Anne Zelensky

The FMA feminist association created a sub-organisation called SOS Femmes Alternative, which opened the first shelter for battered women in France in 1978. Zelensky was president of this organisation from 1980 for several years. She participated in the creation of the association "Hommes et Violences en privé," which opened the first reception and help centre for violent men in France in 1990.[3]

In 1984, she launched an anti-sexist advertisement "Not touched in the image of the man," which appeared in several media outlets and received international support. She organized the first symposium on "Sexual harassment at work" in 1985. With widespread media attention, the symposium saw the last public appearance of Simone de Beauvoir, a place to support the action. As part of her activism, she also participated in the creation of the League of International Women's Rights in 1974 with Annie Sugier, Vicky Colombet and Annie Cohen. The League, led by Simone de Beauvoir, directed its efforts to specific forms of sexism and proposed an anti-sexist bill in 1974, which was adopted by the government in 1983 but was never voted on.[4]

Zelensky was the first woman to host a café-philosophique in 1996 and organized debates with female philosophers. "Café-Philos" were a popular activity for local French residents interested in philosophical discussions. This was founded by the French philosopher Marc Sautet in Paris, France, 13 December 1992.[5]

France along with other western nations saw a trend in the rise of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. France experienced this force of feminism most dramatically in 1975 with the decriminalization of abortion laws.[6] However, due to the heterogeneity that existed in the understanding of feminism, French feminism was volatile to contradictions and conflicts between different feminist views. In the early 1970s, the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (MLF) or the Women's Liberation Movement was created with the main objective of mobilizing women's autonomy and lifting them out of organizational structures where they were systemically put in a place of subordination. These kinds of placements were conducted towards women who had no choice of their own. One of the most contested topics within this movement, along with other like-minded organisations, was whether or not men had a part to play in feminism or whether it should be exclusive to women.

Zelensky participated in this gender centric debate by explicitly showing her support for non-separatism within the feminist movement. She focused on holding spaces for all feminist activists instead of trying to solve the defining technicality of who can or can't be a feminist. In 1967 Zelensky founded a mixed-gender feminist organisation named Féminin Masculin Avenir (FMA) that preceded the MLF and included some of her close male friends, Roger Ribes and Charles Cassuto.[7] However, Zelensky's attempt to involve men in the movement of feminism received immense backlash from separatist feminists as well as male-violence and misandry activists. It was a common response received by other non-separatist feminists such as Marie-Victoire Louis.[8] Due to these circumstances, between 1969 and 1970 the FMA became a women-only organisation. Disagreements regarding the role in feminism were not only felt in France but other European countries such as Belgium. When men did contribute to the cause, they were mostly university-educated individuals, some directly involved in organizing feminist demonstrations and some were more in the periphery of women-led organisations.[9]

The FMA as an organisation differed from groups preceding it by taking a more intersectional approach. Instead of focusing on the existence of a hierarchy of oppression amongst race, social class and colonialism, the FMA prioritized the struggles of women as a whole. However, the consequence of this in relation to the FMA's role in inspiring the MLF was the absence of leadership roles of working-class and marginalized women in the MLF. Zelensky believed, based on a life of observations, that the stark difference between her experience in society as a white woman compared with that of her black peers meant the two issues, race and gender, were mutually exclusive battles and must be fought separately. These separations and fractures in activism that succeeded feminism in the late 18th century and that proceeded the 2000s has been identified by historians as a distinguishing trait of second-wave French feminism, a wave which Zelensky was a major influence.[10]

Between 2007 and 2014, Zelensky was the editor of the Riposte Laïque, a highly controversial, far-right counter-jihad website created in 2007 that presented itself a part of the secular movement and affiliated with identitarian, nationalist and Islamophobic movements[11] under the name of laïcité. Zelensky has been criticized for her vocal stance on the alleged "Islamisation of France" and on Muslim women who choose to wear the headscarf. She, along with other prominent feminists in France said that the "Islamic practice [is] unitary and oppressive to women."[12] Zelensky would eventually become a leading figure against Muslim women's rights to wear a hijab. For example, Zelensky believed that the hijab was a symbol of female oppression, writing in Le Monde that it "symbolises women’s place in Islam as it is understood by Islamism. This place is in the shadows, relegated, in submission to men. The fact that women claim it as their decision does nothing to change its meaning . . . There is no surer oppression than self-oppression". (Le Monde, 30 May 2003).[13]

In 2005, she published her autobiography where she looks back on her feminist journey and testifies to the evolution of the feminist movement since 1968.[14]

Zelensky was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1998.

• Anne Zelensky-Tristan, Mémoires d’une féministe (Memoirs of a Feminist), Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 2005, 405 p.
• Histoires d'amour (Love Story), under the pseudonym Anne Tristan, Calmann-Lévy (ed.), 1979.
• Histoires du MLF (History of the French Women's Liberation Movement, MLF), under the pseudonym Anne Tristan, with Annie Sugier (a.k.a. Annie de Pisan), Calmann-Lévy, 1977 (preface by Simone de Beauvoir).
• Ah elle ira, elle ira…à l'Assemblée Nationale (Ah, she will go to the National Assembly), children's drawings on gender parity, Indigo editions and Côté-Femmes 1995 collective.
• Chroniques des petits abus de pouvoirs (Chronicles of Small Abuses of Power), with Régine Dhoquois, L’Harmattan (ed.), 2010.
• Harcèlement sexuel: scandale et réalités (Sexual Harassment: Scandal and Reality), with Mireille Gaussot, Editions du Rocher (ed.), 1985
• Maternité esclave (Enslaved Motherhood) [collection], ed. no. 10–18, 1975
• Partisans année zéro (Supporters Year Zero) [collection], Editions Maspero (ed.), 1970

• Allison, Maggie (2015). "The Risky Business of French Feminism: Publishing, Politics and Artistry by Jennifer L. Sweatman (review)". French Studies: A Quarterly Review. 69 (4): 570. doi:10.1093/fs/knv200. ISSN 1468-2931.
• Colvin, Sarah; Karcher, Katharina, eds. (23 July 2018). Women, Global Protest Movements, and Political Agency: Rethinking the Legacy of 1968. London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781351203715. ISBN 978-1-351-20371-5. S2CID 158370081.
• Delphy, Christine (1991). "Les origines du Mouvement de libération des femmes en France". Nouvelles Questions Féministes (16/18): 137–148. ISSN 0248-4951. JSTOR 40602853.
• Hurtig, Christiane; Mossuz-Lavau, Janine; Sineau, Mariette (1989). "'Might Is Right': Feminist Movement in France: Achievements and Shortcomings". Economic and Political Weekly. 24 (44/45): 2505–2516. ISSN 0012-9976. JSTOR 4395559.
• Schulz, Kristina, ed. (July 2017). The Women's Liberation Movement : impacts and outcomes. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-78533-587-7. OCLC 987437435.
• Lépinard, Éléonore (2020), "Race, Religion, and Gender: Feminist Intersectional Politics in "Postsecular" Times", Feminist Trouble, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/oso/9780190077150.003.0003, ISBN 978-0-19-007715-0, retrieved 16 March 2022