2023-06-17 08:02:36
This is a first for the Corseuntil now largely absent from the calendar of the pride month. This Saturday, the meeting is indeed given at 5 p.m. in front of the Bastia courthouse for a militant and festive stroll, followed by an evening in a local bar. “It’s a culmination, since the association was born a lot of people wanted a march to be organized”, rejoices Mattea Riu, member of the LGBT + association L’Arcu founded in 2019 in Corsica, and who has recruited about twenty new members this year. “The most important thing for us is to meet and come together, to be visible in the public space, to show that we are there, in our multiple identities. »
“We want to walk together so that no Corsica will ever have to choose between living their life to the full, their loves and a daily life here”, also writes the association in its press release. The appeal is supported by associations, unions and left-wing parties. “We hope there will be a lot of people, from all over the island, we have to fight to assert our right to exist,” smiles Silver Maestrati, member of L’Arcu, who makes his way from Ajaccio.
In June 2020, a same-sex couple was attacked in this city for kissing in public outside a bar. The association also recalls the “violent physical attacks” against a couple of men “in July 2021 in Macinaggio (Haute-Corse), “simply for having danced together and having shown tenderness “, as well as that of December 2021, at Nice“by men claiming to be Corsican” who would have assured: “with us, the queers, we kill them”.
“Being lesbian or gay in Paris or Bastia is not the same”
“The culture of patriarchy here is even worse,” laments Silver Maestrati, who describes in particular the silence imposed in families “because you must not be different”. And also a form of “cowardice”: “We are not necessarily going to tell you things to your face, but on the other hand there will be a dark look. The violence is perhaps even worse, insidious”. Not to mention the “insular cliché of identity”: “As a queer or LGBT community, we are also told that we are not Corsicans, that we are not part of the community. That said, it’s a very identity discourse like there is everywhere in France, certainly with a cultural particularism, but basically the same type of discourse. »
For Mattea Riu, if “insularity necessarily plays a role”, Corsica is not, according to her, “an exceptional territory for violence or tolerance”. “Afterwards, it’s not the same to be lesbian or gay in Paris or Bastia,” she continues nonetheless. It’s like coming from rural areas, where everyone knows each other in the villages. “On social networks, the announcement of the pride march in Bastia in any case reacted. Angry tweets immediately reported. “It’s a noisy minority”, sweeps Mattea Riu preferring, like Silver Maestrati, to see the support for the advancement of the LGBT cause in Corsica… and elsewhere.
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