#the pedagogy of conflict

[soracities]

Pádraig Ó Tuama, from "The Pedagogy of Conflict" [transcript in ALT]

[balestrem]

When I started to learn about education and different styles it helped me a lot to grasp the concept of what other people think about growing up and how they intend to treat children in order to raise them. For those of you who know a little bit about education: you might be familiar with the following metaphors.

There is a gardener and a sculptor. Both of them create and form and influence. One does so by external force, strength, dominance and instruments that cut away and might be understood as destructive. This is the sculptor. They sculpt and form to their ideals and use external force to enforce their goals. The other one is using care, applies water, exposes the plant to sunlight and pays attention to what the garden or the plant needs. The gardener adds new soil, here and there they cut off a few leafs or they provide assistance but they give a lot of room for the plant to grow.

So either you’re a person who is more focused on enforcing their agenda and their ideals no matter what or you’re more focused on what other people might need to grow and assist and help rather than to make sure things go your way. Because you can acknowledge that other people might have different needs than you do.

Whenever I interact with people who are stubborn, unable to have discussions or debates and just think their opinion is the best without a doubt I let them be by themselves. Because the only way you can protect yourself is if you take away the marble that they feel inclined to, so they cannot enforce their ideals on to you and carve you like they would with any other stone. Pay attention to whom you spend your time with in life. Is it a gardener or a sculptor?

[librarycards]

can you explain what transMad means to you using simpler words and shorter sentences please? im not phd i don't understand all these citations. thankyou

i can try!

first, I recommend starting with the easy read version of toward transMad epistemologies: a working text. It's not an exact 1:1 and i have many gripes with the obfuscating/inaccuracy-making work of plain language. But it's a start! I'm also v open to feedback on it.

I'm also going to try my hand at simplifying + summarizing the excerpts I included in the other post, in the rough order that I list them there. below is my attempt. it will be imperfect but I hope it helps!

transMadness, redux:

transMadness isn't just, or most importantly, an identity per se. It's a way of thinking, knowing, and being in the world. I got the idea for transMadness, in part, from words like "neuroqueer" and "queercrip," portmanteaus that also gesture at the links between different forms of bodymind noncompliance. Both are interested in norm-transgression, and both don't hold with artificial boundaries between types (gender, sexual, disability, etc.) non-normativity.

What transMadness does with this knowledge is to embrace unruliness and borderlessness as important to how we know what we know. If psychiatry/the DSM establish authority by creating borders and categories for pathologizing us, transMadness embraces intellectual interdependence and ambiguity, as well as willful refusal of "sane" approaches to organizing the world.

transMadness is also an embrace of failure -- failure to comply, failure to "live up to" cis/sane standards, failure to work without friction -- as something generative, not negative. This is something we can bring into our research/relationships/pedagogy. We can embrace it as a feature of our community, and use it to navigate challenging situations where access needs conflict - for example, when bodily autonomy creates risk for multiple marginalized groups of people.

Another way that I look at transMadness is through xeno/neogender identity and community. For me, an orientation toward coinage/invention is a deeply transMad one, which takes psychiatric/medical authority over language and legitimacy and turns it on its head. Xenocommunities/self-dx oriented communities reclaim and transform hitherto violent language to suit their needs and possibly even serve collective liberation. The communities that form around identificatory self-determination are vital to keeping us alive and loved, and to transMad antipsych resistance. In the face of diagnostic practices that demand individual rehabilitation rather than social transformation, this is deeply necessary.

[elekdragon]

I had a job candidate ask if there was anything they could do to improve their application at the end of an interview. One major thing anyone can do when applying for an academic librarian position is to address how you meet every single qualification listed in the job ad.

We have to use rubrics of different kinds to rate candidates, and the more equitable-focused searches try to remove as much possible bias from the search by focusing on data and facts.

You go through and lay out for us that you meet all qualifications, even if you just state "I am [a fast learner/adept with Word/experienced with assessment and pedagogy/a person who loves event planning]" without examples, you will rate higher than someone who doesn't explicitly state that. Give an example, and you rate even higher.

If we have to infer things from your cv and cover letter, then you will rate lower. We are doing less interpreting and more "Does it explicitly state x?" these days, so being blunt is good. We have to justify every decision and every "grade" so we're less likely to interprete things.

