Dear Karen, Chris, Dori, Eduardo and all,

firstly, thank you all for taking the time to post your conference 
reflections, and thanks to Chris and Karen for your thoughtful 
responses to my post. I understand that our business, academic and 
personal lives today are very hectic, which often makes responding to 
posts on this list a sporadic event, or at least it is in my case.

I agree with you Karen that different personalities make different 
kinds of posts, and that it is sometimes difficult to respond to a 
post when its written tone is perceived either as unfriendly, pointed 
or even condescending, which has very occasionally been my experience 
in the past two years. However, it does impact on my desire and 
motivation to send a post about a topic when I think that either I 
may get no response at all (which is, as you say, disappointing, 
sometimes verging on humiliating), or that the response is what I 
might perceive as harsh. I emphasise PERCEPTION about a response in 
this rather clumsy written medium, which I suggest, may or may not 
relate to the sender's intention. So it's all a bit muddy at times, 
and after all, we are all just people with sensitivities and 
standpoints like in any other group.

So, the dilemma is about often about making the decision to continue 
to 'lurk' on the list in silence, or to bravely send a post that 
raises an issue about which one feels uncomfortable. Which was my 
recent dilemma.

I want to say that I was not attempting to make any comparison 
between either Rosan's or Dori's posts, as I think each contributed 
to us non-attendees' experience of the conference, as did David's, 
Eduardo's, Ken's and Chris's. And each of us will interpret their 
accounts from our own standpoints. But I wish to emphasise that my 
initial interest in Rosan's post was not related to her diary style 
notation of her experience, but rather because in my two years of 
subscribing to this list, I have not seen the words 'gender' and 
'design' combined in one post as a description or representation of 
actual events, and if they were mentioned, it was often in relation 
to conceptual discussions about gender and culture, rather than 
gender as standpoint, or as description of something that actually 
happened. Hence my interest, as my research topic is gender and 
typography.

So, where to from here? Chris and Eduardo made very detailed comments 
as to how the panels were constructed, and Chris also provided 
detailed feedback on differences between presenters' styles and 
preparedness. This was particularly useful for me at my current 
doctoral stage, prior to doctoral assessment and commencement of data 
collection. I am considering conference presentations and journal 
publications as options for my progress, so the discussion on this 
list recently was immensely useful and helped me make a key decision.

However, I also considered whether to pursue the issue, as I am 
tentative about its reception. Chris mentioned relations of power and 
public roles, and I guess that was what prompted my discomfort, as 
from my perspective, power is produced through language and text, and 
does not exist as an object that is to be possessed. Yet the 
relations of power at play and produced through texts is what 
maintains individuals' social locations, in which gender, culture, 
ability etc. play big roles. My discomfort arose from my perception 
that power was being exercised, albeit circumspectly, just like the 
infamous Cindy debacle. Even masquerading as a woman, Ken was not 
able to change the force of the power he unleashed in Cindy's written 
posts, due to his social location, even though that was his intention.

As to how the women who were 'plucked unexpectedly' (thanks Chris for 
this lovely metaphor) to present papers - I would be interested to 
hear your responses to this experience. And, with respect to his 
position of being of a non-English speaking background, I would also 
challenge Eduardo's suggestion that the panels were organised along 
themes or genres rather than gender, as also being a standpoint. This 
is because in my position, I see all social organisation and 
interaction as 'gendered'...and I struggle with ways of discussing 
this because the word itself is a red flag to most of us, conjuring 
images of angry women with axes to grind (perhaps these are only my 
own images?).

However, I thank those who continue to post, continue to reflect and 
continue to bravely ask or respond to nuances that they perceive as 
reflecting something conceptually broader than the context of a post 
that may be of deeper relevance to our fledgling research community.

with kind regards, teena
-- 
Teena Clerke
PO Box 1090
Strawberry Hills NSW 2012
0414 502 648