Let’s get real. To call this blog a newspaper is disingenuous, fallacious. To call it a forum for debate may be accurate, but let’s not forget the site’s baldly partisan, manifesto-like statement of principles, calqued on the Conservative Party’s platform. Or, for that matter, that the editor-in-chief’s written output is an intellectually vacuous, pompous parroting of Tory talking-points. (See his articles in the Tribune.) His – and the Herald’s – pretensions to journalism are a joke.

William M. Burton

B.A. 2010 French Language and Literature

Former Daily Commentary & Compendium! editor

Former member, DPS Board of Directors

Member, QPIRG Board of Directors

The post It’s time to stop pretending appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Why is Zach Newburgh still president of SSMU? Where is his sense of dignity? Regardless of the morality of his involvement with Jobbook, Council’s censure sends a crystal-clear message: It’s time to go.

Step down, Newburgh. You have lost the confidence of your coworkers and your constituents.

William M. Burton

B.A. 2010 French Language and Literature

Former Daily Commentary & Compendium! editor

Former member, DPS Board of Directors

Member, QPIRG Board of Directors

The post A loss of confidence appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Prohibitions on sex work are an anachronistic vestige of Victorian prudery. Opponents of prostitution support their arguments to maintain criminalization by cobbling together legitimate concerns about human trafficking and violence against women with this prudishness, but in reality, their utopian goal of a world without sex work would end up hurting the women and men who ply that trade more than decriminalization. All this does is distract the cops from the serious business of stopping abuse and harmful exploitation by employing them to police the bodies of already-marginalized people.

Striking down these provisions will help sex workers protect themselves on the job. Now, instead of working in alleyways, in cars, in the dark, sex workers can do their job indoors – in safety, with body guards, with a support network. Now, instead of fearing that their landlords, their live-in partners, or anyone they take care of will be prosecuted for living off money gained through prostitution, they can without trepidation feed and clothe themselves and their loved ones, and pay employees – like body guards. Now, instead of having to abbreviate negotiations with clients, leaving sex workers without a strong feel for who they’re doing business with, they can take their time – discuss, sound out the john, and lay out the ground rules, keeping them that much safer from brutality and rape.

But these changes aren’t enough.

Worries about human trafficking and underage prostitution are well-founded. When the cops stop wasting their time trying to eliminate a perfectly legitimate profession, they can start helping sex workers protect themselves. To be able to call the police without fear of arrest – to tell them you’re in danger without thinking you’ll lose everything – that’s a real step forward. And the cops will be able to focus precisely on those dangers that remain: illegal trafficking of girls and women, boys and men in Canada and around the world. As the sex-work organization Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC) has said, a specialized police force should be created to deal with these problems – not with a sexual transaction occurring between consenting adults. Women forced into sex work by drug addiction and unscrupulous pimps should be assisted, not prosecuted; women freely choosing to work in the sex industry should be respected and exercise the same rights and responsibilities as other citizens.

With this ruling, sex workers will be able to form co-operatives, guilds, unions. They’ll be able to pay taxes, create health standards, establish workers’ compensation funds. Decriminalization is the next logical step according to SPOC, and that will make it easier for women to get out of sex work if they want to. Sex workers will be able to establish a community with their colleagues to offer government-supported resources, like skills-training classes so that those pushed into sex work by economic necessity can get out of a profession they might not enjoy.

There are other areas where sex workers need regulation and support. Parasitic, exploitative pimps should be taken out of the picture – sex workers can keep the books themselves, and when they have the right to hire their own receptionists, body guards, and other staff, the need for some other boss evaporates. Additionally, sex workers of colour and indigenous and trans workers will need specific protections and programs to keep them safe. The elevated threat of violence they’ve had to deal with is well known; so too the systemic and deadly neglect they’ve had to face from the police. Already marginalized through their racialization or their supposed gender transgression, these sex workers will need particular assistance. Getting the police off their backs is a great first step.

But we shouldn’t just go inventing solutions on our own. We need to listen to the people on the ground, who put their bodies on the line every day. Like I’ve said, SPOC has called for decriminalization – and that is the only logical next move. The organization has other suggestions, like sex-consumer education programs and professional accreditation for sex workers. Parliamentarians should pay close attention to these propositions. It’s high time they showed some respect to the people who work this trade.

Himel, the Superior Court justice, said that it’s now up to Parliament to “fashion concrete action” to regulate sex work. Rather than appealing this decision, the government should consult with SPOC, Stella, and other sex-workers’ rights organizations. No more paternalistic, top-down, bullshit solutions offered by technocrats with no idea what it’s like to work the sex trade. Let’s listen to the people involved for once.

William M. Burton is The Daily’s Commentary & Compendium! editor. BA 2010 Lettres et traduction françaises, he’s currently a special student. Write him at commentary@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Decriminalize sex work appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Complaints about being broke, for example, rang hollow to me when I knew the person talking would go home to three square meals and secure housing. When I went home, I wasn’t sure there would be enough food there. The meaning of “poor” took on a number of new connotations – some that felt less authentic than others.

That was first year. Things have changed: now I understand the parlous situation even middle-class families find themselves in; friends have revealed the precariousness of their family’s situations; working-class acquaintances have been made; a few discussions on wealth disparities have been held. But as for a campus-wide dialogue on what it means to be from the working-class at a world class university, we’re still lacking that at McGill.

My purpose in writing this article, then, is twofold: I want to open that dialogue, and I want to welcome all my readers to the Commentary section. Commentary is the part of The Daily where you can express yourself, no matter who you are. And it’s an especially vital place for those people who feel like their perspectives are not talked about, or whose lives are too often discussed by others – others who may not have those lived experiences. Whether you’re aboriginal and you want to speak for yourself, rather than be spoken for; or a person with disability, who prefers to speak out, instead of being spoken about; or anybody else for that matter – Commentary’s for you.

Studying at university puts poor students in a profoundly ambiguous position. Without the cash to be truly middle-class, but with too much education to feel very working-class, we are thrust into a liminal zone – between social castes, but still subject to their irresistible gravitational pull no matter where we go. At school, my ignorance about certain aspects of life betrayed my origins to my peers. (For example, I didn’t know what an avocado was until my second year.) At home, my interests and manner of speaking made me feel a traitor. My parents, both supportive and loving, didn’t exactly understand what I studied as an undergrad. As a consequence, communication about our lives became increasingly difficult. We inhabited two entirely separate discursive universes.

Like a lot of people associated with leftism, I would criticize bourgeois culture and denigrate middle-class aspirations. At the same time, my career goals took on an increasingly upwardly mobile orientation. When you’ve grown up without a stable home, embarrassed by your second-hand clothes, your mother mortified at the difficulties she’s encountered in providing for you and your siblings, your dreams are modest – even conservative. Middle-class life starts to look pretty appealing, even as it feels increasingly like a cop-out. Trapped in the fissures of conflicting class loyalties, I couldn’t take the label of “privileged” lightly, even if it wasn’t malicious or wrong.

