Gay Paris: Elements for a Geography of Homosexualy | Cairn Internatnal Edn

Contents:

• RIZAL IN GAY PARIS
• WHAT THEY MEAN WHEN THEY SAY ‘GAY PAREE’
• CHAPTER 15: GAY PARIS, 1889 90
• LE MARAIS: "GAY PARIS" AND THE CONSTCTN OF AN LGBTQIA+ MEC
• EUROPEAN CI HAVG AT LEAST 60 GAY AND LBIAN BS 2004EUROPEAN CI HAVG AT LEAST 60 GAY AND LBIAN BS 200413IF PARIS APPEARS AS A PAL OF HOMOSEXUALY BEE OF THE QUANTY AND DIVERSY OF S MERCIAL OFFERGS TEND FOR GAYS, CERTALY DO NOT HAVE THE IMAGE OR THE RA OF S TWO MA PETORS, ON THE EUROPEAN OR WORLD STAGE. THE HOMOSEXUAL MUNI THERE APPEAR MUCH LS STCTURED AND ENGAGED THE SOCIAL AND POLIL FIELD THAN BERL (GRéSILLON 2000), AND ACRDG TO OUR OBSERVATNS, MUCH LS FTIVE, AVANT-GAR, AND EXTROVERTED THAN LONDON. GENERALLY, ONE NOT THAT BEE THEY ARE STILL RELATIVELY ISOLATED AND MARGALIZED THE SPACE AND THE LIFE OF THE CY, THEY ARE LS EVINCE THAN OTHER INIC PLAC OF HOMOSEXUAL MUNI. NOHELS – AND THE ELECTN 2001 OF AN OPENLY GAY MAYOR IS A CLEAR EXAMPLE – THGS HAVE CHANGED SIGNIFINTLY RECENT YEARS.14FIRSTLY, THE GAY PRI EVENT, [11] A GREAT ANNUAL FTIVAL MIXG TECHNO RHYTHMS AND POLIL SLOGANS (FIG. 2) IS, WH (FOR SEVERAL YEARS) APPROXIMATELY HALF A LN MONSTRATORS THE STREETS OF PARIS (PARED TO ONLY 800 1979), THE LARGT GATHERG OF THE YEAR TERMS OF THE NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS, EVEN IF DO NOT RONATE TO ANY GREAT EXTENT THE MEDIA. THEN, IF THE DOMANT POSN OF PARIS ON A EUROPEAN SLE IS NTTED, THE PAL RETAS S NATNAL HEGEMONY. INED, THE DISTRIBUTN OF GAY TABLISHMENTS REVEALS A VERY HIERARCHIL STCTURE. IF LYON HAS A GAY MERCIAL FABRIC OF ABOUT 30 TABLISHMENTS, OTHER MAJOR CI ARE LS WELL PROVID FOR (ONLY 5 PROVCIAL CI HAD AT LEAST 20 TABLISHMENTS 2004). FALLY, NO TABLISHMENT THE PROVC N PETE WH THE RENOWN AND ATTRACTIVENS OF THE MOST FAMO PARISIAN GAY BARS OR DISTHEQU, WHICH SOME S HAVE AN ATTRACTIVENS ON A NATNAL OR EVEN NTENTAL SLE. WH PARIS, THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTN OF GAY AND LBIAN MERCIAL TABLISHMENTS IS ALSO VERY UNEVEN, BUT EVEN WHEN RTRICTG ONELF TO THIS GEOGRAPHY, THE SPATIALI OF HOMOSEXUALY APPEAR LS SIMPLE TO UNRSTAND THAN ONE MIGHT THK. BETWEEN VISIBILY AND ANONYMY, LICENSED STAT AND ILLEGALY, THE TERRORI OF HOMOSEXUALY SKETCH A SUBTLE ARRANGEMENT OF MULTIPLE CENTRALI.FIG. 2THE PARIS GAY PRI, BETWEEN FOLKLORE AND SOCIAL AND POLIL MANDSTHE PARIS GAY PRI, BETWEEN FOLKLORE AND SOCIAL AND POLIL MANDS

