A Dyke A Broad #38
Paris Pride 2021 edition, the dykiest ever! With photos! What a difference from the first time I went circa 2005 when I thought I’d never seen anything more dead, more square, more male.
I almost didn’t go to the March this year. After a couple of weeks of former Lesbian Avengers duking it out in public, not to mention the Galactic Gender Wars, I wasn’t feeling the pride, and was tempted to give this year’s marche des fiertés a pass, maybe spend the day watching reruns of Mission Impossible where spies conceal their identities under cheap rubber masks, and the goodies and baddies are clearly defined.
But I made myself presentable, grabbed an umbrella, and hopped on the tram, which stopped after just a couple blocks, and disgorged us really, really far from the march. And we had our own pre-march just trying to get there.
I followed this group of baby dykes, feeling almost like a chaperone. They were so young, so happy bumping up against each other as they walked, playing and teasing their friends like a litter of puppies. They wore tiny goth touches, or anarchist ones, rainbow this and that, teddybear ears, animal backpack, wings.
When I finally made it to the route where the march had already begun, there were even more dykes. As if the ten thousand marchers of the Marche Lesbienne in April had all turned up dragging even more girl friends. There were boys, too, of course, and men, dotted here and there, more trans flags than actual trans people, though there were plenty of those, too, plus the occasional drag queen reveling in her excess.
It was… disorienting. The whole thing so different from the first time I went to Paris Pride circa 2005, when I thought I’d never seen anything more dead, more square, more gay-guy-centered with mostly formal contingents of LGBT organizations, corporate floats, and no random people jumping in. Even the partiers on the bar floats seemed strangely flat.
Coming from New York, I especially missed joyful lesbians. Almost the only identifiable dykes at that march were a few tiny gaggles of teenaged girls weaving through the crowd on the sidelines. Most of them were of North African or mixed race descent, their hair streaked with blue, fingernails painted cheerful non-rosy colors, coming practically from another planet than the white females who were around them who seemed so straight, but maybe weren’t.
Back then, I couldn’t tell. I’d get introduced to these girls that were supposed to be dykes, but were so camouflaged, blended in so well with their conservatively longish hair, the generic clothes of studious, mild-mannered girls, that they didn’t set off the faintest beep of my gaydar. I swear, not one even had shortish hair, forget a crew cut, a tat, or tiny labrys necklace. Neither did they toss their long locks with coquettish, femme glee. They kept their eyes and their hands to themselves, didn’t even laugh too loudly, do anything at all that would have betrayed their homo desires.
A year later, though, Segolène Royale ran for president, won the primary but not the election in 2008, and the shitstorm of misogyny around her spawned the first feminist activism in yonks, including the direct action group, La Barbe, created by this dyke couple, including an American ex-Avenger (who is a pal). In 2012, then-president Hollande introduced legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, and the new generation of dyke feminists trained up by La Barbe played a huge role fighting the tsunami of homophobia that followed. In 2017, the French version of #metoo took off with #BalanceTonPorc (Denounce Your Pig) which in many ways, is a lot better as a name, putting the attention for a change on the perp and not the vic. We’d been having huge Women’s Day Marches before Covid hit.
Somewhere in there, French dykes got tired of the normcore, of playing it safe.
Hair is shorter (or colored), at least sometimes. Shoes more extravagantly sensible. Hello Dr. Martens. A few girls I know even shaved their heads (until they got their degrees and needed to interview for university jobs). Piercings and tats aren’t as rare. Hell, every now and then you actually see a dyke in the wild (of the metro). They take to the streets for their rights, like in the dyke March in April for the right to artificial insemination.
I’m starting to think that if they can just keep from getting fixated on the mythical TERF, or even worse, being sidetracked by the perpetual #alllivesmatter pressure to take care of everybody else but themselves, things might get interesting.
In other news…
Valérie Bacot left the courtroom a free woman on Friday, the court giving her a suspended sentence for killing a man who was so awful his brothers and sisters called him “a monster”.
Valérie’s mother began seeing him in 1992, when the girl was 12. He was 25 years older. Very soon he started raping her. He was arrested in 1995 and convicted of sexual assault, spending two years in prison. But afterwards he returned to Mom’s home like nothing happened, and started the abuse all over again. Mom, who had taken him back, kicked 17-years old Valérie to the curb when she got pregnant. The man picked her up and eventually married her. The lock was locked. He kept raping, beating and totally controlling her, often threatening to kill her with his gun. He also pimped her out. When he started suggesting he’d rape their daughter, she killed him with his own gun. Her calvary had lasted 24 years.
More coverage in The New York Times.
And to leave you with more Pride…
That’s it for this time,
Humbly yours,