Tag Archives: vocabulary of queerness

TOWARDS A BETTER VOCABULARY OF QUEERNESS IN FRENCH

So in my recent post about my fancy ideas for a gender-neutral pronoun in French, ai mentioned the word «allosexuelle» and made reference to the fact that it never really caught on in French, losing out majorly in competition with the anglicism “queer”.

By itself, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Ai don’t mind if the French language gets “polluted” with anglicisms, although ai’m definitely a bit pedantic about orthography. Let me spell it all out for you: ai would much prefer it if the French version of “queer” became «kuire» instead of «queer», since the French «queer» (you know it’s French because of the guillemets) looks and sounds fucking weird from the perspective of how words are supposed to get together in that language and how they are supposed to be pronounced. The qu– phoneme should be pronounced like a hard letter-kay [k, K] in English, but it isn’t, and ai just plain don’t like that.

Let’s move on, though, to a problem that goes beyond my personal tastes.

To a very large degree, it seems to be more difficult to discuss queerness – which should be understood as something separate from mere homosexuality, something that encompasses a much larger array of subject matter – in French than it is in English, especially if the aim is to discuss it using precise language. Much of that precise language in English is a bit jargonny, to be sure, and that is because it is largely produced by academics and used by university-educated queers. But this language is definitely more jargonny, more impenetrable to the layperson, in French, and that is because so many of the words are anglicisms. A really comprehensive familiarity with the vocabulary basically needs to coincide with a degree of English fluency. And while ai don’t want to generalize too much as an anglo (cuz what do ai know), ai feel like some terms, like “genderfuck”, would pretty much need an entire footnote to explain properly to someone if you only wanted to use French words.

The vocabulary is also more vague in French than it is in English. Among anglophones, it is still common for people to conflate sex and gender with one another. Some people, like webcomic person A. Stiffler, actually say that “in the English language, [‘sex’ and ‘gender’] are essentially similes to each other.” Ai sort of disagree. Although you can definitely make the argument that the larger part of the English-speaking masses haven’t quite internalized the distinction yet, ai’m going to assert that, today, when people conflate sex and gender in English, they are actually making a mistake – just as much as if they had conflated ethics with morality, racism with white supremacy, or queerness with homosexuality. Yet this isn’t the case in French! Even in French academia, the word «sexe» can still refer to both biological sex and gender identity, and this conflation is why «allosexuelle» was, starting in the 1990s, used as a French-language translation of “queer”. There have been efforts to get the word «genre» to refer exclusively to what we call “gender” in English, and «sexe» to refer exclusively to what we call “sex”, but they simply haven’t been very successful so far.

To an anglophone like me, of course, the word «allosexuelle» seems to imply a concern with matters of sexuality in particular, and thus it seems like a poor translation of “queer”, since the things that can be discussed as being queer go far beyond the matter of simple sexual behaviour. A better word might be «allogenric» (grammatically masculine) or «allogenrique» (grammatically feminine), with «genric» and «genrique» being the words ai just made up for the adjectival form of «genre». Still, these two new words I’ve coined aren’t good enough either. They seem to address gender in particular, to the exclusion of sexuality!

It is clear to me that, when it comes down to the wire, neither «allosexuelle» nor the words ai just came up with, «allogenric» and «allogenrique», can replace the anglicism «queer» (which definitely should be changed to «kuire», just sayin’).

This becomes even more true when we consider that «allosexuelle» actually had a prior meaning to its meaning as a French translation for “queer”. Ai didn’t know this until ai was researching this post, but the term was apparently coined in the ’70s by French academics and used as an antonym to «autosexuelle», a word that referred to people who satisfy their sexual needs by themselves. «Allosexuelle» meant the opposite, referring to anyone who satisfies their sexual needs by seeking out others. Interestingly enough, in parts of the anglophone asexual community (something ai have determined from reading this blog post), “allosexual” is now being liberated from its origins in university research and being used once again as an alternative to the term “non-asexual” to refer to people who are, well, not asexual.

