Teaching about gender violence, with and for gender justice: epistemological, pedagogical and ethical dilemmas

ABSTRACT

This paper reflects on teaching a postgraduate degree which aims to support students to understand and challenge gender violence and contribute to gender justice. It explores three dilemmas: (i) epistemological – how to create a curriculum which embraces diverse knowledges and decentres perspectives which can produce violence; (ii) pedagogical – how to create a learning space which generates intersectional gender justice; (iii) ethical – how to engage with violence suffered by others – and selves – without propagating further harm. Exploring how the author navigates these dilemmas, the paper argues that teaching this degree entails more than developing students’ theoretical knowledge and critical analysis skills. It requires providing opportunities for students to contribute to the degree and supporting them to build skills in self-reflection, empathetic communication and collective witnessing. It means making space for students to work through precarious moments and process their own encounters with gender injustice and violence.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminist pedagogy
• gender violence
• intersectionality
• higher education
• sensitive material

Introduction

In this paper, I reflect on my experiences of teaching a master’s degree on gender violence at a UK university. Engaging with student hopes, needs and feedback, and drawing on my wider experience as a feminist practitioner, I discuss what I teach, why and how. I explore three interconnected dilemmas: (i) epistemological – which kinds of knowledge are generated, how and by whom about gender violence and injustice, what the consequences are, and how to create a curriculum which decentres perspectives which can produce violence; (ii) pedagogical – how to create a learning space inclusive of students from multiple backgrounds, which itself generates intersectional gender justice and (iii) ethical – how to engage with the violence suffered by others – and selves – in ways that do not commodify trauma or propagate further harm.

I am not the only teacher dealing with these issues, but the nature of the degree and the profile of students who study it brings these questions into sharp focus. This paper engages in turn with these dilemmas, exploring their theoretical and practical significance and reflecting on how I navigate them. It engages with literature on decolonial, critical and feminist pedagogy and reflects on feedback from students; yet, it is primarily written as an exploratory reflection from the point of view of a university teacher responsible for convening this course. The paper demonstrates that teaching this degree entails more than developing students’ theoretical knowledge and critical analysis skills. I argue that it requires providing opportunities for students to contribute to the design of the degree; supporting them to build skills in self-reflection, empathetic communication and collective witnessing; and making space for them to work through precarious moments and to process their own encounters with gender injustice and violence.

The MA gender, violence and conflict

For more than two decades, I have worked within and between academia and the international development sector. Most of my work has focused on gender violence and injustice, particularly on gendered experiences of violent conflict and peacebuilding, and on men’s violence against women, mainly in Africa, Asia and the UK. This has included conducting research to understand patterns of gender violence and experiences of reconciliation processes; designing and evaluating programmes and strategies to prevent gender violence; and facilitating training for practitioners and policy-makers on violence prevention.

In 2015, I established the MA Gender, Violence and Conflict (GVC) at the University of Sussex. I envisaged an interdisciplinary degree, grounded in feminist practice, which would give students opportunities to explore gender violence and injustice around the world from multiple perspectives and develop their knowledge and skills to work to address these issues. The course comprises two core modules in the first term: ‘Gender Violence in War and Peace’¹ which I teach, and a complementary module ‘Feminist Approaches to Gender and Development’. In the second term, students pick two optional modules to extend and deepen their study These include modules from various disciplines (anthropology, geography, international relations, law, sociology) on: gender theory and practice; human rights and women’s rights; peace studies; violence, insecurity and militarism; hate crimes; sexuality and sexual dissidence; knowledge, power and resistance; health and the body; migration, refugees and trafficking; humanitarian aid and practice; and decolonizing development. In term two, students also take a module in research methods and professional skills and then work on their own dissertation project with the support of a supervisor.

I also aspired for the degree to engage critically with policy and practice and to create spaces for students to share and explore their own experiences of working against gender violence, with and for gender justice. At the same time, I was apprehensive. I knew from my practitioner work that a significant number of people working on these issues have direct personal experience of gender violence and injustice. The MA recruits 20–40 students each year from a range of backgrounds including younger students direct from undergraduate studies; students with a few years’ professional or voluntary work; and a few experienced practitioners. Around a third are ‘home’ students from the UK and two-thirds are international students from all continents. There are also many survivors. As we work together during the first term, hints, whole stories and disclosures emerge within and outside of the classroom in my office hour. On this basis, I estimate that over half of students each year have direct personal experience of surviving gender violence and most of the rest have witnessed gender violence and injustice up close.

My initial ambitions for the degree remain. However, during eight years as convenor, as I have listened to students, interacted with practitioners, read and reflected more, I have gained greater clarity on what I aim to achieve and why. Dialogue with students suggests that they come to this degree for several reasons: They are all profoundly affected by gender injustice and violence; they are all deeply committed to work to reduce it; and many are also on a personal journey of healing and recovery. This is my starting point. I see my role as facilitator of a learning journey which will enable students to contribute effectively and responsibly to intersectional gender justice in whichever spaces and places they live and work after the MA. This has multiple implications for what I teach, how and why, and is challenging on every level: epistemological, pedagogical and ethical. In this paper, I reflect on these interconnected dilemmas, my attempts to navigate them and how I have come to accept that this is and should be ongoing work.

