On 5 October, the French public learned of the death of Hélène Hazera, a 74-year-old figure whose life bridged literature, radical politics and the fight for trans rights. Her story began in a privileged Parisian arrondissement, where she attended the renowned lycée Janson-de-Sailly. From an early age she was immersed in the books of her father—an engineer in organization—and her mother, an administrative attachée. The household shelves were stocked with Genet, Rimbaud, Verlaine and the manifestos of the Situationists, shaping a worldview that would later clash with the masculine expectations of her father.
As a teenager she covertly pilfered her mother’s scarves and lipsticks, later recounting the humiliation of trying, and failing, to fit into a size-38 heel. She later joked, “Les jeunes homos sortent du placard, les jeunes trans entrent dans le placard de leur mère.” The tension with her parents deepened when she began to understand herself as a woman; her father’s gaze became unbearable, prompting a brief period of street prostitution before she found a more sustainable path.
Radical experimentation in the early 1970s
Before reaching legal adulthood, Hazera gravitated toward the avant-garde fringe of the French gay liberation movement. She joined the Front homosexuel d’action révolutionnaire (FHAR), a collective that relished subverting left-wing orthodoxy. In 1972 she co-founded the Gazolines, a loosely organized group of roughly fifteen members, five of whom would later transition. The group’s ethos was a repudiation of rigid ideologies; members used satire to destabilise opponents. Hazera is credited with popularising two of FHAR’s most memorable slogans: “Prolétaires de tous les pays, caressez-vous” and “Gauchistes, desserrez les fesses.” She later reflected that she did not want her entire identity reduced to moments of “craziness”, emphasizing the seriousness that followed.
The 1970s also marked her personal transition, which she completed in 1973. Emerging from the process as an openly trans woman, Hazera broke new ground by securing a position at Libération thanks to editor Michel Cressole, who was actively seeking LGBT voices for the newspaper. There she crafted sharp columns on television, often reviewing programs she had not watched so that readers could discuss them at work. Her pen also produced the first mainstream articles on transidentité and the 1982 civil-status reform championed by radical senator Henri Caillavet.
Media influence and family reconciliation
Hazera’s presence in the newsroom gradually softened the relationship with her mother. A memorable anecdote recounts her mother spotting a copy of the paper in a taxi and proudly declaring that her daughter wrote for it, prompting the driver to refuse payment. Later, when Hazera launched a France Culture programme devoted to popular song—her lifelong passion—her mother left the radio on all day to avoid missing any segment. The journalist herself kept a physical archive, cutting out every article she authored as a personal collection.
Beyond print, Hazera’s voice reached radio listeners, reinforcing her role as a cultural mediator. She leveraged her platform to champion the visibility of trans people, arguing that representation in media could dismantle stigma. Her writing style blended humor with incisive critique, a legacy that inspired younger activists to adopt similar tactics.
AIDS crisis, activism and enduring legacy
The mid-1980s ushered in the AIDS epidemic, a period that claimed many of Hazera’s FHAR comrades, each funeral held at the iconic Père-Lachaise cemetery. Recognising the urgent need for solidarity, she entered the ranks of Act Up-Paris wielding a megaphone to denounce governmental neglect of prevention policies and to defend the rights of trans individuals and sex workers. She famously declared, “I moved from street prostitution to journalism. I will always defend prostitutes.”
In June 1999, Hazera authored a long-form piece for têtu titled “Les sœurs du boulevard Ney,” profiling Algerian trans sex workers—a work she described as one of her proudest achievements. Throughout her career, she remained committed to intersecting struggles, insisting that the fight for gender identity could not be separated from broader social justice movements.
Hélène Hazera’s death marks the end of a remarkable chapter in French activism, but her contributions—spanning the literary salon of her youth, the radical slogans of the FHAR, the newsroom columns that first named trans identity, and the streets of AIDS-era protests—continue to echo in contemporary debates on gender, media representation and minority rights.
