Becoming Lesbian: A Queer History of Modern France

Becoming Lesbian: A Queer History of Modern France analyzes how a marginalized subculture used modern media to transform public attitudes toward sexual desire. It argues that the history of female same-sex intimacy in France is central to understanding the struggle to control the public sphere in the twentieth century. This monumental study draws on undiscovered sources from cabaret culture, sexology, police files, radio and TV broadcasts, photography, the Minitel (an early form of internet), private letters, and over one hundred interviews conducted with women from France and its colonies. Becoming Lesbian analyzes how women of diverse classes and races came to define themselves as lesbian and used public spaces and public media to shape new forms of gendered and sexual citizenship. It demonstrates that queer women (and not just men) laid lasting claims to urban space; illuminates the importance of business and entertainment in shaping lesbian identities; illustrates the presence of queer women on national television since the 1950s (far earlier than commonly believed); examines women’s sophisticated use of media technologies; explores the contested role of lesbianism in French feminism and of race in French lesbian movements; and argues for the importance of lesbianism to the acquisition of homosexual parenting and couple’s rights. Based on the largest collection of data on French women who love women ever assembled, Becoming Lesbian is a landmark historiographical intervention that provides pivotal insights into the heteronormative and androcentric presumptions that structure both the public/private divide and sexual citizenship writ large.