Epistemological dilemmas: teaching about gender violence, injustice and justice

Epistemological questions relate to the kinds of knowledge that are generated, how, where and by whom, what the consequences are, and what this means for what teachers teach. In part motivated by frustrations at the dominance of Western knowledge in the international development sector; in part inspired by discussions about decolonizing the curriculum, I aim for students to engage with a diversity of feminist, intersectional, postcolonial and decolonial literature about gender violence, injustice and justice and to create a curriculum which decentres privileged and exclusionary perspectives.

Much readily available ‘evidence’ about gender violence has been generated by Global North² researchers funded by public health and international development bodies and is focused on violence against women. Research has been dominated by Western epistemologies, particularly quantitative methods from disciplines like behavioural economics and public health (Pease 2019). Whilst these approaches can generate useful insights, they prioritize concepts and theories from the Global North and mostly collect standardized data which favours comparison across contexts, rather than deep understanding of the dynamics of gender violence in specific contexts. In my work as a practitioner, I have repeatedly witnessed how other forms of knowledge are dismissed, ignored or deployed to provide illustrative quotes to humanize tables of figures. The exclusions are many: narrative and visual forms of knowledge from survivors and witnesses; practitioner knowledge; indigenous knowledge; qualitative and ethnographic research from disciplines like anthropology.

It matters which kinds of knowledge are generated, how, where and by whom for several reasons. Firstly, because epistemological exclusion can propagate violence. Decolonial scholarship demonstrates that the silencing of diverse knowledges is rooted in colonialism which elevated European ways of knowing (Mignolo Walter 2007). Similarly, post-colonial writers have highlighted how the assumed universality of Western constructs and values marginalized the perspectives of colonized populations in Africa and Asia (e.g. Fanon 2004). Colonial knowledge production has propagated structural violence through exclusion and has also been used to justify direct forms of violence during and after the colonial period (Vázquez 2011). For example, Raewyn Connell (2014) traces how gendered violence played a formative role in the shaping of colonial societies and flourished post-colonization. Maria Lugones (2008) examines how ‘the biological dimorphism, the patriarchal and heterosexual organizations of relations’ under the European modern/colonial gender system were imposed onto non-European societies, erasing the varied conceptualizations of sex, gender and personhood that previously existed. She shows how ‘indigenous’ women in Latin America were doubly inferiorized by the imposition of European concepts of gender and race. Similarly, Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí (1997) argues that ‘gender’ was not an important organizing principle in Yorùbá society in Nigeria prior to colonization and that its imposition under British rule resulted in the emergence of ‘women’ as an identifiable category subordinate to men in all situations.

Secondly, these exclusions severely limit our abilities to understand and respond to the ways that violence is shaped by gender, race, class and other identities. Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) looks at the very specific experiences of violence of women of colour in the US, showing how these are shaped by both sexism and racism. Patricia Hill Collins’ (2000) concept of a ‘matrix of domination’ locates lived experiences of oppression at the intersection of systems of power and inequality such as patriarchy, racism, classism, ableism and heterosexism. This work demonstrates the need to use intersectional analysis to understand how the causes, experiences and consequences of gender violence vary according to social location, and to examine particular configurations of oppression that shape specific lives in specific times and places. Yet, Gayatri Spivak (1988) writes about Northern academics who go to the Global South to ‘do fieldwork’, imposing their own constructs and values to analyse what they ‘find’, limiting and de-limiting (and exercising power over) people’s worlds. Chandra Mohanty (1988, 64) critiques Western feminist scholarship for collapsing the heterogeneous lives of women in the Global South into an ‘already constituted and coherent group with identical interests and desires, regardless class, ethnic or racial location’ who are presented as universally oppressed, dependent on men and victims of male violence. Analysing acts of violence and injustice solely through external concepts denies voice and agency to those affected, often failing to comprehend how they see these acts. Across societies, there are variations in which acts are seen as violent and whether and when particular acts recognized as violent may be seen as legitimate.

Thirdly, knowledge generation about gender violence and injustice matters because the way people and events are represented has tangible impacts. For example, Corrine Bertram and Sue Crowley (2012) find that Western psychological models result in too much focus on interventions to address individual behaviours of perpetrators and victims, ignoring the structural contexts of oppression within which gender violence occurs. They also draw our attention to how we name those who have experienced gender violence, arguing that the language of ‘victim’ or ‘survivor’ can reduce a person’s experience and fail to acknowledge how they have resisted, lived before, through and past violence.

My engagement with these epistemological issues has informed the way that I have developed and revised the core module that I teach ‘Gender Violence in War and Peace’. The aims of this module are to provide students with an interdisciplinary foundation in key concepts and theoretical debates; relate these to contemporary policy debates and practical initiatives; and support students to develop their academic, practical and personal skills. This module has been co-designed and revised with the convenors³ of the second module ‘Feminist Approaches to Gender and Development’ to provide a strong foundation in feminist, queer, intersectional, postcolonial and decolonial theory and to cover a range of key themes: relationships between gender, sex and violence; forms, experiences, causes and consequences of gender violence; intersections of violences based on gender, race, class, sexuality and ability; masculinities, femininities, war and nationalism; feminist and decolonial perspectives on gender and development, sexual and reproductive health, sexuality and economic exploitation; feminist movements, mobilizations and resistance.

