epanastatis interviews rfmcdpei

[rfmcdonald]

And the meme began for me here:

1. To some extent, it seems like one of the few points of commonality in the North American psyche that transcends the 49th parallel is the sense of the vastness of geographical space, something that distinguishes U.S. and Canadian cultures from all European cultures except the Russian. Yet in the Canadian maritimes, this is not the case, but is replaced instead by insularity, quite literally in the case of your home, PEI. What cultural differences has this geographic quirk helped induce, and how has it affected your life?

The most visible effect of Prince Edward Island's insularity on my life can be found in my Honours English thesis. I doubt that I would have even been interested in world-systems theory--never mind write a Canadian literature thesis drawing on Wallerstein's work--if I hadn't been aware of the Island's insular marginality. Everything on Prince Edward Island is determined in relationship to off-Island matters, and has been at least since the 17th century when European powers (France then Britain) became active in the Island: When the Island's population has not come from outside it leaves for the outside, when Islanders consume popular culture it largely comes from off-Island providers, when Islanders compare their standards of living to other places they compare it (unfavourably) to our richer and larger partners, and so on. If my experience as an Islander hadn't made me aware of the fact that some places find themselves at the bottom of the pile, my academic career to date would have went differently.

At a more personal level, my growing awareness of the Island's insular marginality has made me increasingly aware of the greater opportunities available off-Island: shopping, residence, career, hopefully even romantic opportunities. As a child, I never considered an adult life on the Island; now, I can scarcely imagine living here for another three months. Emigration is a time-honoured Island tradition, after all, and I intend to fully live up to it.

2. Would you ever consider moving to Quebec Province (whether Montreal, Quebec City, or some shack in the woods) just to have the experience of being in a minority? Or has your experience of coming out as bi giving you more than enough of a taste for having a minority status?

McGill University in Montréal was my first choice for graduate school, in part because it is located in the part-Francophone metropolis of Montréal. (In the end I got accepted to McGill, but since they weren't offering me a scholarship I chose Queen's--my second-favourite on my grad school list--instead, with no regrets.) I would like very much to be in Montréal in order to live as a member of a linguistic minority, if a large and heterogeneous one.

Coming out as bi didn't discourage me from wanting to be a member of a distinctive minority; if anything, it's left me curious as to how that would feel. I'm unusual and rather lucky in this regard, but coming out as bi helped me feel more integrated. In February of 2002, I was entering a cul-de-sac, focused on my academic work to the exclusion of everything else yet failing to achieve much academically. Discovering that a) I had a sexual orientation and b) that it wasn't heterosexual proved in the end to be a decidedly salutary shock. I'm still rather shock of achieving the normality that I want, but my innate nerdishness is the personality factor that's hindering me; more often than not, whenever my sexual orientation has come into things it has been as an interesting topic of conversation.

3. My impression is that your sexual experiences to date are rather limited. When people question your sexual identity, or the ignorant grounds of "How can you really be sure if you haven't tried?" or "Are you sure it's not just a phase?", how do you usually respond to them?

As to your first sentence, if you define "rather limited" as "completely without any relevant experience," you'd be quite correct.

As to your above question in its entirety, it has two possible answers for two different sets of questioners.

The first answer is "Of course I'm sure I'm not heterosexual, and I'm sure that this is not any kind of adolescent phase." I managed, in adolescence, to suppress my sexuality quite well, to the point that I never even thought of partaking in what are apparently normal adolescent patterns of sexual experimentation. I've missed out on these entirely, perhaps unfortunately; I can hope to approach them later in life, but never with the adolescent lack of concern for consequences that (I've been told) characterizes this period. What this all means, I guess, is that I know full well what it means to be heterosexual, and I know what it means to be non-heterosexual, and despite my relatively limited self-knowledge I can say that this is not a phase before some happily-married and unconflicted heterosexuality. (Or if it is, then I have absolutely no clue.)

