A Year of Hate: Anti-Drag Mobilisation Efforts Targeting LGBTQ+ People in France

Published: 23 July 2024

This is one of the country profiles of a series looking at anti-LGBTQ+ mobilisation in the US, UK, Australia and France.

The Executive Summary is available here.

In the last year, a loose network of actors from Bordeaux to Toulouse to Paris targeted drag events aimed at all-ages audiences for protest, harassment and abuse. The behaviours and dynamics observed among these actors echo and mirror those observed in other parts of the world, particularly the US.

While anti-drag action in France remains marginal compared to the activity witnessed in the US, UK and Australia, it nonetheless emerged as a phenomenon from a standing start in 2022. March 2023 saw the nation’s first in-person protest at an all-ages drag event in Paris, and two months later a far-right group protested with banners and a smoke bomb outside of a library hosting a drag queen story hour (DQSH) for children in the small village of Saint-Senoux.

A seemingly unlikely group of actors is leading this charge. The French anti-gender movement, who were at the heart of the movement against equal marriage in the early 2010s, have been joined by far-right parties and politicians, extremist groups, COVID-19 sceptics and assorted conspiracy theorists. All are seeking to cancel drag events through tactics of protest, petitions, harassment, misinformation and intimidation.

This briefing provides in-depth analysis of five cases of anti-drag mobilisation in the period December 2022 – May 2023, using a combination of ethnographic methods and social media data analysis to examine activity related to each case. The first was in Bordeaux, the second in Lamballe-Armor, the third in Toulouse, the fourth in Paris, and the fifth in Saint-Senoux. While the earlier campaigns largely manifested online with limited in-person mobilisation, the two most recent events saw increased offline activity.

This report aims to summarise the key narratives, tactics and actors involved in anti-drag action in France, and how these mobilisations are tied to anti-LGBTQ+ activity in France more broadly. However, given the small number of instances of anti-drag activism in France, the conclusions of this report are indicative and tentative.