“At Planning, we know that men can also be pregnant. “A few words on a campaign support, it was enough to unleash passions, twittos and politicians, of course. For nearly ten days, a poster raising awareness of LGBTQIA + rights, distributed by the Family planning (PF), disrupts the internets. To help you better understand this “Family Planning affair” mixing sexuality, gender and parenthood, 20 minutes make the point.
First, what is family planning?
The “Family Planning” is a militant non-profit organization created in 1956 under the name of “Happy Maternity” which aimed to allow every woman and every couple to control births, in a context of prohibition of abortion. As the PF explains on his website, it was in 1960 that the association became the “French Movement for Family Planning” (MFPF) known as “Family Planning”. The latter now welcomes nearly 300,000 people each year in centers dedicated to reproductive and sexual health.
Today Family Planning defines itself as a “feminist and popular education movement”, which takes into account “all sexualities” and which defends “the right to contraception, abortion and education in sexuality”. In France, Family Planning has 72 departmental associations and nine regional federations, again according to its own figures.
Why is the association in turmoil?
Family Planning launched several weeks ago an information and communication campaign around the reception, within it, of transgender people. This campaign is produced by the author and illustrator of transgender comics Laurier The Fox. One poster in particular set the powder on fire. On August 17, Laurier The Fox aired on its Twitter a drawing representing a transgender man (that is to say, born biologically female and whose gender identity is male) during his pregnancy. The drawing is captioned with this slogan: “At Planning, men can also be pregnant”.
The objective of Family Planning was to reaffirm the notion of “unconditional” reception in its centres. “Some trans people ask for advice on contraception, abortion, medical monitoring of their transition”, and “it is up to us to make them feel welcome”, explains the association.
But who exactly is tormented by this poster?
The poster and more broadly the message “At Planning, we know that men can also be pregnant”, was strongly criticized on social networks, in particular by voices from the right or far right. On Twitter, MP RN Laure Lavalette has thus castigated “archi-subsidized militants who seek only to spread their grotesque and false ideology”. For her part, Laurence Trochu (Reconquest!) denounced the “doctrines” of the association. “We don’t want it,” she wrote on Twitter, with the hashtag “#ProtegeonsNosEnfants”.
Denouncing “drifts” which “must stop”, the deputy (LR) Fabien Di Filippo estimated for his part that Family Planning “is moving away from science to pour into the most questionable ideological activism”. Several personalities from Reconquête!, the party of Eric Zemmour, have also accused Family Planning of promoting “gender theory”. As for Thierry Mariani (RN), he ensured on BFM TV that the association was moving away “from its original objectives”.
In the columns of Figaro, feminist historian Marie-Jo Bonnet has counted on the destruction of feminist struggles by a “transhumanist ideology”. Finally, on the website of Mariannefigures of feminism at the head of which Marguerite Stern, at the origin of the movement “Collages féminicides”, and Dora Moutot, author and creator of the account Instagram@tasjoui, sent an open letter to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to share their their “concern” about the “ideological drift” of family planning.
And who supported Planned Parenthood?
The Minister Delegate for Equality between Women and Men, Isabelle Rome, gave her support to Family Planning on Monday.
“Family planning is an essential historic association for women’s rights and access to contraception and abortion. I fully support its action,” declared Isabelle Rome. “Let’s not let the far right stir up hatred by instrumentalizing a communication campaign which I can understand does not achieve consensus,” she adds. It should be noted that the current mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo also supported the feminist association, as did Philippe Poutou, leader of the NPA, among other political figures.
For its part, the League for Human Rights (LDH) has published a press release on its websitestressing his support for Family Planning, “in the face of the attacks against him”. And to recall the role of the association for “the unconditional reception of people, whatever their gender identity”. “Family Planning breaks down representations of the masculine and the feminine. However, this rupture has always irritated movements that have a very gendered representation of society, according to the usual patterns attributed to men and women,” adds the LDH.
What is Family Planning’s response?
The feminist association denounced in a press release a “campaign of denigration on the back of gender minorities”. In this press release published on Twitterthe association says it is “the victim of an extremely violent attack on Twitter and other social networks, from far-right personalities and their sympathizers”.
“These attacks take the pretext of a poster presenting a trans person to call for our desubsidization, to question our legitimacy as an association for the defense of women’s rights and the fight for the right to abortion”, still deplores the Planning family. The latter recently indicated that she was considering possible legal action against the “instigators of hatred, who are sometimes elected officials of the Republic”.