The module also benefits from student contributions including ongoing conversations during the teaching term, informal opportunities for feedback (e.g. anonymous postcards), feedback channelled through the course student representatives and the formal end of module evaluation. In 2019, I also participated in a pilot project ‘Co-producing the Curriculum’ sponsored by our Student Union. Over three months, three MA GVC students⁴ and I worked together to review and strengthen the content and pedagogy of the module, resulting in the inclusion of more literature from intersectional, postcolonial and decolonial scholars as well as changes to how I teach some material. Each year, students also bring in their own material and examples to shape topics. This strengthens module content in areas where I have less direct knowledge – for example, certain country contexts and authors – and brings in subjective experiences – for example, identifying as queer, indigenous, a person of colour or with a disability – that I do not have due to my own positionality as a white, able-bodied, straight cis-woman born in the UK.

In its latest iteration, in the first session of the module, I introduce a set of cross-cutting themes to encourage students to reflect on epistemological questions. Firstly, we discuss the politics of knowledge. I pose a series of questions to encourage students to think about which and whose knowledges are given more attention, when, where and why; what and who is silenced; what the implications are; and how this is shaped by colonialism, capitalism and neoliberalism. We agree to think carefully about what we read, considering where each author is speaking from and whom to/for/about, acknowledging that this is more complex than a binary North/South divide. Secondly, we discuss positionality, looking at identities as sites of power, privilege and oppression. We discuss how human experiences are shaped by multiple social categories like gender, race, class, sexuality and (dis)ability and how the significance of these intersectional identities can change across time and place. We agree to avoid generalizing about gendered experiences and consider how they are shaped by personal trajectories, multiple identities and structural environments. Thirdly, we discuss socio-cultural context and how gender and violence cannot be separated from the places and times in which they are performed, embodied, experienced and observed. Finally, we consider the politics of representation, discussing why and how it matters how individuals, groups and events are portrayed. We discuss how words and images essentialize bodies, actions and spaces and how such representations shape what people say, do and experience. Each week, in small group and class discussions, we come back to these themes, as we work through different topics, engaging with various authors, disciplinary perspectives, materials and examples.

In the first two weeks, we then unpack different concepts – ‘gender’, ‘violence’, ‘conflict’, ‘peace’ – reflecting on how definitions and meanings vary between disciplines, institutions and across time and space. I encourage students to view these terms as contested, to think about their aetiology and translatability, to challenge the European colonization of terms (Langdon 2013) by considering related concepts in non-Western languages and epistemologies. We then look at various theoretical perspectives and critiques on the relationships between gender, violence and conflict from different disciplines and authors from the Global South and North. We acknowledge that dominant, usually Northern, theories are often inadequate to understand gender violence and injustice in both Northern and Southern societies; that whilst the dominant dynamic of epistemological erasure is towards the Global South, ‘there is a history of epistemic violence in every geographical location, including the geographical West’ (Vázquez 2011, 29).

In the middle weeks, we focus on different forms, dynamics and experiences of gender violence globally. We look at gender violence against women, men and gender minorities and how this intersects with other forms of violence and oppression. We look at men’s and women’s perpetration of violence and challenge simplistic distinctions between victims, perpetrators and witnesses. I encourage engagement with diverse materials including testimonies, films and literature. Sometimes students recount personal stories and lived experiences, thereby creating and sharing new knowledge to ‘articulate gaps and silences that we might find in the work of others’ (Morgan 1999, 189).

During the last three weeks, we look at local and international initiatives that aim to challenge and prevent gender violence and injustice. We look at activism by women’s, queer and intersectional movements, as well as projects implemented by development organizations. We question who leads these initiatives, whether and how they are rooted in local contexts and needs, how they understand gender violence, who they work with and how they judge success. At the end of the semester, all students do an assessed group presentation to critically examine an initiative, policy or programme to address gender violence and injustice. In addition to supporting students to apply their knowledge and develop practical skills, ending the module in this way tends to leave students feeling more hopeful about challenging violence and injustice (see McQueeney 2016).

Ongoing feedback suggests that students find this core module engaging and challenging, and that it provides a solid foundation for the rest of the degree. Nonetheless, there are sometimes challenges, which remind us that, as teachers, we are limited by our own capacities as well as the structural contexts in which we operate. A recent example occurred in relation to assignments submitted by Aline,⁵ a student and decolonial practitioner from Latin America. Aline produced a number of reflective assignments around her experience at a Northern University which claims to be ‘decolonising’. Her assignments were intentionally written as acts of decolonial practice to disrupt Northern academic orthodoxy, including directly challenging the reader/marker to avoid evaluating her work through standard criteria, which Aline described as Eurocentric, biased against decolonial scholars, and structurally violent. Aline received a range of marks for her assignments from various academics, including myself. She subsequently contested her final dissertation mark on the grounds that the marker was not sufficiently qualified in decolonial theory and practice to mark it. However, she faced a struggle with a system which only allows an appeal on the basis of procedural irregularity, rather than a challenge to the fairness of a mark, the qualifications of the marker or the pertinence of the marking criteria for decolonial scholarship.

