From: maffray@imag.fr (Frederic Maffray)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.french,soc.motss
Subject: Re: L'homosexualite en France
Date: 11 Oct 92 16:06:33 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.french
Distribution: soc.culture.french,soc.motss
Organization: Une Generation Desenchantee


In article <92276.192759BM9028A@auvm.american.edu> BM9028A@auvm.american.edu (Brent J. Markley) writes:
>Bonjour,
>
>     Je suis un americain homosexuel qui s'interesse a la homosexualite en
>France.  Je cherche un/une francais(e) avec qui je peux correspondre pour me
>mettre au courant de la vie homosexuelle/bisexuelle en France.  C'est un sujet
>tres interessant, et je peux vous mettre au courant de la communaute homo-
>sexuelle aux U.S.A. egalement.  Si cela vous interesse, n'hesitez pas a
>m'ecrire .

Hello,

For some reason France seems to have the reputation of being
an open-minded nation, but I think that in several domains
this is hardly deserved.  Homosexuality is one of them.  In
general it is a taboo topic, which when raised elicits
mostly embarrassment, giggles or lousy jokes, or the kind of
Neanderthal arrogance recently displayed by Michel Fougeres
in response to your posting.

Of course you may be able to find people who will assure you
that some of their best friends are gay, but it will hardly
go any further than that. Faggots and dykes, "perverts" or
mere "asocials" are expected to remain discreet (since as
everybody knows it is only because some of them speak too
much that they are so hated). Your typically American
attitude of friendly, nonchalant outness is very unFrench.
People are satisfied with just not hearing at all about
homosexuality, even less so *from* lesbian or gay persons
speaking up in their own name. 

While only a minority of the population is blatantly
homophobic, the majority just does not care to be informed
and clueless heterocentrism is the norm. Certainly
soc.culture.french does not counter-exemplify that.

Historically it may be correctly pointed out that Republican
French law does not explicitly persecute homosexuality, but
this says little of the actual situation. French culture is
still pervaded by the Catholic worldview and principles
("good mores", family values, obedience to authority, etc.).
"Abnormal" people may be tolerated, but more because this
enables the soi-disant Enlightened elite to admire itself
being tolerant rather than out of genuine interest and
empathy for alternate or different subcultures. This is the
case for gay culture as much as for ethnic cultures.

In fact if you look at the recent history of various Western
nations, you'll hardly find any that has so rich a tradition
of violent and repressive reaction to the progress,
visibility and empowerment of minorities -- from the Dreyfus
Affair to Vichy to Le Pen. During the second World War, in
few occupied countries were the government and population so
eager to collaborate in the Nazi program of demographic
purification as in France. The part of this collaboration,
by the French police and state administration, involving the
arrest, rounding up, and handing over of Jews to the Germans
is now well known -- although still denied at the official
level. The part concerning the extermination of homosexuals
has purely and simply been forgotten; it's just a "detail".

In 1962 the French National Assembly declared homosexuality
a "national plague". Police harassment ruined many people's
life. I know of one case, a brilliant young mathematician
who committed suicide when forced through a psychiatric
treatment after he'd been arrested during a routine police
raid in a gay bar. That was only 25 years ago, and I've
heard of more recent cases.

Gay liberation ideals and struggles developed after May 68,
but the general attitude towards gays was still mostly scorn
and hostility, even from the Left, and sometimes violence.
The topic continued to be taboo in the French media, save
for the occasional confessional-like TV program about "The
Painful Problem of Homosexuality", where a courageous naive
gay person would be confronted to a psychiatrist and a
priest lecturing him about his sins.

There was essentially no gay press until the late seventies.

In the 80s the coming to power of the Socialists at first
generated some hope but soon proved to be be an illusion, as
revealed for one example by the negligent handling of the
AIDS crisis. The government AIDS information ads are laughly
prudish -- save that this is no laughing matter. There are
things that one just does not talk about on French TV lest
the viewers would be offended. As a result the young French
generation is quite underinformed on AIDS, compared to
Dutch, Scandinavian or Anglo-Saxon countries. There are more
AIDS cases in Paris than in all of England. (This does not
keep people on the nice-liberal bourgeois Left from railing
against Anglo-Saxon "puritanism" and, you can guess, against
"Political Correctness", which is So Contrary To Our Great
Gallic/Latin Traditions.)

In verity American gay minority politics, with its focus on
power and space and networking (Gay Pride days, ACT-UP, etc)
has turned out to be a better inspiration for French gays
than traditional Republican assimilationism and discretion.

1990s mainstream popular French culture is still rather
sexist and homophobic, and not unfrequently racist, with few
eyebrows raised in the public. (Most of what passes for
humor on TV here will make you regret Jay Leno.)

In general, things of concern to gays and lesbians are
un(der)reported in the mainstream press. Homophobic violence
goes unchecked. For example a great beating of homosexuals
by the police took place in Paris in July, when members of
the ILGA conference were demonstrating in front of the
Mexican embassy to protest against the murder of two gay men
in Mexico. People were clubbed and arrested. Several reports
mention that the police were particularly eager to attack a
man wearing a kippa (for the clueless this means a Jew).
Ironically this happened precisely on the 50th anniversary
of the round ups of Jews mentioned above.

Unsurprisingly none of this was reported in the mainstream
press. But what can you expect from a country where 15% of
the population vote for the neo-Nazi extreme-right party of
Le Pen and 30% express agreement with his ideas? What goes
around comes around.

For the rest it must be recognized that little in the world
is more enjoyable than strolling through the Marais on a
sunny late-summer day, after lunch at Goldenberg's in good
company, and sitting in any of the many gay cafes with good
late seventies music and lycra displays...

---
Frederic Maffray