By Marian Lens
This presentation was given as part of the theme on “Visibility” during the first colloquium on the oral history of “Homosexual Activism in French-speaking Belgium since 1950”, which took place in Brussels on September 27, 2012.
A repressive historical context
Let us first recall the context of the mid-1980s. We are in a dangerous and hostile socio-political climate regarding homosexuality. The violence emanating from both civil society and official authorities was multiple: lack of rights and legal protection, discrimination and exclusion in all public spheres, i.e. professional, political, economic and social, but also private.
During these years of repression, homosexuality was still perceived as a deviance, an abnormal and amoral fact. The removal of homosexuality as a disease by the WHO, for example, only occurred in 1991. Suicide spares no social group and no age.
The Artemys bookstore, in spite of the violence of which it will be the object, will always ensure a protected space, semi-clandestine, for lesbians and women. Although it took a lot of guts to run an “outlaw” place, it also took a keen knowledge of the laws and our rights, even if relatively limited. Taking in or housing teenage girls always puts us at risk of being charged with abducting minors.
The legal status of a non-profit organization will allow Artemys to legally decide which spaces would be reserved “for its members”. In the places we rent to organize our parties and large-scale meetings, this legal protection will allow us to prevent the forces of order from disrupting them. We would also establish an orderly service to protect the access and the immediate environment of the rooms from “lesbian molesters”. During these annual days, conferences-debates were held alongside film screenings, but also self-defense workshops.
In the bookstore, the floor will be destined to offer such a permanent secure space. The advantage of this lesbian space, which made it possible in particular to answer the fear of the lesbians, will also protect us from the pornocrats and the voyeurs. We were far from the Dutroux affair, but following the episode of a pornocrat who had selected only postcards of naked or scantily clad little girls, photographed however very modestly, all reproductions of nudes – except those of hyper-mediatized works of art – will be displayed on the upper floor. The ban was never broken, even by the voyeuristic journalist Jambers of VTM, who had hoped to force access. It was delightful to see that despite his rage, he did not dare to destroy the barrier… of books, which I had put, supposedly as a decoration, on all the steps of the winding staircase.
While taglines are important, what worked best in relation to the frigid or biased journalists was the strategy of getting them to question their own stereotypes. Taking a journalist into confidence proved to be very effective. To tell them that most journalists – implying that they were not, of course – would automatically put in the same article the normative comments of a priest and a psychiatrist. To see them blush, and finally to publish in the article only one of the two “experts” provided – in the end rather than the psychologist – was a victory. We were no longer amoral, nor sick, even if in their eyes we were still a problem.
A large-scale political effort
It is obvious that for lesbian visibility to persist, it is the fruit of a major political endeavor.
In terms of identity, it was the political act to affirm us in this world as Subject in the face of our double non-existence as stamped “women” at birth, and as lesbians, by choice.
On a strategic level, it was also to want to attack the enemy frontally, and not to get stabbed in the back, by surprise, without being able to confront it.
We wanted to reinvent the world by including the utopia in reality, take action and implement ideas. Our objective was not to claim a place, but to make a strong political gesture, not only to display our lesbian identity, but also to occupy the grounds of power in the public, political, economic and social spaces, by being in charge. We thus offered ourselves a permanent lesbian place, with the most extended opening hours, and especially opened also in daytime. At the time, the meetings took place in the evening, during private events or in lesbian bars as well as occasional parties.
As now, it was a period of great economic recession. And creating jobs, in itself, was already quite an issue. But to be marked as “women” was also to dare go beyond the spheres of the private or restricted economy, and to allow ourselves greater means of financial autonomy. We had to constantly confront institutionalized violence – censorship and refusal of subsidies or abnormal delays in VAT refunds. And in the economic market, we had to put our foot down to be taken seriously, obtain loans, fight against delays or refusals of delivery, against the slightest discount on books, against their blockade at customs. And so forth…
We even succeeded in starting without a budget and finding our own financial resources, despite the fact that the profits left by the books were always insufficient. At that time, Belgium held the sad record of having, along with Greece, the lowest rate of book reading in Europe of 15 (this was equivalent to 2 books per year and per inhabitant, including bestsellers).
