About Offerings
The Cornucopia

Embodied Ethics & Positionality


My ancestors come from diverse experiences and locations that have influenced my worldview, shaped my ability to understand duality, and granted many privileges. My mother’s lineage is Scottish and Russian, and my father’s lineage is Polish Ashkenazi. Both families immigrated to Turtle Island to seek a better life, as settlers and takers of the colonized land. The Polish family member left Europe due to rising antisemitism and worry for their future.


There are many stories of my ancestors that live within my bloodline - dominance, privilege, fear and safety - that live with me today. I am committed to understanding these parts of me and how they show up in my relationships with self and others. 


I grew up without ever wanting or needing anything, including food, shelter, healthcare, education, and material goods. I have had the privilege of travelling internationally throughout my life and have always participated in extracurricular activities. I understand that I hold privilege as a white, wealthy, Canadian, English-speaking, cisgender woman, able-bodied, and college-educated person. 

My privileges have allowed me to learn about most systemic oppression rather than experience it. I have learned the importance of family, community, education, and charity from my Jewish and "working-poor" lineage; my parents and grandparents imposed the importance of these values. My community and schooling reinforced the values of white-saviorism, racial blindness, heteronormativity, and individualism.
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My primary and secondary schooling was not representative of Toronto's population; the teachers and classmates were predominantly white. Conversations and lessons about social issues were focused on history and international human rights abuses. We spoke about Indigenous people in the past tense and as if the population was no longer a part of our community and country. For years, I saw my role as a "helper" and that I could solve the world's issues. I draw on Dr. Bettina Love's (2019, p. 14) teaching on how this environment and educational experience perpetuated antidarkness and white dominance; these are the values that I grew up with. This affects me as a researcher and educator, how I conceive of knowledge, who gets to be an authority on knowledge, and believing that I inherently have superior knowledge as a white, wealthy cis-woman (Hesse-Bibber et al., 2012 p. 562).

I learn and learned social justice liberation, framework, and knowledge from reading, watching, and interacting with Black, Indigenous, Queer, Trans, Disabled and Fat people of colour. I am constantly challenging and analyzing the biases ingrained in me from my experience, contexts, and position. 


My queerness, learning disability, Jewishness, and fatness have given me personal insight. This insight has provided a lens for engaging in research, advocacy, and education grounded in anti-oppressive theory, methods, and ideas. The roles in the Social Change Eco-System developed by Deepa Iyer (2020) that I feel called to are caregiver, guide, and storyteller. I find joy and importance in caring for my community and myself. I am learning more about what it looks like to be a guide without falling back into oppressive, hierarchical notions of leadership that I want to leave behind. I am open and receptive to feedback and continue to lean into Loving Justice Frameworks. I am consistently seeking mentorship through various avenues in the field and diverse perspectives from those with years of training and experience. 

I am proud of the training and education I have had the privilege of engaging with. They are the scaffolding that holds my practice and pushes me to continue doing the work to dismantle the systems I want changed and destroyed. I appreciate the process of teaching and advising on subjects in which I have experience and knowledge, and I will refer out when I am not able to meet a student's and/or client's needs.

I am deeply dedicated to healing frameworks grounded in embodied ethics that challenge the status quo and acknowledge the systems that got us here. I have seen firsthand how we can build, learn, and experience healing by caring for and learning from each other. We are all learners, and we are all teachers.

 



Curriculum Vitae


Somatic Sex Educator in Training, The Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education, In Progress 

Deep Democracy Level 1 - Foundations of Conflict Engagement, Waterline Co-op, 2026 

Certified Holistic Sex Educator at Institute, Sexuality and Enlightenment, 2025 

Sound Practitioner Training, Kiko Sounds, 2024

Master of Arts in Gender Studies and Community Engaged Education and Social Change, Claremont Graduate University, 2023

The Cornucopia is a living archive + resource by Montana Kimel of The Pleasure State
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