You were a server in a restaurant for 6 months? You are adept at handling multiple conflicting priorities in a fast-paced, user-centered environment! You can do more with less! You can answer random questions with a smile! You've dealt with difficult patrons and ended every interaction positively! You know when to refer an issue up the chain of command! There are soooooooo many ways you can connect a non-library job to library work! Please do so!!

So my best advice is go through the job ad, state in your cover letter how you meet every required and preferred quality even the slightest. We want to hire you! We really do! Make it easy on us!

My qualifications: 20 years of academic library search committee experience.

[onetwofeb]

Although psychology and pedagogy have always maintained the belief that a child is a happy being without any conflicts, and have assumed that the sufferings of adults are the results of the burdens and hardships of reality, it must be asserted that just the opposite is true. What we learn about the child and the adult through psychoanalysis shows that all the sufferings of later life are for the most part repetitions of these earlier ones, and that every child in the first years of life goes through and immeasurable degree of suffering.

Melanie Klein

[elen-aranel]

Hello there 🖖

I now watched episode 8 season 1, so I am not that far along!

But I really want to sit down with Sarek and talk about pedagogy.

Michael is just really cool, I love her and her inner conflict is fascinating.

And with Lorca I don’t know, I mean I am distracted by his hotness but also he has a point about how he handles things in war-times but I feel like he often leaves the path too far to still be good

Sorry about my rambling I had to talk to someone! I hope you have an amazing day!

Please don’t apologise — I am always ready to talk about Discovery!

I think Sarek and pedagogy is a fascinating discussion. I have headcanons relating to things humanity lost in World War 3, and I think a lot we know now about bringing up children with adverse childhood experiences, and bringing up children without access to their cultures seems to have gotten lost.

I think the wartime setting is a really interesting one, seeing how far it can push people. But I like that there’s lightness too like parties, and Michael’s unease with socialising was delicious. But she’s brave so she goes for it anyway.

I’m excited for you to watch more!

[bettsfic]

How much of yourself do you find in your work? And do you have any tips for writers who don’t want to have elements of themselves in their works?

this is a difficult question to answer. my immediate response is wondering why? not "why" as in, you SHOULD want yourself in your work, but why as in, what specifically is motivating this question? if it's something you're afraid of or that makes you anxious, then interrogating that fear might be a worthwhile endeavor to push your work forward. facing fears and taking risks always begets creative progress, even if those risks fail.

in some ways, putting yourself in your work is inevitable. language is one of the ways we can depict consciousness, but because consciousness is limited to our own experience, art is the way we communicate our experience of selfhood to others, thereby broadening our understanding of the world beyond our limited consciousness.

which is all to say, anything you create is a reflection of the shape of your mind. and to intentionally avoid that (out of fear, specifically) will only bring that shape into sharper relief, in the way we can perceive white space as the foreground of an image if we look at it hard enough. as in, if you intentionally work around it, it will only become more apparent.

my advice is to practice offering unwavering empathy to your narrators. instead of fearing that they're a reflection of you, see yourself as understanding them well enough to be part of them. every character you write will have a little bit of you in it, in the same way you have something in common with everyone you meet. in writing fiction, your narrator is never you and the reader isn't thinking about you while reading (unless your reader knows you personally, in which case it's unavoidable). readers tend to always be reading for their own interests and passions, to seek out connections that hold meaning for them.

a few months ago i wrote a post on my own conflicting thoughts about self and writing, and if it's even possible to strip yourself of your work, and why you might want to? or not want to? i'm mostly considering the idea of what it means to write in service of the narrative.

if you're looking for a more literal answer, i wrote a craft essay response to research in writing, and also one about not writing about yourself, and also a response to that response.

i also talk about separating self and work in this newsletter.

if you're thinking, "wow betts, all of this is super confusing and contradictory" my response to that is, yes. these are questions i'm constantly thinking about in my own writing and pedagogy. all i know for certain is that it's best to approach your writing with an eye toward possibilities over restrictions, and curiosity over judgment.

[leftistfeminista]

In Chile, why did the implementation of neoliberalism facilitate VPS practices?

