“What is it to be dyke ? “. A ” homosexual “According to the Le Robert dictionary, which specifies the “offensive” nature of the term, the foreword to the book states Dykespublished by Points on Friday. In the style of the book Fagsreleased in June 2023 by the same publishers and co-written by eight gay authors, eight authors have transcribed, through different subjects and formats, what it was like to be a gay man. lesbian experiences behind the word “dyke”.
Marie Kirschen and Maëlle Le Corre, the instigators and coordinators of the project, take a look back at the history behind the word “dyke”. 20 Minutes on what the term means to them, how they came up with the book and why it was important for them to offer a new work on lesbianism.
How did you come up with the idea for this collective work?
Marie Kirschen a year and a half ago, I spotted that Points was about to release the book Fagswith eight gay authors. I thought it was a great initiative, and that we should definitely do it for the female side: lesbians. I was convinced it was already underway. So I e-mailed the publishing house to find out what was going on, and it turned out that Maëlle had had the same idea twenty-four hours before. That’s how we decided to co-coordinate the book.
What does the word “dyke” mean to you?
Marie Kirschen When you’re a child in the playground, you hear the words “fags” and “dykes” as insults. We understand that homosexuality is wrong, because that’s what we use to insult people. And when we realize that it’s us who are being insulted, it can be a heartbreaking experience. So there’s something very empowering about reclaiming this term, being able to say: “Yes, I’m a dyke. So what if I am? I’m proud of it and there’s nothing to worry about.” It’s a very important tool in the fight against shame, especially self-shame.
Maëlle Le Corre It’s a very powerful word. When you embrace it for yourself, it makes you feel so powerful. It did me a lot of good to reappropriate the term “dyke”. In fact, I did it before I was able to call myself a lesbian. As a young bisexual, I was so far along in my feminist convictions that at one point, lesbianism was everywhere in my life and the term “dyke” became obvious.
What is the aim of this book?
Marie Kirschen As for the book FagsThere’s this idea of turning the insult on its head and showing the multiplicity of voices behind the word dyke, with a book aimed at everyone, accessible to all.
Maëlle Le Corre Some people might say: “Ah, a book about lesbian identities? Coming out again and again”. For us, on the contrary, the idea was to offer something different, to turn to authors whose political positioning, convictions and values we knew to be in other fields.
How did you select the subjects for these stories?
Marie Kirschen We didn’t give any specific instructions. We left the authors free to talk about whatever they wanted and in whatever form they wished.
Maëlle Le Corre : It was a great gamble because we find ourselves, for example, with Amandine Agić’s text on intra-community classism in the lesbian and queer community, quite unexpected because it’s a relatively taboo subject.
We were lucky because it was pretty fluid in terms of the themes covered, no one had to give up on a topic. Obviously, there are some responses in each other’s texts, but there’s no repetition that could give the impression that it’s repetitive.
Marie Kirschen There are also different literary forms: texts that are closer to short essays, No Anger did a letter to himself when he was younger, and there’s also poetry.
How did you go about choosing the stories you were going to write about personally?
Marie Kirschen It was difficult to make a choice. I decided to talk about relationships with exes. There’s this cliché that lesbians stay friends with their exes (which isn’t always the case, of course). But, between us, we make jokes about it. So I wanted to think about it. It may seem light-hearted or funny, but at the same time, it says deeper things about the kind of life we want to lead, the kind of bonds we create and the ways we build our “chosen” families, which don’t necessarily involve being a couple and having children.
Maëlle Le Corre I wanted to talk about the constraint of heterosexuality, a concept of Adrienne Rich’s, and how we construct ourselves as lesbians in a heterosexual world. Talking with friends, I realized that quite a few of us have experienced this, which questions our legitimacy as lesbians. So I wanted to retrace my entire lesbian journey to get to the dyke I am today.
Why was it important to write a new book on lesbianism?
Marie Kirschen For a very long time in France, there were very few essays on lesbian issues. When I came out twenty years ago, I went straight to books in English, because there was very little on the French scene. Recently, we’ve seen an increasing number of publications on the subject, from essays to books about lesbians. The Lesbian Genius from Alice Coffin to photo book Sapphic Lovers by Léa Michaëlis. I’m glad to see that Dykes is part of this movement of publications on these issues which, for a very long time, have been kept quiet and invisible. It’s great that a young lesbian – and not just one – can push open the door of a bookshop and discover several books on these subjects and have a dialogue between these different texts.