François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom de plumeVoltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his criticism of Christianity—especially the Roman Catholic Church—and of slavery, as well as his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
Jean-Baptiste Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, often styled Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, was a French ecclesiastic, preacher, journalist, theologian and political activist. He re-established the Dominican Order in post-Revolutionary France. Lacordaire was reputed to be the greatest pulpit orator of the nineteenth century.
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.
Émile Armand, pseudonym of Ernest-Lucien Juin Armand, 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).
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.
Roxana Maracineanu is a Romanian-born French politician, former swimming champion and television consultant who served as Minister Delegate in charge of Sports in the government of Prime Minister Jean Castex (2020–2022) and as Minister of Sports under Édouard Philippe (2018–2022).
Major anarchist thinkers 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.
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.
Brigitte Sy is a French actress and filmmaker. Her directorial film debut, Les Mains libres, was released in 2010 to critical acclaim in France.
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.
Olivier Duhamel is a French former university professor and politician. As a member of the social-democratic Socialist Party, he was elected as a member of the European Parliament from 1997 to 2004.
Abnousse Shalmani is a French journalist and writer.
Gilles Beyer is a French former competitive figure skater and coach. He is the 1978 French national champion and competed at six ISU Championships. He has been accused of sexually abusing students when they were minors.
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.
Anne-Marie Devreux is a French sociologist specializing in feminism and the sociology of gender relations.
Valéry Giroux is a Canadian philosopher, lawyer and animal rights activist from Quebec. She is an adjunct professor at the Université de Montréal Faculty of Law. Giroux is also associate director for the Centre de recherche en éthique and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She is the author of the book Contre l'exploitation animale and the co-author, with Renan Larue, of the book Le Véganisme ("Veganism") in the PUF editorial collection "Que sais-je?" and a book in the same collection, L'antispécisme ("Antispeciesism"). Giroux is regularly invited to speak to the media on issues relating to animal ethics.
The Duhamel scandal was a scandal that involved the leading Parisian university in social and political sciences, Sciences Po.
Anne-Elisabeth Moutet is a French journalist, writer and columnist. She writes for The Daily Telegraph in London particularly on international affairs.