“ The implementation of neoliberalism could not have been carried out without a shock, as Naomi Klein suggests, which would dismantle relational ecosystems anchored in popular identity associated with the collective and a society in which certain rights were assumed as one's own and won. A society that struggled between reform and revolution, and that had communities and collectivities at its center as a way of resolving conflicts. This shock, to which Chilean society is subjected, is state terrorism and the VPS plays a fundamental role in it, the imposition of power and a particular social organization through sexual violence on bodies. To subdue the social body and terrorize it, it was necessary to degrade, use, abuse and violate sexualized and sexualized bodies, a pedagogy of horror, which based on a patriarchal sex-gender system, uses techniques and technologies on bodies to 'return popular sectors and especially women to their historical place. In turn, neoliberalism uses these techniques again when it feels cornered, which also function as adjustment techniques for neoliberalism, ensuring its sustainability.”

In your opinion, what is the influence of patriarchy and market logic on these events?

“ I believe that sexual violence is at the base of the patriarchal organization, let’s say that it is like its philosopher’s stone, the hierarchical binarism and the appropriation of the body of the feminized is its deepest structure. In the logic of the market, there is an author that I like a lot called Roswitha Scholz, she says in one of her texts that the value is the man, she argues that the fundamental contradiction of the socialization of value between matter (content) and form (abstract work) is determined by gender in a specific way. She calls it the commodity-producing patriarchy. From this point of view, masculine rationality and therefore its praxis is in the DNA of the capitalist market. Marx’s classic formula is nothing other than a masculine rational abstraction: competition, exploitation, conquest, destruction, are at the practical and relational base of this formula. Note that when I refer to masculine I am not saying men, but the cultural, symbolic-practical apparatus of the masculine.”

She points out that "the relationship between armed conflicts and sexual violence is long-standing." She mentions, for example, the kidnapping of Shibox by Boho Hoha, a terrorist group in Nigeria, which accounts for hundreds of girls who were raped. Are these situations that we are exposed to that are repeated?

“ Certainly, as long as we do not transform the prevailing sex-gender system and with it the mode of production and reproduction in which they mesh, we will be exposed again and again in history to this type of event.”

How can victims continue their lives after the atrocities they have suffered?

“ I don’t think it’s a question I should answer, but there are key elements that we can contribute as a society, for example, ending so much impunity is essential and finding equivalent forms of reparation, even if only in part, for so much damage. It is also important to re-validate and value, by demystifying political binarisms, the dreams and hopes of the people who gave their lives for a profound social transformation, whose focus was on the well-being of society.”

It has just been 50 years since the coup d'état... is reconciliation possible?

“There is no possibility of reconciliation with the aggressors without reparation that is equivalent to the damage, and for this, truth and justice are essential, as well as the end of denialism. On the other hand, it is essential to move towards more just, equitable and less violent societies, for this, a radical change in our subjectivities is essential, as well as reformulating the productions of competitive, aggressive, violent individualist neoliberal desire.”

After reading Nieves Ayress Moreno's testimony, how can society recover from this barbarity?

“ I think it is essential to revisit our history to understand the mechanisms that move and push the production of individuals willing to carry out and plan such atrocities, to create strategies for transformation. I think that art, music, science with a focus on society and not on the abstract needs of the market. Collective work, whether in the neighborhood, networks of friends, social, with common purposes, is essential to trust in what is mutual and to give us back something of another form of humanity that was taken from us as a society.”

What consequences has it left in Chilean society that have not been overcome?

“ It installed techniques and technologies of repression that are reused from time to time in the adjustments of neoliberalism, we have for example in 2011 and 2019 where these techniques were used as tactics of repression and terror. Again to dismantle the collective by installing fear. With this, impunity stands as the historical spectre, which constantly haunts us. In addition to neoliberalism, which has deeply affected our ways of relating and our subjectivation, decomposing and atomizing us superlatively as individuals in competition, with levels of inequality so brutal that they are the cradle of the explosion of various forms of crime and various forms of violence that have us living in a constant implosion.”

Personally, how did this research impact you?

“ I remember that there were nights when I was writing or reading testimonies and I couldn’t bear the helplessness, and I would stop writing or reading to cry buckets. I think that anger, pain and helplessness are the emotions that accompanied me for a large part of the research, and I also had to put it aside on several occasions, because it was so emotionally exhausting. The exhausting certainty that those who orchestrated this horror and this model have a historical debt with the generations who suffered the barbarity firsthand and with those of us who today suffer the daily attacks of neoliberalism, especially if you are a woman, a dissident, or part of the children or youth who live in this country. And I say exhausting because you only see that the consequences of the model are deepening. This research reaffirmed my political position in society, and my role as a professor and researcher.”