I have been deeply challenged by these events. Aline’s subjective experience and writing goes to the heart of the contradictions of ‘decolonising the university’ in institutions located in the home of the colonizer (Bhambra, Gebrial, and Nişancıoğlu 2018) where so many of us who teach have been educated. Is it the case, as Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang (2012) suggest, that, whatever critical methodologies we employ or attempts we make to decentre colonial perspectives, they are simply ‘incommensurable’ with decolonization? The moves my colleagues and I are making to ‘decolonise’ our curricula and pedagogies are baby steps, when the whole British higher education system is premised on a particular view of knowledge, how it should be constructed and evaluated. As I remain in dialogue with Aline and reflect on what I might do to address this – or even whether I can from my position – for now, I will be more precise about the limits of my efforts to decolonize and diversify the curriculum and that this is an ongoing and never-ending endeavour – as is working to develop a pedagogy which contributes to gender justice, to which I now turn.

Pedagogical dilemmas: teaching with and for intersectional gender justice

Pedagogical questions relate to how learning takes place for whom and how the practice of teaching relates to the what and why of teaching. My aspiration has been to create a learning space inclusive of students from all socio-cultural backgrounds and identities, in which there is an awareness of the intersectional dynamics of power, privilege and oppression. I aim to support students to engage respectfully in self-reflection, dialogue and disagreement, including around difficult and uncomfortable issues. I believe this is central to transformative learning that models and contributes to ‘intersectional gender justice’ – which I define as the equitable distribution of rights, opportunities, resources, status and power between people of all genders and intersecting identities, their ability to live free from violence and discrimination, and redress for past inequalities and violence from which they have suffered harm. This definition intentionally combines conceptions of justice rooted in representation, redistribution and recognition (Fraser 2007); goes beyond notions of choice, capabilities, no – discrimination and positive rights to focus on the ending of current – and redress for past – inequalities based on gender (Goetz 2007) and ‘the righting of wrongs’ (Spivak 2004).

When I established the MA GVC, I drew on my experience as a feminist practitioner, and my reading of Paolo Freire’s (1970) and bell hooks (1994, 2010) works on critical pedagogy. In particular, I sought to respond to calls for a feminist and ‘engaged pedagogy’, described by hooks as a ‘deliberate endeavour’ to eliminate the biases of Western education systems founded on the politics of ‘imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ (2009, 29). However, it is challenging to practice intersectional feminist pedagogy (Light, Jane Nicholas, and Bondy 2015), especially in a classroom located in a Northern university with a wide diversity of students from around the world – including many who have survived or continue to endure violence and oppression. As I have engaged in dialogue with students, read and reflected more, I continue to revise my practice. In the rest of the section, I discuss the approaches I have tried, the dilemmas I have faced and changes I have made.

At the start of each academic year, I work to set up an inclusive learning space and foster positive relationships with and among the students. As hooks (2009, 22) stresses, ‘a mutual relationship between teacher and students … nurtures the growth of both parties, creating an atmosphere of trust and commitment that is always present when genuine learning happens’. This entails creating an environment in which we care about other people’s learning as well as our own, and where everyone’s knowledge, skills and experiences are valued. I start this process through an extended induction session. I firstly invite the new students to engage in a reflective exercise to explore their ‘journey’ to the MA GVC. My colleague and I share our own journeys on pre-prepared flipcharts, saying a few things about our childhoods, education, professional lives, and the key people and events on our pathways to teaching this degree. The students then document their own journeys on flipcharts and share them with each other – if they wish – in small groups. This is a first step in getting to know one other, to establishing a self-reflective, open style of communication – including being transparent about what we bring as teachers, dispelling hierarchical ideas of expertise, and demonstrating that personal experiences are valued in our classrooms (hooks 1994).

The second part of the session is an introduction to thinking about positionality, power and privilege. Firstly, to promote what Krista McQueeney (2016) calls ‘difference consciousness’ to encourage students, from the outset, to analyse how gender, race, class, sexuality, (dis)ability and other identities shape how individuals experience violence and injustice, how they are treated and whether they can obtain support and safety. Secondly, as Judy Rohrer (2018) describes, to ensure that students are aware that ‘It’s in the room’, that the diversities and inequalities – and experiences of violence and injustice – we study are not somewhere outside the classroom: ‘Part of inclusion is recognizing that in any (class)room there are undisclosed disabilities, histories of trauma, and experiences with structural oppression’ (586). Thirdly, to encourage ‘multiple perspective-taking’ where students attempt to see the world from multiple social positions as they deal with difficult topics, different views and behaviours in the classroom (Bertram and Sue Crowley 2012).

To encourage this reflection, we facilitate an interactive exercise around power and privilege. Setting up such an exercise is challenging and the standard Privilege Walk⁶ can be both powerful and problematic (Sillman and Kearns 2020). It provides an embodied representation of the relative privileges of those present and a basis for reflection on how social identities shape access to spaces, opportunities and resources. Yet, it may create discomfort. For those more privileged, this discomfort can generate a self-awareness important for anyone working on social justice issues; yet it can also create feelings of shame which may lead to defensiveness or disengagement. For those less privileged, the exercise can literally place them yet again on the margins as ‘props’ subjected to the voyeurism of the privileged (Collins 1993). For all present, there may be aspects of their identity that they do not wish to share in such a public way. Some individuals may feel unfairly treated as the exercise is necessarily reductionist and cannot capture every dimension or experience which shape privilege and oppression. Also, individuals with very different intersectional identities can end up in a parallel position, unhelpfully suggesting an equivalence or comparability of privilege and marginality. Finally, it can simply be difficult to answer the questions, as experiences of privilege and oppression are situational.

