Another question implicit in your comment is the relevance of maintaining a bilingual state in areas of Canada where populations of French speakers are extremely tiny. At the same time as there’s a certain lack of logic to the “equally bilingual everywhere” approach when the geographic realities indicate vast differences in the practical usability of French, the flip side is that this very fact serves to isolate French speakers in specific geographic regions, and that leads to incredible amounts of discrimination in other regions. A friend of mine is a Francophone language activist in Manitoba, for example, and some of the stories she’s told me about the way Francophones are treated – even bilingual ones – are appalling.

Lastly, your comment stands as an interesting example of how interest level intersects with learning ability. Especially when it comes to language, I’ve read a couple of neat articles (no sources to cite, sadly) in the last year that indicate that a person’s ability to learn is often directly correlated with their interest – and vice versa: if a person does not want to learn, it’s nearly impossible to force them to. So I wonder how much of the French not “taking” is due to your perception of its pointlessness in the first place. I highly doubt it’s due to any lack of intelligence on your part, given what I’ve read of your work, so there must be some reason… Certainly that would resonate with my own experience of some subjects in high school. Anyway, no value judgment here – simply some musings.

Two solitudes indeed. Montreal queer culture pulls off some incredibly ingenious hybrids, intersections, overlaps, cooperative efforts etc. And yet those efforts always remain in the minority compared to the vastness of the gulfs that remain unbridged. Inspiring and sad at once.

The differences between French and English queer language is interesting. “Two solitudes” as they say.

I had a gay male colleague argue with me once at the pub after work. I referred to myself as queer and he said: “No, you’re not. You’re bi.” Even my hetero colleagues were aghast. I didn’t even have to react. They proceeded to enumerate the ways I was queer (!): “She has sex with men AND women and she fucks with gender. She is into non-monogamy. Meanwhile, you’re living a straight lifestyle, except that your monogamous relationship is with another man. She’s more queer than YOU are.” Of course, it made me smile, even though I don’t believe in that queer one-upmanship type of stuff either, but it was interesting to see how they had an understanding of queer that he wasn’t getting at.

Looking forward to reading your “queer” post.

On a lighter note, I have another colleague (well, a faculty dean actually) say something to the effect of: “Well, Nancy, we all know you’re queer but what does that have to do with your sexual orientation?” I love working in a relatively progressive institution of higher learning, even though I won’t do it forever.

Conversely, I’ve had some forward thinking dykes feel that, because I work in a gay leather bar and like boys, that I’m a gay man. Full stop. I tend to think in many exclamations about that too.

In related yet unrelated news, I’m learning a bit of ASL each day. My new favorite sign: bite.