Finally… are we condemned to be Cains to each other, over and over again?

“ Within patriarchal colonial capitalism, yes, we are condemned, and what is happening with the growing drug violence in Latin America shows this. But this system is never total, there are always spaces for fissures, and it is in these fissures and contradictions that we can imagine, project and create other possible worlds, other policies and social relations of production and reproduction.”

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by Ryan Hammill | hat shall we say of the suspicion that in aiming to educate citizens, AGOGE shoots too low?

We seek to cultivate mere citizens, and even statesmen; it would be better to cultivate saints. True liberal education should attend to the Transcendent. Because politics is temporal, we betray the liberal arts by reducing them to a mere instrument for attaining transitory ends.

It is a fair suspicion deserving a response, and what is more, it reveals inner conflicts of pedagogy pulling the classical education movement in contrary directions. There is, in fact, a rather (to my mind) charming incoherence in the classical education movement. On the one hand, it owes much to the rediscovery of “The Lost Tools of Learning,” Dorothy Sayers’s paean for the medieval system of education…

[soracities]

Pádraig Ó Tuama, from "The Pedagogy of Conflict" [ID in ALT]

[magg0ts666]

My hc about Gotham because I want to do this (All are about to Oswald and Ed maybe in the future do with respect to the other characters because I have too many):

Oswald was born in Germany but after a while he went to live in Hungary (this for his mother) to finally finish his university degree in London . After all that he decided to go to Gotham because he had relatives there

In fact, the last language Oz learned was English, and when he spoke it, his accent was too noticeable

Oswald uses the pronouns of He/Xe, He is genderfluid transmasc and Aceflux ^^

His aunt paid her for his university degree which is why he had to go to London because she lives there

Edward is Blasian. His father is afro-mexican and his mother is Japanese

Edward was born in Mexico but his family didn't have enough money so they had to go the other side and that's where they discovered Gotham city (very bad choice)

Due to the fact that Ed's family had no money they could not give him his diagnosis regarding his autism and dual personality which caused a lot of family conflict

Edward is Nonbinary and Intersex (these hcs are thanks to my beloved @stryshttu 💗) also is bisexual

Edward use the pronouns of He/They

He paid for his university and his career due to many jobs he got throughout his life which he saved

Oswald has hyperfixes with birds, this I would have to study the Ornitology career, also has doctorate and the master's degree in pedagogy

Oswald has adhd and borderline (also has Napoleon's complex)

Edward has hyperfixation to riddles (although it's pretty obvious it's part of it but not only is his hyperfixation also part of his echolalia) also to adventure games, fast logic and science fiction as well as he loves to put together puzzles, cubes, make mandalas (occasionally), sudokus and programming and robotics

Oswald sometimes does bird sounds or act as a bird without realizing

I want to put more but I would make it very long so these are the hc's I'll put on them ^^

My babys <33

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, 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. The development in an educational methodology that facilitates this process will inevitably lead to tension and conflict within our society.”

— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

[via "Alive On All Channels"]

[onewomancitadel]

I have this personal issue with YA is that most of the time I feel like the genre is working at odds with itself. When I was around that age I felt like the idea of my exploration into adult storytelling (which began like most children around age 12) being compromised by something ostensibly aimed at me was patronising. It was telling me that 'this' was what I ought to be reading, which didn't feel right. More specifically I think the majority of the time it fails to tell the story of teenage transition into adult responsibility mostly because I think adult stories already do this well, and I think it's a disservice to young readers to imply otherwise. And even more specifically I don't think it has the established pedagogy behind it that children's storytelling does, by necessity, because the educational purpose of children's storytelling is essentially a civic responsibility.

I also think that the phenomenon of adult readers largely bolstering the YA genre is very telling about what it is good at, e.g. light entertainment, low emotional stakes, simple and straightforward tie between emotional development of the romance to the plot (often romance novels don't have genre plottiness).

I was thinking on this reading an interview with Suzanne Collins after I had recently reread The Hunger Games, where she discussed her intentions to write a war story for children/teenagers within the YA genre. And something that occurred to me reading both THG as well as the recent prequel backstory for the bad guy is that at every turn, her thematic intentions are compromised by recognisable YA tropes which just make it feel sticky and plastic. I cannot take it seriously as a book that adults can read. This is distinct from children's storytelling, because there is a discord between the adult themes and the childish portrayal.