It’s not like being co-opted by consumer culture hadn’t concerned me before. But to feel accused of privilege – to feel attacked for the legitimate desire to rise above the poverty of my childhood – irked me. Leftist discourse on campus too frequently fails to take into account the existence of working-class students at McGill and their valid urge to leave behind their caste. For a poor kid to buy into bourgeois culture and values lock, stock, and barrel might be tragic, but it’s also understandable.

I’m not writing to attack anyone, because I don’t think critiques of bourgeois culture are motivated by animus. On the contrary – I’m on the same page. But I find the campus media’s near-total lack of discussion of class issues – especially from a personal angle – suffocating. For four years, I wondering if anyone else felt the way I did. When a writer approached me last year to propose a column on working-class life at university, I was elated to find affirmation for once.

That affirmation was important. And that’s what I want Commentary to be for – for affirmation and exploration, for self-expression and critique. Everyone’s welcome to write, and I especially want to solicit the participation of people from marginalized communities. Not that I want to discourage those with privilege from writing – on the contrary, write as much as you want. But nothing trumps the first-person experience – so if you feel like problems facing you or the group you’re a part of just don’t get (accurate) coverage, then drop me a line. This is your paper.

Hope to hear from you soon.

William M. Burton is The Daily’s Commentary & Compendium! editor, BA ’10 Lettres et traduction françaises and currently a special student, he can be reached at commentary@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Express yourself! appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Treffin starts by pointing to a worrying trend of women treating men like lovers and friends: “A growing number of women are behaving as though their guy is one of their girlfriends, and more men are agreeing to partake in traditionally feminine activities,” says Christopher Bazina, PhD, whose only claim to fame seems to be his book The Secret Lives of Men.

Acting like your boyfriend is a gurlfriend initiates him in feminine activities and interests like watching The Hills, using skin-care products, and emotional intimacy. According to a study cited by Cosmo that I couldn’t find on the Internet, people with friendship-like romantic relationships are unhappier than those in more traditional unions. Thus, friendship with your fuck-buddy is a doubly dangerous phenomenon: not only do they make you unhappy, but they also “chick-ify” men. The consequence? Your man’s “testosterone level nose-dives.” (No studies cited, of course.)
Cosmo’s solution is elegant. Don’t share your interests with your boyfriend; don’t be emotionally intimate with him; increase distance in order to magnify your “mystique” – men love mystery. Bottom line: don’t get close to men.

If you do, it’s at your own peril. “Sure, some guys will appreciate going shopping with a girlfriend who will help [them] pick out nice clothes and legitimately enjoy listening to your Cat Power album in the car,” the article states. But these men are homosexuals.

So watch out – you might want to invite your boy to body-pump class or eat vegetarian food with him, but if you do, you’ll soon find him singing along to Lady Gaga and exchanging blowjobs with his bros. One too many girltalks and your man’ll be an invert.

This is pretty bad advice to start with. But when you notice that the science here seems pretty weak – according to what statistics are women treating men like girlfriends? By what mechanism does testosterone decrease when men perform “feminine activities? – the real problem here becomes clear.

Maybe it’s nitpicky to quibble with Cosmo over statistics, but an advice magazine that cloaks itself in the power of science is pretty dangerous. How many women will read this and fear that their boyfriends are secretly gay? How many will fear they’ve contaminated their men with homosexual pollution? How many will disengage and cause irreparable harm to their relationships in order to keep their men testosterone-fueled and phallocratic?
But whatever, I guess. It’s just a magazine, right?

Related stories:

My fun fearless miseducation, 4/1/10
CUP: The changing nature of gay, 3/6/10
I love you, man, 10/6/08

The post Don’t turn your boyfriend gay, says magazine appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Let’s go back to September 3 and read La Presse’s headline: “ALLOPHONES MAJORITAIRES,” written in huge, alarmist print. “Mais où sont passés les francophones?” it continued. Inside the issue were statistics that told of the decline of first-language francophones in public schools on the island of Montreal, the increase in foreign students coming to the city, and a list of the island’s most multiethnic schools – hotbeds, I assume, of cultural dilution. (It should be noted: “foreign” is defined by La Presse as “coming from anywhere outside of Quebec.”) But this two page spread wouldn’t be complete without a photo of a hijab-clad mother with two daughters, one of whom is – horrors! – also wearing a hijab. They don’t dress like us, and they don’t speak our language at home. Save us!
In its details, the coverage is less worrisome than at first glance. Tucked away in a corner of the spread is a tiny article pointing out that more and more allophones – the term refers to those whose first language is neither English nor French – attend French-language schools. There’s even a column, conveniently located on the following page, about how children don’t pay attention to ethnicity. But this wishful thinking doesn’t outweigh the headlines, layout, statistics, visuals, and interviews. The overarching effect of the coverage in La Presse is to fan the flames of a very old fear: that Montreal’s cultural syncretism will dilute, if not destroy, the culture of French Canada.

Now, I understand and support the push for the protection of endangered languages and cultures, like revival movements in Scotland or Catalonia or in indigenous communities all over North America. In these cases, it’s clear that one group has been dominated by another and needs safeguards. And indeed, French culture in this country has historically been subjugated by English Canada, thus the need for Bill 101 and similar legislation. It is an absurdity, however, to think that non-francophone immigrant communities in Montreal could endanger the French language in this province, or change the dominant culture from French-speaking to something else. They simply do not have the demographic weight.

In the end, though, the language issue is a red herring. Most migrant languages are replaced within two to three generations by the majority language of the arrival country. This nervousness about language is the surface representation of a latent anxiety about the culture of Quebec. Who owns this province’s culture?
The real fear is not that allophones will outnumber francophones, but that allophones will not assimilate into French-Canadian culture. According to an article published in Le Devoir this summer, 60 per cent of francophone Quebeckers think that immigrants should abandon their customs and traditions and become more like the majority of people in this province. Forty per cent of all Quebeckers, regardless of native tongue, believe Quebecois society is threatened by the arrival of non-Christian migrants. These attitudes, the media coverage of demographic changes, and the rhetoric of politicians like Nicolas Montmorency, whose actions were discussed in a comment piece last week entitled “Mean Streets” – all point to a fear that the “other” will dictate Quebec’s cultural destiny.

The kind of worried discourse that permeates Quebec’s provincial conversation about immigration presupposes that one’s culture has its foundation in issues like modes of dress or religious heritage, and ignores the fact that cultures are constantly changing. The members of a culture can change it as they see fit, regardless of their religion or ethnic origin, or linguistic heritage. The culture of this province is made in Gaspé and in Kahnawake, in Westmount and in Montreal North, and it’s made by French Canadians and English Canadians, Pakistanis, Haitians, and everyone in between. Culture is the common possession of all Quebeckers, not just the people that first colonized this country.