Ai will admit that ai had some grand plan of “fixing” the word «allosexuelle» before ai came across the aforementioned blog post; the title of this post was even going to be FIXING ALLOSEXUEL(LE). Essentially, my idea was to separate the concept of allosexuality from queerness, and to try to imbue it with some kind of new meaning that wouldn’t leave it completely redundant among all the other words that have -sexual as a suffix. But ai think my efforts to that end were banal at best, and ai actually think “allosexual”/«allosexuelle» as synonymous with “non-asexual” is pretty good. So can we all collectively agree to start using and understanding that word as such from now on?

Ai mentioned two other words earlier, «allogenric» and «allogenrique»; these were also part of my plan. Essentially, ai thought – in fact, ai think – that these words should be used as French translations for the word “genderqueer”, along with «allogenre», which might be necessary in some contexts as well. Like “genderqueer”, these words refer to a more specific manifestation of queerness. Like, you can have queer sex and yet you might not be genderqueer; that’s a pretty good description of my cis boy self. So yeah. For the record, in English, the word “allogender” looks horrible and so ai don’t think it should be used for any reason ever, especially since “genderqueer” looks great and already exists.

Ai am going to conclude this post with possible French translations for a few more terms that derive from “queer”. First, let’s all translate “queerness” to «kuiritude» (a feminine noun). There’s a good chance that you’re not sold on this new orthography just yet, but come on, «queeritude» is just dumb. If «kuiritude» rubs you the wrong way, you’re probably just better off rocking another anglicism and spelling it out «queerness» in French, i.e. «J’ai écrit un papier sur le concept de queerness quand j’étais un étudiant à l’Université Concordia.»

Next, the verb form of “queer”, as in the passage “[it] queers violence”, something that ai actually had to translate recently in CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective’s “Say You Want an Insurrection”. Ai translated that passage to «[il] rend kuire la violence». So there you have it again: “to queer” is the same as “to render queer”, thus «rendre kuire» if you share my vision or «rendre queer» if you’re boring.

Next, ai mentioned “genderfuck” at one point in this post already, and ai think this is a hard one. On January 12 of this year, there was at an event at La Belle Époque that was entitled, in the January 2014 poster as Genderfuck Art Making in English and Atelier d’art fuck les genres in French. (Ai would have added some dashes, but that’s just me.) Now, while genderfuck can mean “fuck genders”, it also means fucking with genders, which is a subtlety that the translation «fuck-les-genres» (see, it looks better with dashes) serves to erase. Ai feel like this is one of those situations where you might just need to leave it as “genderfuck” if you want it to mean exactly the same thing, since the word just can’t be translated in such a way that it carries all of the same intertwined meanings into the other language. This feeling was pretty much confirmed the other day in a conversation ai had over tea with a francophone friend when we were discussing this language blog ai was intending to launch, who said that the only way to translate this word clearly would be to say «fucker-avec-les-genres» or something equally long, i.e. quelque chose qui ne craque pas, y’know? However, that is boring and/or surrender, and so while ai want to leave it for now, ai would be open to suggestions about how to translate this word.

All of this comes down to an effort to create a French vocabulary of queerness («une vocabulaire pour la kuiritude») as rich as the vocabulary that exists in English, and to make it possible to discuss, in French, a great deal of the “queer theory” that has been produced in English without use of jargon anglicisms (as opposed to common anglicisms, which are widely understood by Québecers and can practically be considered French words by now).

As something of a believer in the validity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (though that’s a whole other topic), and as a person who thinks the conceptions of sexuality and gender in “queer discourse” in comparison are generally superior to those in to “gay discourse” (i.e. a conception of great fluidity, rather than a conception that is less rigid than the one that exists in heteronormative assumption, but which is still pretty fucking positivist and tends to limit the free expression of the individual quite badly), ai sometimes wonder about stuff. Like, imagining someone very much like myself, but who grows up with queer desires in a small town in Beauce speaking barely any English rather than a small town in south-central New Brunswick speaking barely any French, how is that person going to come to understand sexuality and gender?

There’s a good chance that such a person will do just fine, or suffer a lot of bullshit, or both, but ai think that things improved a lot for me when ai came into contact with the aforementioned “queer discourse” a little bit later in my teenage years and after ai’d moved out of that small town. The words that were suddenly available seemed more useful than the words ai had had before. Ai just wasn’t looking in the right place on the internet, it seems – but how much more difficult would it have been for me to find that shit if it was all written in a language that ai didn’t understand?