Cognisant of these issues, we have experimented with various exercises. We originally facilitated the Privilege Walk with altered questions (extending the dimensions of privilege and oppression),⁷ allowing people to opt in/out and using the briefing/debriefing to discuss these issues. However, we were concerned that this still risked re-victimizing more marginalized students, reminding them of experiences of oppression or placing them in an all-too-familiar role of educating the more privileged (Arao and Clemens 2013). Thus, we now facilitate either an online anonymous version – where people move dots on grids on googleslides – or an adapted exercise using flipchart sheets with questions where people can circulate and add stickers or annotations more discretely (see Sillman and Kearns 2020). These exercises are conversation openers for subsequent teaching, where we strive to link this with epistemological shifts to support students ‘to transition their thinking about privilege from “oppressor/ oppressed” and “more or less oppressed” to an intersectional, contextual, and relative framework’ (Sillman and Kearns 2020, 52). The aim is for students to bring these lenses to their analysis of gender violence and injustice, and to develop the ‘heightened self-reflexivity’ essential for anyone working for social justice (Kapoor 2004).

At the end of the induction session, we discuss how we want to work and learn together. We firstly talk to the students about how the two core modules are structured, the pedagogical approaches we have adopted and why. For example, I teach the core module through weekly three-hour interactive seminars which combine mini-lectures with interactive discussions where students talk in pairs or small groups, engage in participatory exercises, individual and collective reflection. A team of students also lead a presentation or activity each week to explore the framing questions through a case study. This encourages them to apply theories, concepts and analysis to practical examples and to bring their own knowledges into the room.

We then do a collective brainstorming where students add their ideas to a board entitled ‘Co-creating our learning space.’ We discuss issues that come up around how to engage consciously and respectfully with each other; how to ensure everyone can participate; how to support those studying in their second or third language; how to bring in student knowledges and experiences; how to deal with sensitive material, different viewpoints and disagreements; how to reject oppressive language and call out harmful behaviour. We make an initial set of agreements (akin to ground rules) that we publish in a shared learning space and can revisit. The way I facilitate this discussion and the language I use influences how students subsequently deal with disagreement and harmful comments during the module. Conscious of hooks (1994) call for a ‘confrontational pedagogy’ and to disrupt the myth of a ‘safe space’, I have aimed to create a ‘safe enough space’ which allows different views to be considered and encourages engagement in difficult conversations in which it is ‘safe to struggle’ (hooks 1994). As Zoe Thompson (2020) argues, when ‘controversial’ issues emerge, these ‘precarious moments’ provide valuable opportunities to engage ethically with one other, to discuss and challenge oppressive narratives and practices.

For example, although infrequent, there have been the occasional insensitive or prejudiced comments directed by one student towards another student or in relation to an issue we are discussing. As hooks (2009) suggests, it is important not to let such comments pass unchallenged, but also not to respond in a combative way whether we decide to ‘call out’ (where words or actions are unacceptable and need interrupting to prevent further harm) or ‘call in’ (where a comment provides opportunity to explore different perspectives more deeply). Depending on the nature of the comment, I variously respond that the statement is ‘upsetting because … ’; ask the student to explain their point differently; ask them to unpack assumptions behind their comment; or offer data or theory that challenges what they have said (see Bertram and Sue Crowley 2012). I therefore seek to model ways to challenge potentially harmful perspectives, but also prompt further reflection that might be transformative. Nonetheless, though I have not personally dealt with this, all teachers need to be prepared to ask a student to leave the room.

Whilst the nature of classroom discussions and student feedback suggests that this approach has largely been successful in its aims, I am aware that a minority of students will still not feel comfortable to speak up against comments they may find harmful or insensitive. In reading for this paper, I have also come to question the word ‘safe’ in the notion of a ‘safe enough space’ – considering, for example, whether the safety of one group might entail the un-safety of another group in the class. Similar to Arao and Clemens (2013), in the past, I have found that the practice of establishing ground rules in workshops – without properly discussing them – whilst ostensibly to create a ‘safe space’, can actually result in further protection for the privileged, who may be reassured that, if they say something discriminatory, they won’t be held to account as they can opt out of the conversation or play the ‘agree to disagree’ or ‘don’t take things personally’ card. Thus, those less privileged can yet again be expected to endure oppression, hide their feelings of pain and process them internally:

The affected people are in this way doubly affected—first by the event that triggered their emotions and then again by the responsibility for managing them. These rules also prevent the person who caused the impact from carrying a share of the emotional load and preclude the possibility of meaningful reflection on her or his actions. (Arao and Clemens 2013, 145)

The challenge here is the conflation of the term ‘safety’ with ‘comfort’ – whether for students or the teacher (Boostrom 1998) – and the implication that risk or harm will not come into the classroom space. If we consider how the term ‘safe space’ is used by women’s rights organizations providing services to victims of gender violence, these are literal spaces of shelter and security where those who enter expect support and empathy. This is neither possible to guarantee nor appropriate for a classroom in which we are learning about issues of oppression, violence and injustice. As Arao and Clemens (2013, 139) argue, ‘authentic learning about social justice often requires the very qualities of risk, difficulty, and controversy that are defined as incompatible with safety.’ They suggest using the term ‘brace space’ instead and describe how simply using this term at the start of their teaching signals to students that there will be challenge and discomfort in the classroom which will require courage on the part of those who enter. In contrast to the notion of ‘safe space’, a ‘brave space’ is intentionally set up to be inclusive of all present and encourage active engagement in discussion of difficult topics including power, privilege, oppression and violence, and requires a readiness to listen, take risks, face fears and sometimes, to be vulnerable (Arao and Clemens 2013). At the same time, clarifying ground rules around interaction also lets students know that they will be taken care of (Arao and Clemens 2013, 143) and ‘that painful or difficult experiences will be acknowledged and supported, not avoided or eliminated’ (Cook-Sather 2016, 1).

