# Marguerite Stern

Marguerite Stern (born November 24, 1990) is a French polemicist and feminism activist. She is the founder of the collage movement against femicide. She was criticized for her actions deemed transphobic and was excluded from the movement. She is an activist of Far-right politics.

## Biography

Stern was born and raised in Auvergne by parents; her father is a Portuguese immigrant. After her literary baccalaureate, she left Auvergne for Paris, where she studied visual arts at Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis. She further studied architecture in Brussels.

## Activism

On her return to Paris in 2012, Marguerite Stern stopped her studies and begins her feminist commitment within the FEMEN,. At the end of October 2024, she "apologized" to the Catholic Church for her past actions during protests against the Church's opposition to same-sex marriage and claims to have evolved after "investigating transgender ideology" and its "harmful consequences".

### Demonstration against the Civitas movement

On November 18, 2012, she participated in the Femen movement during a Civitas demonstration against same-sex marriage and suffered violence from members of the political party. Accused of publicly insulting fundamentalist Catholics, she was acquitted on November 19, 2024.
She is also accused of having used fire extinguishers with six other Femen as a "weapon by destination". She then obtained a first dismissal on November 19, 2024. She was again acquitted of the facts on October 24, 2024.
On May 29, 2013, she participated in Tunisia with two other activists in the first FEMEN action in an Arab country in support of Amina Sboui. They were arrested and detained for a month in Manouba prison. On June 12, 2013, they were sentenced to 4 months and one day in prison for violating good morals and modesty.

### In Morocco against homophobia

On June 2, 2015, she was part of FEMEN's first action in Morocco, in front of the Hassan Tower in Rabat, where she kissed another activist topless. According to a press release, this action "celebrate LGBT rights and denounce the injustice done to the homosexual community in Morocco". Seven hours after the action, they were arrested, questioned for six hours, then expelled from the territory.

### Commitment to welcoming refugees

From 2015 to 2016 she gave French lessons in the Calais Jungle.

### Collages against feminicide

In February 2019, she initiated collages in France against femicides in the form of brief slogans, particularly in Paris and Marseille. Her collages are composed of black letters painted one by one on white sheets. Her first slogan was "Since I was 13, men have commented on my physical appearance in the street».
On August 30, 2019, she initiated a collective collage against feminicides. She managed the operation of the Paris group and the launch of the movement on a national scale for a month, before stepping aside. She keeps sticking alone.
Due to the simplicity of the mode of action and the increase in the number of feminicides in France, collage groups are forming in cities, but also internationally. The media, in France and abroad, are interested in the phenomenon. These collages display slogans which aim to raise awareness and denounce the inaction of public authorities to act effectively against violence against women. The messages pay tribute to the victims of femicide. They display short sentences which describe the circumstances of the murders or which have a general aim.
In July 2020, she opened a féminist squat, in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, "L'amazone", HQ for collages, and a place of creation for women, with the notable exception of trans women, whom she refuses.He was evacuated a month later.

## Privacy

On October 2à, 2016, the day after altercations with men from his neighborhood, a 9mm bullet hit the window of his Marseille apartment in the middle of the night.

## Positions and controversies
### Positions taken against the wearing of the veil, prostitution

Representing a "universalist" feminism, as opposed to "essentialist" feminism, she notably declares that the veil, likeprostitution, is not a matter of free will.

