“The day before the first round of legislative elections, I came home from work. I had a donut. » Saturday June 29, 2024, Violetta (1) arrives home after her bartending shift, around 1 a.m. In recent days, she has felt tension while interacting with her customers and in the street. She hears “more virulent, sometimes homophobic” comments. That evening, she is dressed “soberly, in civilian clothes”. “I saw three young people at the bottom of the church next to my door. They spoke of the New Popular Front in a rather virulent manner. I couldn’t even tell if they were adults. When they saw me, they called me “PD” then “gauchee” “. Violetta doesn’t want to “let it go” and replies: “You’re not old enough to vote. » The counterattack is immediate:
“They slapped me to silence me. »
The attack pushed the 28-year-old drag to move away from Rennes (35) on the day of the second round. “I was happy not to be there for the results. I am not ashamed or afraid to demonstrate, but I did not want to confront violence, I felt too hurt. » Like Violetta, Eva Porée, Dolly, Velma, Maya or Soleil (1) and Sid have all experienced attacks for years, but have noticed a change for more than a year, which corresponds to greater activity of far-right groups in the city. Besides la banderole « Fuck LGBT »accompanied by a neofascist symbol and displayed by a violent gang during the pride march in June 2023, there were also homophobic tags on the walls of two campuses in January et November 2023. Again, imbued with neo-Nazi symbols or references.
Violetta, Eva Porée, Dolly, Velma, Maya, Soleil, and Sid live in Rennes. Everyone has already experienced attacks, but note a change over more than a year, which corresponds to greater activity by far-right groups in the city. / Credits: Yann Bastard
The seesaw
“As drag culture became more and more visible here, we had a counter-current,” notes Eva Porée, who has been doing drag since the 2000s to the point of being nicknamed “la daronne of Rennes”. The city has established itself as one of the cradle of drag and queer culture – sexual and gender diversity”, with the formation of the Dragopole collective six years ago, one of the initiators of the movement in Brittany. In addition to the banner which insulted the pride march, the drag queen also points out the action of Oriflamme – a small local far-right group, former Rennes section of Action Française – which protested during a story reading for children by drag artists. “That’s when we started to say to ourselves that we really had to be careful. »
“La daronne de Rennes” nevertheless has experience and has always advised her comrades not to “go out alone” in drag. In May, however, she was “beaten up” by two men at Place des Lices. “Leaving the club, some guys started insulting us, telling us that we didn’t have the right to be there. They hit me twice in the face “. At home, she discovered marks on her neck and jaw. “I didn’t file a complaint, I’m used to it. »
In Rennes, LGBTQIA+ and drag artists suffer violence from the far right. / Credits: Yann Bastard
The attacks
“When you are part of the LGBTQI+ community and it is physically visible, you experience more things,” says Dolly, who was attacked last June. She was spat on in the street when she was coming home from the laundromat. “I had to wear a crop top, I was dressed queer. I just felt spite. Another one. The day goes on,” she recalls. At 21 years old, she seems armored. “When I experienced my first attacks, I thought about it all day. Now I’m quickly moving on to something else.” However, if the violence is “the same as usual”, they are now “more and more frequent”. Soleil regularly hosts drag shows at a bar near his home. Recently, a window in his apartment was broken:
“There was really a return of fear in the Rennes community after the European elections. We heard advice: “Go home in a group, charge your phones to call your friends or the police”. Or: “Did you hear? There is someone who was attacked.” »
He thinks about these daily pressures all the time: “It’s very easy to know where I live. » On Tuesday June 11, he was “chased by five guys”, rue de Paris. The same week, this experience happened four times.
