One way of looking at this expect, then, is to see that what is made visible is the language of rights and freedoms. What remains invisible is the language of responsibility.

Within a learner-centred philosophy, the principle of rights is applied to the students, the principle of responsibility to the worker. In North America, critical adult literacy is a field where most of the workers and volunteers are women, a majority of students - and almost all the accredited theorists - are men. I would like to see this allocation of rights and responsibilities between student and worker - and between worker and theorist - made problematic. In Simon's excerpt, however, the issue of rights and responsibilities makes visible the relationship between students. It is two students who have conflicting interests.

At the beginning of this situation, the rights of the man won over the responsibility to the woman. In the end, as Simon says, the staff decided to "go in favour of the women, saying that because there had been other barriers in people's lives, this was one more barrier. I mean you get in and then you get harassed." (Lloyd, 1991a, p. 41) Unfortunately, by this point, the woman had left the program.

Where does this discussion take us? In the discussion of women and literacy, I believe it takes us back, yet again, to the men.

A male worker asked about the men who don't fit into the way things are moving, toward more woman-positive education.

They don't agree with the way we are treating women [positively]. What happens to them? Do we just let them drop out? Do they cause trouble in the classroom? What do we do for them? (Lloyd, 1991a, p. 41)

What do we do for these sexist men. Not with them. He is not talking about letting the men go, or changing them. He is talking about what safe places are we going to create for the men who continue being sexist.

It wasn't only men asking these questions. Many, many of the women I talked with asked "What about the men? We can't ignore the men. The men are going to lose out if we start focusing on women. We can't take it away from the men. That isn't fair!" Finally, I began asking the women, what will the men lose? What can't we take away from the men? What isn't fair? - False deixes again!

It turns out that what we can't take away from the men is the privilege they experience in the programs. As male learners, they have most often been the centre of the programs, the centre of critical literacy theory and practice. In most cases, the work - and the play - of the programs has been defined on the basis of what they suggest, what they will agree to participate in.