Lesbian identity and a wide range of lesbian books: Recognition and fame… though mostly abroad
Artemys turns out to be the first openly lesbian association in Belgian history. As soon as it was founded in 1985, it made its choices public and official by publishing explicitly lesbian statutes in the Moniteur Belge, by the composition of its effective members and by the substantial part of its objectives. Even if she wanted to promote what was done by all women – which still remains a heroic choice to be taken seriously – it was a real challenge, perceived as “suicidal” by many.
In those days of great intolerance, it took a lot of courage to come out publicly as a lesbian and to have your private address published, with all the risks that came with it.
Following our international political campaign launched in 1992, “Lesbian Power” – buying lesbian books from lesbian publishers in a lesbian bookstore – whose objective was to make our existence and its diversity visible, we will experience recognition and fame, although mostly abroad. Artemys was invited to Amsterdam in June 1993, at the 5th Feminist Book Fair, as the only lesbian profiled organization in the world, with the largest selection of lesbian books in French, Dutch and English. Back then, it was one of the rare world meetings for feminists and lesbians. We were invited back to the one in Montreal a few years later.
Artemys had thousands of titles written by lesbians and women from all over the world. It was a gigantic work because most of the titles were imported.
There were books of funds and novelties, diversity rather than quantity (10 different titles rather than one bestseller in 10 copies), and always, what continued to disturb and question, despite the risks and financial losses.
And the linguistic plurality of Artemys has always been a priority, in its active members, its clientele, its activities and the articles sold: international, therefore, “national” too.
A black American lesbian had never seen so many titles about or by black lesbians in one place in the United States.
The Washington Library came to Europe to complete its gigantic worldwide collection of lesbian – and gay – books, and was impressed by the choice of Artemys, where it found many new titles, despite its passage along Paris, London and Amsterdam!
It will take us one year to encode everything, and thus become one of the first fully computerized bookstores in Belgium, and at affordable costs (3 languages for a hundred thousand FB instead of the existing programs going per language from 400000 FB to 1 million…).
This will be possible thanks to the computing prowess of having our own computer program developed according to our needs, combining the passive database management of a library with the active one of a store.
A trendy stationery and card shop
The book’s management will never be sufficiently profitable in Brussels. We will make up for this deficit with large annual book stalls in Flanders and abroad, notably in Paris, in a film club that will become one of the largest lesbian film festivals in Europe, Cineffable. We will make up for this deficit, especially by developing a card shop – still not very present on the European market – which will be combined with a fine stationery shop and a unique selection of music composed by women or from the world.
Artemys will thus become unwillingly, a trendy place of the capital, with its exceptional fund in Europe of more than 50.000 cards, with multiple specialities: artistic reproductions by and on lesbians and women, music, art, calligraphy, philosophical and political slogans, and a lot of humor. Our immense iconographic research was classified by artist and by theme, from which lesbian and feminist researchers, schoolteenagers and academics, but also musicians to reconstitute instruments for example, will draw inspiration.
Indirectly this artistic space will allow to better communicate to the public this bookshop entirely specialized on women and lesbians. Publishers and suppliers, very grateful, recognized at the announcement of the closing of Artemys that this one had launched on the Belgian market many concepts and products. As an illustration, long before it became trendy, we launched angels as end of year greeting cards. For us, these involuntary messengers represented a certain neutrality in relation to religious messages, and especially the questioning of the notion of gender. Because an angel is in principle without sex, but of course we see few without penis! That’s how I placed the first huge calendar in the window with a real vine leaf strategically placed on the angel’s surprising genitalia. Still, we were in a lesbian bookstore! Well, I assure you that no one agreed to buy the calendar without the grape leaf. What was a hoax had become a commercial must-have!
We were also involved in other struggles and had many petitions signed. We have thus:
- Co-organized the collection of basic necessities for the first humanitarian convoys to the former Yugoslavia at war;
- Hosted the first meetings of the Rwanda Women’s Group for the Organization of a Genocide Tribunal.
And I believe that, while I thought I was only addressing “born women”, all this contributed to attracting a critical and diverse clientele, for whom we represented a “ray of sunshine”. I also had positive pressure from gay men who regretted not having a similar bookstore.
A great place for lesbians to meet and exchange ideas: a platform, a hub, a springboard to shape one’s life and actions
Being, then, in the front line, a lesbian bookshop had to “make front” at all levels.
