This article – which does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the owners of this site – originally appeared in French by Michel Carassou in November 2025
Through her response to the survey, and through her various contributions to Inversions and L’Amitié, several of Claude Cahun’s ideas on homosexuality emerge—ideas she expressed nowhere else as precisely.
Her conceptions rest largely on the theories of the English psychologist and philosopher Havelock Ellis, the founder of sexology. Ellis had strong connections in France: a friend of Remy de Gourmont, his books were translated and published by the Mercure de France, his literary agent was Sylvia Beach, and he was close to the anarchist circles of L’En-dehors. Cahun, who had read him since the end of the war and was now translating him, recognised Ellis as a guiding thinker. In Inversions she mentions him from the first issue; later she invokes him in defence of the journal, by soliciting—or fabricating¹⁰—a reply from him to the survey; and in her major text opening L’Amitié, she pays him warm homage after comparing him to a swallow (not gratuitously, but echoing something Ellis himself had written¹¹).
The personal and social philosophy she outlines owes much to him: on one side, a desire for the total development of the individual (“as complete a physical and intellectual development as is within them”, she writes); on the other, “the great ideals of socialism and pacifism”—meaning libertarian socialism. She adds that, in all matters connected to fraternity, homosexuals are better equipped than heterosexuals. In saying this, she takes some liberties with Ellis’s thought. This happens again when she borrows a judgement of his concerning what she calls “abnormal friendship”:
“Friendships that enter through the erotic gate attain an intimacy and contain an intellectually erotic charm that normal friendship between persons of the same sex cannot reach.”¹²
Here she acknowledges her interpretation is bold, “without guarantee from Havelock Ellis,” she admits; indeed, she has transformed his text by combining fragments of sentences and adding “between persons of the same sex”. Her aim is to define the relationship she advocates between two women or two men: a fulfilled relationship evolving from physical love towards friendship.
Although Ellis recognises inversion, respects individuals, and does not condemn their practices, he does not urge them to live their sexuality fully; rather, he advises sublimating it in intellectual work or social action. Is this not, ultimately, what Claude Cahun chose to do in her personal life and partnership?
In fact, nothing in Ellis’s views seems to trouble her, even if they are not always daring in matters of morality; when necessary, she takes liberties, adapting to homosexual relationships considerations that were originally purely heterosexual. She then turns to another English author, Edward Carpenter—friend and collaborator of Ellis (for Sexual Inversion), but himself a declared homosexual and activist. She refers to Carpenter in her second article in L’Amitié, “Friendship and Freedom”, evoking the “intermediate sex”, the subject of his widely disseminated book The Intermediate Sex (1908), never translated into French. According to Carpenter, this intermediate sex generates a new revolutionary class, composed of individuals with exceptional altruistic qualities, whom he no longer wishes to call homosexuals or inverts but uranists¹³. Cahun had already used the adjective uranian and, before the legal troubles, when the editors considered changing the title of Inversions, Urania was proposed.
Returning to Ellis: other themes of his—neo-Malthusian and already ecological—particularly interested Cahun: contraception and birth control, eugenics and child education. These themes are central to the book The Task of Social Hygiene, which Claude Cahun—then Lucie Schwob—had undertaken to translate. In her article “L’Amitié”, she alludes to this “eugenic ideal”; she envisages it for homosexuals, who can achieve it “negatively” (by not having children), and she offers a striking judgement: “Abstinence is a strength. It is the passive resistance of the prophet Gandhi.”
Thus, with Claude Cahun, we are far from a pejorative or victimised view of homosexuality. She offers a very elevated conception—intellectual and moral—and inscribes it in an activist project: the publication of a journal whose founding objective was clearly defined: writing “not about homosexuality but for homosexuality.” When presenting L’Amitié, she is animated by a strong desire to continue publication and to pursue a double struggle: for press freedom and for the promotion of homosexuality.
5. Claude Cahun’s Silence
Claude Cahun’s militant project was abruptly halted when the journal was banned. L’Amitié met the fate previously threatened for Inversions, and the two managers were brought before the 12th Correctional Chamber of the Paris courts. What is striking is that afterwards Claude Cahun never mentioned the case, nor even the existence of the journal. Why this silence, maintained until the end of her life?
