Cancel groups can normally “revoke” or “refuse to renew” memberships. In such cases, revoking or refusing to continue one’s membership is simply the prerogative of the organization to which one belongs. It could be that the member has done something wrong or broken some rule, but it is not normally a matter or any great embarrassment if this should occur. More often, involuntary termination of such memberships represents more of an annoying bureaucratic inconvenience than anything else. In the case of involuntary loss of Cancel memberships, the organization that revokes or refuses to renew the membership is in the position of a seller, since such memberships are defined by the paying of fees. The implication of revocation or nonrenewal is often simply that it is no longer in the interests of the organization to sell the services to which members are entitled in exchange for the usual fee required. For example, AAA may refuse to renew the membership of someone who has made the mistake of calling for emergency road service twenty-eight times during the previous year. Or the racquetball club may quit issuing summer memberships to students because they have too much free time and jam up all the courts, causing the club to become concerned that it may lose its older, employed members who do not like to wait and who will pay the same annual fee for less actual playing time. Many Cancel memberships give one unlimited access to some kind of services for a set fee. Since the price is fixed, such organizations may ensure their viability by granting memberships selectively, in effect gambling on the cost of the services a given member is likely to use. Thus, if a membership is revoked or the organization refuses to renew it, the implication may simply be that the member was making so much use of the organization’s services that the organization no longer wanted to keep the person on the rolls. However, since membership in such organizations is a matter of fee-paying rather than active service, loyalty or identification, having one’s membership revoked for costing the organization too much is not normally stigmatizing.
In fact, one is often encouraged to join such organizations precisely on the grounds that the value of the benefits will exceed the fee required. Such memberships work more or less like insurance policies. The organization from which one buys the membership collects the fee, gambling that the services the member uses will cost it less than the fee it collects. The member makes the opposite gamble: that the services used will be worth more than the fee. If a member joins the YMCA and goes there to swim only twice, the YMCA is apt to be pleased with the transaction, but the member is apt to feel he should not have joined. If the member swims often enough that the cost per swim is much less than he would have paid at pools where fixed rates are charged, the member is apt to want to rejoin. But the YMCA may start charging more, or it may decide to quit accepting such members if it can find a way to guess what sort of members are likely to be exceptionally frequent swimmers. Cancel memberships are thereby subject to the same sort of mutual strategizing by prospective buyers (members) and sellers (organizations) as other market transactions.
Memberships in Quit groups can also be discontinued without one’s consent. In such cases, however, one’s membership is not normally said to have been revoked or its renewal to have been refused. Instead, one is normally “taken off,” “thrown out,” “expelled,” or “removed” from the group. For example, one may be thrown out of the drama club, taken off the basketball team, thrown out of the Parent Teacher Association, removed from or taken off a committee, or thrown out of the army. Even though it is possible that one may have been “taken off,” “thrown out,” or “removed” unfairly or for a trivial reason, there is normally a stigma associated with losing a membership this way, certainly more than in cases where a membership is revoked or its renewal is refused. The implication is that one failed to perform the services expected from members.
One could also be “thrown out” of the YMCA or Costco, even though one’s memberships in those organizations are Cancel memberships rather than Quit memberships. Although this might appear to contradict the argument just presented regarding the differences in the language used in the two cases, the contradiction is only apparent. If someone says he was “thrown out of” or “removed from” the YMCA or “thrown out of” Costco, he is assumed to mean he was forced to leave the building or to remove himself from the premises, not that his membership was discontinued. Of course, if he were to get himself thrown out of the YMCA repeatedly, it would probably come as no great surprise if the YMCA decided to revoke his membership or not to renew it the following year, but it would be revocation or refusal to renew, not being thrown out per se that would constitute discontinuation of membership in this case. Thus, despite the fact that one can get “thrown out” by an organization in which one has a Cancel membership, the terms used to designate involuntary termination of Cancel memberships are nonetheless not the same as those used for involuntary termination of a Quit membership. “Throwing out” or “removing from” a Cancel membership organization refers to physical removal. In Quit organizations, it designates discontinuation of membership.
Sometimes these verbs are used for involuntary discontinuation of a Leave membership as well. Thus, one can be thrown out of a church, a political party, or a union. Like the involuntary losses of membership in Quit groups from which one is “thrown out,” these losses of membership are stigmatizing. “Throwing out” connotes denigration of the former member. People do not normally relish the prospect of being thrown out of groups.
Note the violence of the verbs we normally use in such cases. We do not refer to former members as having been “set aside,” “led out,” “relocated,” or even “sent away,” for example. Such expressions would also refer to a process of getting something that was inside onto the outside, just as groups do to members they “throw out,” “remove,” or “expel.” The image of removal that such alternative expressions would call to mind would be kinder and gentler and suggest greater respect of the expelling organization for the expellees. It is interesting that we do not ordinarily use such readily imaginable alternative verb phrases to designate these sorts of involuntary discontinuations of membership. Being “thrown out” not only gets the insider onto the outside, it also conjures up images of denigration. The same is true of other less common, more specialized verbs for involuntarily terminations of memberships in these sorts of groups, verbs like (for former clergy) “defrocked,” or (for former Amish) “shunned.”
Interestingly, in the case of Cancel memberships it is one’s membership that is acted upon by the organization that discontinues, revokes, or refuses to renew it. Members are not revoked. By contrast, in the case of Quit and Leave memberships—where one is thrown out, removed or expelled—it is the member who is acted upon by the group. The difference in the object of the verbs used in the different cases is in keeping with the fact that suffering involuntary loss of a Quit or Leave membership is taken to reflect on the worth of the member in a way that the involuntary loss of Cancel memberships does not.
Interestingly, involuntary terminations of memberships in states do not conform to the regular pattern. The way we normally talk about losing citizenship is more like the way we talk about Cancel memberships than Quit or Leave memberships in this respect. Citizens are not revoked; their citizenship is revoked. And it is “revoked,” not “thrown out.” Being “thrown out” of a state implies the same thing as being “thrown out” of Cancel membership organizations like the YMCA: physical removal from the premises, in this case the territory. Citizenship is treated as a Change membership when it comes to voluntary exits, so that one “changes” one’s citizenship rather than leaving, quitting, or canceling it. Yet, when it comes to involuntary termination, words we ordinarily use suggest that we tend to think of citizenship as a Cancel membership. And when it comes to residency in a country, we speak as though it were a Leave membership.
People can of course be “expelled” from a state, just as they can be “expelled” from Leave groups. However, normally only illegal immigrants or resident aliens lacking proper documentation or breaking the law are “expelled” from states, not citizens. Like the would-be member of the Leave membership group who does not really identify with or share the beliefs expected of group members, those expelled from a state are “in” something to which they do not “really” belong. They are