This is true whether one is looking at the potential separation of Quebec from 'English' Canada and its long history or politics in the State of California. It is a banality to point out that all political practice requires language and that it is on the terrain of language that political issues, whether of nationality, race, gender or class, are manifest. On the contrary, language is a major source of fragmentation. Language difference is one of the essential elements of many national and ethnic conflicts. It is the vehicle of racism.
Language can place little barriers between people organizing for change in the simplest ways.
Bad Subjects critique applying only to the U.S. context represents a cultural domination of the U.S. over Canada that is usually practiced in much more commercial ways. A more important example would be the Womens movements around the world that have shown how small, seemingly trivial, language practices such as in English the labels 'chairman' or 'fireman' and the use of 'he' as the universal pronoun have detrimental effects. And in North America, Womens Movements have been quite successful at changing some of these practices. But where non-feminists see these as 'silly' issues, other feminists see them as examples of how superficial such goals are with respect to changing the material conditions of women's lives. To take another example from Bad Subjects , the original 'Manifesto for Bad Subjects' contends that the appropriation of the term 'queer' by gays and lesbians does little more than avoid the history of stereotypes and what purposes they serve.