You can tell me until you're blue in the face that the love triangle is a symbolic war for Katniss between war and peace, but that does not justify the material vehicle for this idea: a love triangle, with tropey entitlement, with clumsy execution, with delayed execution when the author is trying to tell you she's writing a serious story where Prim doesn't survive, and then Katniss/Peeta is kind of realised offhandedly afterwards. There is an inherent silliness to trying to marry this idea of a love triangle to a serious moral conflict. The serious moral conflict which girls face at that age is not something farcically realised through which boy they like. They have serious moral concerns about the world and it is actually facile to imply otherwise, and it is in no way redeemed through its metaphor. Worse, the definitive resolution of the love triangle lands with a dull thud, and I am still teased endlessly, with boring and hackneyed and gimmicky scenes between Katniss and Gale, that perhaps she might actually just choose this one (wink) - not at all reflective of the allure of violence, the call for vengeance - the painful consequences of violence, the spiritual wear of it - right through to the third book. She does not definitively reject Gale, with emphatic insistence - with fear or hatred or something thematically meaningful - and is essentially forced into that position via Prim's death. Yes, it's symbolic - yet symbolism is not self-justifying. Symbolism heightens and suggests material, not is materiality unto itself.

This is not least to get into my problems with the prequel story (A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes), where the spiritual corruption of its protagonist is something straight out of Dostoyevsky yet is written like the twee YA story it is. It is constantly at war with itself because it is trying to write something 'for young people' with higher themes. What I think is truly condescending is the implication that for war stories to be accessible to teenagers, it must be simplified in a medium 'meant for kids'. Sure - the series is grossly popular and has had a massive reception, for the good in some ways, that makes people think about the spectacle of war (even if i do think this theme of spectacle is actually compromised by its own genre). But I do think that the aspirational intent of the THG series really is probably the perfect example of my bone to pick with the YA genre. It compromises itself. Had it not been YA, or had it not stuck to YA conventions, I think it would have been more artistically defensible. And I don't even think this is a matter of the simplicity of the prose, or even the presence of romance, or a young girl's perspective of war - none of those three, pointed to as traditional elements of YA, are the problem here. The identifiable structure of the three books (repeating three times) is probably not even the problem either. But it wants me to believe it has serious things to say, using silly vehicles for it.

I still think the fundamental existence of the YA genre is questionable. For whom is it truly aimed at? What does it mean to teach children to love reading? I think that we may potentially see here a product of that 'kidult' genre - the tension between the childlike medium and the desire for adult sensibility - mostly something I have discussed within fandom and children's shows which attract adult audiences (SU, Voltron, and so on). The ready defensiveness criticism of the genre incurs suggests that they want the ease of being an established publishing genre read by millions worldwide but they want the escape from criticism that other genres do not enjoy. More importantly at the heart of this is what it means to write fiction for children and teenagers in the transition to adulthood, and I think that the class of YA defenders online are actually morally and pedagogically irresponsible. Either you are or aren't a criticisable genre, and either you are or aren't 'YA' - Young Adult, traditionally aimed at teenagers - and either you are or aren't making money.

I used THG as a case study, and jumping off for this thought, because it is a sensation cross-readership - and continues to attract new readers, and readers return to it for nostalgia. The Katniss/Peeta dynamic remains a relative strength to the series, although I'd argue it is fatally compromised by the love triangle, and I think it has some interesting ideas about the theatre of war - particularly through a feminine lense. But equally the reality of war is entirely absent from it, reduced to spectacle to manifest its thematic statement about propaganda but also for the focus of violence to be on the arena (and its Minotaur allusion), and the relatively isolated perspective of the protagonist within a YA novel. Such is the source of my criticism. But to take it even further, I think that, because YA does not bear enough responsibility to its teenage readers, it is generally patronising with its depiction of these adult themes of the world they are entering. Then you enter the discourse which is 'are adult books appropriate for developing readers to read?' and in which case I would've thrown my Stephen King at you for daring to ask such a question.

These are just my feelings. I fear that a Tumblrina does not hold much sway over potentially the most profitable and booming book genre now around. They may develop further also - I think THG is the most redeemable of any YA, but for that very reason illuminates these problems the best.

