agenda items

[Chris Beckwith]

Dear GALA,

I think the matter of establishing non-profit corporation status is
actually quite simple. I did it myself, with no help, when establishing a
scholarly society (successfully) some years ago.  The simplest way to
go about it is to get a copy of the articles of incorporation and the
bylaws of an existing society that achieved non-profit corp. status fairly
recently in the state where this new society will be registered, then
mechanically go through the text and substitute the new name for the old,
and the few references in it to what the society does to what we actually
we will be doing.  There are some requirements (dues-paying members, etc.)
that need to be met, and a few pitfalls to beware of that no one warned me
about (but I escaped, luckily!), which I can relate to whoever does this,
but basically this is something more or less restricted by federal
(mainly) and state law so much that there is no leeway for any innovation
or discussion.  Which means it can be done simply and quickly by almost
anyone.  It definitely doesn't need a long committee process, from which
a society may never emerge...

I would also like to know to what extent the association will be focused
on feminist issues rather than gender issues (i.e., both female and male
genders, at least, as well as other 'genders').  I have been working on
linguistic gender and classification systems for about ten years, and
have taught classes on gender (linguistic, sociolinguistic, and social).
It occurred to me at one point that there must be a strong cognitive
connection between purely linguistic classification systems (gender,
classifiers, etc.) and what is generally considered social categorization,
such as sexism, racism, and so on; it was the only logical solution to
some puzzling patterns I had been studying.  In short, I would like to
know if this is the sort of thing the Association will be at all concerned
with?

Thanks!

Chris