Homicidal, marginal, notorious collaborator... her controversial death demonized Violette Morris, and overshadowed the life that preceded it. Yet the woman whom newspapers dubbed "our country's most intrepid sportswoman" was undeniably a pioneer. A multi-medalist sportswoman, Cocteau's inspiration and a hugely popular figure, she freed herself early on from all the limitations associated with her gender, refusing to accept the femininity imposed on her by the times, wearing a suit and short hair, accepting her homosexuality and her decision never to give birth. Rejected by both conservative society and the feminist activists of her time, she embodied a challenge to gendered binarity that disturbed everyone at the time. New research today offers a new reading of the destiny of the woman who played a key role in her contemporaries' access to sport, the wearing of pants and the right to assert themselves outside a man's shadow.

Homicidal, marginal, notorious collaborator... her controversial death demonized Violette Morris, and overshadowed the life that preceded it. Yet the woman whom newspapers dubbed "our country's most intrepid sportswoman" was undeniably a pioneer. A multi-medalist sportswoman, Cocteau's inspiration and a hugely popular figure, she freed herself early on from all the limitations associated with her gender, refusing to accept the femininity imposed on her by the times, wearing a suit and short hair, accepting her homosexuality and her decision never to give birth. Rejected by both conservative society and the feminist activists of her time, she embodied a challenge to gendered binarity that disturbed everyone at the time. New research today offers a new reading of the destiny of the woman who played a key role in her contemporaries' access to sport, the wearing of pants and the right to assert themselves outside a man's shadow.