47

This article explores the situation of lesbians of North African descent, their relationships with their families and their possible feeling of membership of the gay and lesbian community in France. It analyzes the emergence of a lesbian subject through the complex configuration formed by the social relations of sex, race, class and sexuality. This article is based on eight interviews with women between 25 to 38 years old who are confronted with paradoxical injunctions with respect to the what are considered the social standards of coming-out, family loyalty and heteronormativity. These women live in a state of permanent ambivalence. A situation which allows the construction of tacit, ambivalent and uncertain subjects.