RIZAL IN GAY PARIS

Helpful Vobulary When Talkg About Gay Life ParisUn marais - A swampUn hôtel particulier - A French mansn orlerally “a private hotel”L’âge d’or - The Goln age Un bar - A barAller boire un verre - To go get a drkPrendre un verre - To have a drkAller en boîte - To go to the clubFaire la fête (tf*) - To partyRearch has shown that the number of same-sex hoeholds holdg PACS (pacte civil solidaré, or civil unns) is evenly distributed throughout the cy, ditg that gay people live everywhere throughout Paris, not exclively the Marais. Rizal went to live Bssels for two reasons, first was the st of livg Paris was very high bee of the ternatnal exposn and send was the gay social life of the cy hampered his lerary works pecially the wrg of his send novel El Filibterismo.

This progrsive openns towards the LGBTQ+ muny has been illtrated wh Paris beg the first European pal to vote an openly gay mayor when Bertrand Delanoë was elected 2001 and when France beme the 13th untry to legalise same-sex marriage 2013. Th, no geographer has llaborated wh the many dictnari and encyclopedias published recent years, which have been voted to homosexual cultur, nor participated the symposiums spired by Gay and Lbian Studi the Uned Stat on this subject, (such as the Renntr ternatnal sur l cultur gays et lbienn [Internatnal Meetgs on Gay and Lbian Culture] anized Paris by the Ge Pompidou Center 1997).

WHAT THEY MEAN WHEN THEY SAY ‘GAY PAREE’

2“What we should be askg ourselv is not about why gay and lbian cultur exist (…); but rather why they are ncealed, ” the philosopher and soclogist Didier Eribon, a specialist on homosexual culture France, pertently remds (2003, 16). It requir a knowledge, or even a practil experience of the terrori ncerned, an sight to the logic of those who nstct them and of the habs of those who equent them, difficult issu bee the anizatn and the dynamic of the spac of homosexualy are part visible, as we will monstrate. It is natural that Paris should be the lotn for the study bee is the only cy France today which has a regnized, visible gay neighborhood, [1] likely to reprent the terrorial basis for a llective homosexual inty.

That is why we n wele the exceptn, which is the recent Dictnnaire la géographie et l’pace s sociétés, eded by Jacqu Lévy and Michel Lslt (2003) which, unlike prev works of the same genre, propos an entry for “sexualy” and another for “sexuatn, ” and even refers to Gay and Lbian Studi.

It is wh this particularly unfavorable ntext that gays and lbians all over the world mt try to build spac that su them, terrori of the llective, which as we know generate a sense of inty (Di Meo 1998).

CHAPTER 15: GAY PARIS, 1889 90

It suffic to simply browse through the Dictnnaire s cultur gays et lbienn (Eribon 1999) or the monumental encyclopedia by Bonnie Zimmerman and Gee Haggerty (2000) for a broad overview and to be nvced. “Long forced to exprs self the margs of urban society, homosexual culture n now flourish broad daylight, the central districts of the metropolis, ” not Boris Grésillon (2000, 312) when speakg about Berl. While their fluence has always been nsirable artistic and lerary productn (Eribon 2003; Tamagne 2000) and the var movements mpaigng for equal rights, seems that homosexual women have a more discreet liftyle, more stable, and any se very different om that of men (particularly rpect of their needs and ways of meetg).

