Silenced resistances and conflictual identities: lesbians in France, 1930-1968

Between the publication of Colette's Le pur et l'impur in 1932 and the emergence of lesbian groups in 1970-1971, silence and invisibility seem to have set in a society which remained traditional as far as gender roles and heterosexual norms were concerned. Through studying a few literary works and tapping the lesbian memory by the methods of oral history, however, it is possible to trace some aspects of the lesbian existence during this period and especially to document the key issues of self-definition and resistance in front of the dominant categorizations, stigmatisation and repression. A strong sense of individual legitimacy and claim to happiness stand in sharp contrast to the weakness of collective subcultural constructions; this appears in the ambivalence-as for every minority identity-towards the identification as a group and the word "lesbian" itself. This, being the background of the lesbian movement after 1970, may help one to understand some of its characteristics.