This is a unique test. A “counter-narrative”. A “gift” or as the author would say, “a cure for loneliness”. In To our desires, in the privacy of lesbians, which comes out this Friday from Editions de la Déferlante, Elodie Font tells what it is to “love a woman when you are one” and what it means to “desire between two women, throughout a lifetime , both in our beds, in our daily lives and in our bodies.” For the first time, a book explores the sexualities of homosexual women through the stories of more than 1,200 of them, aged 14 to 87.
Three years after the release of his first book in graphic novel form Coming In, Elodie Font returns with 20 minutes on the importance of representations, the need to create them and the need to transmit them.
Why did you choose to write about lesbian sexuality specifically?
I chose this subject because it is a book that I really wanted to read to confront the stories of other women who would tell me something about myself, because I am a lesbian woman. I found position books, Kâma sutra but no testimony that tells anything about a lesbian existence. So, since I couldn’t find it, I wrote it down.
How did you imagine this unique essay?
I thought of this book as a remedy for loneliness to make life journeys that we hear so little about or that are caricatured, fantasized and far from our realities visible. The number of women who have told me that, when they meet a woman for the first time to kiss her, they say to themselves “but what am I going to do, what am I going to do? ‘we have to do it, how do we do it? ! “. This shows the extent to which we integrate, from a very young age, a very precise model of sexuality and nothing else. Having a lesbian sexuality thus highlights other ways of desiring, of making love.
What stands out most about this book?
This is because, when we desire another woman, another path opens up to us. A path on which we are less affected by the injunctions of society made to women, a path of potential freedom around the shapes, the body, the limits that we give ourselves. Ultimately, being a lesbian means daring to say no, and that’s okay. And just knowing that it’s not serious allows you to have more orgasms, for example, thanks to this “letting go”. Sexuality should only remain a zone of pleasure, where we do not force ourselves.
I also wanted a sincere book, which tells the story of sexuality from the inside. Which means that there are both very beautiful stories but also some that are still very steeped in the dictates of society. Which shows how difficult it is to free yourself from it.
What struck you the most personally?
When I spoke with “older” lesbian women, I realized that this had never happened to me before, at almost 40 years old. It may seem trivial, but not having images of yourself aging does not allow you to project yourself into the future. To see these 60, 80 year old women tell me about their past and that they draw out their future for me, at the same time as mine, it turned my life upside down.
Why is having representation so important?
It’s very difficult to make heterosexual people, who live in a world designed for and by heterosexual people, understand how good it feels to feel represented. They do not imagine that a world without representation is a world where it is difficult to build oneself and move forward. So, on a personal level, this book did me a lot of good. I had the feeling of being part of a circle of words where, all together, we held hands while being very different but with something in common. This something is a way of fighting against loneliness, of feeling, finally, as one of several people. It’s a crazy feeling.
Especially since we could do without the few representations of lesbian sexualities…
Effectively. When people tell me that we are seen everywhere, I would like to know where you see us apart from in the “lesbian” category which is the one that people click on the most on pornographic sites… For years, and still counting 2023, these are the most viewed videos on these sites. The collective imagination therefore has a completely distorted and soiled vision of sexuality between women, which bears absolutely no resemblance to the reality of what happens in our beds. The consequence of all this is that the word “lesbian” itself is sullied. So we, as lesbians, can have difficulty defining ourselves as such because of these representations.
Despite recent work to re-appropriate this word, it remains linked to pornographic content to the point where Internet algorithms continue to think that “lesbian” means “videos of naked women”. Recently, when I wanted to post a post about first lesbian kisses, very soft, Instagram censored some of the content and restricted part of my audience from having access to it.
For me, it was therefore all the more important that this word appeared on the cover of my book. We still use it too little. And I don’t want this word, which is linked to my identity, to be tarnished. I remember that when explaining this choice to friends and family, I was asked several times if I was sure, if it wasn’t going to deprive me of a certain readership. There is still a lot of work to do.
What does this say about the society we live in?
Every year, SOS Homophobia reports show that LGBT-phobic acts are increasing. We are in a society which is not favorable to the fact that we are there, to the fact that we show ourselves, that we show our loves and our ways of being, of living. Through this book and through my work, I then try to offer a counter-narrative, to say “we exist, we have the right and see what paths we take”.
I hadn’t thought about it specifically when I was writing but somehow, To our desires can also serve as an archive of the thoughts of lesbian people, of different ages, in France in 2024. I really like the idea that together, we leave a trace.