Final dictionary entries:

Allosexuality is a noun referring to those who seek and/or desire sexual gratification. It can be contrasted to asexuality. Both allosexual and asexual are both adjective and noun, referring to those who are characterized by allosexuality or asexuality.

French asexualité (f.) for English asexuality.

French allosexualité (f.) for English allosexuality.

French asexuel (or asexuelle, f.) for English asexual.

French allosexuel (or allosexuelle, f.) for English allosexual.

French genric (or genrique, f.) for English adjective gender. (Example: «l’identité genrique» for “gender identity”.)

French allogenre (probably, and problematically from a grammar perspective, neutral) for English countable noun genderqueer.

French allogenric (or allogenrique, f.; allogenre, n.) for English adjective genderqueer.

French kuir (or kuire, f.) for English queer (both noun and adjective).

French rendre kuir (or rendre kuire when applied to feminine object) for English verb to queer.

French kuiritude (f.) for English queerness.

A GENDER-NEUTRAL PRONOUN IN FRENCH?

Ai propose to you, dear reader, «ale» – plural form being «ales».

The word derives from the prefix allo-. These two syllables are affixed to the words for the categories of stuff that are other from, apart from, and/or aloof from the categories of stuff that are considered most important by the dominant sources of metanarrative production in our society (what ai like to call “the dessemp”, based on the acronym DSMP).

For example, Québec’s allophones, who are not perceived as those with the most agency or the most responsibility in the conflict between the Province of Québec’s official French unilingualism, on the one hand, and the threat of «le bilinguisme grimpant» and/or English-language hegemony, on the other. Then there’s the word «allosexuelle», a French translation of “queer” that never really caught on. It sounds a bit clinical, for sure, and it’s pretty obvious why it couldn’t compete with that sexy single-syllable anglicism that has swept the world (or at least a large number of European languages). Right now, though, in this paragraph here, ai’d like us all to appreciate «allosexuelle» for what it is. Ai think it implies a certain vastness, one as diverse and far-reaching as the human animal’s propensity for creativity, experimentation, desire, and resourcefulness. It’s not infinite, but for limited subjectivities like ourselves, it is effectively so. (EDIT: while the main thrust of this paragraph remains relevant, research done for a later post revealed some important information about the word «allosexuelle» which is probably worth looking into).

My motivation here, for the record, is that ai want to have a French word that ai, myself, can feel comfortable using to refer to the people in my life who, in English, prefer to use they as a personal pronoun. Ai don’t feel comfortable using «il», ai don’t like the gendered «lui» (as opposed to the non-gendered «lui» that you can also use for someone who is otherwise an «elle» – such is the intricacy of proper French grammar), and ai don’t like the needlessly ugly and binary-affirming «ille». It doesn’t seem like any of the other gender-neutral pronouns ai’ve seen (all of which come from this blog post, incidentally) have caught on very much, and ai don’t like any of them anyway.

The sort of go-to in Montréal, at least among the small number of people that ai’ve ever had this conversation with, is to use «ille», which you may notice ai just shit-talked in the last paragraph.

Ai came up with «ale» because «ille» is terribly inadequate as a when-in-doubt pronoun. To be clear, if someone told me to use «ille» when referring to them, ai would do so, just as ai have used “e”, “ze”, and even “it” in English when people have told me that such or such is the pronoun that so or so uses. But in English, if ai’m uncertain about someone’s preferred pronoun and ai can’t just find out easily, ai’m going to use “they”. It seems to me that «ille» isn’t appropriate for this same function, though, because of a few reasons. First, «ille» sounds pretty much the same as the masculine pronoun in French unless you really stress the final letter-ee [e, E] and get another syllable out of it, like you might do for certain chants or songs. That sounds a bit weird in regular speech, though, and it’s still going to sound pretty much the same as «il». Second, the orthography of «ille» is simply a cross between «il» and «elle». There is an implication here that the person to whom this pronoun refers is simply between masculinity and femininity, rather than completely beyond the two of them. It is entirely possible that the person in question does feel “in between the two” (or feels like an embodiment of the two, or whatever other subjective experience they might have of their gender), but it’s also possible that they don’t, and frankly, ai am rather unlikely to know for sure. Once again, it’s subjective!

