Pragmatic advocacy means endorsing multiple policy vocabularies- our representations aren't uniquelly exclusionary, they exclude the same way the alternative does

(Haithe, As If Gender Mattered: Feminism and Change in Higher Education The Journal of Higher Education,Vol. 74, No. 3 pp. 321-336 )

The fact that Bensimon and Marshall (1997) bring their criticism to bear upon conventional academic practices, but also upon the work of other feminists, offers another clue about the place of feminist critique in higher education. If academic feminism is now characterized by internal conflicts over what it means to do work that is recognizably feminist, then this is a sign of its growth, maturity, and vitality. As Alasdair MacIntyre (1984) once observed, "when an institution-a university, say, ... is the bearer of a tradition of practice or practices, its common life will be partly, but in a centrally important way, constituted by a continuous argument as to what a university is and ought to be.... Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict" (p. 222). Feminism entered the university in opposition to the common life of men's studies but, because it is academic, it has been subject to the continuities of conflict that are definitive of all academic work. Whenever conflict over what constitutes an academic conversation ceases, that particular way of thinking withers away. Judging by contemporary conversations, academic feminism is still firmly in the game. Like other groups of academics, feminists have enunciated the norms and conventions that establish their distinctive boundaries, and these conventions, in turn, identify who is and is not an insider. Often as not, feminists do this by pointing to differences that mark others as outsiders. Bensimon and Marshall, for example, tell us that "there is a misperception among those who are not knowledgeable of feminist theories that any work that focuses on women or issues that concern women is feminist" (p. 8). What counts as feminist work in higher education? As they put it, "If the study's data were analyzed in connection to historically-embedded policy assumptions that structure universities around males, with a critique of assumptions of current policies and programs, and presented an activist/advocacy stance for remaking institutional practices to be responsive to women, then it would be feminist critical analysis" (italics in original, p. 9). While Bensimon and Marshall (1997) like to think that their acts of criticism are dismantling the master's house, to the pragmatist it looks like business as usual. As Richard Rorty (1989) says, pragmatists do not treat people "as anonymous channels for truth but as abbreviations for a certain final vocabulary and for the sorts of beliefs and desires typical of its users" (pp. 79-80). The work of academics, in part, is to try on different vocabularies, redescribe events from the perspectives they offer, and compare the results with those generated by alternative vocabularies. Academic feminists have introduced new vocabularies, and the redescriptions these vocabularies enable have been very productive. Bensimon and Marshall are trying to redefine the world of higher education policy by applying a feminist vocabulary, which they hope will make things better. Ironically, the challenges they offer would not make sense to other members of the profession-indeed, could not even be heardif Bensimon and Marshall had not mastered some of the academic protocols handed down to them by men. The inescapable fact, the truly fundamental principle that underlies academic work, is that to become a member of academia, is to be socialized into a community defined by rules that determine who is, and is not, a member in good standing. Membership rules are never fully secured, of course; instead they are historical and contextual and must, as a consequence, be continually worked for. Nonetheless rules of membership, however much they shift to accommodate new ways of thinking and being, are still rules. The dilemma that Lorde eloquently points to, despite her desire for a revolution (or perhaps because her desire is so strong), is that it is impossible to challenge membership rules without already being an insider of one sort or another. In Women of Academe: Outsiders in the Sacred Grove, Nadya Aisenberg and Mona Harrington (1988) characterized academic women as being "outsiders."A s "women of academey,"however, they are also insiders. Academic feminists in higher education are insiders of a particular kind, to be sure. They have used, and will no doubt continue to use, the uniqueness of their insights to challenge the rules that govern academia at large. I am sympathetic with their agenda for change, but I do wish to point out that the alternatives that feminists offer, like those offered by other groups of academics, are defined by rules of inclusion and exclusion that, in turn, point to their own specialized biases. As Bensimon and Marshall make plain, it takes more than womanhood to put one inside the circle of academic feminists. (325-6)