A rainbow flag unfurled in a field serves as the colorful cover of a book by Elodie Potente, published by Le Passager Clandestin and unveiled on October 3 at the Terra Nova bookstore in Toulouse. The book was discussed in an interview with Mediacités on the occasion of the International Coming Out Day on October 11. Potente, an independent journalist and collaborator with Mediacités, writes from the margins of being both a lesbian and a rural resident. She describes these dual identities as two forms of invisibility that coexist and amplify each other. Potente grew up in the Tarn and now resides in the Comminges. When asked whether her primary identity is queer or rural, she states that she is first and foremost rural, as this aspect fills more of her daily life. The main objective of her book was to build upon the reflection initiated by her 2023 podcast "Champs queers." After reading many sociological books on rural and queer history, she found no complete document and therefore wanted to bring together all these stories and combine them with her own, which is both unique and resembles that of many others who have returned to rural areas. She aimed to highlight the intersection between these two forms of invisibility and oppression. She also wanted to counter the idea that rural areas are either poor or super territories by showing the nuances. In these areas, a lot is happening socially. Potente's personal journey has influenced her journalistic practice. She notes that journalistic neutrality is often emphasized, but journalists always come from somewhere and do not choose their subjects by chance. She chooses those linked to her territory or personal life, as a woman, lesbian, and rural person. She could not exclude herself from this narrative, even if it is a difficult exercise for her to speak in the first person. Her journalism is about telling the stories of people to whom we rarely lend an ear, stories that we hear in fragments. She is also interested in the movement of rural pride marches, which began in 2022. She has cataloged 40 in 2025, noting that it is a place where a political discourse is built. Potente was raised with the idea that girls should be good, well behaved, and occupy a discreet place. Her politicization began late, at 29 years old. She comes from a modest middle class, with parents who were an employee and a worker. She was raised with the idea that girls grow differently from boys. Her older brother had more freedom. The first thing that allowed her to emancipate was school. However, she was a very good student and wanted to stay within the lines. Even in journalism, at first, she was afraid of her shadow, wanted to remain consensual, fit into the mold, and not talk about LGBT topics. In local digital media and regional weekly press, where she first worked, she did not say that she was a lesbian. She did not want people to question what she said, because she was an activist. It is a strong injunction, which Alice Coffin talks about very well in Le Génie lesbien. She also took ten years to come out to her parents. Her homosexuality was not something she claimed, even though she lived in a village with her partner. By not being visible, she missed out on her political identity. She had to go to the Drôme and understand the issues of these territories to be able to emancipate herself. Her politicization began when she participated in the pride march in Crest in 2022. She settled there in 2018, at the end of her studies, which she completed in Toulouse. She needed to change the air and found a job there. She stayed there for six years and participated in the creation of a local rural digital media. When she arrived, she was not aware of what it would lead to. In 2022, during the pride march in Crest, she felt at home, finally. Her experience of life in Toulouse challenged the myths she associated with the city. She first lived in Albi, then in Vichy and Metz, before arriving in Toulouse, the big city of her original territory. It was an escape, linked to what the American academic J. Jack Halberstam calls the "metro-normativity" of cities, the idea that one can only live a queer life in a big city. Encouraged by pop culture and series like The L Word, she dreamed, as a teenager and young adult, of living her queer life freely. She had assumed that it would not be possible in rural areas. She loves Toulouse, had her friends there, but did not have the impression that one could hide so much there. She was disappointed by city life, as the promise of emancipation she had imagined was not fulfilled. In Toulouse, she could not live a queer socialization or a queer romantic life. There, queer socialization passes through the party, whereas in rural areas, one can socialize in other ways than through festive evenings. She was not in associations or in the organization of the pride march, surely because she is not urban. In fact, she did not manage to flourish in Montreal when she did an internship there. She speaks of solidarities, resistances, and experiences carried out in rural territories, and qualifies them as "rural genius." The expression is borrowed from Alice Coffin, who theorized the "lesbian genius." The first rural genius is to manage to make entire territories function without having the same public services