Sarah El Haïry Becomes The First Female Minister In France To Come Out
April 9, 2023A discreet coming out, in just a few words. Amid ChatGPT, SNU and social media discussions in an interview for Forbes, Secretary of State for Youth and National Service Sarah El Haïry became the first woman member of a government in France to reveal her homosexuality, according to ‘Time News’.
Without dwelling on the subject, the spokesperson for the MoDem simply answered a question honestly about the criticism of her on social networks. “I try not to read because I know Twitter is not real life. But when my family or my partner are affected, yes, it pains me. But I made this choice of public action,” replied the youngest of the government.
“My companion”, in just two words, Sarah El Haïry made public a relationship with another woman, without giving her identity or going into the details of her personal life. A way to trivialise what should no longer be surprising but which may still be relevant to note insofar as homophobia is still a social problem.
Minister Olivier Dussopt had also come out in the columns of the magazine Têtu, a fortnight ago, in a delicate political context for the latter since he was the bearer of the pension reform.
The Minister of Labour, on the other hand, returned more extensively to his sexual orientation, which was however “neither a secret nor a subject” for him: “being homosexual is never neutral, but one has the right to defend causes, to militate, to participate in the debate without making one’s personal situation a political element in itself.”
Qualified since her interview as the first female politician to come out, Sarah El Haïry rather walks in the footsteps of others before her like Mélanie Vogel, current environmentalist senator for French people abroad, who has not missed to underline it on Twitter: “Prime Minister to come out in France yes, the first female politician should consider not pushing.”
Image Credit: Pixabay
Long before them, the first female politician to openly display her homosexuality was Françoise Gaspard, former PS MP, who announced her pact with her companion of more than 20 years, journalist Claude Servan-Schreiber, in the newspaper Le Monde, in March 2000.
Among men, André Labarrère, the socialist mayor of Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), was the first major politician to come out in June 1997. Then aged 70, this former minister said he no longer had nothing to hide and had revealed himself in a novel, ‘The Bachelor’s Ball’.
This announcement by Sarah El Haïry, where she evokes the criticisms on social networks that affect her partner, is also made in a context where homophobia is gaining ground. According to figures from the Paris police headquarters – which brings together the capital and its inner suburbs – the number of complaints filed concerning homophobic and transphobic acts has increased by 55% in 2022.
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