### Positions on transidentity, accusations of transphobia and rapprochement towards the far-right

On January 22, 2020, after a collage in the city of Montpellier calling for the inclusion of trans women in the feminist movement woth the slogan "sisters not cisTERF" (pun built on "cis" (cisgender) et "TERF" meaning "Trans-exclusionary radical feminist », and slogan which can be translated as "allies not transphobes"), she takes a stand against the place that, according to her, trans activism has become too important in the collage movement and within feminism, via Twitter. She states in particular that being a woman is a question of biology and that the activism of trans woman, consisting according to her of reducing women to a set of patriarchal stereotypes such as makeup or clothes, is insulting to them. She denies the status of women to people assigned male at birth, stating in particular: «Throughout time, men have tried to silence women by silencing their revolts. Today, they do it from the inside by infiltrating our struggles". She refuses designations such as "people with vulvas". Her positions have led to her being considered a "TERF" by intersectional feminists.
Following these statements, the Instagram account Collages Féminicides Paris dissociates itself from her comments: "Discrimination has always been condemned […]. We are about the exclusion of a part of women from the struggle, transphobia is not a debate. » She is excluded from the movement she co-created, several months after having already left it. She is the subject of numerous insults on social networks, so much so that the collective reacts and specifies that it refuses any "killing rhetoric".
In february 2020, Marguerite Stern co-signed, alongside Christine Delphy and Fatiha Agag-Boudjahlat, a column written by Pauline Arrighi entitled "Trans: suffit-il de s'autoproclamer femme pour pouvoir exiger d'être considéré comme telle?" ("Trans: is it enough to proclaim oneself a woman to be able to demand to be considered as such"). This column, initially published on the Huffington Post, then unpublished by the editorial staff which describes it as transphobic, is republished by Marianne. On February 26, 2020, several personalities and associations signed two columns in Libération entitled "Féminisme: le débat sur la place des femmes trans n'a pas lieu d'être" ("Feminism: the debate on the place of trans women has no place") and "À toi ma sœur, mon frère, mon adelphe" ("To you my sister, my brother, my adelphe). These different positions crystallize the dissensions within the collages against feminicides. Marguerite Stern is harassed for her positions, harassment going as far as death threats and leading to psychiatric hospitalization for Generalized anxiety disorder..
In September 2021, seven authors withdrew from a feminist book fair because of her participation and that of Dora Moutot, due to their transphobic positions.
In August 2022, she co-signed with Dora Moutot an column published in Marianne addressed toÉlisabeth Borne, in which they opposed a Planned Parenthood poster representing a pregnant man, judging that "it uses vocabulary used by transactivists". According to Mediapart, the text is "mostly relayed by far-right activists, press outlets or pesonalities.
The site Arrêt sur images then reports that femellism, a movement launched by Dora Moutot and Marguerite Stern, is rejected by many feminists "for its transphobia", but also becausse many women do not claim to be female. A rhetoric used by Marguerite Stern. According to the journalist, the movement adheres to the Conspiracy theory on "funding the trans lobby" and remains close to an ultraconservative or far-right ideology. The two activists reject in a right of reply any accusation transphobia and rapprochement with the far-right or fascism. They specify that according to them, femellism is above all a fight "against the oppressions that women suffer because of their sex". Libération criticizes the two activists for ideological connections and common obsessions with the activists of La Manif pour tous and the far-righ. However, a few months later, Marguerite Stern lent her support to a well-known figure of the far-right: Julien Rochedy, masculinist and former national director of Front National youth between 2012 and 2014. In September 2024, she gave a conference at the Institut de sciences sociales économiques et politiques founded by Mario Maréchal, a far-right political figure.
Dora Moutot and Marguerite Stern were received shortly after by LREM deputies Caroline Yadan and Aurore Bergé, which led to protests from two other LREM elected officials, Pierre Karleskind and Raphaël Gérard, the latter denouncing Carloine Yadan's "vocabulary which makes echo of the hateful speeches heard in Poland or Hugary". Shorthly after this meeting Aurore Bergé tabled an amendment to prohibit trans men from having access to abortion.
Interviewed in September 2022 by Libération, Marguerite Stern defends herself from being transphobic, explaining: "I am not transphobic because I say that a trans woman is a man and I am not fighting trans people but trans ideology. In the same way that I am not Islamophobic because I say that Islam is shit, nor anti-Semitic because I say that the Jewish religion is shit, nor "communistophobic" because I say that communism is shit".
In April 2023, her visit to Nantes, to the annual conference organized by Comité Laïcité République Pays de la Loire at château des ducs de Bretagne, for a conference entitled "Cinq ans après #MeToo, où en est le féminisme?" ("Five years after #MeToo, where is feminism?") is canceled due to threats. The conference will ultimately be rescheduled in a Senate room, and her appearance will ultimately be maintained.
On 19 November 2024, Marguerite Stern opposes the LFI amendment proposing that a transgender woman can be incarcerated in a women's prison.

#### Controversy surrounding the book Transmania

In April 2024, the Paris town hall opposed the promotion on billboards of a book she wrote with Dora Moutot, Transmania. According to the first deputy, Emmanuel Grégoire, the book propagates 'hate speech" towards transgender people, which "goes against the values held by the City of Paris". Dora Moutot denounces "an act of censorship" after JCDecaux withdraws the advertising.
On April 20, 2024, SOS Homophobie announced that it was filing a complaint against Dora Moutot and Marguerite Stern for their book Transmania, the association denouncing "hatred against trans people".
A conference on books at the Paris-Panthéon-Assas university at the initiative of the Student Cockade is announced for Monday May 6, 2024, provoking controversy, left-wing student associations and the communist senator of Paris Ian Brossat requesting its cancellation. It was finally held under police protection in an annex center, while a counter-demonstration of 150 people took place opposite.
She is participating to the 2024 summer university of the far-right Reconquête party led by Éric Zemmour

### Rejection on feminism

In July 2023, she expressed her rejection of feminism due to developments in feminist struggles which she considers negative. She now defines herself as "female" and gets closer to the far-right masculinist activist Julien Rochedy, whose positions she says she shares

## Works
### Essays

* FEMEN, Manifeste FEMEN, éditions Utopia, 2014 ISBN 978-2919160174.
* Héroïnes de la rue, Manifeste pour un féminisme de combat, éditions Michel Lafon, 2020 ISBN 978-2749943961.
* avec Dora Moutot, Transmania, Magnus, 2024.

### Podcasts

* Conversations avec Marie, March 2019
* Héroïnes de la rue, April 2019
* Le dernier homme, April 2021
* Écoutez les survivantes, June 2021
* Ma fortune, March 2022
* Au peuple des femmes, May 2022