vote and comments

[Ines Shaw]

Of the possibilities offered, my vote goes to 2)

2)  Include an overt philosophical statement for GALA which emphasizes the
promotion of feminist research and goals among other things which may or
may  not conflict with 'feminist' goals, such as the study of queer
language, gendered language and ethnicity, gender and race.

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I have been only been able to save the GALA messages and read them
periodically.  So, because my reading is out of sync with the time they are
sent, I haven't been able to respond right away.  But here are some
comments which I hope make sense if you can recall the messages regarding
feminist goals sent earlier and those sent in this latest round.

When we work outside a field of which we speak, our view of it is bound to
be influenced by indirect knowledge.  Many of the comments and arguments
regarding feminism/s have revealed such an indirect knowledge.  In regard
to several arguments against the explicit inclusion of feminism in the
goals of the organization, all one has to do is to replace feminism,
feminist methodology, or feminist philosophy/ies with a parallel academic
-ism, -ology, or -osophy/ies to see how there is some fallacy or bias,
unintended as I am sure they are.  Unavoidably, this indirect knowledge is
constituted of misunderstandings, misconceptions, and some stereotypical
ideas about feminism/s.  Recently there was an argument which mentioned
popular negative meanings or understandings of feminism/s--would the
meanings/understandings of politics and politicians be significant if we
were talking about political science in the context of an academic
organization?
(Of course, popular meanings/understandings of politics/ians,
feminism/ists, etc. are a valid subject of study, but this is not the issue
here).

In addition, while it is true that the term gender has come to meant women
in several contexts, I think that this term is taken by academic women's
studies and feminists, which I believe constitute a large percentage of
feminists, to be inclusive of biological sex and sociocultural gender
categories.  This belief comes from the context of my academic and
administrative experience in women's studies and several years of varied
professional service to a large women's studies association.  I also mean
this statement to apply to women's studies and feminists who do not believe
that there is a distinction between sex and gender or that this distinction
is not as clear cut as stated above.  In other words, I am not familiar
with *any* scholar who takes gender to mean only 'women.'  Of course, there
may be some who do.

How can these differences and misunderstandings be resolved?  I think 1) by
a willingness by all to keep engaging in discussion, and, 2) a willingness
to become more knowlegeable about feminist research and teaching on the
part of some.  The burden is on the latter because feminist research and
teaching is not yet academically integrated, despite the great inroad of
feminism/s.  Finally, we all know that women does not equal feminist, but
it bears repeating, I think.







Ines Shaw
Linguistics & Women's Studies
North Dakota State University

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