William M. Burton is The Daily’s Commentary & Compendium! editor. He’s also a U3 Honours student in Lettres et traduction françaises.

The post Whose culture is it? appeared first on The McGill Daily.

David Bahati, an MP from Ndorwa West, tabled the Anti-Homosexuality Bill on October 14, 2009. Homosexuality is already a criminal offence in Uganda. Under section 140 of the Penal Code, practitioners can face up to life imprisonment. Bahati’s bill would create the offence of “aggravated homosexuality.” Conviction on this count would carry the death penalty.

Under the bill, homosexuality would be completely outlawed, queer rights groups banned, and failure to report a homosexual known to you within 24 hours of discovery would carry a fine as well as a prison sentence of up to three years. Attempting to have sex with someone of the same sex carries a seven-year sentence – accomplishing the act, a life sentence. Do it twice, and you’re dead. And this, even if you’re outside of the country: Ugandans convicted of homosexuality abroad will suffer the same penalties.

But it’s not just queer people who are targeted. The “aggravated homosexuality” provision entraps anyone and everyone who associates with non-heterosexuals by virtue of its two-strike system. Strike one – jail. Strike two – death. The offence is defined very broadly, giving the state the right to execute “serial offenders” – anyone who “has previous convictions of the offence of homosexuality or related offences.” Related offences include everything from failing to disclose to the government that someone you know is homosexual to touching someone “with the intent of committing the act of homosexuality.” Certain offences carry an automatic death penalty, including raping a child, having sex while HIV-positive, or having sex with a disabled person of the same sex.

Several of the measure’s sponsors have objected to characterizations of it as the “kill-the-gays” bill, claiming to hate the sin and love the sinner. Bahati complained on the Ugandan TV show Matters of State in December 2009 that there has been “a lot of distortion.” He said that the death penalty will only be applied to adults who rape minors or commit a rape while HIV-positive.

No one should be fooled. This law does nothing less than lay the groundwork for gay genocide. It is part of a much larger scramble for power in Uganda, one that is enmeshed in conflicts over Western influence and money, one that pits American-backed clerics and politicians against a maligned and marginalized minority.

Bahati has defended his bill by claiming it will prevent the promotion of homosexuality in schools and reinforce already-existing prohibitions on sex with minors and homosexual activity. Given that 95 per cent of Ugandans are opposed to decriminalizing homosexuality – according to a 2007 poll by the Steadman Group, at least – Bahati says this law will simply codify “the aspirations and values” of the Ugandan people.

The bill has received a warm welcome in Uganda. It’s found ample support at all levels of government and religion, and comments on news media web sites have been by and large enthusiastic. A massive rally in Kampala planned for February was cancelled due to security concerns, but hundreds demonstrated in favour of the bill in Jinja days later. GayUgandan, a pseudonymous blogger in Kampala interviewed by email, says that people “openly talk about killing us, express disgust, spit, and do all their things when we are right there in the middle of them.”

Bahati is a congregant at the church of Martin Ssempa, an evangelical pastor, former breakdancing champion, and HIV/AIDS activist. Ssempa is the flamboyant heart and soul of the anti-homosexuality movement in Uganda. In lively public presentations in churches and community centres, he shows audiences black-and-white photos of gay fetish pornography – mainly fisting and rimming. Ssempa claims these activities are the daily bread of same-sex love. He has come under fire recently for his porno presentations, but promises to bring them all the way to Parliament, because, he says, once legislators see what homosexuals do, they’ll ban the activities right away – just like they did with female genital mutilation in December 2009, after viewing a slide show presentation on the practice.

Ssempa has connections: Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor of the Saddleback Church in California who delivered the benediction at Barack Obama’s inauguration, is a friend and partner; Janet Museveni, the first lady of Uganda, is another. During the heyday of his anti-AIDS activism, when he burnt condoms in the name of Jesus and promoted abstinence and fidelity, Ssempa was the darling of U.S. aid programs. Now he’s repudiated the West, denounced Obama for preaching “a gospel of sodomy,” and chided Warren for condemning the bill (though Warren took his time doing so).

According to Ssempa, the stakes of homosexuality are high. “In Africa,” he told the BBC last month, “what you do in your bedroom affects our clan; it affects our tribe; it affects our nation.”

Paul Kagaba, another of the bill’s high-profile backers, thinks Westerners are seducing young people into homosexuality. He claims that there is an “ongoing recruitment of young people…funded by European and American organizations, which bribe [them] into sodomy with offers of money, iPod[s], and laptops under the guise of ‘sexual and reproductive rights’ seminars.” Kagaba is a member of Ex-Gay Uganda and a former member of Integrity, a queer-rights organization.

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, originally a firm supporter of the bill, agrees with the broad principles Ssempa, Kagaba, and others have laid out: homosexuality threatens the integrity of Uganda because it is a dangerous foreign pollutant. “I hear European homosexuals are recruiting in Africa,” he told an audience of youth in November. “You should reject it because homosexuality is unnatural.”

In recent months, Museveni has distanced himself from the “harshness” of the proposed measures as pressure to veto the bill from Western leaders – including Stephen Harper and Hillary Clinton – has ratcheted up. The Bahati bill has become “a foreign policy issue,” Museveni said in January.

Things weren’t always like this in Uganda. “Five years ago, no one was talking about homosexuality. Except Ssempa,” GayUgandan says. “And no one would say anything. He was just one crazy obsessed man.” According to one queer activist now living in Nairobi, five or 10 years ago, people were so unthreatened by same-sex activities that there were even same-sex weddings.

There is a long history of same-sex love in Uganda. “When we turn to the past, we find that, contrary to popular belief, homosexuality in Uganda predates colonialism and other forms of subjugation,” explained Sylvia Tamale, a women’s rights activist and lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Kampala in Makerere, Uganda, in her 2003 article “Out of the Closet.” “Historically…homosexual practises were neither fully condoned nor totally suppressed,” says Tamale. She lists the many ethnic groups in which homosexuality was accepted – including among the ruling class in the kingdom of Buganda – and concludes that “ironically, it is the dominant Judaeo-Christian and Arabic religions, upon which most African anti-homosexuality proponents rely, that are foreign imports.”

As more people have adopted queer identities in east Africa over the past forty years, they’ve become more high-profile targets for discrimination, suggests Tim McCaskell, an anti-homophobia and AIDS activist from Toronto who recently visited the region. (For the record, McCaskell warns that he is no expert on queer rights in east Africa.) Because homosexual identity didn’t exist per se, British colonial laws against homosexuality went largely unenforced. “[They] seem to have more relevance, because now there’s someone to target,” he says.

