I Don't Do 'Feminist' Posted on January 9, 2008 Reconciling feminist research methods with the rhetoric of research institutions sometimes requires reframing, suggests Barbara J. Guthrie (bio).

My friend Carol had said, “You need to come to the feminist workshop with me.” I’m like, “Feminist? Come on. I’m an African-American woman. I don’t do 'feminist.'” So she said, “Just come.” So I went. And then I started listening to the basic assumptions of feminist perspective, and I thought, “Oh my goodness.” It just coalesced with my whole sense of being. And they asked me why I was there, and I said, “Because she told me to come.”

But in the coming, it opened up another whole new world. So my first grant was a feminist perspective of understanding adolescent girls’ substance use. It was sent down to NIDA, and they totally rejected it. But there was something there, because they invited me to come down as an emerging scientist. And so there was about ten women that went down. And we sat around the room, and they critiqued our proposals as we sat in the room.

What came out of that was, “There’s no such thing as feminist. It’s an ideology, and it has no business in research.” But there was one woman at the table that said to me, “Take the word feminist out. Talk about stress and strain, and you’ll get funding.” And that was a very good point. So the next time I submitted the grant, I wrote stress, looking at a stress model for reasons why adolescent girls use substance.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I got funded.

I have to admit, when I was sitting in this room with mostly white women talking about feminists, I was like, “What is this?”

And then someone said, “Well you know, there are some black feminists, like Hooks, Dr. Hooks." And I’m like, “What?” And they introduced me to a whole other area that I had not known about. So the listening and the willingness to take on something that might be uncomfortable works from both the mentee and the mentor’s side. And the moving people to challenge their thinking, too.

And to reframe it. I always thought I was going to be like compromising my values, but then I thought about it. And you can always reframe it in a way that you’re comfortable with, but also in a way that others can understand it.

So I don’t lead with a feminist perspective, but I talk about being gender-responsive because that means that, irrespective of if you're male or female, that you are responsive to the individual that you’re talking to and their identity as a gendered person, whatever that might be.

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