It is after the Second world war that the homosexual community felt the importance to be organized politically, to defend oneself against the Homophobie and persecutions which it underwent on behalf of the States. The battle then proceeded in two more or less separate phases, initially with the liberation movement merry , in the years 1970, and then with the movement for the rights of merry the as of the years 1980, which prevails still today.

The Stonewall episode

Although cores existed already in the United States (Mattachine Society, Daughters off Bilitis), in France (re-examined Arcadie) and elsewhere, the merry movement was truly to make its Coming-out in June 1969 , during famous the riots which explode in New York around the bar Stonewall In .

Attended especially by drag queens Oporto-ricaines and Lesbian S, this establishment of the district Greenwich Village is the object in this evening of June 28th of one énième police descent. However for the customers, it is a descent of too. The bar and the streets around blaze up, of the police officers are taken as an hostage and a continuous flood of bottles breaks on the few 400 police officers, who must face during two days more than 2000 determined rioters.

Starting from the riots of Stonewall, the handle of militants of the homosexual cause which existed transfer in an army of activists, who soon will strike in all the Western countries.

FHAR in France

In France, holding them of the merry release strike for the first time at the beginning of the year 1971. Gathered within burlesque the homosexual Face of revolutionary action (FHAR), whose Guy Hocquenghem was one of the pricipaux organizers, they successfully stop a platform of radio, which relates in this March 10th, 1971 to the topic: “Homosexuality, this painful problem”… The large one of the commando is then made up lesbians, among whom many militant feminists and in particular the écrivaine Monique Wittig . With the wire of the months however, the FHAR comprises a male component in constant growth.

The author of the Anthology of anarchism , Daniel Guerin , account inter alia among the novel members. He tallies besides perfectly with the libertarian spirit which reigns in the group. Direct democracy and rejection of stardom form part of their political culture indeed. Children of May 68 , the members of the FHAR feel a sharp need to live their ideology with the concrete one. Celebrities like Guerin or Francoise d' Eaubonne will go thus until being stripped as a full general meeting, to live until the end their speech on the release of the body.

The increasingly hegemonic presence of the men within the FHAR, added to the “libidineuse drift” of the latter, will end up pushing the women to be organized between them. A schism occurs thus and the radical lesbians form with the invitation of Monique Wittig, the group of the red Gouines, which will fall more or less into the orbit from the Liberation movement from the women (MLF).

In Quebec: a face of homosexual release

The vague liberationnist broke on all the Occident and Quebec was not going to escape from it. The first association the homosexual ones to be born in Quebec is precisely the homosexual Front of release (FLH), born in March 1971. The simple fact of choosing the term “face” as a name of group translated with him only the radical spirit which planes then above the young regrouping. The name is all the more daring as Quebec hardly recovers from the traumatism generated five months earlier by the Crise of October, which had seen another face - the Front of release of Quebec - multiplying kidnappings and other blows of glare.

Chance or not, it is besides at the time of a walk anti-Canada, on July 1st, 1971, that the Face of homosexual release makes its first public exit, by forming a homosexual quota there. One of the members of the group, Denis Side, is addressed then to the crowd joined together in a park, and declares that the release of Quebec would be made with the collaboration of all and that it was necessary to release oneself before releasing Quebec…

Extremely from about thirty members at the beginning, political training passes quickly to nearly 200 people, a progression which is reflected however on the ideological composition of the FLH. Those which cultivated a more complete view and political become so minority in the FLH, which they preferred to leave its rows. In August 1972, the young organization is scuttled, crushed that it is under police harassing.

Radical thought

In Quebec, in France and elsewhere, the Marxism with the dimension among partisans of the merry release. Their imaginary is invaded revolutionary and Marxist terms, but to which a key of derision is added which distinguishes them from the rigor of the conventional Marxist-Leninists. This slogan sung by the red Dykes illustrates well the double spirit which characterizes the movement:

“Has low the middle-class order And the patriarchal order has low the order hétéro/And the order capitalo/Us them dykes, the lesbians the vicious ones, the infamous ones We love other women We will break our chains do not shave more the walls Aimons us at the great day” (Martel, 1996, p.55).

Perhaps the off-hand characteristic of the merry radicals drew its origin from the particular position which they occupied in the Marxist movement of the time. Whereas the other radicals called some at the end of oppression in the factory, the third world and the company in general, the speech of homosexual specifically targeted as for him the oppression exerted in the rooms to sleep. The ones thus occupied the public domain, the others the private field. The ditch took sometimes problematic dimensions.