The fight against AIDS has been impetus for queer-rights organizations to form, he explains. Local organizations attempt to avoid the “homosexual” identity label, preferring “men who have sex with men” (MSM) – but “MSM has now become a kind of an identity that very much parallels gay identity,” McCaskell says. An indigenous queer identity has also developed in Uganda: kuchuism. Partly basing their identity on repudiation of gender norms, kuchus – who are both male and female – have to be very secretive, especially with the prospect of the Bahati bill becoming law.

But McCaskell cautions that the fight over sexual minorities isn’t just about civil rights; it’s about the concept of the nation. “As more people are picking up on these sexual identities,” he says, “other people are finding these things as threats to what they consider their national identity.”

Elisabeth Engebretsen, a professor specializing in gender and sexuality issues in transnational contexts at the McGill Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, points out that “there’s a strong link…between so-called intimate sexuality – even if very transgressive – and actual political nation-building. I think it’s really a key relationship,” she says. “[The situation in Uganda] isn’t really about sexuality as such; it’s really about nationalist politics and stating a cultural identity against that which is ‘foreign’ and hence ‘Western’ and which tries to tell us how we should think about sexuality and freedom.”

Ssempa and other anti-gay activists have made the national stakes in this debate very clear: “I care deeply about white people telling us what to do,” he said. “We really find that annoying. I want to say, we are a superpower!” He referred to Uganda’s oil reserves as a source of leverage. “America is bankrupt, deeply in debt to China, and soon to be completely dependent on African oil. The U.S. can’t afford to set preconditions now that Uganda sits on two billion barrels of crude.”

If we look at the past 20 years, McCaskell says, we see the slow erosion of borders in the developing world. “You have to see [the Anti-Homosexuality Bill] against the kind of neoliberal structural adjustment programs that have been affecting these countries,” he says. “As social services and education and health services all decline for the majority of the population, we’ve seen a concomitant increase in the influence of church-based organizations.” Restructuring programs in Uganda date back to Milton Obote’s second presidency, which began in 1980, shortly after the fall of Idi Amin.

These organizations are often funded and supported by American evangelicals – a relationship well-documented in Kapya Kaoma’s report, “Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African churches, and homophobia,” released last month. Kaoma is a Zambian Anglican priest. McCaskell says that church-based groups redirect people’s frustrations to local targets. “If your life is becoming more and more precarious because of what the IMF and World Bank have been imposing…you can’t get a hold of them, but if you can conceptualize ‘gay people’ as another foreign influence on your country, then all your anger goes against this foreign influence.” Profiting from this hatred, church leaders increase their clout. Their congregations grow in size, their power in the community expands, and they become important political players.

In the process, the unstable boundaries of the nation are projected onto the body. The “foundational anxieties” surrounding nation-building in postcolonial contexts, as Engebretsen puts it, are transposed onto sex acts. Celebrated queer theorist Judith Butler has posited that the body – specifically its permeable parts, like the anus or the mouth – comes to stand in for the nation as a whole. Thus transgressive sex – the kind that crosses those unstable boundaries, like anal and oral sex between men – becomes “a site of danger and pollution,” Butler writes in Gender Trouble, her groundbreaking book on sexual subversion.

“The real borders of the nation are being made permeable by neoliberalism and free trade and all of these deals that are being imposed by the Western world,” McCaskell says. To seize back the reins in national definition – a fraught process when your nation lies apparently helpless at the confluence of foreign powers – power-brokers in the developing world attempt to control the bodily borders within the nation. To do so, they scapegoat queer people.

But there’s more: in addition to redefining Uganda as a nation, political leaders can distract from the pervasive poverty and corruption – which are often related to those very same structural readjustment programs. “The current fracas about…sexuality is a simple red herring that the government is using to distract attention from some very massive corruption and abuse of power,” GayUgandan says. “[Kuchus] are a distraction.”

The law’s effects will spread far beyond Uganda as well. Witness what some African bloggers have called a pogrom against gays in Mtwapa, Kenya, last month. It will scare people away from getting treatment, setting up the conditions for AIDS rates to skyrocket. “People are going to have to go deep, deep underground,” says McCaskell. “This could set them back years, and with the kind of transport and increasing economic ties in the east African community, it could mean a huge increase in AIDS cases in the whole region.”

Kaoma’s report on the role American evangelicals play in bankrolling homophobia in east Africa is compelling. Beyond funding, it discusses the close relationship between American church leaders, their African counterparts, and local lawmakers. He describes how “U.S. religious conservatives of all stripes have gone to Africa to lobby political leaders there to criminalize homosexuality.”

In part, Kaoma relies on an effective rhetorical trick: turning the tables on the homophobes. “It is actually homophobia that is un-African,” he writes. Queer rights activists need to unmask these homophobia-peddlers, he says, and stop them from contaminating Africa with their hate.

Both sides’ accusations of Western influence have some validity. It’s true that queer activists in Uganda have borrowed language and ideas from the West. But it’s also true that homophobic campaigners in the country, besides just taking money and gifts from evangelicals, have founded their ideology on the ideas of North American pastors.

Though it’s important to use the homophobes’ rhetoric of foreignness against them, Kaoma’s tactic oversimplifies the situation. There is no meaningful distinction to be made between “indigenous” and “imported” attitudes or customs in Uganda (or anywhere), at least since colonization. All nations are in constant contact with others. “It’s kind of belittling people…to think that a discourse is just imported without their middle level of actually appropriating it,” says Engebretsen. “You have perhaps the same signs or symbols…but the ways in which people are locally appropriating what [those signs] say are totally different.”

“[Queer identities] don’t have the same kinds of meanings [as in the West],” McCaskell says. “We’re seeing a dissemination of ‘gay identity,’ but we’re also seeing it taken up in ways that are pretty culturally bound.” The same goes for homophobic activism.

What’s a concerned Westerner to do? Because any intervention from the West has been so problematic, it can leave onlookers feeling helpless.

On the one hand, the enormous outcry from Western leaders has led Museveni and Minister of Ethics and Integrity James Nsaba Buturo, formerly a strong proponent of the bill, to soften their positions. GayUgandan thinks this is the best way to help the situation: “Whether we like it or not, Ugandans are very dependent on the West. For the U.S., we are fighting the War on Terror in Somalia – and the U.S. is giving us lots of military aid. That pressure is what works. So putting pressure on your governments puts pressure on the government in Uganda.”

And there are some signs the pressure is working. Unconfirmed reports claim that Museveni plans to veto the bill, though Parliament could overturn that decision with a two-thirds majority vote. The bill should be voted on later this month – Ssempa wants it passed before Easter – but GayUgandan says no date has been set. “It’s supposed to be all dependent on how busy the parliamentary schedules are. But it is all relative. When the government wanted, they passed through constitutional amendments in a month.”

