# Jean Le Bitoux

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**Jean Le Bitoux** (16 August 1948 – 21 April 2010) was a French journalist and gay activist. He was the founder of *[Gai pied](/source/Gai_pied)*, the first mainstream gay magazine in France. He was a campaigner for Holocaust remembrance of homosexual victims. He was the author of several books about homosexuality.

## Early life

Jean Le Bitoux was born on 16 August 1948 in [Bordeaux](/source/Bordeaux), France.[1][2] His father was an admiral.[3]

## Career

Le Bitoux worked as a substitute music teacher.[3]

Le Bitoux founded the Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire (FHAR) in [Nice](/source/Nice) in the 1970s.[1][2] By 1978, he ran for the [National Assembly](/source/National_Assembly_(France)) as a "homosexual candidate" alongside [Guy Hocquenghem](/source/Guy_Hocquenghem); they lost the election.[1][2]

In 1979, Le Bitoux founded *[Gai pied](/source/Gai_pied)*, the first long-running commercially published gay magazine in France.[1][2] Its name, coined by philosopher [Michel Foucault](/source/Michel_Foucault), literally means "gay foot," but constitutes a multilayered pun in French: The two words pronounced together sound like "guêpier" (hornet's nest), while the word "foot" also evokes a "kick in the ass" ("un pied au cul") and sexual pleasure ("prendre son pied," equivalent to "to get off").[3] Le Bitoux resigned from the publication in 1983 due to the magazine's increasingly consumerist orientation.[4]

Le Bitoux joined [AIDES](/source/AIDES), an HIV/AIDS awareness non-profit organization, in 1985.[4][5] He co-wrote many HIV prevention documents.[4] He was the editor-in-chief of the *Journal du Sida*, a publication about HIV/AIDS.[2]

In 1989, Le Bitoux founded the Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle, a nonprofit organization for the remembrance of homosexual victims of Nazi Germany9.[1][2] Initially, the organization was met with homophobia from some Holocaust survivors, who wrongly feared they were being smeared.[6] In 1994, Le Bitoux co-authored the memoir of [Pierre Seel](/source/Pierre_Seel), a French homosexual who was deported by the Nazis for being gay.[1][2]

By the 1990s, Le Bitoux argued that anti-homosexual legislation in France harked back to laws devised by [François Darlan](/source/Fran%C3%A7ois_Darlan) of the Vichy government to end same-sex prostitution in 1942, not Nazi Germany.[7] However, Marc Boninchi, a Law professor at the [University of Lyon](/source/University_of_Lyon), has argued that the first instance of legal discrimination dates back to prosecutor [Charles Dubost](/source/Charles_Dubost_(lawyer))'s 1941 recommendations.[7] Meanwhile, Le Bitoux's 2002 *Les oubliés de la mémoire* led President [Jacques Chirac](/source/Jacques_Chirac) to acknowledge the homosexual victims of persecution under the Nazi Regime.[2]

Le Bitoux was a co-founder of the Centre LGBT Paris-Île-de-France in 1991.[8]

## Personal life

Le Bitoux was openly gay, and was rejected by his family for being gay.[1] Drawn to [Maoism](/source/Maoism) in his early twenties, he also left due to homophobia.[1] He contracted HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s.[2][4]

## Death

Le Bitoux died on 21 April 2010 in Paris, France.[1] A memorial service conducted by [Patrick Bloche](/source/Patrick_Bloche) was held in his honor at the city hall of the [11th arrondissement of Paris](/source/11th_arrondissement_of_Paris), with a performance by the [Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence](/source/Sisters_of_Perpetual_Indulgence).[2] He was buried at the [Père Lachaise Cemetery](/source/P%C3%A8re_Lachaise_Cemetery).[4]

## Works

- Le Bitoux, Jean & Seel, Pierre (1994). *Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel*. Paris: Calmann-Lévy. ISBN 9782702122778. [OCLC 30927212](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/30927212)
- Le Bitoux, Jean (2002). *Les oubliés de la mémoire*. Paris: Hachette littératures. ISBN 9782012356252. [OCLC 50541993](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/50541993)
- Chevaux, Hervé; Le Bitoux, Jean; Proth, Bruno (2003). *Citoyen de seconde zone : trente ans de lutte pour la reconnaissance de l'homosexualité en France (1971-2002)*. Paris: Hachette Littératures. ISBN 9782012355682. [OCLC 402382714](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/402382714)
- Le Bitoux, Jean (2005). *Entretiens sur la question gay*. Béziers: H & O. ISBN 9782845470989. [OCLC 60596632](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/60596632)

## References

1. Chemin, Anne (27 April 2010). ["Jean Le Bitoux"](http://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2010/04/27/jean-le-bitoux_1343324_3382.html). *Le Monde*. Retrieved 11 August 2016.

1. Halperin, David M. (Spring 2011). ["Michel Foucault, Jean Le Bitoux, and the Gay Science Lost and Found: An Introduction"](http://rcin.org.pl/Content/48120). *Critical Inquiry*. **37** (3): 371–380. [doi:10.1086/659349](https://doi.org/10.1086/659349). [JSTOR 10.1086/659349](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086%2F659349). [S2CID 162264764](https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:162264764)

1. Martel, Frédéric (1999). [*The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France since 1968*](https://books.google.com/books?id=Nnz57zheGWcC&q=jean+le+bitoux&pg=PA107). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. pp. 107–108. ISBN 9780804732734. [OCLC 42643256](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/42643256)

1. Favereau, Eric (30 April 2010). ["Jean Le Bitoux, militant de la mémoire gay"](http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2010/04/30/jean-le-bitoux-militant-de-la-memoire-gay_623516). *[Libération](/source/Lib%C3%A9ration)*. Retrieved 11 August 2016.

1. Broqua, Christophe (2005). [*Agir pour ne pas mourir ! Act up, les homosexuels et le sida*](http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=SCPO_BROQU_2005_01_0115&DocId=386304&hits=19858+19857+19856+19242+19241+19240+17480+17479+17478+). Paris: Les Presses de Sciences Po. pp. 115–161. ISBN 9782724609813. [OCLC 469793514](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/469793514). – via [Cairn.info](/source/Cairn.info)

1. Celse, Michel (1997). "Il paraît que le mouvement gai a 100 ans..." (in French). *Vacarme*. **3** (3): 44–46. [doi:10.3917/vaca.003.0044](https://doi.org/10.3917/vaca.003.0044) Cette revendication se heurte régulièrement à des refus violemment homophobes de la part de différentes associations d'anciens déportés, qui y voient une entreprise visant à salir leur mémoire.

1. Boninchi, Marc (2005). [*Vichy et l'ordre moral*](http://www.cairn.info/vichy-et-l-ordre-moral--9782130553397-page-143.htm). Paris: PUF. pp. 143–193. ISBN 9782130553397. [OCLC 420826274](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/420826274). – via [Cairn.info](/source/Cairn.info)

1. Aldrich, Robert & Wotherspoon, Garry (2001). [*Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History*](https://archive.org/details/whoswhoingaylesb00robe/page/241). New York: Routledge. p. [241](https://archive.org/details/whoswhoingaylesb00robe/page/241). ISBN 9780415159821. [OCLC 46843939](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/46843939)

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