving them at a tremendous disadvantage that will get exposed even if there is early success prepping in that manner."

Extra relevant for historical fighting where we should be extra careful about context or environmental factors, and with the diversity of rulesets and training areas we could learn a lot by both participating in it all whenever we can, and from picking up ideas from other sports that happen in a variety of competition spaces, or dances from various different social contexts etc.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Some advice on how to start studying the sources generally can be found in these older posts

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Fear is the Mind Killer: How to Build a Training Culture that Fosters Strength and Resilience by   Kajetan Sadowski   may be relevant as well.

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“How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach & Practice Sports Skills”  by Rob Gray  as well as this post that goes over the basics of his constraints lead, ecological approach.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Trauma informed coaching and why it matters

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Look at the previous posts in relation to running and cardio to learn how that relates to historical fencing.

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Why having a systematic approach to training can be beneficial

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Why we may not want one attack 10 000 times, nor 10 000 attacks done once, but a third option.

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How consent and opting in function and why it matters.

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More on tactics in fencing

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Open vs closed skills

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The three primary factors to safety within historical fencing

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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And if you train any weapon based form of historical fencing check out the ‘HEMA game archive’ where you can find a plethora of different drills, focused sparring and game options to use for effective, useful and fun training.

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Check out the cool hemabookshelf facsimile project.

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For more on how to use youtube content for learning historical fencing I suggest checking out these older posts on the concept of video study of sparring and tournament footage.

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Consider getting some patches of this sort or these cool rashguards to show support for good causes or a t-shirt like to send a good message while at training.

[marxonculture]

A Quick Note on 'Jewface', Maestro and Oppenheimer

Given that my presence on this platform is filtered specifically through the lens of Jewishness in film, and that I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the Jewish identity of Leonard Bernstein – the subject of Bradley Cooper’s controversial upcoming film, Maestro – I thought I’d weigh in on the current discourse.

For those who are unaware, one of the biggest films due to premier as part of this year’s autumn film festival season is Bradley Cooper’s Maestro. The film is said to be a non-traditional biopic of 20th century American composer Leonard Bernstein, focusing largely on his complex relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegre. Controversy has arisen around the Netflix production due to images from the trailer featuring Bradley Cooper as Bernstein wearing an enlarged prosthetic nose. Voices within and outside Jewish communities have loudly criticised Cooper for caricaturing Jewishness, using the term ‘Jewface’ which describes the act of a goyische (non-Jewish) actor using prosthetics to make themselves look more like a cartoonish, imagined Jew.

While it is true that Bernstein did own a decent sized schnoz, the prosthetic utilised by Cooper is significantly bigger, and more defined than the nose was in reality. From a personal standpoint, I do find the use of this prosthetic to be pretty discomforting, but I think it speaks more to Cooper’s insecurity about the size of his own nose, which is a lot bigger than perhaps he would like to admit (and not too dissimilar to Bernstein’s actual nose!), than it does about his perception of Jews. That being said whether it was his intention to cartoonify Jewishness or not, Cooper has ruffled feathers in a way that is crass rather than substantive. Bernstein’s living relatives have come out in support of Cooper and his decision to use the prosthetic, saying that Bernstein would not have minded, but I think their statement rather misses the point. The nose is not about Bernstein himself, but about highly visible representations of a tiny minority that are stereotypical and incredibly reductive.

Funnily enough, however, Cooper’s use of ‘Jewface’ is the element of Maestro that bothers me the least. I have been fairly vocal since the film’s announcement about how I believe the production as a whole to be a pretty catastrophically bad idea. Leonard Bernstein is my number one creative hero – as a composer, public intellectual and educator, I don’t think there has been a single Jewish figure in American history who has had more of a positive impact on culture.

As I mentioned, I have written extensively about Bernstein in an academic context, and in researching him, it became clear to me just how vitally important his Jewish identity was to him throughout his life. It informed his music (even West Side Story, which was initially conceived as a story about Jews and Catholics on the Lower East Side of Manhattan), and his role as an educator (he often described his pedagogy as rabbinic in nature), and he was deeply, foundationally affected upon learning about the realities of the Holocaust which caused what he described as ‘aporia’, a state of being where he was too overwhelmed to write a single word for years. Bernstein’s complicated relationship to sexuality was also hugely significant in his life. There is still debate to this day about whether, given an open, accepting environment, he would have identified as a gay man or as bisexual. He had significant, passionate relationships with both men and women, and was an early major advocate for HIV/AIDS research.

My problem with Maestro is that I don’t have faith in Bradley Cooper as a writer/director, to sensitively depict these two massive aspects of Bernstein’s identity. Focusing on his most significant straight-passing relationship as the centre of a film called Maestro does not inspire confidence that the film won’t totally whitewash Bernstein’s Jewishness, or reduce his sexuality to the pain it caused his wife (in a similar way to other reductive music biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman). Cooper’s own identity is significant in that he is starting from a place of remove from the identity of his subject, which isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, but when there are other filmmakers out there who are far better suited to a project like this, both from an identity perspective and a thematic one, it’s hard to justify why this project exists at all in its current form.

Some have pointed to the involvement of Steven Spielberg as a producer on the project as hope for better representation, but given that Cooper and Martin Scorsese – a filmmaker who I have criticised in the past for the didactic, Christian morality of his movies – are also credited producers, I don’t think it’ll make much difference. I’m more comforted by the involvement of Josh Singer (Spotlight, The Post) and his contribution to the screenplay, given his Jewishness and his work on thematically sensitive historical films.

I’m not writing off the film entirely just yet. I had similar worries about Oppenheimer, given the significance of the scientist’s Jewishness in his decision to start work on the bomb in the first place. Nolan and Cillian Murphy, thankfully, proved me wrong in the director’s decision to focus on the differing Jewish identities of Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss, and I.I. Rabi, and the nuanced ways in which their characters were informed by Jewishness, as well as Murphy’s attention to detail in his performance. It’s certainly possible for non-Jewish filmmakers to consider Jewishness in a valuable way (see Todd Field’s Tar or Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza for a couple of recent examples), but the set-up of this project makes it hard for me to believe that Cooper is one such filmmaker.

To end with a little self-gratifying what-if, I thought I’d lay out what would be my ideal Bernstein biopic: a film centred around the relationship between Bernstein and his fellow queer, Jewish composer and mentor, Aaron Copland, the letters they wrote to one another, and the fallout of their brushes with McCarthyism which had vastly different outcomes. I would keep Cooper as Bernstein (without the prosthetics!) because he can convincingly play the man’s charm, I’d cast Michael Stuhlbarg as Copland, and get Todd Haynes to write and direct. Haynes is Jewish, gay, and has a great deal of experience directing sweeping, romantic, dark, and political films. He knows how to portray music on screen and has several masterful period-pieces under his belt, with Carol in particular as a shining example of complex, historical queer romance in America. Honestly, this would be my dream film project.