But European and North American leaders’ attempts to influence the government in Uganda has only emboldened the bill’s supporters, who say the country will go without foreign aid if need be. So while we pressure our leaders to put the arm on Uganda’s politicians, we need to remember that our sexual-rights paradigm is inapplicable in that country. We often frame gay rights in North America as a private matter about personal choices, but the issue is national in Uganda – it’s about the country’s integrity.

“To take our understandings of the sexual body into another cultural context, and especially when you have all of these historical connections with colonialism, is quite dangerous, because we really speak beyond each other,” Engebretsen says. “A body isn’t simply that sexual body [as we see it in the West], but is so much more.”

See the whole interview with GayUgandan here.

The post Gay genocide appeared first on The McGill Daily.

McGill Daily: Can you us tell us a bit more about yourself? You’re blogging from Kampala.

GayUgandan: Hmmm, I am afraid I am going to cite “security reasons,” that blanket refusal to respond…like governments do!

Fact is, a lot of people know who I am. But, admitting it myself, or giving them clues to confirm it would make things much harder for me. I do write about having sex with my lover on the blog. Such an admission may be a quick path to life imprisonment, even with the current law. So, no, personal details are out.

For Kampala: yes, of course. Nothing like losing oneself in the most densely populated part of the country!

MD: Can you describe everyday life for queer Ugandans?
GU: Interesting, to say the least. I mean we have lived in the country for all our lives. So we know how to camouflage to our best. We are soldiers who live always behind the lines. Nothing to do about it. So, they see us, and they understand nothing about who we are, what we are. We necessarily reveal ourselves to only a privileged few. Of course, if, despite constant vigilance, we are outed, then that is something else. The horror stories of something like that just reinforce our vigilance.

They openly talk about killing us, express disgust, spit, and do all their things when we are right there in the middle of them. So it can get very interesting. Of course, it does lead to a lot of self-disrespect. We can’t defend ourselves from their most ridiculous assertions.

MD: According to a 2007 poll, 95 per cent of Ugandans oppose decriminalizing homosexuality. How do you think such a remarkable majority can be convinced to support at very least decriminalization?
GU: That is a dream. Decriminalization is something which the government would not even dare to table. How to change it? It will take years and lots of education.

MD: There has been a lot of talk about homosexuality being a Western import. President Museveni, for example, has said that Europeans are recruiting Ugandan men to be homosexuals. Martin Ssempa has accused Europeans and Americans of spreading “the gospel of homosexuality.” Obviously same-sex love has existed in Uganda since before contact with the West – can you tell us a bit about that?
GU: In the kingdom of Buganda, a 700-year-old institution before the coming of Europeans to Uganda, the king, or kabaka, Mwanga II, was bisexual at least. Homosexuality was okay at the Royal Court of Buganda.

If the king was bisexual before the coming of Christianity, then it is fair to argue that homosexuality in Uganda is more African than the Christianity which was brought in. It is the Christianity which made homosexuality be seen as a bad thing.

I know that Ssempa is using the results of the conflicts that followed to damn us, but there is no doubt that homosexuality was practiced at the royal court before the coming of the Christians, and that the white men are the ones who told the people here that, according to the new religion, it was wrong.

MD: You identify as a gay Ugandan. The identity of “gay” or “homosexual” – as opposed to someone who merely has sexual relations or romantic relationships with someone of the same sex – has its origin in Europe and the United States. How did you come to identify as gay? Was there any Western influence?
GU: Hey, I write in English. Have to get a word that is equivalent to express myself. Actually, we call ourselves “kuchus.” The direct translation of that is possibly “queer.”

MD: In his report “Globalizing the culture wars: U.S. conservatives, African churches, and homophobia,” the Reverend Kapya Kaoma of Zambia claims that homophobia is in fact a recent Western import, pushed on African church leaders in exchange for money and influence. In your experience, is this true? Has there been a notable upswing in homophobia in Uganda? Has homophobia in the country changed in character in recent times?
GU: What Kapya Kaoma is talking about is reality in Uganda. And it has been for a very long time. There has been an insidious recolonization of Uganda, and Africa in the last 10-15 years or so. They were all Christian missionaries. What had not been clear to us was the fact that they were all right[-wing] Christians, and that they do have a heavily conservative agenda.

Of course, money and influence play a huge role. That is a matter of fact.

Homophobia in Uganda? May I point out that Ssempa learned about “homosexuality” in the U.S.? Might have got his famed porn pic show during that time…[snicker].

Five years ago, no one was talking about homosexuality. Except Ssempa. And no one would say anything. He was just one crazy, obsessed man. After the coming of the three [Americans – Scott Lively, author of the Pink Swastika; Caleb Lee Brundidge, an “ex-gay” who claims to heal homosexuality; and Don Schmierer, of Exodus International] in March 2009, then we had the pastor wars, witch-hunts inside and outside the Pentecostal Church, et cetera. So definitely, the link is there. No, I had not connected the dotted lines. But the results and the fact that I have been here all that time is inescapable.

MD: As I mentioned, Ssempa and Museveni, among others, have claimed homosexuality is new in Uganda. Similarly, Kapya Kaoma has claimed homophobia is newly imported. Some theorists have located sexuality as a “site of permeability” by which foreign influence can enter the nation. Battles over sexuality are therefore often battles over the definition of the culture of a nation. Do you think this is the case in Uganda? Does the current persecution of queers have more to do with nationalism, colonialism, and political power than with sexuality per se?
GU: You are drawing me into the “culture wars” too!

What I know is that the current fracas about my sexuality is a simple red herring that the government is using to distract attention from some very massive corruption and abuse of power. It is certainly not all about us. We are the distraction – a minority which cannot even point out the glaring stupidities and misinformation that is being touted about us.

MD: What can concerned Westerners do to help?
GU: Whether we like it or not, Ugandans are very dependant on the West. For the U.S., we are fighting the War on Terror in Somalia. And the U.S. is giving us lots of military aid. That pressure is what works. So putting pressure on your governments puts pressure on the government in Uganda. It is matter of fact that we have had no voice in Uganda before this.

MD: Do you know when the Bahati bill is going to be discussed?
GU: No, I don’t know when it is going to be discussed (or have a second reading) in Parliament again.

It is supposed to be dependant on how busy the parliamentary schedules are. But it is all relative. When the government wanted, they passed through constitutional amendments in a month. But other bills have languished in “committee” for years. So, the important thing is what the government wants to do.

MD: Do you have anything else you’d like to say?
GU: Only a very heartfelt thanks to people in the West who have made sure that this law didn’t go unchallenged in Uganda. When it was tabled, I was sure that it would pass with little attention. One member of parliament thought there was a 99 per cent chance of it becoming law almost immediately. That was my assessment, too. But thanks to the pressure from the West, there is actual debate happening. Lopsided, yes, but at least debate! Thank the deities for those silver linings that we can see!