Yet establishing a ‘brave space’ is challenging. Reflecting on the contributions of students and teachers who worked together to create ‘brave spaces’ in classrooms at two US colleges, Alison Cook-Sather (2016) highlights the importance of challenging the ‘implicit and explicit ways in which inclusion and exclusion, affirmation and disenfranchisement, and belonging and alienation play out for people with different identities’ (2). A contributor to the online magazine medium.com, Elise Ahenkorah (2020) argues that the notion of creating a ‘brave space’ risks ignoring the daily bravery that marginalized groups already have to exercise to navigate the biases and discriminations of everyday life, and then asks them to do more. Instead, she proposes the concept of ‘accountable spaces’ which she defines as ‘being responsible for yourself, your intentions, words, and actions … entering a space with good intentions, but understanding that aligning your intent with action is the true test of commitment’ (Ahenkorah 2020) Ahenkorah maintains that this avoids an ‘unfair burden of bravery’ and allows allies and marginalized communities to agree on a set of actionable behaviours during the discussion to show allyship in real-time and after the event. Reflecting on these discussions, when I teach next year’s student cohort, I will drop the language of ‘safe enough space’ in favour of ‘brave and accountable space’ and, as with my other teaching practices, I will engage the students in a discussion about what this might mean and why.

The discussions and agreements we set up in the induction session carry through into the weekly teaching seminars for the two core modules as well as into an extra optional weekly session called ‘GVC Space’ which I set up after the first year of teaching the MA. This space, co-designed and run with students, is used to build relationships, to continue discussions about power and privilege and how to engage with difficult materials and ‘controversial’ topics, to reflect on our learning and develop academic and other skills.⁸ In the first week, we do a ‘wish list and gift list’ exercise. ‘Gifts’ can be anything a person is willing to contribute to others during the year (e.g. proofreading an essay in English, giving guided local walks). ‘Wishes’ are things we hope to learn from others. Subsequently, my colleague and I offer GVC Space sessions on critical reading and writing skills, effective group work, non-violent communication, self- and collective care and student well-being. The two student representatives consult their peers and organize other activities such as invited speakers, films and well-being sessions. In recent years, some students have used this space to share their own experiences of witnessing, surviving and working against violence and injustice. It is this issue of handling students’ own experiences and engaging with other peoples’ experiences of gender violence and injustice – whether a classmate, family member, friend, or stranger in a film, novel or book – to which I now turn.

Ethical dilemmas: teaching about gender violence with and for gender justice

There are numerous ethical issues to consider when teaching a degree about gender violence and injustice, especially when most students have direct experience of or have witnessed gender violence. Almost all the material we discuss in the classroom is sensitive and this raises difficult questions about how to engage respectfully and compassionately with the violence suffered by others – and ourselves – in ways that do not commodify trauma or propagate further harm.

Katarzyna Marciniak (2010) discusses the complex ethical issues around representation and witnessing she confronts when showing students a documentary film with personal testimonies about sexual violence during the Bosnian war, highlighting that ‘the trauma of war, rape, and torture is mirrored in the subsequent violence generated by its representation’ (872). Indeed, witnessing violence suffered by others raises ethical issues of ‘appropriation, consumption, self-indulgence, empty empathy, or sentimental gestures of pity’ (Marciniak 2010, 876; see also Ahmed 2004). Attempts to identify with experiences of ‘others’ may variously involve projection and appropriation by more privileged selves, confessions of one’s own traumas or obscuring of complicity, thereby reproducing power inequalities and further marginalizing those who are oppressed (Bartky 1996; Pedwell 2012). Thus, some scholars insist on maintaining an ‘ontological distinction’ between self and other ‘underscored by “recognition that the experience of the other is not one’s own”’ (LaCapra 2001 in Pedwell 2012, 167). Yet, too much distancing can also be problematic, leading to disidentification between self and others, ‘othering’ others and denying their dignity and agency (Zembylas 2006). It can also result in the ‘false comfort of concern’ where ‘[t]he space between one’s own and others’ experiences provides a safe zone wherein the listener assumes the position of an innocent bystander whose sympathy both is easy to evoke and requires no action’ (Bertram and Sue Crowley 2012, 65).

Thus, several feminist and anti-racist scholars argue that those who wish to work for social justice need to go through a process of ‘affective self-transformation’ in order to be able to work in collective solidarity with those suffering violence and injustice (Hemmings 2012; Collins 2000; Alexander and Mohanty 1997). This is especially critical for more privileged individuals wishing to work as ‘allies’, striving to interrupt and dismantle oppressions, including those from which they themselves benefit (Ayvazian 1995). Central to this process is the development of empathy, the ability to identify with others, to ‘put yourself in someone else’s shoes’, ‘imaginatively experiencing the feelings, thoughts and situations of another’ (Davis 2004, 403). Thus, it can be argued, it is not enough to know about injustice, one needs to be emotionally moved in order to be able to recognize the subjectivity and agency of others and challenge hierarchies of power and privilege (Zembylas 2018). As Sara Ahmed (2004, 30) writes, ‘an ethics of responding to pain involves being open to being affected by what one cannot know or feel’.

