Editorial Notes (Edition Zero)

Since 2022, a particular political sequence has been playing out in our communities. As the transphobic wave crashed all around us without quite reaching us, radical queer circles began to shake off their torpor. Between 2022 and 2023, we saw seeds start to sprout were we didn't know they existed. A variety of initiatives sprang up all over the place, emerging from the self-organization of our communities on a much more radical basis than we'd ever seen before. This burgeoning of initiatives put up a strong dam against the wave of hatred when it sought to intrude here too. 2023 thus gave us many spectacles of confrontation between transphobes and organized queers. The frenzy of demonstrations, counter-demonstrations, festivals, events, encounters, texts and much more that has followed has given rise to a movement that didn't exist before or had disappeared sometime in the past.

We are now participating in and witnessing the emergence of a multifaceted and energetic queer revolutionary force. Yet there's still a lot of work to be done. Many of us accompanied the emergence of this movement and came out the other side, two years later, with a bittersweet taste. Our victories have not been enough to stem the tide of hatred, and the ground we have gained over the liberal hegemony is, in the end, very thin and not very secured. The desire to multiply our approaches and tactics has been growing: we'll still need to be in the streets and organize on the ground, but we're now convinced of the need to create spaces where we can pause and reflect over the long term. 

To make our future struggles stronger and richer, and to encourage others to join us, we wanted to embark on an original project: media, magazine, think tank, community infrastructure, meeting point and space for conflict, Front Rose was created in the hope that it would offer us something new, something we've been missing. It brings together those who have been at the heart of recent mobilizations, as well as queers disillusioned with their community who are taking a step towards revolutionary politics, and revolutionaries who choose to engage their queerness in the struggle. Front Rose a été créé dans l’espoir qu’il nous offre quelque chose de nouveau, quelque chose qui nous a manqué. S’y rejoignent celleux qui ont été au coeur des mobilisations récentes, mais aussi des queer déçu·es de leur communauté faisant un pas vers la politique révolutionnaire, et des révolutionnaires choisissant d’engager leur queerness dans leur effort de lutte.

Front Rose is not a queer lifestyle magazine.

It's not a cultural magazine.

It's not a courrier du cœur or the who's who of queerness.

It's not the paper form of the queer Instagram.

Nor is it an academic magazine ready to churn out the 101st incomprehensible Butler review or to debate the nature of the abstract.

Front Rose seeks to encourage and support the expression of thoughts that may sometimes be less structured, and not necessarily analytical. We want to give birth to something that belongs to the militant movement, something that emerges from our revolutionary practices and desires. Something that serves us in our lives and in our struggles. A space where the term revolution is not scandalous, where we spit on bourgeois justice and where the rejection of this capitalist, imperialist and patriarchal world goes without saying. The Front Rose collective is not yet another activist group; rather, our project is to underpin the development of a capacity for political and strategic reflection, specifically within the radical queer community of course, but bridging queer and other struggles from a revolutionary position; tending towards a greater strength of revolutionary politics in popular consciousness.

Front Rose is an expansive autonomous space full of possibilities, but also a train well on its way: towards the development, with people and in community, of revolutionary queer thinking. We want to read and write texts that light fires in our hearts, that this space be one of encounter and conflict of ideas, and that it offer a counterweight to liberal hegemony. Let us take a step back to reflect collectively on our capacity for action, the needs of our communities and the best strategies to adopt, so that we can move forward together. It's a place where we can compare notes, put our intuitions into words, change our minds, keep abreast of the latest developments, make known the resources and groups that are relevant to our lives and projects, and learn from and help each other. May it lay the foundations for the movement's political autonomy. May this space be one of revolutionary love and pleasure.

We're just getting started, but we've taken the time to deliberate on what we want to build. Amongst our plans are a magazine aimed at those who wish to inscribe their thinking in the long term, a virtual presence to touch on current events and make struggles more visible, as well as audio-visual projects. In addition, we're planning events, training courses, discussions and much more. So that ideas leave the pages and animate our commons.

We invite you, our readers, to join us on this journey. Whether this project awakens in you a deep enthusiasm and a desire to join us, or a simple curiosity about what's to come, it's with you that we want to make Front Rose. We'll need you, whether for one-off or ongoing help, for collaborations, text submissions, project ideas, for distribution and dissemination of print and virtual content, or simply to read us, to form a community with us and make Front Rose a project worth investing in.

With love and rage,
The Front Rose Editorial Board