François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom de plumeM. de Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher (philosophe), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
Jane Mallory Birkin was a British-French actress and singer. She had a prolific career as an actress, mostly in French cinema.
Catherine Millet is a French writer, art critic, curator, and founder and editor of the magazine Art Press, which focuses on modern art and contemporary art.
Brigitte Lahaie is a French radio talk show host, mainstream film actress and former pornographic actress. She performed in erotic films from 1976 through 1980 and is a member of the XRCO Hall of Fame.
E. Armand, pseudonym of Ernest-Lucien Juin, was an influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist. He wrote for and edited the anarchist publications L'Ère nouvelle (1901–1911), L'Anarchie, L'En-Dehors (1922–1939) and L'Unique (1945–1953).
Inés Sastre Moratón is a Spanish model and actress.
Major anarchist thinkers, past and present, have generally supported women's equality. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren and to experimental communities, viewing sexual freedom as an expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights. In New York's Greenwich Village, "bohemian" feminists and socialists advocated self-realisation and pleasure for both men and women. In Europe and North America, the free love movement combined ideas revived from utopian socialism with anarchism and feminism to attack the "hypocritical" sexual morality of the Victorian era.
Richard Anthony, born Ricardo Anthony Btesh, was a French pop singer, born in Egypt, who had his greatest success in the 1960s and 1970s.
Adèle Haenel is a French actress. She is the recipient of several accolades, including two César Awards from seven nominations and one Lumières Award from two nominations.
Michèle Audin is a French mathematician, writer, and a former professor. She has worked as a professor at the University of Geneva, the University of Paris-Saclay and most recently at the University of Strasbourg, where she performed research notably in the area of symplectic geometry.
Abnousse Shalmani is a French journalist and writer.
Gilles Beyer was a French competitive figure skater and coach. He was the 1978 French national champion and competed at six ISU Championships. He was accused of sexually abusing students when they were minors.
Danièle Obono is a left-wing Gabonese-French politician who has represented the Paris's 17th constituency in the National Assembly since 2017. A member of La France Insoumise (FI), she was reelected in the first round of the 2022 legislative election and again in the 2024 legislative election.
Approximately 12 million French citizens are affected by disability. The history of disability activism in France dates back to the French Revolution when the national obligation to help disabled citizens was recognized, but it was "unclear whether or not such assistance should be public or private." Disabled civilians began to form the first associations to demand equal rights and integration in the workforce after the First World War. Between 1940 and 1945, 45,000 people with intellectual disabilities died from neglect in French psychiatric asylums. After the Second World War, parents of disabled children and charities created specialized institutions for disabled children for whom school was not accessible. In 2018, the French Government began to roll out a disability policy which aimed to increase the allowance for disabled adults to €900 per month, improve the digital accessibility of public services, and develop easy-to-read and understand language among other goals.
Najma Kousri is a Tunisian feminist and LGBT-rights activist. Kousri is a co-founder of the #EnaZeda movement and a co-ordinator of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women. She is a campaigner for LGBT rights and her photographic project documenting the lives of same-sex couples went viral in 2017.
Pamela Badjogo is an Afro-Jazz musician from Gabon and a former member of Les Amazones d'Afrique.
The Duhamel scandal was a 2021 scandal involving a leading Parisian social and political sciences university, Sciences Po. The scandal originated from accusations in a book written by Camille Kouchner, La Familia Grande. In that book, Kouchner, daughter of former minister Bernard Kouchner, accused Olivier Duhamel, her step-father, of sexually abusing her twin brother. The resulting outrage resulted in multiple resignations from the school and in Duhamel's confession. The public questioned Sciences Po's handling of the alleged activity, but the school was ultimately exonerated.
Sandrine Rousseau is a French economist and politician who has represented the 9th constituency of Paris in the National Assembly since 2022. Member of Europe Ecology – The Greens (EELV), she has been widely seen as a figurehead of France's MeToo movement against sexual violence, and describes herself as an ecofeminist.
Anne-Elisabeth Moutet is a French journalist, writer and columnist. She writes for The Daily Telegraph in London particularly on international affairs, and for UnHerd. She is a regular commentator on the BBC, SKY News, Times Radio, BFMTV, Deutsche Welle, RTS, Radio Canada, ASharqNews, WION TV.
Fatima Ouassak, is a French essayist, speaker, public policy consultant, and environmentalist, feminist and anti-racist activist, of Moroccan origin. She is co-founder of the Front de Mères collective, a parents' union in working-class neighborhoods. Her book The Power of Mothers received the Public Prize for Feminist Essay in 2021.
