Arria Ly, figure of feminism in Toulouse in the 20th century
The Lotoise Joséphine Gondon, alias Arria Ly, is a figure of feminism in France. In 1910, she ran for the legislative elections in Toulouse, when women did not have the right to vote. The departmental archives of Haute-Garonne present his electoral poster.
Joséphine Gondon is an activist and journalist who has counted in the history of the feminist struggle.
Born in 1881 in Cieurac, in the Lot, she represents the radical wing of the French feminist movement. Better known by her pseudonym, Arria Ly, she campaigns for absolute equality between men and women.
At that time, at the time of the second wave of feminism which emerged in the 18th century, demands were organized around four points: women’s right to vote, their education, the right to divorce and equal pay. Arria Ly has subscribed to it, but also makes more radical demands: the young woman is indeed campaigning for the right to self-defense against male aggression and claims the right to provoke men into a duel. What she will do besides at the beginning of the 20th century, when she will bless a doctor whom she considers responsible for the death of her father. A gesture that made her known in the media in particular and which earned her to be tried and then acquitted in 1904.
At the end of this trial, Arria Ly must leave Grenoble. She moved to Toulouse with her mother. It was there that in 1910, she ran for the legislative elections, when women did not yet have the right to vote (they did not obtain it until 1944!) and that she was therefore not eligible. She is obviously not elected, and in the event of victory, her election would have been invalidated.
The radicalism of his commitment gives him a certain notoriety but is not to the liking of the media. Thus, the newspaper Frou-Frou, in 1911, wrote: “Miss Ly! You no longer have the happy age when pranks are corrected by spankings. You have where that of the famous showers can restore the balance of the organism. I allow myself to advise you to use it…“.
In 1934, desperate by the death of her mother, she made a first suicide attempt by throwing herself into the Baltic Sea, in Stockholm where she lives. Rescued and then interned, she repeated her gesture two months later by throwing herself from the roof of a sixteen-storey building.
This extraordinary woman, who created her own newspaper, Combat féministe, in Haute-Garonne between 1912 and 1913, is one of the female figures who will be mentioned, this Tuesday, March 8, International Women’s Rights Day, at the Departmental archives of Haute-Garonne.
From 5.30 p.m., the archives offer an original visit to the collections through several female figures from the history of the department. And this, from the Middle Ages until today.
Marie-Louise Dissart, known as Françoise, a great resistance fighter, Paule de Viguier, the Marquise de Pompadour, Marthe Condat, the first holder of a chair of medicine, Marthe Canal, conductor will be mentioned there, as well as, of course, Arria Ly .