Jean Le Bitoux

Jean Le Bitoux

Jean Le Bitoux (right) with Yves Navarre, 1981
Born August 16, 1948
Bordeaux, France
Died April 21, 2010
Paris, France
Resting place Père Lachaise Cemetery
Occupation Journalist

Jean Le Bitoux (1948-2010) was a French journalist and gay activist. He was the founder of Gai pied, the first mainstream gay magazine in France. He was a campaigner for Holocaust remembrance of homosexual victims. He was the author of several books about homosexuality.

Early life

Jean Le Bitoux was born on August 16, 1948 in Bordeaux, France.[1][2] His father was an admiral.[3]

Career

Le Bitoux worked as a substitute music teacher.[3]

Le Bitoux founded the Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire (FHAR) in Nice in the 1970s.[1][2] By 1978, he ran for the National Assembly as a "homosexual candidate" alongside Guy Hocquenghem; they lost the election.[1][2] A year later, in 1979, he founded Gai pied, the first mainstream gay magazine in France;[1][2] its name was found by philosopher Michel Foucault.[3] However, he stepped down in 1983 due to its consumerist turn.[4]

Le Bitoux joined AIDES, an HIV/AIDS awareness non-profit organization, in 1985.[4][5] He co-wrote many HIV prevention documents.[4] He was the editor-in-chief of the Journal du Sida, a publication about HIV/AIDS.[2]

Le Bitoux founded Le Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle, a non-profit organization for the remembrance of homosexuals victims of Nazi Germany during World War II, in 1989.[1][2] Initially, the organization was met with homophobia from some Holocaust survivors, who wrongly feared they were being smeared.[6] In 1994, Le Bitoux co-authored the memoir of Pierre Seel, a French homosexual who was deported by the Nazis for being gay.[1][2] By the 1990s, Le Bitoux argued that anti-LGBT legislations in France harked back to laws devised by François Darlan of the Vichy government to end same-sex prostitution in 1942, not Nazi Germany.[7] However, Marc Boninchi, a Law professor at the University of Lyon, has argued that the first instance of legal discrimination dates back to prosecutor Charles Dubost's 1941 recommendations.[7] Meanwhile, Le Bitoux's 2002 Les oubliés de la mémoire led President Jacques Chirac to acknowledge the homosexual victims of World War II.[2]

Le Bitoux was a co-founder of the Centre LGBT Paris-Île-de-France in 1991.[8]

Personal life and death

Le Bitoux was openly gay.[1] He was rejected by his family for being gay.[1] Drawn to maoism in his early twenties, he also left due to homophobia.[1] He contracted HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s.[2][4]

Le Bitoux died on April 21, 2010 in Paris, France.[1] His funeral, conducted by Patrick Bloche, was held at the city hall of the 11th arrondissement of Paris, with a performance by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.[2] He was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery.[4]

Works

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jean Le Bitoux.
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Chemin, Anne (April 27, 2010). "Jean Le Bitoux". Le Monde. Retrieved August 11, 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Halperin, David M. (Spring 2011). "Michel Foucault, Jean Le Bitoux, and the Gay Science Lost and Found: An Introduction". Critical Inquiry. 37 (3): 371–380. doi:10.1086/659349. JSTOR 10.1086/659349. (registration required (help)).
  3. 1 2 3 Martel, Frédéric (1999). The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France since 1968. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. pp. 107–108. ISBN 9780804732734. OCLC 42643256.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Favereau, Eric (April 30, 2010). ""Jean Le Bitoux, militant de la mémoire gay"". Libération. Retrieved August 11, 2016.
  5. ↑ Broqua, Christophe (2005). Agir pour ne pas mourir ! Act up, les homosexuels et le sida. Paris: Les Presses de Sciences Po. pp. 115–161. ISBN 9782724609813. OCLC 469793514 – via Cairn.info. (registration required (help)).
  6. ↑ Celse, Michel (1997). "Il paraît que le mouvement gai a 100 ans...". Vacarme. 3 (3): 44–46. doi:10.3917/vaca.003.0044. Retrieved August 14, 2016 – via Cairn.info. (registration required (help)). Cette revendication se heurte régulièrement à des refus violemment homophobes de la part de différentes associations d’anciens déportés, qui y voient une entreprise visant à salir leur mémoire.
  7. 1 2 Boninchi, Marc (2005). Vichy et l'ordre moral. Paris: PUF. pp. 143–193. ISBN 9782130553397. OCLC 420826274 – via Cairn.info. (registration required (help)).
  8. ↑ Aldrich, Robert; Wotherspoon, Garry (2001). Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History. New York: Routledge. p. 241. ISBN 9780415159821. OCLC 46843939.
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