Journalist Naomi Titti’s interest in gender and sexuality took hold at university, and blossomed when she began working at the Paris-based podcast production company Binge Audio. In 2024, the 26-year-old took over as host for two of Binge’s biggest podcasts, Les Couilles sur la table and Le Cœur sur la table. Earlier this year, she spent three months writing and hosting the audio documentary, “After Mazan,” a four-part series on the 2024 Mazan rape trial — the first audio documentary she wrote completely independently. When she’s not working on a podcast, you might spot her in Paris’s Belleville neighborhood, making a stop at the fromager at the market in Place des Fêtes, or catching a film at the Max Linder cinema in the 9th arrondissement.
on her morning routine
I often set my alarm for 7:45, and I snooze it until 8:00 or 8:15 depending on the day. Then, I start by taking a shower. I very rarely put on makeup, but I do my hair, get dressed, and put on jewelry. I always wear rings and earrings too — if I forget them, I feel like I’m going out naked.
When I have time for something to eat, I have breakfast, either while watching a video on YouTube or listening to a podcast. Then I go to work. It’s pretty rare that I work from home. I could do it more, but it’s not really my thing.
I always have a podcast playing on all my commutes, too. I live in the suburbs, so I take the metro to go everywhere. I try to keep track of what I listen to so I can remember things.
on the podcasts she produces
Les Couilles sur la table is a feminist podcast about masculinities. The podcast was created by Victoire Tuaillon in 2017. Starting in 2020, I became its producer (sometimes alongside others), and since September 2024, I’ve taken over as the main host, co-presenting the show with Tal Madesta. Le Cœur sur la table is a documentary podcast about how love and relationships, in the broadest sense, are shaped by systems of domination and how we can build deep, meaningful connections today, without waiting for the end of patriarchy, racism, or capitalism. I’ve been producing this podcast since Victoire created it in 2021, and since September 2024, I’ve taken on its editorial supervision. I’ve also become a host within Le Cœur sur la table: I co-wrote the five-part documentary “Suis-je lesbienne?” (“Am I a Lesbian?”) with Emilia Roig, known as Rio Indigo on the podcast — that was the first audio documentary I co-wrote. And I’m currently editing another documentary co-written with the author Mihena Alsharif.
on deciding to create an audio documentary on the Mazan rape trial
I remember very clearly the first time my colleagues and I read about this case in Lorraine de Foucher’s big article in Le Monde. At the time, she had anonymized everyone and basically recounted the facts and the case. It was still under investigation. The article was published long before the trial began.
When we saw it, we were both shocked by the case itself, but also really struck by the fact that so many men were accused — because it’s very rare for it to be that way around. Usually, it’s one man accused and many victims.
Here, it was the opposite, and that the profiles of the men were so varied, in terms of age, social background, race. Their lives were all different from one another, and yet they were all accused of more or less the same acts — with, of course, Dominique Pelicot standing apart from the rest. The fact that there was such a broad range of perpetrators really made us feel that this obviously said something about masculinity, and about the male relationship to sexuality, at least from a heterosexual point of view. Which is, in fact, at the heart of Les couilles sur la table. We knew that we’d have to find a way to cover this case.
on focusing on the structural factors behind sexual violence
I really wanted to approach this case in a way that looks at the structures of power and how violence is made possible, not only by the men who commit it but also by the entire system around them that either encourages it or lets these crimes slide without doing much to prevent them from happening again.
I wanted to see this case really as a kind of archetype of sexual violence. People often said that the defendants were a representative sample of French society. It’s not entirely true, but it is true that there were very different profiles among the men who raped Gisèle Pellicot. They were men from many different backgrounds, who didn’t necessarily know each other. Yet the overwhelming majority of them didn’t really see what they had done wrong.
So what interested me was trying to understand: What causes ordinary men to get to that point? What leads them to commit such serious crimes, and leave such deep scars in a woman’s life and in the lives of everyone around her? That was the starting point. Through the words of the people involved — the accused themselves, but also their families or their lawyers — we could show the ways they justified their actions.
Given the current state of institutions — the police, the justice system — and the way lawyers defend the accused, and even the way relatives respond, it’s actually very difficult to prevent these kinds of crimes. Everything encourages men to commit them, whether through negligence, minimizing their actions, or planting false ideas in their heads about what consent is.
