Coalitions and divisions: the issue of sexual violence in queer and feminist demonstrations in France

For the duration of a demonstration, a variety of individuals and political organisations gather to express their political opinions. With the aim of demonstrating relative unity in the face of a common political adversary, the demonstration becomes a space for building a political community, but also collective identities and demands, sometimes generating conflict among protesters. To explore these strategies, I focus on the case of the politicisation of resistance to sexual and gender-based violence within feminist, LGBTQI and sex workers' protests in the French context. The constituent heterogeneity of LGBTQI activist groups and the many fractures running through feminist movements provide us with a particularly heuristic approach to understand alliances and coalitions through the lens of collective identity and community building. As part of my master's thesis on the politicisation of sexual violence in an LGBTQI activist context, I conducted 16 ethnographic observations of demonstrations in the Paris region between September 2021 and June 2022. I paid particular attention to speeches, posters, slogans and the spatial organisation of the demonstration. Based on these data, my paper will analyse the diversity of strategies used by activists to create a unified community, based on intersectional solidarity, within the demonstration, but also the moments of conflict that can arise. First, I will show how the emphasis on a shared experience of domination and sexual violence allows a plurality of identities and mobilisations to unite around a common issue. I observed this “frame bridging” strategy (Snow et al., 1986) in relation to the integration of groups facing multiples forms of oppressions such as sex workers or trans lesbian women. Furthermore, alliances can be formed with the definition of a “common political enemy" (Della Porta and Diani, 2020: 94) and I will highlight the specificity of this strategy when it comes to intra-community sexual violence. I will conclude my presentation by analysing a case of confrontation between two groups claiming to be feminists within an 8 March demonstation in Paris, concerning trans and sex work issues.