Illegitimate affairs: The sex of politics and the politics of sex in French contemporary politics

Abstract

Is it necessary to draw on details from a person’s ‘private life’ to describe his (or her) ‘public life’? During fieldwork conducted on the politics of a medium-sized French city, the authors garnered a good amount of information – real or alleged – about the sexuality of local elected officials (most often women). Rather than keeping sexuality out of the scope of their research, as is common in social sciences, the authors examine how it is used locally to interpret political life. They look at two elected municipal officials with atypical career paths whose rapid rise to power defied the common rules of political selection, and who were rumoured to engage in romantic relationships with men who benefitted from a greater political capital. The study addresses two dimensions: social explanation by sexuality, which requires analysing the social functions of rumours; and the sociological explanation of sexuality, which implies examining the political role of sexuality. For both of these dimensions, the authors draw from analyses of the political context: the use of these sexual explanations does not make sense per se, but can only be understood within the context local politics in France during the 2000s, shaped by the application of the parity law. Finally, the demonstration leads the authors to plead in favour of normalizing the analysis of intimate relationships.