Homosexual relatnships were mon and accepted the ci of ancient Greece (Halper 1990), jt as they were wispread (but already tolerated ls) the Italian ci of the Renaissance (Rocke 1996), or most of the large European ci om the seventeenth century onwards (Higgs 1999). ), homosexuals, bee of their limed number and their safety needs, mt fd or create plac of solidary and fe works of sociabily, build livg spac which, if not a muny, are at least llective nature (Altman 1983; D’E 2002; Murray 1996). The cy is the terrory that n bt meet the expectatns and is even the only one allowg pe om the domatn, even hostily, of the majory groupgs: “They (ci) beme plac where gays uld, to some gree, pe om the nstant prsur of an tolerant heterosexual society” (Lria and Knopp, 1985, 158).

Two ditive pots: even if not only lookg at homosexual upl, wh nearly 130 “regnized upl” [4] per 10, 000 habants aged 18 years or more, pared wh the average of 60 France at the end of the 2004 [5], Paris is well ahead terms of the number of people signg a PACS (uple’s civil ntract), regardls of the sex of the signatori. Siarly, if we look at the plac of rince of ers who subm classified ads for enunters on gay webs, the ma urban agglomeratns clearly domate (after the number of ads has been related to the size of the ci). But is also reasonable to assume that, all major ci of veloped untri, the homosexual populatn is over-reprented and has been for a long time (Higgs 1999), even if the phenomenon has probably been magnified recent s, as a rult of the wispread crease mobily.

LE MARAIS: "GAY PARIS" AND THE CONSTCTN OF AN LGBTQIA+ MEC

The ci polarize young homosexuals for whom the provc have been too rtrictive, and who are sure to experience – by “gog up” to the pal or the big cy – the cktail of anonymy and visibily, paradoxilly only appearance. If one accepts the theory of gentrifitn proposed by David Ley (1980), favorg the cultural dimensn to expla the emergence and creasg mand for hog the center, gays, wh their terts, their preference for plac wh good ameni (Black et al. [9] “Ever sce my childhood, an imaged Paris had been the shg pla twklg at the center of my ner stellar map” (Whe 1998, 12) nfs the young gay hero of the betiful novel by Edmund Whe, La Symphonie s adix, as he leav New York for Paris.

In the Amerin versn of the Brish gay seri Queer As Folk, most of the characters dream aloud of gog to vis and even live Paris…12Wh nearly 140 mercial tablishments [10] 2004, followg exponential growth durg the 1980s and 1990s, the French pal is ranked jt ahead of Berl (but behd if this number is related to the rint populatn) and que clearly ahead of London (Fig. The historian Florence Tamagne (2000) has shown that, om the begng of the twentieth century and ntrast to the suatn neighborg untri, the French pal was benefg fully om the relative benevolence of the thori and the absence of ercive measur even if, as the other pals, “the progrsive tablishment (…) of a homosexual subculture a fear of ‘ntagn’ public opn and feeds the myth of nspiracy (…)” (Tamagne 2002, 13).