The first reason seems to lie in her desire not to upset her father. In a letter to Charles-Henri Barbier of 21 January 1951, she admits she could neither have published Aveux non avenus during Maurice Schwob’s lifetime nor joined the Surrealist group he loathed. We may suppose she would not have wanted him to know of her collaboration with a homosexual journal.
After her father’s death she was able to join the Surrealists. But there, too, it would have been unthinkable to mention Inversions. André Breton’s homophobia was well known and, although he tolerated lesbians and accepted—grudgingly—that Cahun could come to the café dressed as a man and accompanied by Suzanne, he would hardly have welcomed any involvement in “pederastic” publication.
Another reason for her silence may lie in the hostile reactions to the journal. The satirical press attacked it viciously. Only L’En-dehors, the journal of individualist anarchists, directed by E. Armand, gave it support—and even that was measured. Cahun was certainly hurt by the hostile article in the Mercure de France, from which she had expected sympathy. She found herself extremely isolated in the face of a homophobic press that would have attacked her even more fiercely had it known the writer was a woman.
Time passed and morals evolved; she could have spoken later. Morals evolved, yes—but not the law. Measures criminalising homosexuality were introduced by the French state in 1942 and maintained after Liberation. Both communists and Gaullists promoted an outdated moral order. It was not a favourable moment for homosexual emancipation.
However, the main reason for Cahun’s silence is probably found in the court records¹⁴ of a trial that dragged on. Beyria and Lestrade were tried in first instance on 20 March 1926. Despite the pleadings of Me Ernest-Charles and Me Beffay, both were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment without parole and a 200-franc fine. The Court of Appeal reduced these penalties on 27 October 1926 to three months’ imprisonment and a 100-franc fine; the judgement was upheld by the Court of Cassation on 31 March 1927.
On one side, the defendants were represented by two lawyers. One of them, Me Ernest-Charles, was a leading figure at the Paris bar, a specialist in literary trials; also a literary critic, he was president of the National Journalists’ Union. We also note that they appealed the first judgement and then lodged a cassation plea—legal costs far exceeding the means of two postal workers at a time when legal aid did not exist.
On the other side, we notice that Claude Cahun’s name—nor those of Eugène Wilhelm or Henry-Marx—never appeared during the trial. The reasoning of the Court of Cassation shows the defence strategy (likely devised with Wilhelm): “[…] the defendants, both former¹⁵ postal workers, do not appear to have taken any personal part in writing the journal; their role seems to have consisted merely in receiving anonymous articles and handling their printing and sale.”
There is no doubt they were well defended for such a version of events to be accepted. Thus their roles were minimised and the involvement of any other person denied. None of the contributors were questioned.
We can infer a tacit agreement within the editorial team: Cahun, Wilhelm, and perhaps Henry-Marx took charge of the legal matters, but their names were never to appear.
They spared no effort. In the end, sentences were reduced, but Beyria and Lestrade still served time in prison. Through the two managers, the journal was condemned for offending public morals, for “insidious incitement to the most repugnant of vices”, and for “the grave danger of promoting and propagating contraception methods,” and for “neo-Malthusian methods” seen as threatening “the future of the race.”
Contraception and neo-Malthusian ideas—these were precisely what Claude Cahun, in particular, sought to promote in Inversions, and which formed the grounds for the conviction of the two managers, legally responsible for the content. Unable to assume this responsibility vis-à-vis her father, we can imagine her guilt, her wish to bury the whole affair, her determination never to mention it again.
At the end of this extraordinary trial—which brought the history of Inversions to a close—it becomes clear that, for Claude Cahun, living her homosexuality openly was one thing, but expressing it publicly was quite another.
True, she later published Aveux non avenus, a book in which homosexuality appears, but in veiled terms. She also continued her advocacy for birth control, translating Ellis’s The Task of Social Hygiene. With difficulty, she persuaded the Mercure de France to publish the first volume, but the second—more focused on education, pacifism and socialism—was rejected.
Above all, she organised her life in accordance with her ideals. Of her conviction regarding the special gifts of homosexual couples for matters of fraternity, she and Suzanne would later give a beautiful demonstration through their political engagement and Resistance activity.
Michel Carassou
Claude Cahun 
Leave a comment