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The Post writes that though Women’s Studies programs appear to be disappearing in Canada, they are in reality being renamed with less contentious labels, while the destructive effects of their radical ideology remain to wreak havoc on “families, our court systems, labour laws, constitutional freedoms, and even the ordinary relations between men and women.”

Something nice about newspapers is that they foster critical thinking. Some of that would have been nice in this piece. Case in point: the Post decries that rights are granted to “whole classes of people.” As if this were not already the case – our society is organized in a way that favours certain classes of people (e.g., men, whites, anglophones, the able-bodied). If you belong to one of these classes, you have special, unwritten rights by virtue of that belonging. In a society where the group you’re born in determines your life chances, there is no “objective assessment of individual talents.”

Another nice thing about newspapers is reporting. I’d like to have seen some in this piece. Where is the substantiation of the destruction wrought by radical feminism? Where are the statistics, the stories, the facts? All I see in the Post is the same pathetic masturbatory fantasy of a world beyond history, beyond systemic oppression, where the privileged can stop feeling guilty about oppressing the marginalized.

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The motions, authored by Nicolas Montmorency, councillor for Rivière-des-Prairies-Pointe-aux-Trembles, called for two separate actions: the renaming of rue Amherst, and the francisation of various mixed-language street names (e.g., rue City Councillors, avenue McGill College, rue University). Montmorency claims that it’s inappropriate to name a street after Jeffrey Amherst, who conquered Montreal for the British and favoured the use of smallpox-infected blankets on Aboriginals. He also says that names like City Councillors and McGill College “dilute” the French character of the city.

Whether or not Amherst pioneered germ warfare, the suitability of naming a street after him is beside the point. What’s important here is the motivation behind the second motions—the reflexive, unhealthy, anti-English attitude that presupposes the weakness of francophone culture. Montmorency says that these street names threaten an already-threatened language. In reality, it’s this absurd paranoia that convinces French-speakers to fear all things anglo and scares English-speakers into staying within their comfort zone, both by staying in the Ghetto and by speaking English in day-to-day transactions.

Does anyone really think that a couple of street names with English words in them threatens the future of French in our city? Can a language spoken by a vast majority of Montrealers – even if they speak another language at home – and learnt by the majority of new arrivals be in any danger from these signs? A strong language, free at last from the bonds of a psychological colonialism, will be generous of itself and accepting of others, receiving and borrowing freely from the cultures and tongues it is contact with. A vibrant language—and French is a vibrant language in Quebec—does not scurry away from a handful of toponyms.

The biggest threat to the French language in Montreal is the intimidation that such hysterics inspire in non-francophones. Fearful of speaking it poorly, stuttering and full of self-doubt, learners trip around in French at the grocery store, at the bank, on the bus, filling every sentence with self-deprecating apologies. Ex nihilo nihil: the fear that these political games causes in francophones in turn creates the fear that seizes anglophones in situations where French is required.

Fearful students will not venture into a new culture. Witness the low rate of McGill and Concordia students venturing into this province’s dominant culture. It’s true that there’s a lot of apathy on the part of many students—they come here to take advantage of the quality schools paid for by the tax money of the citizens of Quebec without thinking of exploring the society around them. Such students should learn French and use it. And no one should be discouraged—perseverance is the only sure method of gaining confidence.

But they need help. Both sides need to fashion a new attitude of openness and confidence. On the one hand, openness to English Canada and confidence that one’s sense of self will not disappear in interactions with others. On the other, openness to the culture of French Canada and confidence in one’s ability to learn a new language.

Montmorency should drop the fear mongering discourse and remind people of how strong their language is. As for us anglophones—well, let’s learn some French already.

William M. Burton is The Daily’s Commentary & Compendium! editor. He’s also a U3 student in Lettres et traduction françaises.

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She then went on to destroy my hypothesis that the recuperation of second-hand style by such stores, for example, as Urban Outfitters, means that thrift-store fashion only increases waste. She told me that it all goes back to the tripartite mantra of the environmentalist movement: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The Suzuki-friend explained that we should reduce on two fronts: we should use what we have as much as possible, which means buying second-hand, and we should get used to living with less (clothes, possessions, travel, etc.), which will reduce production. The Earth, she told me, can’t take this anymore – we need to make fewer products and fewer babies, because our mineral resources aren’t going to grow back and our planet can’t sustain such reckless population growth.

As for recycling clothes, Dressel had some reassuring words for anyone anxious about their fashion being co-opted by manufacturers: “It’s not your fault if some capitalist fat-cat takes your style.” (Dressel did admit, however, that she has trouble getting good finds at thrift stores.) She was rather optimistic about clothing manufacturing, saying that the current financial crisis will strike that sector of the economy first, because people can more easily stop buying new clothes than they can stop buying food.

She was also enthusiastic about used-book stores; she told me she usually brings in as many books as she takes out when she shops at them. Book manufacturing, like other industries, will simply need to produce less – even if that means a certain number of jobs lost.

Dressel pointed out that a good way to make our society waste less is to waste less ourselves, thereby decreasing demand for overproduction. She told me that it practically makes her ill to throw away anything nowadays, and that she’d rather find a new use for an old thing than put it in the trash.

The underlying message of our conversation was that we need a steady-state economy, a situation where population growth and consumption have reached a sustainable plateau. To attain the steady state, we need to learn to live with less, she said. Other societies have done it before. We just can’t keep going like this.

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The set, as well as the costumes, designed by Jaelem Sangara, illustrate the director’s post-cataclysm aesthetic through the lens of eighties futurism. Using recycled materials to fashion clothes reminiscent at once of cyberpunk and classical dress, Sangara’s costumes call to mind the ancient and the modern, the play’s roots and the update the director has attempted to give it.

The six vertical blocks around the set reinforce this apocalyptic atmosphere. Like brutalist buildings, these structures abstract traditional forms – in this case, columns – into stark, honest shapes. The colours of the columns, various shades of decayed green, help reinforce the notion that some sort of disaster has occurred. Together, the costume and set design give a desolate image of the future, a world where all buildings are bare and utilitarian, and all clothes scavenged from the rubbish heap.

Using the three small staircases that also adorn the set to delineate space and emphasize certain actions, the director is able to make a small cast seem large (in the battle in Act V, for example), and small actors seem towering (the somehow imposing yet diminutive Cicero of Sean Wood). These stairs also permit Neilson to focus attention on orators or on particular dramas, like Brutus’s suicide.

Dave Howden’s lighting works particularly well. It’s hard to imagine certain scenes having the effect they do without Howden’s skilful arrangements. The red light during Caesar’s assassination and the blue at the close of the play are especially powerful.

