When I take into account other things I have heard and read during this research, I believe that Martha and other women like her don't have enough time and space - sometimes any time and space - to explore their contradictory and fragmented feelings and experiences. This lack of time and space may come from many directions: material constraints in programs, a lack of effective process, passive and aggressive resistance from other workers and from students, and women's uncertainty about whether critical literacy theory includes a critique of sexism and heterosexism that leads to an actual change in practice.

In a second interview, a male literacy worker I'll call Simon makes the connection between practices labelled "learner-centred" and practices I would label "woman-positive." He is discussing a sexual harassment incident in the program.

And we realized that he was preventing her, and then subsequent women - I mean, we were trying to be learner-centred in giving this guy literacy, but felt that he was a barrier to women in the program. And, see, he was really smart. It was really hard to pin him down between his rights as an individual and his - because we're not detectives and we're not lawyers - his rights as an individual and his freedom. Because we say literacy is a right - his right to have literacy. (Lloyd, 1991a, p. 40)

Simon uses three partial sentences. The first fragment is
     he was preventing her, and then subsequent women

If we look at one way of finishing this fragment, we can imagine Simon recognizing that the man's behaviour, and the staff's non-intervention, was preventing this woman, and possibly other women, from participating. In order for him to be included, she would have to be excluded.

In the second fragment, Simon does not at first complete this thought:

It was really hard to pin him down between his rights as an individual and his

In this case, Simon might move to recognize the man's responsibilities to the individual woman and the program as well as his rights to literacy education. When he does complete the fragment seconds later, however, he doesn't use the words "his responsibilities." He uses the words "his freedom."

The third fragment is:
     because we're not detectives and we're not lawyers

I think this fragment highlights the denial of authority that is so much a theme in emancipatory literacy theory. If there is anything antithetical to critical, learner- centred literacy work, it is probably the image of the worker as someone engaged in Foucauldian surveillance - snooping around and then confronting students with legalisms, judgments and punishment. A very significant goal of critical literacy work is to provide students with a place where they can gain or re-gain the sense of self that various social systems families, church, school, welfare and justice - have destroyed.