Gender, sex and Feminist Pedagogy

The classes on October 15th and 16th were delivered by lecturer Tereza Mytakol on Feminist Pedagogy: From Theory to Practice.

The classes were very pertinent and provoked several reflections and repercussions in our group. It started with the teacher asking us about some aspects of our careers, for example: if we had regrets; what we were proud of and what we would like to change in Brazil education system. We found that most of us were proud and satisfied with the profession we chose for our lives.

The second round of questions gave us some idea of ​​what was coming next. They referred to whether in our opinion there was any difference between biological sex and gender. As a teacher I think this should be very clear in our heads. We should understand that one's sex is usually linked to a biological issue, how a person was born, the structure of their body, and gender refers to cultural, social and cultural issues.  We debated it in our group, even from the point of view of individual soul, how someone sees themselves in the world. It bothered me a lot to know that some of my colleagues fail to realize that there is a big difference between sex and gender.

Later in class, we began to analyze the gender and our experiences and our challenges in dealing with it. This is a very pertinent topic today worldwide. At this point in the class, the conversation was about sexism, gender prejudice, and also prejudice against those who have their gender different from their biological sex. Perhaps this discussion was one of the most disturbing moments of our entire stay here in Ireland. The speech of some colleagues bothered me to the point of crying with sadness. Their speech not only posited feminism as an exaggeration, an unnecessary struggle but also said that prejudice did not exist.

As a white, straight, cis person and from a privileged social class, I cannot say that prejudice does not exist just because I did not experience it. Prejudice exists and it has been killing daily in Brazil. One of my colleagues who mentioned the fact that he does not think there is prejudice against homosexuals lives in a Brazilian state where statistics show the highest number of homo related homicides in Brazil.

According to G1, an important news channel in Brazil, a homosexual is killed every 23 hours in our country. This piece of news is from last May. The same sad situation happens when I analyze some figures from in my state, Santa Catarina. According to data from the SSP (Public Security Secretariat), the number of femicides - cases in which victims were killed for being women - continues to grow. The reported cases increased from 25 between January 1st and September 2^nd 2018, to 38 in the same period this year – a 52% increase.

Educators cannot just close their eyes to this situation. Naturally, this is not a simple matter to work on and it will depend greatly on the age and social context of each class, but ignoring these problems would not be a good thing if we wish to transform our reality. Therefore, these questions should be present in the hidden curriculum of the school and should be included as transversal themes.

To better address these issues we can use in our classes the themes presented in Feminist Pedagogy: From Theory to Practice. It could be a moment against actions that reproduce racism, gender prejudice and to be more focused on class consciousness. It is a practice that opposes the male, white and straight pattern.

We left the room and the discussion continued in our WhatsApp group. On the one hand, 90% of the class-conscious people who may see that we live in a world full of prejudice and injustice and it's up to us to fight it. On the other hand, there are those who think that feminine is an exaggeration and we are living in a world where prejudice is only opportunistic media.

Our second day of lecturer with Tereza we acquired much knowledge as well. We developed some projects to work in the classroom to try to teach our students all of the above questions discussed. But there is a question that is not silent within me: could some of my colleagues learn something about…?

This classes show how much these issues are necessary and pertinent to our background. If according to praxis, reflection generates reaction, surely we learned a lot in these two classes.