The music, however, by sound engineer Chris Barillaro, is distracting and trite. Most noteworthy is the cringe-worthy use of “drama piano” during Antony’s eulogy for Brutus. Rather than heightening the pathos of the scene, the strains of piano make it seem cliché and forced. The music saps all of the emotional force from Antony’s speech.

Without a doubt, the best parts of the play are the crowd scenes. The “mutiny” in Act III deserves special mention. After Antony whips the public into a frenzy, the animalistic plebeians, shrieking, stooping and stomping, run off stage. Darkness, then a spotlight: Cinna the poet (Jordana Weiss) walks alone. The shadows of the rabble rise on the steps in the background; several of them open lighters.

The tension mounts and mounts in a taut exchange – and breaks: the howling masses brutalize the innocent writer. In this one scene, the greatest strengths of the production – its emotional energy, Howden’s lighting, and its use of space – culminate.

This scene also brings out the play’s most troubling aspect: its mistrust, or scorn, of democracy. Shakespeare presents to us a volatile, fickle crowd, swayed by whatever words Antony, Brutus, or Caesar throw their way. As Cassius and Brutus fight to save the Republic, we wonder if this lot really deserves the effort.

As for the acting itself, the performances are uneven. Zak Rose interprets Caesar somewhat shallowly. Nevertheless, the swagger and sway, and the good-humoured arrogance of the dictator gives us a novel insight into his character and make up for the flatness of Rose’s portrayal. His body language is especially well-rendered, for example, when enthroned at the Senate, and effectively conveys a man whose hubris blinds him to the dangers that surround him.

Little saves Murteza Khan’s Brutus, however, whose depthless, monotonous performance is a great disappointment. At turns angry and yelling or bland and uninspired, Khan fails to deliver the multidimensional Brutus that the play calls for. His wavering over the plot to kill Caesar in the first three acts is unconvincing, as is his gushing, emotional reaction to Portia’s self-inflicted wound in Act II. Worst of all is his recourse to yelling, as when he inappropriately shouts himself hoarse during his justification to the people of Rome.

Indeed, hoarseness is a problem for several of the actors, many of whom yelled, rather than emoted. On the subject of voices, the voice of the soothsayer (also Weiss) regrettably echoed Christian Bale’s Batman voice. Her ridiculous, raspy growl makes her predictions of misfortunate impossible to take seriously.

Antony, played by Fraser Dickson, is a breath of fresh air after so many scenes of Brutus monologuing. His transition from grief to wrath following Caesar’s murder is moving and effective; his devious manipulation of the crowd is brilliant and entertaining. Dickson only fails during his eulogy of Brutus; his overwrought delivery exacerbates the melodramatic mood set by the fleeting piano in the background.

Spencer Malthouse’s Cassius stood out from the four other protagonists and stole the show. Gesticulating, twisting his face and bending his voice to convey Cassius’s complexity, Malthouse brings his character’s corrosive jealousy vividly to life in Act I. (His portrayal is especially strong when relating the story of Caesar’s near-drowning.) Malthouse performs Cassius’s hysterical, self-pitying theatrics with subtlety, skill and humour, and more than makes up for the flat Brutus.

Merely on the merits of its staging and lights, this play deserves to be seen. The high points of Neilson’s Julius Caesar – Malthouse, Dickson and the group scenes – make up for the flawed and flat performances of too much of the cast.

The play runs this weekend, April 2-4, at 7:30 p.m. in Moyse Hall Theatre.

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The flattened perspective of these pieces, all mixed media on wood, immediately calls to mind the art of the Middle Ages – and the iconography that the St-Henri-based artist references only reinforces this notion. Her skeletons – the most common form that human life takes in these works – grapple and joke with headless, nude human figures in a way that recalls both post-Plague art, for its focus on the macabre, and art preceding the Black Death, for its often slyly humourous take on sex and violence.

Though subtle, the artist’s playful side shows through in these bleak tableaux, like in her homage to Manet, “Déjeuner sur l’herbe” (“Breakfast on the Grass”), in which skeletons, one of whom is wearing a football helmet made of rags, picnic with a decapitated human. “Sans-Titre I” features a hysterical practical joke – the skeletons have put a horse’s head on a man’s body. The sexualized battling of the living and the dead in “Combat” is also rendered somewhat comical by the dolled-up undead, who sport blue eye-liner and lots of rouge.

A certain sense of trauma pierces through this humour, however. The outdoor scenes, though violent, display low-velocity attacks, a tranquil assault of the dead on the quick – the most disturbing aspect of “Combat,” for example, is the figure of a rabid horse, belly torn open, running at full speed, which recurs in several other pieces as well.

But it’s human constructions that witness true brutality, a past violence of which only traces remain – like the Khmer-Rouge–style pile of feet, skulls, and hands in the cell pictured in “Aux oubliettes” (“In the Dungeon”), or, the most disturbing piece of the exhibition, “Les membres et fouineurs V” (“Members and Snoops V”), where a skeleton, arm shattered, hangs against a blood-stained stone wall underneath loose chains and picture frames displaying an apple and a nail.

These depictions of the indoors often hint at something horrifying and vaguely sadomasochistic, like the torture chamber door in “Le dortoir” (“The Dormitory”), the menacing armoire in “La chambre” (“The bedroom”), or the omnipresent hooks, nails, straps, and chains. Sometimes, there’s even some leftovers: the severed horse’s head, for example, hanging from a meat hook in “Sans-Titre II,” and the floor plan of a house littered with limbs, leaves, and apples.

Apples – the symbol of hubris and the subsequent fall – are only rarely absent in depictions of humans in Corps à os, and indicate past or present punishment. Like the allegorical painting “Les sept péchés capitaux” (“The seven deadly sins”) – which features a masturbating skeleton – this Christian icon reinforces the medieval sensibility of the works. The fruit abounds in “Combat,” the large-proportioned chef-d’œuvre of the exposition, where the dead enact their vengeance on the living with a certain gallows humour.

The root of this conflict seems to lie in the distinction between the organically-designed natural sites and the deformed, perturbing human constructions; perhaps these corpses have returned to chastise their descendants for abandoning nature, for spoiling it.

The punishment is not without tenderness, as though these living dead were parents disciplining their children. The most moving piece of the series, “Convoi nocturne” (“Nocturnal Convoy”), shows a gang of skeletons transporting a headless human, from whose slack hand drops an apple. The night-time scene occurs along a winding path that undulates into the blackness, though some of its shining stones twinkle on. There is a gentle remorse in the touch of these gauze-wrapped bone-men, as they gingerly move their fleshy cargo. Their expressionless faces somehow transmit an unbearable regret, as though mourning that it had to come to this.