So the idea behind the documentary was to look at all the angles of responsibility that allowed such a crime to happen, and also to suggest ways of changing things — both in terms of how perpetrators think, and in terms of how sexual violence cases are handled by the justice system, which is deplorable in France at the moment.
on discovering political feminism
I come from a very political family. Both my parents were, for a long time, members of the Communist parties in their respective countries — my father is Cameroonian and my mother is French. So, politics was always part of my family environment to such an extent that I almost didn’t notice it. I was political by reflex, but it wasn’t yet something I had fully internalized. And I grew up in a working-class suburb to the northwest of Paris called Gennevilliers, so I was rarely directly confronted with racism in my daily life. It was a very mixed place, at least in ethno-racial terms.
When I went to university, I began to see things differently. I participated in my first-ever blockade. I think that coincided with the moment when I became more aware of my feminist convictions. I find that interesting, because I think my trajectory is quite different compared to others in my current circles — in media, for instance — which are very white environments, where people often come from families that were either not political at all or politically conservative, and they had to unlearn their family beliefs to develop their current outlook. For me, it was more about singularizing myself. Feminist politicization was really my own; it wasn’t something I was taught in childhood. It was also around then that I started having girlfriends, and later really identifying as a lesbian. Everything sort of came together and intertwined at that point.
on experiencing culture shock within her own family
Even though I didn’t come from a poor family at all — my mother is a pediatrician — I really saw what cultural capital was when I started my master’s degree in cultural journalism at Paris 3, the Sorbonne. Everyone there had done a prep school, everyone had been watching art films forever, reading highbrow literature, and so on. Whereas even though I had always been a good student and read all the school books, I just didn’t have the same cultural background as my classmates. There was also the fact that while I grew up near Paris, I didn’t have a Parisian cultural life at all.
I realized that to become a journalist, I was going to have to accumulate a lot of things on my own that hadn’t been given to me from the start. I just did a long interview with writer Édouard Louis, who also often talks about these cultural shocks he experienced. Now I’m the one who is creating these sorts of shocks with my own family.
There aren’t really intellectual professions in my immediate family. My sister is a banker, my brother manages maintenance teams at the SNCF, my mother is a pediatrician, and my father was her medical secretary. There is a gap that’s opened up, because I’m the only one doing a job like journalism. That’s something that has shifted me a bit in relation to them. And also the fact that I became a lesbian — that has an impact too. For example, my siblings are building families and having kids, whereas that’s not at all my life project.
on her mother’s support of her career in journalism
My mother has always been very supportive of everything I’ve done. Since I became a journalist, and even more so since I’ve been behind the microphone, she’s taken a real interest in everything I do. She listens to everything; she shares it.
And I feel like it’s changed her on a personal level, because even though she’s always been politically engaged, feminism wasn’t her thing. She was never against it, but she had never really been immersed in it. Now, I can sense that she’s evolving on that front through me, which is really cool.
on becoming politically lesbian
I started having relationships with girls from age 19 onward but I didn’t immediately present myself as a lesbian. From that point on, my romantic relationships were overwhelmingly with women but I still called myself bisexual.
Then I joined Binge, and we started working on Le Cœur sur la table, which is an audio documentary written by Victoire Tuaillon about how power dynamics affect love. And I saw just how difficult it was, in heterosexual relationships, to have truly equal relationships. At the time, I thought: Actually, I don’t have to keep putting myself in relationships that could potentially harm me, frustrate me, take away my sense of agency, be unfulfilling or even violent. That doesn’t mean that violence can’t exist in lesbian relationships, but at least it’s not structurally built in by social systems to be that way.
From that moment on, I started to connect more with what’s called political lesbianism — that is, the feminist current that links being a feminist with consciously choosing women, and no longer giving men your attention in your private or personal life, at least not in romantic or sexual relationships. That’s why I say that I became a lesbian — because it was a very conscious process.
on her relationship with her family
I’m the youngest of five siblings. I have two older half-sisters, one brother, and one sister. I’m an aunt to five nieces and nephews. My family relationships are generally good, even though I’m a bit of the odd one out in the family, I believe, because I’m a lesbian and chose to move further away. I often feel caught between wanting to live close to my family — close to my nieces and nephews, whom I adore — and wanting to build my own life; my lesbian, activist life, which I hope will be deeply rooted in my friendships above all. Sometimes that feels so far removed from my family background.