The second answer is "I'm not completely sure, but that term seems to work nicely for me." By identifying myself as bisexual I am neither trying to claim some vestige of heterosexual privilege nor am I hoping for the Right Woman to Rescue Me. Rather I'm simply using a label that does the best job of describing the nature of my sexual fantasy life, that is, largely same-sex-oriented with a significant opposite-sex component, roughly Kinsey 4.5 to 5 at the gay-leaning fringes of bisexuality. (Your use of "gay"--as you wrote, "in the political sense signified by the "Gay Liberation Front" of the immediately post-Stonewall era, in the sense that everyone--male or female, transgendered or comfortable with their birth sex, exclusive in their attraction to a particular gender or not--[. . .] whose desires do not fit within the monotonous framework of the bourgeois, heterosexual family is "gay"--would probably be more accurate, but it doesn't seem to be commonly used in that sense in North America.

I admit that my second answer might be flawed given my lack of practical experience (as opposed to my surfeit of self-directed Socratic dialogues). I might indeed be confused, overrating the relative importance of my opposite-sex-directed impulses. Last year, I wrote some pieces--here, here, here, here, here, here, and finally here--about my Foucauldian-inspired stance on male sexuality. In Part 3, I posited an economic model of sexuality:

[D]etermine what you define as a class of benefits and determine how much effort you're willing to pursue on behalf of each member in the set of benefits. Once this is accomplished, plot the different data points on the chart, and then draw a line connecting these points. The resulting curve will bound the upward limits of your sexual/romantic goals; goals which are located below this curve will be the goals that you'll aim for, while goals located above this curve will be the goals that you'll decide not to pursue, whether for lack of interest in the necessary effort or disinterest in the actual goal.

It might well be that given sufficient experience I'll decide that it isn't worth my time to seek out heterosexual relationships because the cost doesn't come with appropriately large benefits, hence becoming for gay in terms of behaviour if not in thought. Given my lack of experience, I can't exclude this particular possibility out of hand. If I do turn out to be purely gay behaviour-wise, though, I rather doubt it would be because I found women and their private parts icky.

4. Have you ever had a moment when you realized how horrifically white you really are?

A few, but only when I was travelling off-Island. Living as I do on Prince Edward Island, I know that between 83 and 85% of the province's current population was born here, that 95% of the population is of British or French background, that something like 97% of the population speaks English as a first language, that the near-totality of Islanders come from families at least nominally Roman Catholic or Protestant. It's only when you leave the Island that you realize that the province's homogeneity is exceptional. In my case, although I consider myself competent in the literature on ethnic communities in urban areas, I was intruiged and perhaps a bit surprised to actually see large and relatively coherent ethnic neighbourhoods like Chinatown at Bloor and Spadina, or like the gay strip on Church Street. I also liked the fact that I, as a gay-leaning bisexual Prince Edward Islander of a decidedly academic and introverted background, was in a decided minoriy everywhere I went.

5. A modified version of my standard final question: when you visited New York, you almost met my wife and I, but I was insanely busy that weekend with writing. Given that you're friends with three of my in-laws, it's likely that we'll finally meet eventually. Do you think that how we get along will be determined by the circumstances of our meeting (e.g., which if any of my in-laws are present at the time), and if so, how?

I don't think that the presence of your in-laws will weigh negatively or otherwise against you, actually. My main concerns re: our first meeting are mainly connected to our ideological differences: though we're both influenced by Marxism to varying degrees, I'm more of a post-structuralist with a continued interest in formal analysis, while you're a Trotskyite. It's possible that we could get along badly based on our ideological differences alone.

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And now, copied from epanastatis because it works so well, the request:

If you want me to interview you--post a comment that simply says, "Interview me." I'll respond with questions for you to take back to your own journal and answer as a post. Of course, they'll be different for each person since this is an interview and not a general survey. At the bottom of your post, after answering the Interviewer's questions, you ask if anyone wants to be interviewed. So it becomes your turn-- in the comments, you ask them any questions you have for them to take back to their journals and answer. And so it becomes the circle.