Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris

6. "These Men's Minor Transgressions": White Frenchwomen on Colonialism and Feminism

171 “these Men’s MinoR tRansgRessions” White Frenchwomen on Colonialism and Feminism [Women] are the ones who will force the cessation of the terrible antagonism between races and who will keep men—who have already fought over territories, religions, and money—from killing each other for colors . . . It will be enough for them to decree that the black race equals the white race and that beauty resides there as well as it does here; that a black brain is structured like a white man’s brain; and that there is only one humanity.—louise faure-favier, La Dépêche Africaine In 1930, in one of several articles she wrote for La Dépêche Africaine, Marguerite Winter-Frappié de Montbenoît responded to the métis question, an ongoing debate involving anthropologists, government officials, and others regarding the legal, social, and “scientific” ramifications of being métis. As the president of la Française Créole—The French Creole, a Paris-based organization that since at least 1909 had been providing opportunities for social gatherings for French men and women from the old colonies, including La Réunion, Martinique , Guadeloupe, and French Guiana—she saw in the illegitimacy that marked the children of mixed race the seeds of sedition: “these children of indefinite race stay on the margins of society and become a danger in their legitimate revolt.”1 She broadened her analysis of these concerns in another article in which she called métis the “péchés de ces Messieurs,” or “these men’s minor transgressions.”2 More of a gentle rebuke than a slap across the face, this carefully worded phrase well reflects the delicate position in which Frenchwomen 6 172 “These Men’s Minor Transgressions” found themselves when confronting colonialism. Métis was not the only topic that demanded such careful handling; French men repeatedly “transgressed” with various actions and inactions that women deftly understated as “minor.” The white Frenchwomen involved in La Dépêche Africaine also included the lawyer Yvonne Netter, the social activist Marguerite Martin, and the writer Lucie Cousturier. Their names, and those of the writers Marthe Oulié and Denise Moran, likewise surfaced in the pages of the feminist newspaper La Française, published in Paris. They were not the wives of anti-imperialists, struggling to reconcile their personal lives and their politics, but they had in common with these wives a desire to make their voices heard in an imperial nation. As a result, understanding how feminists absorbed colonialism invites us to explore not just their social and political backgrounds but also the extent to which the print matter they produced reflected changes in a public sphere shaped by negrophilia and reverse exoticism, amongst other colonial discourses. Because these women published in Paris and lived there at least occasionally, exploring why they came to write about colonialism and what they said reveals how the city became a colonial metropolis. It did so in part as a result of its centrality in the dissemination of the print matter of both the colonizers and the colonized. The content of publications emanating from Paris also discloses how women writers and their audiences absorbed or rejected, but in any case were introduced to, a range of stances on colonialism. As a colonial metropolis, Paris not only allowed white women to come into contact with black colonial citizens and subjects, but also placed women of very different persuasions, feminisms, and backgrounds in contact with one another —inviting them to exchange multiple perspectives on the impact of colonialism and the links between feminism and colonialism. Paris acted as a clearing house through which authors and journalists transferred their ideas via books, articles, and encounters. “The multiple misdeeds of colonialism”? Why Women Started Thinking about Colonialism and Race Like their predecessors who had focused upon slavery and abolitionism , Frenchwomen during the interwar years positioned themselves as mediators between France and her colonies.3 These outspoken wom- “These Men’s Minor Transgressions” 173 en were all the more remarkable because their expressions of dissent were disproportionate to the presence of women in the colonies acquired during the second wave of imperialism.4 The first attempt to send women overseas was organized by the French Colonial Union, an organization designed to defend colonial commercial interests as well as the colonizers themselves. When the Society for the Emigration of Women to the Colonies was created by the French...