I take care of my dad quite a bit. He has Parkinson’s disease. So my brother, sister, and I take turns keeping him company, making sure he takes his medication properly, eating well, and everything. Since I’m the youngest, I wasn’t initially asked to take on responsibilities for managing everything that needed to be handled for him — medical appointments, arranging outside help, accompanying him to visits, or assisting with daily life. But that’s been the case for the past three or four years. At first, it was very hard for me to take on my share. I was just entering my twenties, eager to enjoy my young adult life and all the exciting things that came with it. I was building my own path and felt like I was making a huge sacrifice. But I soon realized that I couldn’t, in good conscience, defend egalitarian values in my work without also doing my part at home, however difficult, constraining, draining, and sometimes depressing it might be. One thing is certain: we are confronted very directly with the shortcomings of the public health system, and we know how lucky we are to be three of us who can take turns supporting him — physically and financially — so that he can continue to live decently.
on the challenges of maintaining strong friendships in adulthood
I see my friendships as a fundamental part of my life. They carry me every day in some ways. I often feel like I don’t take enough care of them — that I don’t really know how to nurture those bonds. That weighs on me, because I’m afraid those connections might fade. I also find it hard to balance not holding it against people for having busy lives, because I do, too. I don’t like when people place unfair expectations on friendships, which don’t need that kind of pressure. At the same time, commitment in friendship matters to me, even though I sometimes struggle to express that. It’s not something we easily articulate in friendships, because it feels too personal or too revealing. Changes in a friendship — seeing each other less, losing rituals, feeling distance creep in even when you didn’t want it — can hurt. And that’s hard to navigate, because when you don’t see people often, you don’t want to bring up those heavy conversations during the few times you do.
Or sometimes, when there’s a relationship I choose not to invest in anymore — because we’ve grown too different, or for one reason or another — I feel like I’m losing a part of myself, or a part of my past connections. I’d like to form new ones, but that’s exactly what I find so difficult. I often think that I have a hard time making friends. I can’t tell if that’s actually true or if it’s just something I’ve made myself believe. I’m quite reserved around people I don’t know. I find it hard to form new, deep friendships with strong bonds. I know I doubt myself a lot when it comes to my ability to connect with people.
We form friendships in everyday contexts — with people we see every day at school or at work, or in spaces where we’re present regularly. It’s harder to make friends outside those circles, when you don’t see people regularly. That’s what I find challenging: When you meet someone you get along with, how do you know if that could turn into a real friendship? What exactly do you do to form that bond? Are you doing too much? Is it too intense? Too suffocating?
on unlearning heteronormative roadmaps for life
Becoming a lesbian made me reconsider all those so-called life milestones that were presented to me, almost unconsciously, as the way to live: Starting a family, getting married, living together, all that. It’s really just a heteronormative model.
Once I started realizing that those weren’t things I actually wanted, that I wanted to live outside of that framework, it became harder to stay close to friends who were still very much following that path. There’s also something strange about reporting on patriarchal violence, talking about how it affects relationships, exposing all the subtle things that women endure every day with their partners, and then seeing those same patterns play out in my friends’ relationships. I have tried to tell them, gently, but firmly, that it’s harmful. It’s frustrating when they don’t want to leave, or don’t seem to put any energy into changing things, or don’t even see what I’m trying to show them.
That kind of hyper-awareness about these things creates a bit of distance. All the things that stand out so clearly to me now since becoming a lesbian and getting more radical in my feminism — I just can’t ignore them anymore. I can’t pretend to be happy for friends who are in relationships where it seems to me that they’re forgetting themselves, fitting into a box, unable to fully flourish.
on handling the mental toll of covering gendered violence
At work, we try to alternate between difficult subjects and lighter ones. There are still some topics that are less difficult and that help restore a bit of energy and hope, which is important to us in the podcasts we create. It's important to be able to offer possible paths forward and concrete things that people can do, both individually and collectively, to overcome the violence we describe in the episodes.
When I’m not at work, I dance and play the harp. I try to read a lot, too. I spend quite a bit of time with my girlfriend and our group of friends. Since she lives in a shared apartment, there’s always a lot of people around. On weekends, when we’re at her place, it’s always this lively, mostly lesbian atmosphere. It’s really nice. I also try to see my close friends as much as I can.
on her favorite films
What really helps me unwind is going to the movies. I try to go to the cinema about three times a week. It helps me relax and clear my head. One of my favorite films is In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai. It’s such a beautiful movie about an impossible love story. Every time I watch it, it just dazzles me. It’s stunning. Generally, I really love the aesthetic of Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinema. It takes you out of what we usually see in Western films.
