A Dyke A Broad #29
The Dyke March in Paris! Plus verdicts for the murderers of Sarah Halimi in France, George Floyd in the U.S.
Hello from Paris!
In celebration of #LesbianVisibilityWeek, I’ll start with good news for a change. And how yesterday, Sunday April 25, I watched the unthinkable—Paris streets fill up with dykes! I have never seen so many in one place in France, especially not in a march that used the terrifying L-word. It was mind-blowing. I saw somewhere there were 8000!
They’d been called to the streets to fight for lesbian visibility and the right to artificial insemination. Yep, in France—that formerly Catholic, currently Freud-loving, father-venerating country—lesbians and even unmarried, single, straight women don’t yet have that right.
Most just seemed happy to be with each other on a sunny Sunday. It was an extra joy for me to watch, because I remember how invisible dykes were when I first got to France in 2005, even at LGBT Pride. The march was also an accomplishment because dykes could have been discouraged by how, the day before in Lyon, France, a smaller sister march was violently attacked by far-right thugs and there were calls for more violence online.
But no, in Paris, yesterday, brave dykes took to the street and I got to remember how beautiful dykes are, and how funny with their witty homemade signs. Yes, “Even vegans eat...”
Of course, there was also a little neglected current of anger. Like the one I didn’t get a shot of that said we should cut the patriarchy off at the “root”.
I have my fingers crossed that this is just the beginning of something amazing for dykes. And clever dykes out there are thinking about how to mobilize this crowd for the long haul.
* In related, but far less momentous news, I rode my borrowed bike to get there—almost as unthinkable a month ago—both that I would ride it, much less dare pass through the center of the city. Thankfully, it was a particularly quiet Sunday.
Wanna see more images from the March? Consider a paid subscription. I’m finally gonna give my paid subscribers bonus material. (The disgruntled dyke needs a bike of my own.) Let me know if you want me to add you to the list for free. You only have to promise to re-tweet these newsletters.
No Justice For Sarah Halimi
Also, Sunday, but in a different part of town, twenty thousand people, mostly Jews, participated in a massive rally denouncing the ridiculous verdict in the 2017 murder of Sarah Halimi, an older Jewish Parisian woman, and retired doctor and school teacher, who was tortured in her own apartment by a Muslim neighbor before he tossed her out of her third-floor window.
Her murderer, who shouted, “Allahu akbar” as he did it, and later boasted he killed the Jewish demon, was let off the hook twice by the French justice system because he had smoked pot, and was considered not responsible for his act. (A detailed and horrifying timeline in French).
They apparently had legal justification. But morally? You gotta be kidding.
Making History
There was a very different outcome in a murder trial last week in the U.S. Even in France, maybe especially in France, the top of the news on Wednesday was Black America’s responses to the guilty verdict for Derek Chauvin, the Minnesota cop being tried for murder for kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for 9 whole minutes until he was dead.
I watched the coverage on French TV. There was something disturbing about the aesthetic. Like everything had a filter on it. There were iconic shots of crowds of young Black people cheering, softly focused shots of Black cab drivers pulling over to weep, other shots of Black militants with their fists solemnly raised, all gauzy, all iconic as if the gaggle of photographers and video makers had one eye on the history books, another on a Pulitzer prize. Nobody who caught their eyes quite human.
There was a shot, too, of the court room with Chauvin in an ill-fitting dark suit, his eyes squinting in disbelief and anger as he learned his fate. And another, maybe of the same room, of what looked like the prosecution rejoicing, a stack or two of folders on a wooden table, a middle-aged Black man pumping his arm as energetically as Tiger Woods after sinking a long putt. Another Black man happily thumping on the back of an older Black woman who did her best to smile, but only managed a grimace.
I felt like I could read her thoughts on her face. That you could put away every guilty cop in the world and it still wouldn’t bring back George Floyd. Even if the verdict became a turning point, preventing other murders, Big Floyd would still stay dead. All his aspirations like all his failures gone with him to the grave.
After a while, though, I understood what bugged me. That the way it was presented on the news reflected how much white French people love the Black Panthers with their iconic black leather and raised fists. Even Jean Genet was a big fan. Because, wow. How the French love suffering. As long as it’s other people’s. Apparently the crucible of it makes the victim good and strong and pure. Once, a straight French person (and Black Panthers’ fan) told me how brave and noble and wise they thought I was. How they admired me as a lesbian. Grappling with society. Doing all that activism.
Except, once, when they’d had a few drinks, and had spent more time with me, blew their top and asked me why I was angry all the time. I was such a downer. (Ha!)
That’s the thing about those images. They’re not real. They’ve all been crafted—to some extent, anyway. Activists do it themselves, self-consciously, to mobilize people. Give our fights dignity. The press eats it up. Always eager for heroes, less interested in the day afterward which is the one that really counts in any social justice fight. Who sticks with it. Does all the boring things you don’t see, but occur over lifetimes, and are much harder to portray.
Then I thought for a while that one danger of all this posing and being posed is that it affects our priorities as activists. There are great photo ops for black lives lost to police violence, especially when you have the murder on videotape, not so much for a black woman’s life lost in child birth, no matter that that kills far more black women in the U.S. The cause? Unequal access to health care for black women. But also because she is an American, and care for pregnant women in the U.S. is disastrous even for bourgie white chicks.
“American women die in childbirth at a higher rate than in any other developed country, while non-Hispanic Black women are more than 3 times more likely to have a maternal death than white women in the United States.”
“The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries. Obstetrician-gynecologists (ob-gyns) are overrepresented in its maternity care workforce relative to midwives, and there is an overall shortage of maternity care providers (both ob-gyns and midwives) relative to births. In most other countries, midwives outnumber ob-gyns by severalfold, and primary care plays a central role in the health system. Although a large share of its maternal deaths occur postbirth, the U.S. is the only country not to guarantee access to provider home visits or paid parental leave in the postpartum period.”
Of course, everywhere, women of all races can die in the most gruesome, visible ways possible and still no one cares.
In Australia, even the plight of a couple of sheep farmers who had their land seized is far more important than a woman’s murder at the hands of her male partner. (Click on this post to see the illuminating thread).
Here’s one more very French photo…
That’s it for this week,
Disgruntledly yours