Feminism, the vote.

[Megan J. Crowhurst]

Hi all,

I've just moved across the country (USA) and am presently catching up with
all the GALA mail.  I've certainly appreciated Alice's posting, and the
feedback from people who would rather keep the process slow...  A comment
about the voting.  There are hundreds of people on this list (I'm not sure
what the present count is), and so 15 votes (or even 23 contributions to
an earlier vote) represents a very small percentage of the membership.
This means that even though the goal was to make this bottom-up process as
democratic as possible, the truth is that it isn't really, simply due to
the fact that such a small percentage of the membership is participating.
I wouldn't want to attribute the gap to anything in particular, but I
think part of Alice's point might have been (as I interpreted it), why
take such pains to make this an open democratic process when it isn't
working out that way?  On the whole, if going slowly is helpful, I have no
problems with that.

The next comment is offered as a personal viewpoint, and not from any role
I might play as one of the facilitators of this list.  And because the
opinion I'm about to express is a fairly strong one that disagrees with
recent postings (which are in some cases reiterations of their personal
positions by people who also apparently feel strongly), I'd also like to
stress that this isn't intended to single out or disparage anyone.  On the
subject of feminism, I think it's important for an organization like GALA
to affirm in some positive way some set of feminist principles, broadly
defined, as part of the organization's general orientation, in much the
same way that various members expect it to be positively stated that work
on masculinity and queer issues is to be welcomed.  The plea regarding
endorsing a feminist stance has in some cases been "let's not go there";
but as I see it, we could say exactly the same about the other two areas I
just mentioned (and more).  Endorsing/affirming a set of feminist
principles, however defined (personally, I like Alice's definition, but
others would be possible), does not mean that work supported by GALA has
to take a feminist orientation.  And it does not mean that members hAve to
identify as feminist, any more than affirming a place for work addressing
queer issues means that members of GALA have to identify as queer.  If you
think about this comparison, it becomes clear that to exclude reference to
feminism in GALA's statement, as has been suggested, would be to encode a
specific bias against feminist orientations, and this I would find to be
unacceptable.  I've hesitated to express this opinion in this group
because I don't feel that I have the credentials to do so; my own work
does not examine issues which are primarily relevant to this group (I am a
theoretical phonologist who does linguistic fieldwork on Tupi-Guarani
languages in South America), and I only teach language and gender courses
occasionally.  My committment to this organization and to others which are
similar in some ways grows specifically out of a personal committment to
queer and feminist issues.  So, if feminist orientations were not
specifically welcomed by this organization for all of the reasons I've
mentioned in these paragraphs, I would feel that there was no place for me
in this organization.  Perhaps some others feel similarly.  Again, this is
offered as a personal viewpoint.  Although it may not really be possible
to separate this opinion from my role as a facilitator of this list, I'm
speaking only for myself; the other facilitators shouldn't be blamed!

--Megan

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Megan J. Crowhurst, Ph.D.		Tel:  919-962-1484
Department of Linguistics		Fax:  919-962-3708
The University of North Carolina	
318 Dey Hall 014A, CB # 3155		
Chapel Hill, NC  27599			
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