Another film I think about very often is In the Cut by Jane Campion. In it, Meg Ryan plays a role that’s completely against type compared to what she was doing at the time — you know, all those super famous romantic comedies. She plays a somewhat lost woman, an English teacher in her thirties. In her neighborhood, there’s a serial killer on the loose, murdering lots of women. She’s witnessing all of that, and at the same time she starts a relationship with the detective investigating the case. It’s such an interesting film. It really feels like the female gaze before its time, because of the way Jane Campion films the character’s desire. It’s subtle and fascinating. She captures not only what female desire actually looks like, but also the danger that comes with it for women who love men. I find that so powerful. The movie kind of flopped when it first came out, but to me it’s a masterpiece and really deserves to be rewatched and reinterpreted today.
I also like Milou en mai by Louis Malle. It’s a comedy that takes place during May 1968. It’s about this somewhat bourgeois family who all gather in their country house. It’s a really funny film, and very typical of French cinema from the time. Michel Piccoli is hilarious. It has that very Nouvelle Vague feel, with a kind of theatrical style of acting and dialogue.
on her beauty routine
On an everyday basis, I don’t really do anything fancy. I just use moisturizer and that’s about it.
Honestly, I think I wear makeup maybe once every six months. When I go out, I wear a lot of glitter. I really like the brand Si Si La Paillette, which makes biodegradable glitter — or at least that’s what they claim.
I take more care with my hair. I go to this hair salon in Paris that I love. It’s called Studio Boucle. It’s a salon that specializes in textured hair. I always feel really good when I go there, and they give me great advice. That’s been a big relief, because for a long time I was wandering from one salon to another — places that just weren’t suited to my hair at all. It was a bit of a nightmare. Now that I’ve found this one, I’m sticking with it. I usually just follow the advice the stylists there give me.
on her personal style
My personal style is about moving between different codes within lesbian aesthetics — mixing big Doc Martens, leather jackets, chunky chain necklaces, things like that, with really feminine clothes when I feel like it. I never want to force myself into a style or an outfit that doesn’t feel right, that makes me feel uncomfortable or constrained.
I always wear earrings and rings. When choosing my earrings, I pick what feels right with the outfit. But I always wear the same rings. I think it’s because rings are a very lesbian thing. Having your fingers covered in rings all the time — for me, that really feels like part of a lesbian look, a lesbian culture. A lot of my rings are gifts. I’ve sort of made it a thing where I have one hand with gold-colored rings, and the other with silver ones. I’d actually like to have even more.
on playing the harp
I’ve had the same harp teacher since I was eight and I still take conservatory lessons — one hour every two weeks. When I was younger and still taking exams at the conservatory, I had a one-hour individual lesson plus a one-hour group class every week. At home, I used to practice my pieces three to four times a week, for about 30 minutes to an hour each time. Now I have much less time. I try to practice at home at least once or twice a week. But it really depends on the period, my motivation, and my workload.
A piece I’ve been playing and revisiting almost every year for the past fifteen years is the harp adaptation of Première Arabesque by Claude Debussy. I really love Debussy, and also really like pieces from the Romantic period. They’re so lyrical and intense that they make me want to cry because of how beautiful they are.
You wouldn’t expect it, but it’s actually a very versatile instrument. For example, you can make stunning adaptations of jazz, soul, or even rock pieces. Often, in times when I feel the most off-balance or disconnected from myself, playing is the only thing that helps me feel better. I’m biased, of course, but I honestly think it’s the most beautiful instrument in the world. And it’s seriously underrated!!!
I’ve never played it myself since I’ve done very little orchestral work, but the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony has a stunning harp part. More recently, I discovered a jazz adaptation of Misty by Tadao Hayashi, which I find absolutely splendid. I dream of playing it one day, though I’m afraid my version wouldn’t sound anything like that, unfortunately. I even have a Spotify playlist with harp pieces that I listen to whenever I need to calm down or bring a bit of softness into my day — it’s called “harpistiquement parlant.”
