French writer, philosopher and activist Monique Wittig was BOTD in 1935. Born Dannemarie, Haut-Ruin, she moved to Paris in 1950 to study at the Sorbonne, earning a doctorate in languages at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Her 1964 debut novel L’Opoponax became an overnight success, winning the Prix Médicis and praised by literary stars including Mary McCarthy, Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet. She became heavily involved in the Paris student protests of 1968. Rankling at the male domination of the protests, she shifted her focus to the emerging feminist movement, co-founding the radical feminist group Mouvement de libération des femmes. In 1969, she published Les Guérillères (The Guerillas), a fantasy novel about female warriors who lead bloody battles against male society, distracting men by baring their breasts before killing them and displaying their flayed skins. Attracting praise and ridicule, it became her most read, translated and debated book. Her 1973 novel Les Corps lesbien (The Lesbian Body) continued her exploration of lesbian sexuality as a radical act, describing her lesbian protagonists invading each other’s bodies as an act of love. In her 1976 book Brouillon pour un dictionnaire des amantes (Draft for a Lesbian Dictionary), co-written with her partner Sande Zeig. Their ideas frequently placed them at odds with mainstream feminists, prompting them to leave France in 1976. They settled in Tuscon, Arizona, where Wittig established the women’s studies department at the University of Arizona. Her 1982 essay collection The Straight Mind brought her to a wider international audience. In the essay “The Category of Sex”, she famously argued that lesbians were not women because gender was a function of patriarchy, and called for the abolition of essentialist notions of sex. She also praised the writings of Marcel Proust and Djuna Barnes for their fluid presentation of gender. In 2000, Wittig and Zeig collaborated on the lesbian-themed love story The Girl. Wittig lived with Zeig until her death in 2003, aged 67. Now viewed as one of the major feminist thinkers of the 20th century, her work was a major influence on the development of queer theory, particularly in Judith Butler‘s book Gender Trouble.