[grandhotelabyss]

What's your opinion on MFA writing programs? Not a very favorable one, I suspect. I'm not living in the States now, but it seems to me the Iowa Writers' Workshop doesn't enjoy quite the same reputation it did when luminaries like Cheever and Salter taught there. Am I right?

The network it makes available is still the only way into the husk that remains of literary publishing. (Note how all the tributes and elegies to Louise Glück are from her former students or colleagues; I may be the only "common reader," and I am just a common reader when it comes to poetry, who has written anything about her.) But as literary publishing has lost prestige, so has the program. I didn't get an MFA, so I can't comment on the quality of the pedagogy. I'm sure everyone is trying their best. Obviously, however, the whole idea seems misconceived from the start, and not only because of the CIA seed money.

In reducing art either to craft or to psychology, the MFA has made fiction into a set of routinized procedures (show don't tell) and a form of group therapy (find your voice). You do have to learn techniques, but techniques alone cannot create great art, and the very greatest art has often been careless of technique. And individuation is part of the writerly vocation, but you're not finding your voice per se; you're finding a much larger, much more agonized and conflicted thing, which is the whole of your sensibility. If you want to write more than one book, this had better contain a veritable pandemonium of voices.

Such an education keeps you, almost as if it were calculated to do so, from the only true literary education: an encounter with the best literary works of the past, with the main line of the tradition. (There are non-literary educations that will also shape you as a writer, both in life and in school, everything from what you learn as a person in the world to what you learn as a student in physics class or history class, but those aren't my concern here.) The purpose of this encounter is not to make you slavishly worship literary tradition, but to enable you to transform it, even to escape it, intelligently; if you don't know your tradition, you are the one who will only be repeating it. But no, we have taken Hemingway's canny modernist streamlining of a vast corpus he had tenderly internalized—he did this for a good reason: a chivalric kitsch version of the canon had been used as propaganda to lead a whole generation of young men to their slaughter—and we have made an idol and a fetish of it, so that educated people today can no longer appreciate, perhaps can no longer even comprehend, a complex periodic sentence. I hold the MFA partly responsible for this decline in the general intelligence.

Meanwhile, the academic setting of the MFA turns the literary enterprise into a game of social oneupmanship, the pettiest form of competition. In the same way that runners and swimmers say you'll only make your best time if you race the clock rather than your competitors, you should be writing with and against Shakespeare, Austen, Woolf, and Faulkner, not some random matriculates on either side of you, themselves as stupid as you are, in a cramped and sweaty seminar room. Such environments—small groups full of young people either trying to be nice to one another or, more likely, trying to be cruel to one another in subliminal and deniable ways—also encourage the ideological herding we've seen in recent years. This helps to account for the vaguely "Soviet" feel of contemporary mainstream fiction: its endless promotion in book after book of the same collectivist ideological pieties, its implicit disparagement of strong imagination, unless this take the form of tediously allegorical fantasy.

In general, MFA fiction feels both overworked and underthought, the product of much tinkering but little experience (personal or mental), a filigreed little balsa wood figurine, and nowadays moreover inevitably carved into the shape of our age's political idols. To quote the old headline the malicious LRB editors slapped onto Elif Batuman's 13-year-old essay, whose arguments I have rehearsed above: "Get a real degree."

[mariacallous]

More and more women are joining Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion, but while they can now take on the same roles as men, the challenges they face are very different.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, more than 11,000 women have voluntarily joined the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces.

“From the first day of the war, women along with men stood in queues at territorial recruitment centres to join the defence of our Motherland,” Lieutenant General Serhii Naev, commander of the United Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said on June 22 this year.

Some of them have taken on the most dangerous assignments, becoming machine gunners, snipers and tank gunners, firing grenade launchers and mortars.

As of early 2023, at least 600 women had expressed their desire to join eight new assault brigades – the Offensive Guard – tasked with pushing Russian troops out of occupied parts of Ukraine.

‘No right to make a mistake’

Armed conflict in eastern Ukraine broke out in early 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Back then, a total of 49,926 women were employed within the Ukrainian armed forces, of which 16,557 were military personnel and 33,369 civilian. By March 1 this year, a year into the full-scale invasion, the total had climbed to 60,538, including 42,898 military personnel. That’s a 2.5-fold increase in military personnel since 2014. The number of female officers is now six times higher, at 7,416.

