Gaines' Generalizations (Fallacy)

In Jane M. Gaines' article, "Film History and the Two Presents of Feminist Film Theory," I found that she uses broad generalizations about feminist film history that become fallacious because she gives no specific details. She does not seem to even realize that she is making broad statements about the history of women filmmakers. This goes along with the fallacy of the insidious generalization which is "committed by a historian who swears up and down that he cannot and will not generalize upon his subject, and then proceeds to bootleg generalizations into his work, without recognizing their existence or controlling their content" (Fischer, 124).
In the essay, Gaines asks many questions about early women filmmakers and why no histories were ever written about them. A few of her questions are, "Why did they succeed then? And why, in the later stages of industrial development, did these women no longer exercise the influence that they exerted at the outset?" She says she will "return to this question as one of the pressure[s] to write 'the history of' these women and their struggles"…in five pages? Of course, Gaines is going to make generalizations about women filmmakers in the early era…she has to. To write "'the history of'" these women in five pages is impossible. But she tries her damnedest by making broad, sweeping generalizations (but leaves out where many of her sources come from).
She looks back at the women film theorists of the 1970s and asks why they don't credit early women filmmakers as influence. Well, Miss Gaines, you haven't finished writing 'the history of' them yet…you are only on page 3. They didn't have your history in the 1970s. She states, "The two presents of feminist film theory are powerful clamps, and the project of writing an intellectual history is made especially daunting because of this temporal entrapment. The problem, it would seem, is that for so many scholars, feminist theory has two 'nows'" (115). Gaines goes round and round making lofty statements but never really gets down to writing 'the history of' these women.
In the end, she makes really general statements like, "Until recently, the first world map of cinema history imagined large portions of the world in which there were no women filmmakers in the silent era." When is 'recently?' And you looked at every film history from every period? Are we being a bit general, Miss Gaines? So in the end, she doesn't realize that she is making lofty statements about these women filmmakers of the silent era but she does succeed at allowing me to find a fallacy in her work!