Considering how to navigate the risks of over- or under-identification with suffering ‘others’, Michalinos Zembylas (2006) argues that teachers need to create the conditions for students to become ‘critical witnesses’ to trauma and oppression. In his classes, he introduces testimonies about ethnic hatred and atrocities in Cyprus, engaging his students in ‘dialogues of witnessing’ in which they proactively discuss the act of witnessing the traumatic experiences of others and the uncomfortable affective responses provoked. Drawing on Ahmed’s (2004) notion of ‘affective economy’, he stresses that the classroom can become a space for students to collectively ‘bear witness’ and consider the ‘response-ability’ this entails ‘to become a transformative agent of awareness and reception of Others’ trauma’ (Zembylas 2006, 315).

My own experience also points to another ethical dimension to consider when teaching about violence and injustice. Receiving testimonies of suffering can also trigger intense traumatic responses in listeners whether through the mechanism of vicarious trauma – acute tension that results from engaging empathetically with traumatic stories – or because these stories retrigger one’s own experiences of trauma. In our classrooms, we cannot draw simple lines between the dominant/oppressed, survivor/non-survivor, traumatized/non-traumatized. These spaces are characterized by a more complex, multi-faceted matrix of experiences of privilege, oppression, violence and witnessing. In reality, many people from all kinds of subject positions – including Global North students – have suffered violence and injustice in their own lives and their trauma can be retriggered by listening to the trauma of others.

There is a growing, somewhat contested, literature around teaching ‘sensitive’ materials including those related to violence, sexism and racism. At one extreme, some advocate avoiding potentially triggering material or using ‘trigger warnings’ and making participation optional (see Dalton 2010). However, this is not an option for degrees (e.g. the MA GVC) or professional training (e.g. for social workers) where students have chosen to study these topics. Moreover, omitting materials (e.g. teaching about the criminal justice system and failing to acknowledge how experiences are shaped by race) can also cause distress (Halberstam 2017). More widely, evading sensitive content or the over-reliance on ‘trigger warnings’ can result in a kind of paternalistic protection of students, ‘shield[ing] them from particular histories and realities that can enrich their knowledge of the world’ (Dalton 2010, 8) and removing students’ own agency to make decisions about how to engage with materials (Halberstam 2017), which may also provide opportunities to process their own traumatic experiences and emotional responses in order to continue healing (Robbins 2016).

As discussed, it is therefore important to find ‘brave’ ways to teach and learn about violence and injustice which minimize risks of serious suffering, but support students through discomfort and distress. This will help students to develop the knowledge, emotional capacities and practical skills they need to address violence and proactively work for justice. During the induction, I endeavour to prepare students to engage with course content as safely and responsibly as possible. I explain that, every year, this masters class includes direct and indirect survivors of violence – that ‘[s]ome students may be currently grappling with abusive behaviour; facing psychological, political, or socio-economic issues after violence has ceased; experiencing numbness; or feeling totally resolved’ (Newman 1999, 198). By clearly communicating that survivors are not ‘others’ or ‘somewhere else’ but are among ‘us’, this prompts discussion on how to make the classroom a supportive space for survivors – both visible and invisible. We talk about the responsibilities of witnessing, the issues of (dis)identification with others, and the importance of acknowledging victimization and survival without reducing the lives of survivors to this. I acknowledge that much of what we will read, watch and discuss is likely to provoke emotional responses. I explain the sequencing of the core module and commit to publish teaching material at least 24 hours before class so students can prepare and make their own choices.

We discuss different practices including ‘trigger warnings’ and ‘forewarning’ and I state my preference for the latter, explaining, that:

[f]orewarning, rather than acting as advice to ‘stay away’ for vulnerable students, can act as a means to empower students to deal with their emotional reactions by allowing them to situate their response within a deeper conceptual understanding of that issue. (Scriver and Kennedy 2016, 200)

We discuss that individual reactions may vary from social withdrawal and non-attendance to displays of emotion and disclosure of personal trauma. We also discuss further coping strategies such as students ‘buddying up’ so they can check in with each other before, during and after class. Overall, I encourage students to attend rather than avoid sessions that they feel might be difficult, but to know that they always have options to tune out with headphones, leave the class, seek my support or access support services.

I follow this up with a session on well-being in the third week of GVC Space, just before we move into the more detailed material on different forms of gender violence. I invite a representative from the University Student Wellbeing Service to talk about the various resources and services available on campus and in the wider community to support students dealing with past or current violence, mental health concerns or crisis situations. We then discuss self and collective care and the emotional, cognitive and physical and signs of trauma. We acknowledge the potential benefits of engaging with and processing our emotions around our own and others’ experiences of violence. We discuss issues of disclosure in and outside of the classroom and survivor needs for active listening and confidentiality, to be believed and validated, and to make their own decisions (Durfee and Rosenberg 2009). We also discuss our own limitations and the importance of supporting survivors to access professional services if they so choose.

