“Pregnant man”: how family planning found itself at the heart of feminist disputes

It only took a few hours for the conflagration to reach social networks. On August 18, Laurier The Fox, a professional illustrator, posted on Twitter a poster he had produced at the request of Planned Parenthood. We see two men in a waiting room, one of them visibly expecting a baby. Just below, this slogan: “In planning, we know that men can also be pregnant”. Immediately, a fierce quarrel of words, anathemas and arguments/counter-arguments begins on the Web. We shout at each other, we exchange bird names. Many denounce a provocation. The most extreme – often from the right of the right – demand the cessation of the payment of subsidies to the association. Others, from historical feminist ranks, wonder about this new step towards erasing the “woman”.

Laurier The Fox, himself a gay trans man, is taken aback. After all, his drawing and three others have adorned the walls of Family Planning branches for over a year. And it is, in his eyes, in no way a provocation. Since 2016, it is no longer necessary to have undergone surgery to change marital status. A man born woman who would have kept his genitals can therefore be “pregnant”. So much for rationality. But the business of the poster goes far beyond that. She questions the philosophy of family planning, born under the banner of universalism, and awakens the recent and violent quarrels in the feminist world and society around questions of sex, gender, transidentity.

The Planning is not at its first shock. From its beginnings in 1956 under the name of “Happy Maternity”, the organization has been the object of passion and criticism. Including internally. At the end of the 1960s, it was divided on its missions, some wanting to be concerned only with the implementation of the Neuwirth law of 1967 on contraception, others to take up the fight for abortion. . The oldest activists also remember walls that tremble during disputes over the place to be given to men in the movement. “From the start, there have been tensions between a classic line and new demands, often made by the base against the advice of the leaders”, confirms Janine Mossuz-Lavau, research director at Cevipof and author of Sex life in France (La Martiniere, 2018).

Today, “classical” feminist, universalist and secular discourses oppose “intersectional” activism and advocates for transgender people. Renewal of generations, difficulties in finding volunteers in sufficient numbers to ensure the permanence of local branches, temptation for certain militant groups to carry their ideas through an institution as powerful and recognized as Family Planning…, the evolution is is done gradually. “The intersectional fringe is in the minority, but it shouts louder than the others, in particular by accusing its opponents of being on the far right. Suddenly, the universalists are silent or leave the ship. And little by little the intersectional people take the place “, observes Naëm Bestandji, a former activist in Grenoble and author of shroud of feminism (ed. Seramis).

Several episodes testify to this change. In 2018, for example, the Bouches-du-Rhône antenna broadcast a visual showing, on one side, a white woman in her underwear and, on the other, a veiled black woman, with these sentences respectively: ” nudity empowers some women”, “modesty empowers some women”. Each time, Planning’s response to criticism is the same: we don’t interfere in the choices of others. An argument that can be heard when it comes to contraception or sex life, but which offends those who put nothing above the freedom of women. “The reality is that family planning, like society, is crossed by many debates on gender identity, women’s rights, secularism, and that these debates are sometimes expressed in unfortunate and clumsy or even harmful way”, regrets Marlène Schiappa, Secretary of State for Associative Life.

In recent months, it is around the place of transgender people that conflicts have crystallized, fueled by very determined activists. “We must defend the rights of trans people and denounce the discrimination they face, but without giving in to transactivism. The problem with Planning is that it has been very porous since a turning point that was made there about ten years ago”, notes Senator (PS) Laurence Rossignol, who nevertheless says she is “totally in solidarity” with the association to defend the right and access to abortion “whatever her mistakes”. The choice of vocabulary, such as “menstruating people” rather than women, or the support for #NousToutes a year ago when the movement decided to no longer relay the count of the Féminicides collective by companions or ex on the grounds that it would not integrate not transgender victims are indicative of a breakup.

Without “women”, does feminism still exist?

Far from being anecdotal, this last one touches the very heart of the feminist fight. “Words say what we think. It’s structural,” insists Marguerite Stern, former initiator of the collective of gluers in France claiming a universalist vision of feminism. “We cannot, under the pretext of activism and the desire to welcome everyone, sit on biology. If we can be pregnant, it is because we are a woman biologically. The questioning of science , it’s obscurantism, and that, I can’t”, adds Janine Mossuz-Lavau. They are not the only ones to wonder what meaning can still have the feminist struggle if there are no more “women” to defend. “Before, we were witches, badly fucked, hysterical, now we are not feminists because we do not support trans people”, regrets an activist from the Féminicides collective by companions or ex. Even within Family Planning, the subject is not unanimous. When in February 2020 Release publishes a forum entitled “All women” and defending the place of transgender people in feminist struggles, only three branches of Planning are among the first signatories. “Each team has its thoughts, its paths. Some debates are carried out more deeply in certain places, with consensual positions. In other places, no”, admits Danielle Gaudry, still active activist of the house.

But critical voices are reluctant to speak out. Admittedly, a Janine Mossuz-Lavau qualifies the poster posted on social networks in mid-August as a “dumpling”, even if she is “sorry to criticize an institution which does more than necessary work”. Laurence Rossignol’s appreciation is rounder in form, but the message is not very different: “We are living through an anthropological revolution, it is a reality. But if this revolution is obvious for young people and certain CSPs, it is less so for other parts of the population. And this contributes to overall identity anxiety. We must accompany this development with delicacy. However, the Family Planning poster is, in my opinion, an additional element of destabilization . We must beware of any provocation. Otherwise, it is the fachos who win the bet.”

Most public figures prefer to take refuge in silence. Even in the government, Marlène Schiappa who, a few years ago, did not hesitate to summon the leaders of Family Planning to express her dissatisfaction, is discreet, leaving Isabelle Rome, the minister delegate in charge of equality between women and men, support family planning. As for Elisabeth Borne, it is difficult for her to criticize an institution to which she devoted one of her first trips as Prime Minister at the end of June.

In all, embarrassment dominates. By accusing its opponents of being on the far right and refusing any mea culpa on the poster, Family Planning gave the impression that it refused the debate – contacted by L’Express, its national officials did not otherwise not followed up. But everyone also knows that the extreme right and certain religious currents are surfing on the poster affair to reduce women’s rights. However, in these times when access to abortion is made more difficult in certain countries of the world, when, even in France, the deadlines are getting longer to access it in certain regions, where the proposed law extending from twelve to fourteen weeks of pregnancy the deadline for recourse to abortion had all the trouble in the world to be adopted by Parliament, no one wants to weaken family planning. Even if it means giving him what everyone, depending on their mood and their degree of annoyance, euphemises as “dumpling”, “stupidity”, “shot in the foot” or “significant debility”.