or the same opportunities offered by the state as cities. The MJC (which are sometimes the only cultural facility in rural areas, NDLR) are the perfect example of places that function because people have fought for them, they have found alternatives. The way of fighting proposed by rural territories is a model to follow. It is enough to see the determination of the populations to bring doctors or maintain their train line. There is a strong history of rural struggles, on which it would be a pity not to rely. One can also look at the ecological struggles against projects, such as that of Tony Parker to buy a ski station to put a four-star hotel in the Vercors. An entire territory mobilized against this project, and it didn't matter who voted what in the presidential elections. Without counting solidarity? Yes, there is this link, which is becoming more tenuous, that exists between neighbors, or with the local farmer, whose land we will buy. She sees the territory as a community. We take care of each other, because we have no choice. She saw it during the agricultural crisis of December 2025, where people camped on the motorway, blocked strategic roundabouts. All this is rural genius. And if we want to reweave the social link and fight against fascism, we must draw inspiration from what we know how to do. The role of local officials to preserve the vitality of rural territories, support these struggles, and make queer people visible is important. They can provide material support, and not only financial support to our events. With the Qlac, the Alternative Queer Lesbian Collective of the Comminges, she organized on July 10 a screening of Outliers and Outlaws in Malvezie, in the presence of the American director Judith Raiskin. The documentary speaks about the experimentation of lesbian lands in Oregon in the 1970s. Not only did the city hall provide the community hall, but part of the council came to the screening. To support LGBTQIA+ people, it is necessary to be interested in the subject, try to take care of these people, who are sometimes isolated. In villages, mayors act as social workers and plumbers, they have the role of ensuring that everyone is integrated, that life is peaceful. And if there are discriminations, it is necessary for the municipal council to take a position. One often senses a reluctance, although elected officials have the mission to protect all their residents. She addresses in her book the role of LGBT officials. They are very few to be visible in France. She cites the example of Sarah Persil, the ecological vice-president of the Bourgogne-Franche Comté Region, in charge of youth and associative life. She is very militant on LGBTQIA+ issues, especially in rural areas, where she lives. It is essential to have this kind of officials, who ensure that LGBTQIA+ issues are taken into account, because this allows for improving representativeness, and to be able to say "why not me." It is often enough for an official to say that he himself is homosexual or that this subject resonates with him, to lead the others. In the Drôme, two officials, because they had been confronted with this problem in their village, embarked an entire community council to train on the fight against violence against women. The message of officials is crucial. A person she met in the Morvan, Mars, suffered a lot of transphobia. The day his mayor gendered him normally and shook his hand, he told her he felt that ordinary transphobia no longer had a place in the village. There is an urgency not to compromise! Her book is a cry of anger against the fact that rural territories and queer people are too often forgotten or invisibilized in public policies. But it also carries a message of hope. A better world is possible, thanks to the alternatives that already exist in rural territories. With the people around her in rural areas, she has a common language, they try to think together. They are what remains of a society not completely individualistic. Every five years, we say "in rural areas, they vote RN." But we need to go further. We forget that queer people have always resisted, because LGBT issues remain on the margins. Before, the civil union was divisive, today it is transgender people who are. When she heard in 2025 at a roundtable in a militant festival, someone say that one could superimpose the RN voting map to the car usage map, it made her angry. This sentence contains all the ingredients of a caricatural and contemptuous portrait of "ploucs." In our territories, the car is not an ideological choice, it is a condition of existence. What is the solution to get out of this stigmatization? We need to rebuild relationships as much as possible. Political parties are quite bad at building relationships in rural areas, while RN gains visibility by shaking hands at markets. Six months before the presidential elections, many parties still overlook rural areas. We still remain in an approach very centered on metropolitan areas, while 22 million French people live in rural areas. We need to be interested in the geographical specificities of the territories, their traumas. There is a card to play for the parties of the republican arc. If we do not pay attention to people for five years, there is little chance they will put a ballot for us in the ballot box.