Marie Huot
{{short description|French writer and activist}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Marie Huot
| image = Portrait of Marie Huot.jpg
| birth_name = Mathilde Marie Constance Ménétrier
| birth_date = 28 June 1846
| birth_place = Yonne, France
| death_date = {{d-da|13 April 1930|28 June 1846}}
| death_place = Paris, France
| occupation = Activist, writer
| spouse = {{marriage| Anatole-Théodore-Marie Huot|1869}}
}}
Marie Huot (born Mathilde Marie Constance Ménétrier; 28 June 1846 – 13 April 1930) was a French poet, writer, feminist, and animal rights and vegetarianism activist.
Biography
Mathilde Marie Constance Ménétrier was born in 1846. In 1869, she married Anatole-Théodore-Marie Huot, the editor of the leftist Parisian review, L'Encyclopédie Contemporaine Illustrée.{{Cite web|url=https://www.cahiersdelunite.com/ivan-agueli|title=Nouveaux éclairages sur Ivan Aguéli|last=Brecq|first=Mahdî|date=2017|website=Cahiers de l'Unité|language=fr|trans-title=New lights on Ivan Aguéli|access-date=2020-04-15}} She was a close friend of the Swedish anarchist, impressionist painter Ivan Aguéli, whom she indirectly introduced to Sufism{{Cite book|last=Sedgwick|first=Mark|title=Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2009|isbn=978-0-19-539601-0|location=Oxford|pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=kbARDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA60 60–61]|language=en}} and dedicated her collection of symbolism poems Le Missel de Notre-Dame des Solitudes ("The Missal of Our Lady of Solitudes").{{Cite web|url=https://www.cahiersdelunite.com/3-agueli|title=Nouveaux éclairages sur Ivan Aguéli (III)|last=Brecq|first=Mahdî|date=2018|website=Cahiers de l'Unité|language=fr|trans-title=New insights into Ivan Aguéli (III)|access-date=2020-04-15|quote=À mon frère d’armes, à l’artiste fervent Ivan Aguéli (en religion Abdul Hâdi) [To my brother in arms, to the 'fervent artist Ivan Aguéli (in religion Abdul Hâdi)']}}
Huot was an advocate for animal rights and member of the Parisian animal protection society,{{Cite book|last=Kete|first=Kathleen|title=The Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth-century Paris|publisher=University of California Press|year=1994|isbn=978-0-520-07101-8|location=Berkeley, California|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=3QF3EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA16 16]|language=en}} founder of the Popular League against Vivisection{{Citation|last=Traïni|first=Christophe|title=(Animal) victims and social domination|date=2016|work=The Animal Rights Struggle|pages=125–156|series=An Essay in Historical Sociology|publisher=Amsterdam University Press|jstor=j.ctt1jd94gh.10|isbn=978-90-8964-849-5}} and France's first hospice for animals. She was famous for a number of spectacular activist actions. In 1886, she interrupted a lecture by Louis Pasteur at the Sorbonne University, for using dogs in animal testing. Once, at Collège de France, she hit the Mauritian scientist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard over the head with a parasol for having performed a vivisection on a monkey. In 1900, she helped Ivan Aguéli in his attack on two matadors at a French bullfight.
Active in the French Neo-Malthusianism movement, Huot was the originator of the expression "la grève des ventres" ("strike of the bellies" or "birth strike").{{Cite book|last=Martínez-Alier|first=Joan|title=The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation|publisher=Edward Elgar Publishing|year=2003|isbn=978-1-84376-548-6|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=4JIzg4PUotcC&pg=PA51 51]|language=en}} In 1892, Huot delivered a public conference, in which she demanded free access to abortion and contraception. At this conference, Huot also advocated for the voluntary extinction of the human race by refusal to procreate, both out of compassion for human suffering and the suffering that humans inflict on animals. This was later published, in 1909, as Le Mal de Vivre ("The Pain of Living").{{Cite book|last=Huot|first=Marie|title=Le Mal de Vivre|publisher=Génération Consciente|year=1909|location=Paris}}
Selected publications
= Articles =
- "[https://www.cahiers-antispecistes.org/le-droit-des-animaux/ Le Droit des Animaux]" ("Animal Law"), La Revue socialiste, Iss. 6, 1887, pp. 47–56
= Books =
- Le Missel de Notre-Dame des Solitudes ("The Missal of Our Lady of Solitudes") (Paris: E. Sansot, 1908) (preface by Rachilde)
- [https://www.tpsalomonreinach.mom.fr/Reinach/MOM_TP_129996/MOM_TP_129996_0001/PDF/MOM_TP_129996_0001.pdf Le Mal de Vivre] ("The Pain of Living") (Paris: Génération Consciente, 1909)
References
{{Reflist}}
{{Animal rights|state=uncollapsed|advocates}}
{{Authority control}}
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Category:French anti-vivisectionists
Category:French anti-vaccination activists
Category:French animal rights activists
Category:French feminist writers
Category:French vegetarianism activists