5. While the Women's Secretariat presents a feminist analysis of issues, there is often a lack of feminist process. Individuals' best intentions to be inclusive, collaborative, and consultative are often impeded by the bureaucratic structures within which public servants function. Traditional work relationships and structures continue to permeate the workplace and there is generally a lack of opportunity to explore alternatives. The decision-making process often does not include those who will be directly affected by those decisions, and there is a lack of time and energy to attend to the emotional needs of staff members. Furthermore, the Women's Secretariat remains somewhat marginalized from other government departments and there is the sense that, as employees, our performance must be superior as a means of avoiding criticism and further marginalization within the bureaucracy.

Denials

1. The emotional complexities of my work being credible, legitimate, and worthy of redress have often been denied. Using the work of Narayan I liken my experience as a woman adult educator in the area of sexual harassment prevention to being in a position of oppression (Narayan). Narayan argues that oppressed insiders have more immediate, subtle, and critical knowledge regarding their oppression and consequently treat their experiences more seriously. She identifies a number of ways in which outsiders may view the emotional description of personal experiences as excessive, silly, irrational, or manipulative, which increases an insider's sense of alienation, grief, and anger and also contributes to self-doubt and self-blame.
   
   
2. As an adult educator, I have experienced my own denial of the emotional, psychological, and physical costs associated with doing social change work. Doubting my feelings and questioning my analysis limits my ability to contextualize my work within a broader social and political framework and prevents me from making sense of my experience. The problem, then becomes one of being too sensitive to do my job. Ironically, this oversimplification is also commonly directed at recipients of harassment, such as "if you weren't so sensitive the problem would just go away," or "if you had only said something, this would have never happened."
   
   
3. The relationship between the educator and the learner is not always benign or even mutually beneficial. In the theory of adult education there is little emphasis on creating a safe and respectful learning environment for the educator; as a woman adult educator I am frequently at risk of being harassed by participants. And because there is such a backlash against a variety of equity-related issues, including the introduction of mandatory education regarding the prevention of sexual harassment, those of us working in the area are particularly vulnerable, especially those of us visibly connected to a feminist philosophy. Shore and Butler suggest that some adult educators "experience resistance in the very process of publicly naming and practicing from a feminist standpoint" (3). We who are the messengers of social change often become the target for expressions of frustration and anger with respect to that change.