nerd teacher 🦇I know this is me kind of... spiraling on something, but I need to be very clear:
Judith Suissa has literally done precisely zero for anarchist pedagogy (or anarchist learning spaces or anarchist anything). She wrote a book about a niche topic. One. She hasn't worked with anarchists, she isn't an anarchist, and she makes her living by being an academic.
And we know that academics, particularly those who do not engage with the topics they research (but even those...), are engaged in extractive work. Nothing she did benefited any anarchic learning community. Her work also focused primarily on alternative schools that weren't specifically anarchist in any capacity, regardless of whether or not there was an anarchist somewhere inside of it.
She did the academic thing. Niche topic to extract from, conflate things that aren't really that topic (while ignoring the relevant people in that space), and then move on.
And she has spent the last decade being a piece of shit TERF and has appeared in Krauss's most recent piece of shit bigot book, The War on Science (2025). And here's me... in 2023 pointing this out for what feels like the dozenth time.
nerd teacher 🦇 (@[email protected])
Please, anarchists, do some of us trans and non-binary folks a fucking favour and start excluding known transphobes from your constant recommendations. I do not care if Judith Suissa is the only person you know who wrote a book about anarchism and education (and did so very superficially, btw). She is a transphobe. You do not need her. You can find almost everything she talked about somewhere else. You can (and should) put her in a bin. Literally. With the lid on.
heylel 💜