[Campaign notebook to be found in the autumn magazine, at your newsstand or by subscription.] Saint-Denis condenses many French tensions, and singularly the fractures of the left. As 2027 approaches, we went to take the pulse of this popular, diverse and engaged city.
Reportage : Romain Siraut et Nicolas Scheffer
Photographies : Arthur Gau et Yann Morisson pour têtu·
At Chloé and Agathe’s, an old cover of têtu· sits atop the bookshelf. Christiane Taubira smiles there, slightly faded by the sun, above shelves filled with feminist books. The two thirty-somethings, who met during the 2022 presidential campaign, enjoy talking politics. Moreover, for them, politics does not stop at electoral deadlines. “Our life choices are all nourished by the fact that we are lesbians”, summarizes Chloé.
From her second date with Agathe, she tells her that she wants to have a child, whatever the outcome of their relationship. “When you’re a lesbian, you know you must anticipate the desire for a child, because while the hospital makes us wait, the biological clock is ticking.” Today, mothers of a two-year-old girl, they have begun a second medically assisted reproduction (MAP). They note, however, that their homosexuality weighs on the journey. “We have to come out permanently to doctors who rarely understand what it implies for our bodies, notes Agathe. A gynecologist openly asked me, for example, if I was using a method of contraception…”
For their first child, they preferred the Parisian Bluets maternity ward over Saint-Denis hospital. Founded by the CGT in 1937 and equipped with a maternity ward ten years later, the institution claims feminist medicine attentive to the lived experiences of those who give birth. “The obvious choice would have been to go to the Saint-Denis hospital, but we wanted this moment to align with our vision of the place of the female body”, explains Chloé while pulling from Agathe’s pants the fur that the cat left behind.
A few kilometers from their apartment, in Diderot Square in La Plaine, another family is already planning its future elsewhere. Lætitia, 40, and Andréa, 34, talk about their son, who will soon be turning 2. “When he starts middle school, we’ll leave”, predicts Andréa. A few weeks earlier, a fight between rival gangs had erupted in front of a school in the neighborhood. “A kid was stabbed and had to be hospitalized”, reports Lætitia.
The couple has also faced lesbophobia several times. “Recently, I rested my head on my partner’s shoulder when a man insulted us and chased us down the street. I would never allow myself to kiss Lætitia in public in the evening”, confides Andréa. Originally from Ducos, in Martinique, she nonetheless appreciates the popular character of Saint-Denis. At home, attachment to the city and the desire to leave are held in the same breath.
Juliette also wonders about the place where her children grow up. A tall blonde wearing orange overalls, this eco-friendly fifty-something came to meet us with a sheet blotched with proposals: improve bike lanes, public services, access to culture… and fight against violence linked to the drug trade. Recently, while picking up her child from the nanny, she witnessed a confrontation between drug traffickers and the police. “The violence of the dealers faces that of the police, and the two feed on one another”, she laments.
Across from Nord Station, in Paris, Benjamin drinks a coffee while waiting for his Transilien. This 37-year-old bisexual actor chose to settle in Saint-Denis because “it’s the only nearby suburban area where it is possible to become a homeowner”. Still, one must be able to stay there. The building’s co-owners’ association has just approved energy renovation works. “In my 150-apartment condo, each owner will have to spend 25,000 euros, so some will have to sell”, he points out. In the poorest department of France, the ecological transition has a very concrete cost.
In the city of 150,000 souls — making it the second most populous commune in Île-de-France after Paris — daily concerns mingle with a particularly intense political life. When Bally Bagayoko won the municipal election for La France insoumise (LFI) in March, Victor, 35, pops the champagne. And when Jean-Luc Mélenchon chose a few months later “the city of dead kings and the living people” to launch his presidential campaign, he is in the crowd. Working by day in a law firm, he becomes Azuré de la Badasse, a drag queen, up to fifteen nights a month.
Strasbourg-born, Victor did not know, when he settled here after about twenty moves, that Saint-Denis was a left-wing stronghold. He loves his city deeply, even after the burglary his couple suffered. “I am convinced it was homophobic: the thief spotted us, Sami and me, thinking we were a couple more vulnerable than others.” But he is quick to recount the opposite experiences, notably at his downstairs barber, who regularly checks in on his couple. In the street, he has noticed, “people always address me in the feminine, even when I am not in drag.” Where others might see harassment, Victor prefers a benevolent reading: “Perhaps my search for identity is better understood here than elsewhere.”