Artemys was and represented:
– A hub for information from the lesbian, feminist and mixed homosexual communities, which sold their magazines or publications, and distributed their event, professional or festive advertising.
– A meeting place for lesbians and women, with exhibitions of paintings and photographs, numerous literary and musical evenings, and passionate political debates. Activists, writers, researchers and artists came from Belgium, but also from France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Germany,…, the USA and Quebec.
– An active space in the questioning of the foundations of current thinking, notably the construction of sexual gender and heterosociality, and in the struggle for individual/universal rights and the notion of elective “family”. And contrary to what one might think, there was real interest in these ideas, even if sometimes very hostile and mixed at first. As ideas that shake things up do, and that affect every human being, without exception.
– A pressure group, which, together with other lesbian groups, initiated political actions, networks and lesbian coordinations. It is one of the founding groups of the federation that initiated the Rainbow House in Brussels, guaranteeing in its statutes a real – and not fictitious – mix of member groups, under penalty of dissolution of the association.
– A crisis center to respond to the calls for help that poured in from all sides, to which we responded existentially, legally and medically, on average 2 hours a day, through free and unsubsidized supervision and, with a difficult relay to doctors, lawyers, and various specialists, when most of them simply turned away the pariahs that we were. It took strong nerves to, after a long, overworked day, respond in the evenings and nights to calls for help – attempted suicides or assaults. Underage girls of school age were put into treatment with the approval of the school and their parents, or excluded from their orphanage and put on the street.
From the beginning, we have constituted other lists with the few lesbian groups in Belgium and abroad, which we will then send to the international guides who will ask us, when they started to publish.
***
Looking back, having directed Artemys first calls for a very powerful sense of pride. It took a lot of passion, courage, and tenacity. Acting, analyzing, taking stock, thinking about action and taking action once again. It was to combine all the organizational and political qualities with those of a business leader.
However, every act performed, especially in the spheres of power, has a cost. The pioneers, the female pioneers in particular, pay a heavy price to allow others to exist or to live better: impossible or broken careers, physical and moral injuries, burn-out, exhaustion.
It is often confronting situations, alone or in very small numbers. Constantly fighting external hostility, but also skepticism and defeatism within the movement, especially at times of its slowdown. And overcome a lot of taboos.
So-called “field work” means taking risks, without particular glory. It’s about being there, when the others aren’t there yet. It is all the ingratitude to get your hands dirty, not being able to hide the small and large unavoidable and tedious compromises, as a literary, utopian or symbolic writing allows.
This is not a work limited in time, but all the everyday politics. It is impossible to turn your back on the realities and the sufferings that leap over you. They ask to be treated.
By dint of carving a jewel, we do not realize how much we can make it shine. Over time, the lack of recognition, the dislocation of networks, the desertion of places, we end up doubting the raison d’être of our place.
To end on a positive note, in keeping with what Artemys has brought to a whole community of people, this talk has been written to show that it is possible to make dreams come true, to make yesterday’s utopias come true, and therefore that it is possible to “change the world”, despite adversity and skepticism.
Few of Artemys’s contemporaries really believed in it, and yet this one lived for 18 years*.
Marian Lens – September 2012
Originally published under (references to quote the article): LENS, Marian : Artemys, in: Het ondraaglijk besef / La notion insupportable (Fonds Suzan Daniel), n°18, december/décembre 2012, pp. 11-13. Rapport du Colloque « Mémoires homosexuelles. Le militantisme homosexuel en Belgique francophone depuis 1950 », 27 septembre 2012.
* “Un record mondial encore inégalé” Lucile Bazantay.
On this particular point: “La librairie Artemys (1985-2002) {…}. The longevity of this initiative is remarkable, as most feminist bookstores in Europe did not survive the 1990s.” Dani Frank : Petit focus historique sur les lesbiennes radicales à Bruxelles dans les années 70-80, dans : Chronique Féministe (Université des femmes), Féminismes et lesbianismes, n°103-104, Juillet/Décembre 2009, p.14.
Translated from French by Brussel Onthaal vzw, supervised by the author – With the support of Equal.Brussels (Equal Opportunities for the Region of Brussels), as part of the grant file “What spaces exist for the most fragile minorities within the LGBTQI+ communities, otherwise accumulating different types of discrimination/inequality?”.
