Monique Wittig was a French author, philosopher and feminist theorist who wrote about abolition of the sex-class system and coined the phrase "heterosexual contract". Her groundbreaking work is titled The Straight Mind and Other Essays. She published her first novel, L'Opoponax, in 1964. Her second novel, Les Guérillères (1969), was a landmark in lesbian feminism.
Gayle S. Rubin is an American cultural anthropologist, theorist and activist, best known for her pioneering work in feminist theory and queer studies.
Virginie Despentes is a French writer, novelist, and filmmaker. She is known for her work exploring gender, sexuality, and people who live in poverty or other marginalised conditions.
Samois-sur-Seine is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France.
Michèle Causse was a French activist, author, and self-described radical lesbian.
Feminist views on BDSM vary widely from acceptance to rejection. BDSM refers to bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and Sado-Masochism. In order to evaluate its perception, two polarizing frameworks are compared. Some feminists, such as Gayle Rubin and Patrick Califia, perceive BDSM as a valid form of expression of female sexuality, while other feminists, such as Andrea Dworkin and Susan Griffin, have stated that they regard BDSM as a form of woman-hating violence. Some lesbian feminists practice BDSM and regard it as part of their sexual identity.
Jovette Marchessault was a Canadian writer and artist from Quebec, who worked in a variety of literary and artistic domains including novels, poetry, drama, painting and sculpture. An important pioneer of lesbian and feminist literature and art in Canada, many of her most noted works were inspired by other real-life women in literature and art, including Violette Leduc, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Emily Carr, Anaïs Nin and Helena Blavatsky.
Paris, the capital of France, has an active LGBT community. In the 1990s, 46% of the country's gay men lived in the city. As of 2004, Paris had 140 LGBT bars, clubs, hotels, restaurants, shops, and other commercial businesses. Florence Tamagne, author of "Paris: 'Resting on its Laurels'?", wrote that there is a "Gaité parisienne"; she added that Paris "competes with Berlin for the title of LGBT capital of Europe, and ranks only second behind New York for the title of LGBT capital of the world." It has France's only gayborhoods that are officially organized.
A lesbian bar is a drinking establishment that caters exclusively or predominantly to lesbian women. While often conflated, the lesbian bar has a history distinct from that of the gay bar.
Town Bloody Hall is a 1979 documentary film of a panel debate between feminist advocates and activist Norman Mailer. Filmed on April 30, 1971, in The Town Hall in New York City. Town Bloody Hall features a panel of feminist advocates for the women's liberation movement and Norman Mailer, author of The Prisoner of Sex (1971). Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker produced the film, which stars Jacqueline Ceballos, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, Diana Trilling, and Norman Mailer. The footage of the panel was recorded and released as a documentary in 1979. Produced by Shirley Broughton, the event was originally filmed by Pennebaker. The footage was then filed and rendered unusable. Hegedus met Pennebaker a few years later, and the two edited the final version of the film for its release in 1979. Pennebaker described his filming style as one that exists without labels, in order to let the viewer come to a conclusion about the material, which inspired the nature of the Town Bloody Hall documentary. The recording of the debate was intended to ensure the unbiased documentation, allowing it to become a concrete moment in feminist history.
Nathalie Magnan was a media theoretician and activist, a cyber-feminist, and a film director. She taught at both universities and art schools, and is known for initiating projects linking Internet activism and sailing with the Sailing for Geeks project. She also co-organised the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1984. She died at home of breast cancer.
The Paris Feminist and Lesbian Film Festival is a women-only film festival founded in Paris, France, in 1989. The festival is organized by Cineffable, an association dedicated to promoting lesbian cinema, and encouraging lesbian creativity.
Jacqueline Julien is a Moroccan-born French feminist, film maker and lesbian role model. She co-founded the Bagdam Cafée in Toulouse. This cafe is credited with moving the focus of French lesbian culture south. It closed after ten years but its virtual self continues today.
Danielle Charest was a Quebecois writer, a major figure in the Canadian radical lesbianism movement.
Jacqueline Feldman is a French sociologist and author. She worked as a researcher for the French National Centre for Scientific Research until retirement in 2001, but has continued to publish until 2020. She co-founded FMA, one of the ancestors that later would become Mouvement de libération des femmes in 1970.
The Collectif intersexe activiste - OII France, until 2022 known as the Collectif intersexes et allié.e.s, abbreviated to CIA-OII France, is a not-for-profit association founded in 2016 by Loé Petit and Lysandre Nury. It aims to defend and support intersex people.
Geneviève Pastre was a French poet, academic and lesbian activist. She has been described as "responsible in a large measure for the creation of the Gay Liberation Movement in France", although she said of herself: "Je ne suis pas une activiste. Je suis poéte et danseuse".
Alice Coffin is a French journalist, feminist, lesbian activist and politician. She was elected to the Council of Paris in 2020. She is affiliated to the political party Europe Ecology – The Greens, without being a member of this party.
Jacqueline Coutras, born in 1942, is a French geographer, CNRS researcher, and pioneer of gender geography in France.