Des gauches queers
At 27, Yanis also supported Bally Bagayoko. It was in his hometown that in 2019 he co-founded the Pride of the suburbs. That year, nearly 10,000 people marched through the streets of Saint-Denis and shouted their demands: fighting discrimination, housing, social actions… “We also wanted to bring a new perspective on the suburbs”, adds the history and political science graduate at the university that borders the city. “We must analyze the causes of LGBT-phobic violence. Often here, it’s poverty, lack of resources, marginalization…”, he enumerates. And what about religion? “I have never seen, in France, Muslim movements organized against homosexuality”, dismisses the young bi. Now leading Cali & Gali, a training organization against workplace discrimination, he intends to continue in 2027 his intersectional fight.
Mamadou, 21, lives these questions in a less theoretical way. Born to Malian parents in a family of seven children, he learned to keep a low profile since he experienced school harassment in adolescence. “At first, they were insults because of my effeminate appearance; later, they became blows”, he relates. At home too, the closet is the rule. “My parents are religious, I fear their reaction if I tell them I’m gay: they could kick me out. So with them, I play a role of hetero.” So, he dreams of elsewhere. This computer science graduate aspires to move to Canada: “I tell myself that there, I will be accepted as I am.” His coming out, he reserved for a few close friends with whom he shares a passion: cosplay. He slips into the skin of fictional characters, records himself and feeds his social networks. But his crew only goes out in costume in Paris: “It’s unimaginable here. Already, when I wear pink pants, it shocks. So in Fairy Tail…”
What Mamadou testifies to, everyone interprets through their own political grid. A few hundred meters from the Stade de France, Smile, Quentin’s Labrador, begs for caresses as his owner speaks about pluralism. This centre-right man in his thirties ran in the most recent municipal elections to have his voice heard as a “moderate.” With 3.5% of the votes, the wave did not materialize. “To win an election, you must deploy a populist strategy to stand out as much as possible from your opponents”, he concludes. Quentin feels minority in the community when he calls for a sharper break with Islamism. “It takes courage to speak up and go against the majority. Sometimes I feel I have to hide, like when I was in the closet.” He has nonetheless found a place where he can challenge his opinions: Saint-Denis LGBTQI+, an association where he says he has met “people far from my circles”, who have become close friends.
That is where he notably met Guy. At 63, this retiree in tourism has roamed across all continents, speaks three languages fluently and pick up two more. “In Saint-Denis, I was able to integrate because I knew how to talk with people who do not have the same culture as me,” he says. He finds that the different populations of the city mingle too little. His explanation: “People are 100% connected with their country of origin through social networks. They do not read the press or watch television in French, which prevents them from truly integrating into real life here.”
His life on Grindr gives this muscular daddy another reading of these borders. He stacks secret plans with younger boys who present themselves as straight. “They come to me because they know that by sleeping with a White man who is not the same age as them, they take no risk of being recognized”, analyzes him. A clandestinity he attributes to the weight of religion. He also reproaches his own political family for averting their gaze: “In the name of Muslims suffering discrimination, a part of the left tolerates that this religion spreads a patriarchal and homophobic view of society.”
A few streets away, another queer left tries precisely to build a sense of community. Raw concrete, smeared glass: the Bourse du travail has preserved all the stiff union-era austerity of the 1980s. Behind this austere façade, the Queer Place, opened in March. Yoga workshops, queer evenings, conferences of the rupture left, a shared garden… More hipster than you die. Sitting at the bar, Gwenaëlle, a thirty-something French teacher, defends radical ecology as much as her lesbian identity. Next to her, Grégory, a legal assistant and musician who has moved here from Pantin, serves homemade iced tea in mismatched festival cups. The two volunteers have been there since the beginning. “If Bernard Arnault showed up here, we would gladly welcome him, provided that he participates in the donation box”, Grégory jokes as he points to a wooden donation box.
Behind the gear of the coworking space, the political stake is very real: how not to reproduce the in-group that one claims to fight? “We regret being an association essentially made up of White people,” Gwenaëlle admits. “We are thinking about ways to attract racially marginalized people.” The collective is notably trying to develop its social actions and to anchor itself more in the neighborhood. Yet it remains to be seen how far the place can rely on the new city hall. The occupancy agreement, which ran only until July, was not renewed. With a “dramaqueer” cap fixed on her red hair, Tatiana, a librarian and volunteer, grows impatient: the association needs to find a new home. “Bally Bagayoko was supposed to visit our cafe in May, during Pride week, and stood us up. Now we can’t get a meeting before October.” The têtu· editorial team has also contacted the office of the new very media-savvy mayor to try to slot an interview into his agenda. With no luck.