Ai like to think, though, that «ale», in contrast to «ille», is closer to «hen», the Swedish gender-neutral pronoun that has been generating a lot of controversy in some circles as of late. Like «hen», «ale» has a different vowel sound than its masculine and feminine counterparts (which, in Swedish, are «han» and «hon» respectively), but the word has the same consonant structure, so it doesn’t look completely out of place alongside the other two. In French, of course, the orthography is also a bit different between the masculine and feminine pronouns, with «il» having two letters and «elle» coming in at four. «Ale» has three letters. There is a risk, of course, that it will look like it is “in between” masculinity and femininity because of this, an apparent compromise that ai don’t like about «ille» and something ai want to avoid. But hopefully ai’m reading too much into it, and no one else will care! The purpose of the three letters is to render it different enough in form from both of the predominating pronouns, not necessarily to be “in between”.

So the final thing here is finding a word that corresponds to «ale» for those situations where «lui» is not epicene. In this case, ai am not sure if ai should propose another word formation in order to differentiate «ale» even further from the predominating pronouns (using, for example, «aule»?) or if it’d be better to go with the standard that is set by «elle». It’s basically a question of whether «lui-même» (“himself”) and «elle-même» (“herself), and all other situations of this kind, will be joined with the obvious «ale-même», or with the alternative «aule-même». Considering that ai can’t actually speak French properly, ai doubt it’ll be much of a problem for me, but there should be a standard, and considering that ai can’t decide between the two, ai am going to unilaterally propose that both are appropriate!

Of course, the introduction of a gender-neutral pronoun doesn’t resolve the problem of adjectives which, in French, can have either of two genders, masculine or feminine. Short of making a new version of each adjective that corresponds to a third grammatical gender, which is an absolutely daunting task, the only solution seems to be for people who use neither masculine nor feminine pronouns to simply pick an adjectival form they feel more comfortable with. In many cases, the adjectival forms are not going to matter too much, at least when spoken, because the difference in pronunciation is very subtle. It is going to be more difficult in cases where the masculine and feminine versions of the same word are markedly different from one another in both pronunciation and orthography, as with the words «beau» and «belle».

Today, many English-speaking anarchists ask for and offer pronouns when in the midst of introductions. Ai think this cultural practice is good and useful, and ai think it would be nice if this practice could be imported to French-speaking anarchist scenes too. In French, though, due to this matter of gendered adjectives – something that, at least as far as ai can see it, can’t be torn down or reformed without a total negation of the French language itself – introductions may sometimes need to include the question «Et c’est quoi ta forme adjectivale préférée?» after name and pronoun come up. This may not be necessary if a person has already told you that their preferred pronoun is «elle» or «il», but for someone who uses «ale» (or whatever other gender-neutral pronoun, since there’s no guarantee that the one a cis boy anglo came up with is the one that will eventually actually catch on), it is definitely pertinent information.

Of course, asking for adjectival forms in English might not be a bad idea either, at least if you live in a city where the French language predominates. Ai might be anglo, and you might be anglo, and so you might think that ai don’t need a preferred adjectival form since we’ll be speaking to each other in English, but there’s a chance that ai’m going to have a conversation about you (using adjectives!) with a francophone later. If ai don’t have know what to do, ai’m going to be staring at my phone, trying to tell someone that you are “determined” or something (in French, either «déterminé» or «déterminée»), not knowing whether ai should add that extra letter-ee to my text or not, and generally freaking the fuck out.

(This has actually happened, although “freaking the fuck out” is a bit of an exaggeration.)

So here’s my proposal, once again, in a nutshell. Unless another French gender-neutral pronoun has been specified as appropriate (for example, «ille», which some people do prefer), use «ale» when referring to people for whom you would use the singular “they” (or any other gender-neutral pronoun) if you were speaking in English. Use «ale» when referring to someone whose gender identity you do not know, in the same way as you would use “they”. Bring the practice of asking for pronouns to the other solitude, and when necessary, ask for adjectival forms as well. Expect some confusion, but do it anyway, because it’s a good thing to do.

In any case, whatever you choose to do yourself, you’ll now know what I’m talking about if you ever hear me say «ale».