In the classroom, I also seek to provide space for students to reflect on their thoughts and feelings through acknowledging difficult material, using open-ended questions and regularly breaking into small groups. As Mandy Morgan (1999, 193) points out, once a person has engaged with difficult material, especially making personal connections, ‘there is no “turning back”, no option of a place where the extent and effect of violence … is unknown or unacknowledged’. It therefore matters how teachers respond when students say they find material depressing and overwhelming; it matters that we acknowledge and normalize their feelings and discuss ways of handling this (hooks 2009). I also set aside time for ‘checking out’ after discussing particularly difficult materials so students can share or write down feelings as a way of legitimizing and processing them. I also endeavour to be available after class in case anyone wants to stay behind to talk.

Despite this preparation, every year there are sensitive moments. For example, there have been occasions when students have disclosed their own personal experiences of gender violence in the classroom. In these moments, I have been grateful for my practitioner training, which has taught me how to focus attention on the person speaking, listen empathically, support and validate them. At the same time, aware of how triggering this may be, I check in with the class, acknowledging that this might be distressing, reaffirming our commitment to confidentiality and offering to follow up with anyone who needs this. In almost all cases, the students who disclosed and those who witnessed said they felt supported and found it helpful to see how disclosure can be handled. Nonetheless, there are occasionally students who get very distressed and need further support, demonstrating that it is simply not possible to remove all risks when teaching about violence and injustice. As Marciniak (2010, 890) states, ‘there is no ethical purity in the work of teaching gender, trauma … ’ and it requires courage to teach and learn about these issues.

These incidences highlight that teachers who manage to teach about issues of violence and injustice in ways that make survivors feel validated and supported may be perceived as people who can help. Yet, in the UK, training for university teachers in managing disclosures is practically non-existent. It has therefore become incumbent on us to equip ourselves with basic skills in empathic listening and psychological first aid to enable us to handle disclosures and refer students for further support; to recognize when a student is at serious risk of harm; and know procedures for seeking their consent or mandatory reporting (where relevant) to involve specialist services. At the same time, we need to recognize and communicate the limits of what we can and should do, as most of us are not trained counsellors or therapists (Hayes-Smith, Richards, and Branch 2010). We also need to develop our own coping strategies, as teachers may also be susceptible to vicarious trauma or triggering based on our own experiences of gender violence and injustice. Finally, we need to lobby our educational institutions to give us the training we need to be able to teach as ethically as possible on issues of violence and injustice. This is a tall order requiring self-awareness, commitment and courage.

Conclusion

The MA students I teach come to learn about gender violence and injustice and develop the knowledge and skills to work for greater gender justice. In this paper, I have demonstrated that this requires a teaching practice that goes beyond developing their theoretical knowledge and critical analysis skills. It requires teachers to support students to embrace different ways of knowing about gender violence and injustice across the world, to look at how people resist and challenge violence and to reflect on what gender justice means and for whom. It means encouraging students to reflect on their own position, power and privilege and consider how to actively work for intersectional gender justice in their daily lives. It requires providing opportunities for students to contribute to the degree and supporting them to build skills in self-reflection, empathetic communication and collective witnessing. It means making space for students to work through precarious moments and to process their own encounters with gender injustice and violence.

The processes of decolonizing and diversifying the curriculum, developing an intersectional feminist pedagogy and creating an inclusive and ‘brave’ teaching space are and should be an ongoing endeavour. As teachers, we are challenged by the limits of our own learning and experience; what we were taught and how and what we have learned through our reading, research and practical experience. We are also dependent on the institutional environment in which we work, the inherent limits of the Northern higher education system and the training and guidance (not) offered to us. I have personally been fortunate to work for many years outside the academy with feminist practitioners from whom I have learned skills that shaped many of the approaches described above. Along with exchanges with students and engagements with literature on feminist and decolonial pedagogies, I have become more confident in why, what and how I teach, and I hope the experiences shared in this paper may be valuable for other teachers. In the meantime, I will continue to shape the MA GVC with colleagues and students in full knowledge that teaching about gender violence and injustice with and for intersectional gender justice is a process of constant learning and becoming.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lyndsay McLean

Lyndsay McLean is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and International Development at the University of Sussex, UK. She has conducted research and published on gender-based violence, women’s empowerment and youth engagement in violence and peacebuilding. She convenes the MA in Gender, Violence and Conflict at the University of Sussex. She also works as a part-time consultant to support the development of programmes and policies to prevent gender-based violence in multiple countries in Africa and Asia.

Notes

1 Titled ‘Gender, Conflict and Peace’ until 2021.

2 In this paper, I use the terminology ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ to refer to societies with higher and lesser relatively degrees of power, wealth and privilege respectively. However, these terms do not delineate exact geographical boundaries as there are marginalised and privileged communities in all parts of the world, and of the world is interconnected and interdependent.

3 Suda Perera from 2019–2021; Melissa Gatter in 2022.

4 I would like to thank Yasmine Janah, Shreshtha Das and Claudia Medina Lopez who generously gave their time and ideas.

5 Pseudonym.

6 Also called ‘One Step Forward, One Step Backward’: An exercise where people line up and take steps forward and steps back in response to a series of questions related to relative privilege. This positions people relative to each other depending on privilege.

7 E.g. If either of your parents graduated from university, take one step forwards; If you have an illness or disability, take one step back; If people have assumed something about you due to a stereotype of your ethnicity or race, take one step back.

8 I acknowledge that this is extra voluntary labour. We are in dialogue with colleagues about how to collectively provide support to students working on difficult social justice issues and with experiences of violence and injustice.