As of publication of this article, 106 female soldiers have died in combat since February 24, 2022.

More women will be need for the war effort, but they will continue to face different challenges to their male colleagues.

Ukrainian society and military servicemen have been slow to accept women fighters.

“As a woman, you have no right to make a mistake; you always have to prove yourself more than men. The attitude towards you, as a woman, is ‘It’s just a girl’,” said Sharlotta Khmelnytska.

Aged 26, Khmelnytska holds a BA in political science and a Master’s degree in public administration. She is also a senior lieutenant in the army, an example of the changing nature of military service in Ukraine and the transition of women into combat roles traditionally reserved for men.

Major reform of 2018

Women have served in the armed forces of Ukraine since independence in 1991, but usually as the wives and daughters who followed their husbands and fathers to new military posts.

Ukraine kept with the Soviet tradition of military rotation in which the family members of officers would rotate with them; wives and daughters would typically work in the military compound where their husbands or fathers were stationed, as administrative staff, secretaries or other civilian personnel.

Over time, the number of female military personnel steadily increased, particularly within the officer corps: between 2001 and 2006, the proportion of female officers rose from 0.7 per cent to 2.25 per cent. The hostility displayed by some toward female officers was largely due to the fact that military men did not want to hold lower-paid positions.

In 1994, women could apply for a limited range of positions. Social stigma forced women to occupy more typical ‘female’ posts such as medics, administrators or logistical support.

There was also a shortage of women trained to perform highly-skilled jobs. In the Soviet era, most of those studying IT, technology, or science were men, while women traditionally enrolled in more ‘feminine’ fields such as pedagogy, light industry, medicine, and cooking.

Consequently, the majority of women in the army typically occupied low paid, ‘feminine’ roles.

By June 2016, 62 combat positions were open to women, and on September 6, 2018, military laws were amended to bring radical change to the rights of women in military service.

Law 2523 introduced six amendments to the Statute of the Internal Service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Law of Ukraine titled ‘On Military Duty and Military Service’.

Women became eligible for all military positions and ranks, with the same duties and opportunities as their male colleagues: the age limit on women serving in the military was raised from 40 to 60; servicewomen who reach the age limit are now transferred to the 1st category reserve, as opposed to the 2nd, meaning an increase in their pension pot and the chance to be mobilised first if needed.

As Ukrainian society pushed for greater gender equality, more women than ever began to join the army. In 2018, 53 per cent of Ukrainians supported the idea of gender equality between women and men in the army; in 2023, that number stands at 80 per cent.

The sharp rise in the number of women joining the armed forces reflects the army’s increased recognition of women, and the need felt by women to contribute to the war effort.

“Once I realised that a full-scale invasion by the Russian Federation into the territory of Ukraine was inevitable and that the enemy would try to occupy my hometown, Berdiansk, I could not sit by,” said Khmelnytska. “I had to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine – so I did.”

Currently, 24,797 servicewomen perform different tasks in the army, from combat engagements and special operations, to admin and logistical support.

More than 16,000 serve in the Ground Forces, at least 7,000 in the Air Force, over 3,000 in the Territorial Defence Forces, around 2,000 in the navy, and approximately 1,000 in the Airborne Assault Forces. The rest serve across other departments of the armed forces.

Women as prisoners of war

Women who join the military effort in Ukraine are in double jeopardy: they risk death or imprisonment by Russian forces, and sexual harassment within their own forces.

While there is no publicly available data on the total number of female prisoners of war, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War believes that several hundred women may have been taken prisoner.

Since February 24, 2022, there have been several prisoner exchanges involving women. One of the biggest occurred on October 17 that year, when 108 women were exchanged.

Maryana Mamonova, a female Ukrainian military doctor who was pregnant at time of her detention, was held captive by the Russian army for six months. According to Mamonova, Russian soldiers told her that she would give a birth to “a Nazi/Banderite” and that the child would be better off raised by a Russian family.

Fortunately, the media coverage of her case led to her release in the ninth month of her pregnancy.

When asked to describe their imprisonment, female servicewomen report systematic violations of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war by Russia – including torture, psychological abuse, the refusal to provide medical care, and a lack of food and water.

Many say that in Russian prisons they are not only denied hygiene products but often denied any opportunity to wash themselves at all. Detained Ukrainian women report being tortured during interrogations, shaved, and forced to undress. Some were sexually abused by Russian soldiers.

