Class relations and the shaping of associative boundaries. The plurality of lesbian expressions in Rennes (France) in the 1980s and 1990s

Based on a historical ethnography combining the examination of private and associative archive sources and the analysis of a corpus of biographical interviews, this article looks at the formation of a space of the lesbian cause in a regional city. This study examines the conditions and social logics of the politicisation of lesbianism and its varying articulation with feminism in the 1980s. Two types of activism were confronted: one was conceived as a space for the joint theorisation of lesbianism and feminism at odds with the local autonomous feminist movement, which was the prerogative of women with the most cultural capital; the other was a welcoming and convivial space aimed at combating the persistent invisibility of homosexual women. The 1990s was a major turning point. The reduction of social distances between activists and a context more favourable to the affirmation of lesbian visibility in the public space reorganised the associative boundaries, which became blurred, as well as the ways in which the category of lesbian was re-appropriated.