EUROPEAN CI HAVG AT LEAST 60 GAY AND LBIAN BS 2004EUROPEAN CI HAVG AT LEAST 60 GAY AND LBIAN BS 200413IF PARIS APPEARS AS A PAL OF HOMOSEXUALY BEE OF THE QUANTY AND DIVERSY OF S MERCIAL OFFERGS TEND FOR GAYS, CERTALY DO NOT HAVE THE IMAGE OR THE RA OF S TWO MA PETORS, ON THE EUROPEAN OR WORLD STAGE. THE HOMOSEXUAL MUNI THERE APPEAR MUCH LS STCTURED AND ENGAGED THE SOCIAL AND POLIL FIELD THAN BERL (GRéSILLON 2000), AND ACRDG TO OUR OBSERVATNS, MUCH LS FTIVE, AVANT-GAR, AND EXTROVERTED THAN LONDON. GENERALLY, ONE NOT THAT BEE THEY ARE STILL RELATIVELY ISOLATED AND MARGALIZED THE SPACE AND THE LIFE OF THE CY, THEY ARE LS EVINCE THAN OTHER INIC PLAC OF HOMOSEXUAL MUNI. NOHELS – AND THE ELECTN 2001 OF AN OPENLY GAY MAYOR IS A CLEAR EXAMPLE – THGS HAVE CHANGED SIGNIFINTLY RECENT YEARS.14FIRSTLY, THE GAY PRI EVENT, [11] A GREAT ANNUAL FTIVAL MIXG TECHNO RHYTHMS AND POLIL SLOGANS (FIG. 2) IS, WH (FOR SEVERAL YEARS) APPROXIMATELY HALF A LN MONSTRATORS THE STREETS OF PARIS (PARED TO ONLY 800 1979), THE LARGT GATHERG OF THE YEAR TERMS OF THE NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS, EVEN IF DO NOT RONATE TO ANY GREAT EXTENT THE MEDIA. THEN, IF THE DOMANT POSN OF PARIS ON A EUROPEAN SLE IS NTTED, THE PAL RETAS S NATNAL HEGEMONY. INED, THE DISTRIBUTN OF GAY TABLISHMENTS REVEALS A VERY HIERARCHIL STCTURE. IF LYON HAS A GAY MERCIAL FABRIC OF ABOUT 30 TABLISHMENTS, OTHER MAJOR CI ARE LS WELL PROVID FOR (ONLY 5 PROVCIAL CI HAD AT LEAST 20 TABLISHMENTS 2004). FALLY, NO TABLISHMENT THE PROVC N PETE WH THE RENOWN AND ATTRACTIVENS OF THE MOST FAMO PARISIAN GAY BARS OR DISTHEQU, WHICH SOME S HAVE AN ATTRACTIVENS ON A NATNAL OR EVEN NTENTAL SLE. WH PARIS, THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTN OF GAY AND LBIAN MERCIAL TABLISHMENTS IS ALSO VERY UNEVEN, BUT EVEN WHEN RTRICTG ONELF TO THIS GEOGRAPHY, THE SPATIALI OF HOMOSEXUALY APPEAR LS SIMPLE TO UNRSTAND THAN ONE MIGHT THK. BETWEEN VISIBILY AND ANONYMY, LICENSED STAT AND ILLEGALY, THE TERRORI OF HOMOSEXUALY SKETCH A SUBTLE ARRANGEMENT OF MULTIPLE CENTRALI.FIG. 2THE PARIS GAY PRI, BETWEEN FOLKLORE AND SOCIAL AND POLIL MANDSTHE PARIS GAY PRI, BETWEEN FOLKLORE AND SOCIAL AND POLIL MANDS

This predomance at the European level is rerced durg the 1930s as a rult of the Nazi reprsn Germany, general, and particularly Berl (Tamagne 2000) 1European ci havg at least 60 gay and lbian bs 2004European ci havg at least 60 gay and lbian bs 200413If Paris appears as a pal of homosexualy bee of the quanty and diversy of s mercial offergs tend for gays, certaly do not have the image or the ra of s two ma petors, on the European or world stage. The homosexual muni there appear much ls stctured and engaged the social and polil field than Berl (Grésillon 2000), and acrdg to our observatns, much ls ftive, avant-gar, and extroverted than London. Wh Paris, the spatial distributn of gay and lbian mercial tablishments is also very uneven, but even when rtrictg onelf to this geography, the spatiali of homosexualy appear ls simple to unrstand than one might thk.

Between visibily and anonymy, licensed stat and illegaly, the terrori of homosexualy sketch a subtle arrangement of multiple 2The Paris Gay Pri, between folklore and social and polil mandsThe Paris Gay Pri, between folklore and social and polil mands4 –. The Multi-Faceted Centrali of Parisian Homosexualy15Across the arrondissements (districts), the distributn of gay and lbian tablishments Paris prents a clear ntrast between the center and the periphery (Fig. As a rult of the high ncentratn of gay bs the central arrondissements, the Parisian homosexual appears as fundamentally “right bank, ” at least as regards his plac of visibily and sociabily.