Ukrainian military women are also sometimes at risk from their male colleagues. The results of a 2011 study by the Research Centre for Humanitarian Issues of the Armed Forces of Ukraine revealed that every tenth woman faced sexual harassment in the army. “A woman has a harder time in the army than a man,” said Khmelnytska.

“When we did military training we faced sexism. Dealing with it was draining on my nerves, my energy, and my emotions. At times it was terrible. For example, you could be punished or reprimanded because you were a woman and the brigade commander didn’t like it.”

Sexual harassment in the army remains a taboo topic in the Ukrainian army.

In 2021, Olga Derkach became one of the first to speak out publicly about sexual harassment in the military when she accused Colonel Oleksandr Krivoruchko of harassment that she said began in 2016.

According to Olena Shevchenko, head of the Ukrainian human rights NGO ‘Insight’, complaints of sexual harassment are often submitted to Insight by the friends and acquaintances of the victims, rather than the victims themselves. Insight has received more than a dozen in recent years.

“According to women who complained to us, the commander harasses the woman, demands sexual favours and her loyalty,” said Shevchenko.

The head of the NGO ‘Association of Women Lawyers of Ukraine’ also reported receiving similar complaints. “Complaints are not coming from the frontline,” said Khrystyna Kit. “Women combatants are less likely to be sexually harassed than admin staff who work away from the battlefield.”

But even when women are willing to testify about harassment, it is often difficult to bring such cases to court. “Women have no witnesses to the harassment and, apart from her own testimony, there is no one who could confirm her claims,” said Kit. “Holding the perpetrator criminally accountable is a difficult and traumatic endeavour for a female victim.”

Social stigma

Ukrainian women serving in the army still fight to be recognised by society as equal to male soldiers.

The traditional view of the army as an exclusively masculine environment prevails, and women – so the argument goes – have no place in this environment.

Debate has raged on social media in response to comments on women who have decided to join the army, especially those who have children. As more and more women volunteer for the frontline, the more heated the debates become.

Some express full support for women and mothers; others argue they should think first about their children, who could become orphans at any moment. Such debates do not happen when it comes to men.

Despite their increasing involvement in the armed forces, society still believes that women have no place in the army. As a consequence, women’s experience of war remains neglected by the media. We have seen changes in public perception, but not as rapidly as one would expect in response to the rapid changes caused by war.

From the start of full-scale hostilities to the end of 2022, 350 military servicewomen have been awarded for bravery. The highest award, Hero of Ukraine, was bestowed posthumously on two women. Recently, Forbes-Ukraine magazine added ten women from the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to its list of the 50 most influential women in Ukraine.

In preparation for future waves of military mobilisation, women of certain professions are now legally obliged to register for the military. While full scale mobilisation is not expected before 2026, women can serve under contract. The list of professions from which women can be called up for military service has also expanded. According to the new law, women with any type of science or medical background must register.

Once registered, women will be subject to general mobilisation to the same degree as men.

At present, only women with medical backgrounds are legally obliged to be drafted into the war effort and this is due to the constant shortage of military medics. With the potential for a prolonged conflict, the change will be necessary to maintain strength and numbers on the battlefield, meaning that women could fall subject to general mobilisation.

[euridise]

The Pedagogy of Conflict

Pádraig Ó Tuama

I

When I was a child, I learnt to lie.

When I was a child my parents said that sometimes, lives are protected by an undetected light lie of deception

When I was a child, I learnt to lie.

Now, I am more than twenty five and I’m alive because I’ve lied and I am lying still.

Sometimes, it’s the only way of living.

II

When I was a child I learnt that I could stay alive by obeying certain rules:

let your anger cool before you blossom bruises on your brother’s shoulder;

always show your manners at the table;

always keep the rules and never question;

never mention certain things to certain people;

never doubt the reasons behind legitimate aggression;

if you compromise or humanise you must still even out the score;

and never open up the door. Never open up the door. Never, never, never open up the blasted door.

When I was a child, I learnt that I could stay alive by obeying certain rules. Never open up the door.

III

When I was a child, I learnt to count to five one, two, three, four, five. but these days, I’ve been counting lives, so I count

one life one life one life one life one life

because each time is the first time that that life has been taken.

Legitimate Target has sixteen letters and one long abominable space between two dehumanising words.