The auteure Margaret Cruikshank amongst other things claims in its work gay And lesbian release movement , that “the merry release could not be completely comparable by the left (...) being given its strong chaotic nature. Moreover, the merry release tends to promote an high degree of individualism of the fact obviously which it fed with same private experiments which consolidated the impression to be different from different”. The sexual cause (and the feminist cause to a lesser extent) were transformed consequently into subject of discord, so much so that it precipitated sometimes the rupture within Marxist groups. In France for example, the movement Lives the Revolution (tendency Maoist-libertarian…), came to its total dissolution, after an special edition of their newspaper of opinion, bearing on homosexuality and supported highly by a carry-standard of the movement (Jean-Paul Sartre), raised a thunder of dissatisfaction, in particular in the working trade unionists.

Put aside of such episodes, the years liberationnists remain one time of great convergence. Sometimes whereas solidarity seemed self-explanatory, in particular between the movements merry and feminist, it showed other times more surprising. In his Gay Manifesto appeared in 1970, the American Carl Wittman invited the other homosexual ones thus to support the fight of the women, the hippies, of the radical white, but also the release of the latinos and the American blacks, whose speech could however tend towards the machism to the occasion.

A such play of boomerang, the other liberation movements lined up in their turn behind the combat of the homosexual ones. Huey Newton , leader of the '' Black Panthers '', expressed in these words its solidarity with the merry cause:

“Let us know We it well all, our first impulse is often to want to put our fist in the figure of homosexual, and to want that a woman keep silent herself… We must lose these feelings of insecurity (...). They (the merry ones) are perhaps the layer most oppressed within this company… The Face of Women's Liberation and the Face of release of homosexual are our friends.” (Martel, 1996, p.55)

Identity questioning

If the revolution as wanted by the merry activists returned in first to a rupture socio-policy, important a identity shutter nevertheless were attached there. The déconstruction of the identities homo/hétéro and man/woman thus already with the day order at the time, though much was put of before it is it in years 1980 and 90. It is in the facts a staggering identity criticism which prevailed then. While denouncing psychological colonization that the capacity heterosexual subjected homosexual (“ We are children off straight society. We still think straight: that is share gold our oppression ” and Phelan, 1997, p.380-388), Carl Wittman did not resort about it less to one fundamentally identity grid when he preached in favor of the creation of a distinct territory for the homosexual ones, as well as distinct institutions and media.

They is probably the lesbians who reflect largest emphase on the déconstruction of the categories, and it is not the result of the chance. Initially the militant lesbians were with the catch with a constant dilemma, which obliged them to question their identity unceasingly: were they to militate initially like homosexual, or woman? Then, the traditional fear carried by the feminist movement to be labelled lesbians mad by the men, encouraged many homosexual feminists to take to their distance vis-a-vis the category “lesbian”. As much the word that the concept represented with the eyes of these last a creation of the patriarchal capacity, a capacity which used the qualifier of “lesbian” to rasseoir any woman who dared to rise.

Monique Wittig compared for example to the evolution of the terms “woman” and “slave”, and denounced that the emancipation of the women did not result in the setting with the date of reality “woman”, as the emancipation of the blacks had formerly reflected by the abandonment of name “slave” within the black population. Another reason in addition justified the disintegration of the concept of woman - and the concept of man by extension: the rigid borders of the female masculine would have represented for the individual a total refusal of his freedom and would have slowed down its personal blooming. To be in harmony with its major personality, to be the most authentic person and the least censured possible, it was necessary according to the radical lesbians, not to reform the identities of kind, but to abolish them completely.

A turn towards integration

Appear central of the FHAR, the Frenchwoman Francoise d' Eaubonne considered thus in 1971 the future of the merry release: “You known as that the company must integrate the homosexual ones, me I say that the homosexual ones must disintegrate the company” (Martel, 1996, p.25).

But towards the end of the year 1970, the context changes, and this radicalism which had marked so much until there the social movements - those of the blacks, the women, the inhabitants of the third world and others - blurs little by little. The merry movement does not make exception.

The liberation movement merry will thus succeed the movement for the rights of merry the , a movement says “integrationist”. The targets change and the means of reaching them too. The new militants, often of the professionals in communication or legal right, will not claim any more abolition of wild capitalism, the “hétéropatriarcat” and other structures social which they detested. From now on, the claims will be more pragmatic and rounds towards the needs for a community eager to be integrated into the remainder of the company: obtaining an access equal to the army, the institution of the marriage and the Homoparentalité .

It will not be therefore the death of a militancy more confrontationnel and policy. The emergence of movements like Act Up , Queer Nation and The Lesbian Avengers in the years 1990, or the Panthers Pink at the beginning of the 21e century, will reanimate on the occasion the spirit of Stonewall.

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