On April 5, 1972, Françoise and a score of activists from the French, Belgian, Dutch, Norwegian and British homosexual movements, including her companion Marc Payen, went to San Remo to join their FUORI comrades in sabotaging the first International Congress of Sexology. The psychiatrists intended to focus on “deviant behaviors in human sexuality”, i.e., on homosexuality as a mental illness. While the protest went unnoticed in France, it was widely reported in the Italian media.

On the placards carried by the activists were slogans such as :

• Psychiatrists, we’ve come to heal you;
• Normality doesn’t exist;
• Psychiatrists, plant electrodes in your brain;
• First and last sexophobia congress.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the emergence of gay protest in Italy, a number of events and meetings are being organized: conferences, LGBT+ prides, podcasts…

Francesco Lepore, journalist, author and researcher into Christian spirituality in medieval and modern times, revisits this founding episode of the Italian gay movement in an article in Italian published in Linkiesta, in which he highlights “the admirable intervention of Françoise d’Eaubonne” and recalls “the famous speech by the poetess and ecofeminist”.

She gave an admirable fifteen-minute speech, like a true Amazon.

We also recall the testimony of Marie-Jo Bonnet (MLF and FHAR activist) and other participants in the sabotage of this congress, which can be followed on vimeo.