Sid has lived in the Breton capital for eight years. “Before that evening, I had only suffered verbal attacks or threats,” assures the young woman. It is between 4 and 5 a.m., in Rennes, Friday June 21, 2024. Sid comes out of a metro entrance in Charles-de-Gaulle. After the hot hustle and bustle of the music festival, the streets are calm, it’s time to go out clubbing. She crosses the pedestrian crossing, when behind her, someone whistles: “Ah, that likes to suck cock! » A group of three men and two women, in their twenties, stare at her from the sidewalk opposite. One of them approaches. “I fucked up in front of him, he put his head against mine. Instinctively, I punched him in the nose, I didn’t think, it’s stupid, I just hit him,” she says in her living room, her hands folded on a cup of coffee with detachment. The man staggers. They return to the charge, several of them. In an instant, Sid finds herself pinned to the ground, face crushed against the asphalt. “They start hitting me. I shout at them: “Go ahead, beat me up, you are super brave”. I hear the two girls with them saying to let go, to stop, that they are going to kill me. They leave me, and shout things like: “PD, get back in the closet”. I was stunned, it must have lasted a minute and a half. In my head, it was a quarter of an hour. »
All the way home
Acts of violence sometimes go so far as to pass through the door of the victims’ homes. Dolly lives in a shared apartment with Velma and Maya, in an apartment right in the center, on the semi-ground floor. Thursday June 27, three days before the first round of legislative elections, “we were smoking a cigarette in the window, we were dressed in drag, we were coming home from a show”. Two men, “fairly built”, pass “in black tracksuits, hooded. They throw an egg at us. At first, we didn’t understand why,” Dolly describes. The roommates close the window and turn off the lights. “We cut off all contact. » Dolly continues: “Three-quarters of an hour later, we reopen, they were still there, they threw a can of beer at us”. “They wanted to get us out of the apartment, they wanted to fight,” assures Maya.
“It’s not normal, it’s scary. It’s intimidation. Now, as soon as I hear a noise in the evening, I close the window. I pay more attention to what’s happening in the street. I’ve lived there for three years, that’s never happened to me before,” says Dolly. Maya feels a “feeling of insecurity”, the commute to work weighs on her.
As for Soleil, who was chased several times during the legislative elections, he chooses to change his routes in the evening. “Even though it was Pride month in June, it really cooled me down to go out in full drag. » The twenty-year-old slips that, if he does not have access to dressing rooms to change at drag shows, he calls “friends so that they [le] bring back”, take “civil clothes” and remove their make-up “before leaving”. “I started taking longer and longer journeys to pass through populated areas. There are evenings where I decide not to go because it’s too far,” explains Soleil.
The breakthrough of the far right in France has been affecting the daily lives of minorities for several months. In Rennes, the LGBTQIA+ community is suffering more and more attacks. / Credits: Yann Bastard
The city “remains a bastion of the left”, but the “safe” aspect is damaged
The victims who testify here did not file a complaint following the attacks. In most cases, this is due to a lack of confidence in the justice system and law enforcement. On June 15, 2024, Rennes Pride was desired to be more politicized than usual by its organizers, given the context. The police gassed the procession, “for the first time in the history of the pride march in Rennes”. In April 2024, Paul Carton, leader of the small group L’Oriflamme, organizer of the far-right demonstration on the sidelines of the Saint-Senoux media library, was acquitted (2) by the Rennes court. Eva Porée regrets:
“It’s incredible that it came out on appeal. It was the trial of the drag queens. »
Originally from Brest, Sid came to Rennes for studies, to “emancipate herself”, but above all because the Breton city is “politicized and I knew I was going to be safe”. “Rennes remains a bastion of the left. It’s important to continue living as we do,” she assures. And if his event “did not traumatize him, I don’t wake up sweating at night”, Sid recalls that “without necessarily doing drag, we, precarious trans women and men, we people in everyday life, are impacted. It’s not necessarily an increase in violence, but a decomplexion,” laments Sid.
“It depends on whether I shaved today, whether I’m holding hands with a girl, whether I’m wearing fishnet stockings, and how much skin people are going to see. It’s the game of randomness. »
“Being part of a minority is political anyway,” Sid maintains. Eva agrees, sighing: “These people who tell you: “We see you too much, we hear you too much”, think that we should live in tightly closed nightclubs, and never see the light of day”. Dolly raises her fist:
“These attacks give me strength. Yes, I’m here. I’m not going to disappear. You want to beat the shit out of me, do it. I’ll come out more queer next time. »
(1) The first names are the stage names of drag artists, who preferred to appear that way.
(2) Paul Carton, leader of the small group L’Oriflamme, was acquitted of charges of organizing an undeclared demonstration and provoking hatred because of sexual orientation or gender identity.
When contacted, the municipality of Rennes and the prefecture of Ille-et-Vilaine did not respond to our requests.
Article by Alice Gleizes with illustrations by Yann Bastard.
