Radical Pedagogy, first chapter

I'm going to try to blog each chapter, so that I've got notes to come back to for our meeting.  I picked up the book this morning (along with Tristan Taormino's, woo!) and am done the first chapter.

First impression?  Dude needs a better editor.  The writing is dense, with paragraph-long sentences, and it's not very readable.

The first chapter did not give me a lot of useful information, despite being so dense.  There were exceptions to this, but the nuggets of "yes, that's great" were somewhat few and far between. 

It was filled with references to Lacanian psychoanalysis without going into readable depth about how the author was using the terminology himself, which I found a little frustrating.  I'm somewhat confident in my understanding of Lacan, but because Bracher is trying to articulate a concept that he himself says Lacanians might disagree with (he says this disagreement would hinge on his idea of a unified identity, rather than the traditional Lacanian idea of self being based on difference), I think it would have been better to spend some time really explaining how he is using the terms himself.

I was really irked by the non-ironic use of the phrase "animal magnetism" and it got my hackles up.  I'm not sure why, perhaps because he used it in the context of describing how paying attention to sexual attractiveness can detract from learning.  I think it was perhaps the sloppiness of this that bothered me - the phrase "animal magnetism" implies something inherent or natural, but what he was describing was the behaviour of self-presentation.  They seem like different things to me.  I'm not sure if this is the entire reason the phrase bugged me.  Something about the way he talked about sexuality intersecting with identity in general rubbed me the wrong way (see below for another example).  I will be watching for this in the rest of the book and will try to better articulate why it bugged me.

I was also bugged by his brief paragraph on teen mothers, and how they use pregnancy and motherhood as a way to gain attention and recognition of their identities.  I don't discount his argument here, but it was the only argument he mentioned and the lack of engagement with other factors that result in teen pregnancy seemed glaring to me.  Although I think that understanding how pregnancy and motherhood can allow a marginalized young woman to achieve a recognizable identity is important, giving the impression that young women get pregnant as a way of forcing society to recognize them seems to hint at victim-blaming/shaming, and casts young mothers as manipulative.  Maybe I'm being too harshly critical here, and I will hold off on a judgment until I've read more of the book.  It did jump out at me as problematic, though.

On the whole, I appreciate his articulation of identity as "a sense of oneself as a force that matters in the world."  I liked a lot of what he had to say, and am still invested in the book despite the couple hiccups in the first chapter.  He's not very readable, but maybe that's just because he didn't know how to get through the Lacanian stuff in this first bit.

And now, onward!

May Meeting Minutes

s.e.x.

Heather Corinna is the author and the main force behind scarleteen.com, a fabulous and popular online sex-ed resource for youth. We loved the writing style, particularly the fact that the book "talks to you."

"Imagine what it would be like if you had taken a sexuality class at school, one where the teacher just focused on the facts, and the students were free of embarrassment and could listen in rapt amazement. Sure you would have learned the usual stuff, like how your body works, what your genitals look like, how babies are made, how contraception works, and how STD's get passed around. But you also would have learned that each person's sexuality is unique, and that gender identity and sexual orientation fall on a continuum. You would have learned that sex is a gift you give as well as receive, that it is based on mutual respect and responsibility, that it is about pleasure, that it is more than intercourse, and that being good at it has nothing to do with penis size or tight vaginas, but practice and presence." - s.e.x., from the "foreword" by Anne Semans

While there are some problems with the word "give" in this quote, essentially this is exactly what we try to do as educators! All-around a good feeling from this book.

Check it out: Deal With It. For a bit of a younger audience: 12-16. Recommended by several educators in the club.


The V Book <- mostly the thumbs down....
The possibility of having a female partner was brought up only on page 112, the same page on which there was also advice given on using olive oil as lube (with no specifically attached warnings on infection, cleanliness, latex condom-oil incompatibility etc.)

When talking about menopausal symptoms, the fact that these vary between cultures is not acknowledged! This is an important piece of info for anyone wanting to deconstruct why they are experiencing anything in the body a certain way (what is "natural"?)

There is lots of "norm" talk in this book; heterosexist.

The chapter on what an examination should look like is valuable, but it does - along with the rest of the book - shift the onus on "us" to get the proper care.

The author is an MD with lots of experience, and that's exactly how the book is written: biomedical model language.

We decided that this is more of a reference guide, not a by-the-fireplace read. It is densely packed, there is a sense that there was no editor to be found (lots of unnecessary repeats and length), and plenty of translation is needed to get the info into feminist, sex-positive language.


The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women -2nd Edition
Good, yummy, a fun read. Feels like you're sitting in one of Tristan Taormino's workshops right then. Covers everything from basics to hygiene to lube to troubleshooting; has chapters on BDSM and advanced play - very diverse. Great sections on communication, addressing fears of all participants.

There is an Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Men as well, and sexy educational videos by the same author.

Book Swap

Hi all,

This post is intended to facilitate book swaps. Look on the right for a list of books wanted/available to share, then comment here to indicate interest in any of the books, or to add more titles to either column.


Cheers!

First Books!

Dear Sex-positive sex educators,

Below is our list of books for this month.

The V book

Sensuous magic

s.e.x.

Ultimate guide to anal sex (for women version or for men version)

Sincerely,

Sasha