“When I became a lesbian, I also started to identify with the femme label, which is basically a way of being a lesbian and reclaiming femininity without imitating traditional femininity. My femininity is distinctly different from straight femininity. I’m still figuring out what that means, because what’s interesting about the femme identity is that there aren’t really any fixed rules. I rarely see femme lesbians judging other femmes for the way they dress. That kind of judgment feels way more common among straight women. Style lets me express myself outwardly, to show that I’m not straight. Most of the time, it’s other lesbians who can tell that I’m a lesbian.”
on her podcast recommendations
One of my favorite podcasts right now is a cinema podcast hosted by a journalist named Anaïs Bordages. Unlike the usual film buff podcasts — which are mostly groups of guys using super niche vocabulary to talk about films that nobody has seen — she does a podcast called Anaïs se fait des films, where she talks a bit about the week’s releases and what she enjoyed, and also does more in-depth interviews on topics that interest her.
A feminist podcast I love and have always listened to is Un podcast à soi by Charlotte Bienaimé, produced by Arte Radio. It’s a documentary podcast that covers a lot of themes related to feminist issues.
I also listen to Les pieds sur terre by Sonia Kronlund, where you follow people’s stories — sometimes it’s one person, sometimes two people on the same theme. It’s very, very varied. Recently, I listened to the testimony of a woman in an episode called L’arnacoeur. It’s about a woman who was scammed by what’s called an arnacoeur — a scammer (arnaqueur) of the heart (coeur). That’s a man who finds women on social networks, pursues them romantically, and gradually convinces them to send large sums of money.
on her favorite books
I absolutely adore the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante. They really moved me when I read them.
I also really like Virginie Despentes. I’ve read all her books. She’s the only author whose entire body of work I’ve read. I don’t even know if I could pick one favorite, because what I love is the variety across everything she’s written.
Honestly, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun really marked me. I used to love her, but she made some questionable comments in support of J.K. Rowling when Rowling started with her transphobic comments, so I’m always a bit hesitant to mention her. In that book, you follow these characters living in Lagos, Nigeria. At first you see their everyday lives, and then the Biafran War breaks out. I still think about it often. I always hesitate about whether I should keep recommending it, since I don’t agree with the author on everything, obviously, but it’s still a book I deeply love.
I also recommend The Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter. Her book follows a family from Algeria, starting before the War of Independence, and continuing on to follow what happens to them when they come to France as Harkis. It gave me the same feeling of being completely absorbed in the story and really understanding how a huge political, decolonial conflict can shape an entire family’s fate.
on what she’s reading now
I’m reading a novel called Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst. It’s about the life of a gay mixed-race English man, who is half Burmese, and who grows up in the 1970s. The book is this big, sweeping story about his life and his circle of people, all the way up to Brexit. I’m about halfway through.
And I’m also reading this book called La Captive by Alexandre Kauffmann. It’s the story of a woman who was scammed. I think I might do a podcast episode about men who romantically scam women.
on an underrated feminist writer she loves
Gerty Dambury is a novelist, a playwright, and a translator. She’s translated, for example, a lot of Audre Lorde’s poetry collections into French.
I interviewed her for an assignment back when I was studying cultural journalism, about the translation of African-American feminist writers. Dambury isn’t really well known, but she played a big role in the landscape of Caribbean and Black French women writers, because she was part of the Coordination des femmes noires in the 1970s, which was a feminist activist group that emerged after 1968. People don’t really talk about the group that much. I knew it existed, but I’d hardly ever heard anyone talk about its history. When I spoke to her, she really struck me. You could tell she had this well of knowledge about the history of Black women’s struggles in France. She could recite by heart all these poems by Caribbean women writers I’d never even heard of. I think she’s still very under the radar. But to me, she’s someone whose work would really be worth exploring more deeply.
naomi’s favorite spots in paris
I think it’s great to go to the cinemas in the Latin Quarter to see old films. There’s the Filmothèque, Le Champo in rue Champollion, Écoles, Le Grand Action, Reflet Médicis, and Christine. These are all theaters where they show old movies.
There’s an Instagram account that lists the program for each of those cinemas, with the showtimes and everything. It’s called Movies in Paris. It’s a really good way to keep track of what movies are playing, especially when you don’t necessarily feel like going to see a new release.
Another one of my favorite theaters is the Max Linder, which is at Grands Boulevards. There’s just one huge screening room with three levels and incredible sound.
I love going to La Flèche d’Or. I also go to the Parc Buttes Chaumont pretty often because it’s between the office and my girlfriend’s place. It’s my favorite park in Paris. It’s really beautiful and really big.