Corps à os is showing from March 12 until April 11 at Galerie SAS, 372 Ste-Catherine, space 416.

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What’s your problem?

Aside from asthma, a weak stomach, and a negative attitude, my problem is that I have principles. I’m no saint, but as a student translator, I believe in and want to defend ethical translation. Not everyone, it seems, understands translation the way apprentice-translators and translatologists do, so I’ve taken it upon myself to popularize the fundamentals of the domain.

What is translation? What are its so-called ethics?

Translation is an art and a service. The art, “literary translation,” has fluid procedures. Its objective varies from translator to translator; the service, “pragmatic translation,” has strict rules and clear goals. Restrictions apply.

Pragmatic translators perform a service for people who do not speak the original language of a text. The language these translators use must conform to standards of accuracy, clarity, and usage – that is, the translated text ought to say all that the original text says, in completely normative language, following contemporary usage patterns to the letter: no surprises, nothing inventive. Pragmatic translation should not feel translated; it should read as though it had been composed in the target language.

McGill is an English-speaking school, and AUS’s translations aren’t mandatory. Can’t you be happy with what you’ve got?

No. Translation is a service, and a service poorly executed is nothing more than unethical tokenism.

Some tokens are good. Learning a little French so you can chat with cashiers in the Plateau is a wonderful, symbolic gesture of respect towards the local culture. Translation, however, is not symbolic. It’s a practical action with specific utility. It helps those who would not normally understand a text to access its meaning. A mangled translation, in addition to disgusting and/or confusing the target audience, doesn’t even have token value; if anything, it is a token of disrespect.

What’s the goal of the French listserv? If it’s to help integrate francophone students, there’s little hope that it’ll work as long as it remains gibberish. If it’s to show respect, then there are better ways than massacring the French language to do it.

You’re not even a francophone. Why do you even care about this?

See the first question.

How can I find a qualified translator at McGill, if you insist that I use one?

The best way to get in touch with aspiring translators would be to write to the French Literature Students’ Association (AGELF) at agelf.communications@gmail.com. Ask them to send a message to all undergrads in the Lettres et traduction françaises program. (Be sure to mention if it’s paid or pro bono; I suspect this will affect the number of responses received.)

What makes a qualified translator? Who should I pick?

The first criterion: What is the translator’s strongest language? If you’re looking for a translation into French, and the mother tongue of your candidate is English, pick somebody else.

Next, look at the their grades and work experience. Though bilingualism is essential, not just any bilingual can translate well. Ask for a translation sample. Have it evaluated by a francophone. If you can’t find someone qualified, keep looking: no translation is better than a bad translation.

Do you hate Adil Katrak and AUS’s translator?

Absolutely. Psych. Julia Wilk, AUS’s translator, is someone I know and like, and is very qualified to translate French into English. As for Katrak, I don’t know him, but have nothing against him; this is purely a professional and ethical matter. His motion on bilingualism at AUS Council is a step in the right direction; I hope the next VP Communication will follow his lead (and my advice) and put an end to token translation.

William Burton is a U3 Lettres et traduction françaises student, and Vice-President (External) of AGELF (Association générale des étudiantes et étudiants de langue et littérature françaises). He also sits on the Commission des affaires francophones, but the views expressed here are his own. You can reach him at william.burton2@mail.mcgill.ca.

The post Hyde Park: Putting an end to token translation appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In order to make Mr. Kattrak understand, I have undertaken an experiment in re-translation. Taking this week’s listserv as my base material, I have re-translated from the French back into English AUS’s weekly message, reproducing as much as possible the same kinds of errors made in French in this second English version. For example, if there was a major spelling error, I reproduced one in English; a major error in grammar yielded a similarly large error in English. Some less tangible mistakes (switching between nous and on in the same paragraph, for example) led me to more creative English faults. You get the picture.

Hi Everyone!

Happy Year!

At SSMU, we are all very enthusiast on the subject of this new year and we believe it’ll be full of fantastic events and agreeable moments. Here are some good ways to begin the year and to familiarize yourself anew with your friends. We hopes to see you there!

AUS Announcements

Are you passionated by what you study? […] Become a tutor! […] If tat interests you, kindly contact Claudette van Zyl […].

Are you interesting in getting hired at McGill? Would you like to make all the difference? Join the Academic Affairs Committee! […] If tat interests you, kindly contact Claudette van Zyl […].

Stumble across Montreal in an epic tour of the bus led by SSMU and AÉFG!

Are you in a musical group? Do you perform? Does you or your group do something artistic or creatif? If the answer to a of these questions is “yes,” your club should get involved in one of the creative, fantastic, most interactive events of the year! […] If tat interests you, or if you’d love to know more, kindly send an email to […].

Departmental Announcements

On n’a même pas traduit le titre de cette annonce! […] Come listen to your favourite political sciences professors, economy, geography, history, sociology, and much more, to tell some interesting or amusing anecdotes about their working or a studies in the domain. It’s a good opportunity to familiarize yourself with your profs and their research interests. […] Be over there – Thursday 16 january 5:30 Leacock 232.

The Committee Integrating the Bachelor of Arts and Science (BASiC) is in the middle of publishing the second tome of Ampersand, a journal of bachelor’s students’ handwriting worrying about subjects that integrate the arts and the sciences. […] The texts must be interesting, clearly written, well-cited, they must have earned a grade of A or A-, and they must be available to those who don’t know deeply the domain about which they act on themselves.

[…] ARAB COFFEE BREAK. […] [Encore une partie qu’on n’a pas traduite ! Et pourquoi ? Parce qu’il y avait un jeu de mots ? On ne se sentait pas à la hauteur de rendre cette blague en français ?] […]

Are you looking to get published? Dorot, the jewish Studies journal for Bachelor’s students is looking for texts for its 2009 edition.

Other announcements

[…] Are you interesting in learning first aid or CPR? The competencies can be very useful and might touch your CV nicely! […] The courses cost 85,00$ per person, which includes a manual of CPR and Red Cross Canadian. […] If you would love to register in a course, kindly email […]

“Féminisme et le Au-delà” is the bulletin of the International Day of Women, creates by the borderless women. […] We’re on the look-out for your submissions basing in the problems of feminism (max. 500 words) […]. The submissions we’d like to receive could be guided by the following questions: 1) How do we (evil) interpret feminism in the public domain? 2) How have feminist initiatives collaborateds with in our worldwide society? 3) Your experience, some ideas, the initiatives!

Women in Parliament is a trip entirely subsidized to Ottawa. Participants will have the chance to […] make contact with interested or implicated in politics women.

[…] Leave us to know that you come!

William Burton is a U3 Lettres et traduction françaises student, and a member of AGELF (Association générale des étudiantes et étudiants de langue et littérature françaises). Write well to william.burton2@mail.mcgill.ca.

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