Her gender transition is not at the center of her campaign for the legislative elections of June 30 and July 7, 2024. This is not what Biarrote Éva Pernet first highlights in a program with diverse themes that she has stamped “centrist”, with coloring on the right (1). But she also wants to claim: “I am one of the first trans women to run for legislative elections, this is not trivial, I know that. I don’t hide anything, I discuss it very freely. And at the same time, I am here first and foremost because I am passionate about politics and I want to get involved. »
To be able to be a candidate for deputy, to show the “F” on her identity card which formalizes her gender in all aspects of her administrative and social life, for her, is to be in continuity. “Being there, introducing myself, means that I am a citizen like any other,” she smiles. I am aware of the hatred I can arouse in some people. I’m preparing for it. But this right to have visibility, the right to act as an ordinary person: I grant it to myself! »
“Dismantle the clichés”
The entrepreneur, founder of a “company in the field of neuroscience”, would be the fourth transgender woman candidate for deputy in France since 2002. After two ecologists and a communist in the Paris region and in the North. Where Éva Pernet stands out among these pioneers, in addition to her center-right positioning, is that she is running without the support of a party.
She has already experienced the difficulty of fighting without a label, without the support of a political apparatus. His trial run was in Béarn, on the 3e constituency, in 2022. Connections with the agricultural world had pushed her to start a stone’s throw from her stronghold of Biarritz. She did it “to see”.
“I don’t just show up once, like that, in passing. I would like to continue my political commitments”
She saw. Faced with structured training, candidates as anchored in the territory as the very successful outgoing socialist David Habib, and the number of applicants, it is impossible to exist as an independent. In the first round, she obtained a score of 0.46%, or 207 votes.
Nothing to discourage her: “A defeat brings experience,” she insists. And the desire to hang on. So this time, “when the dissolution was announced, I decided to go there to offer an alternative to the dubious alliances between each side”.
Although she admits to having “often voted left in the past”, she does not feel represented there today. Aren’t the struggles for the rights of LGBT+ people more supported by left-wing structures? Is it possible to be transgender and centre-right? Éva Pernet herself raises these questions to have fun with them and, she says, “to dismantle the clichés”.
Example taken from recent news. On June 19, Emmanuel Macron mocked the proposal of the New Popular Front which aims to authorize the free change of civil status at town hall for transgender people and describes it as “ubiquitous”. The left is outraged. For associations defending LGBT+ rights such as SOS Homophobia, the President of the Republic’s comments constitute transphobia.
” We’ll meet Again “
Éva Pernet believes, on the contrary, that “there is nothing transphobic”, praises the progress already obtained in this area, discusses her own case, says she was confronted with “a lot of goodwill” during her proceedings in court when she wanted to change legal sex. “It’s not that complicated,” she believes. The testimonies and certificates proving that she lived daily as a woman were enough for her. “That we make administration easier in general, yes. But I think it’s good to go through a judge: it has to be recorded so that there is traceability because it is not trivial. »
At 44, she sees her commitment to the race for the National Assembly as the start of a story that she wants to continue writing in her city of Biarritz, “a city of tolerance”. Regardless of her score, on the evening of June 30, her emerging visibility, she saw it as “the start of something. I don’t just introduce myself once, like that, in passing. I would like to continue my political commitments, continue to get involved. » And to already promise: “We will see each other again. »
(1) Like the other independent candidates, she was able to present her program on sudouest.fr and in the “Sud Ouest” Basque Country edition of June 26, 2024.
