“Family planning is a stakeholder in all feminist issues”

Dor several months, through the press, on social networks, by the degradation of its premises or the intimidation of its members, Family Planning has been continually attacked. Attacked for the support and visibility it brings to trans people, also attacked for its role in access to abortion. The latest of these offensives took the form ofa column published in THE Pointsigned by many personalities from the academic world and the field of psychoanalysis, which ended with a call to cut the public subsidies paid to this historic association.

It is not a question here of returning to the ineptitude which consists, by these positions, in denying the social and historical construction of gender roles, nor of recalling the immense diversity of bodies and the way in which they are daily subject to the binary gender norms. We refer, on these questions, to the abundant scientific literature developed over decades and to the practical tools designed by the associations of persons concerned.

What we want to recall here is that if Family Planning is today, in all its actions, alongside trans people, it is because it has been, since its foundation in 1956, a stakeholder in all feminist issues and all struggles in favor of people who are discriminated against (anti-racism, anti-validism, anti-serophobia, etc.). Yes, Planning, a feminist and popular education movement, is constantly evolving; it is his role to listen to the new debates that cross society and which are also carried by the people he receives.

Health and security

If the most recent attacks focus on the activity of education on sexuality and contest the visibility that the Planning gives, on this occasion, to the existence of trans people, they completely ignore most of its other activities. On a daily basis, Planning acts for the health and safety of people, whoever they are. Firstly by offering free and free access to sexual and reproductive rights (sexual health, contraception and abortion) and, secondly, by welcoming victims of discrimination and sexist and sexual violence. Each year, more than 320,000 people are received to be listened to and accompanied, including more than 75% of women, around 20% of men and less than 2% of people who identify themselves differently.

Read also: Family Planning criticized for a poster with a pregnant transgender man, Minister Isabelle Rome supports the association

A question therefore immediately comes to mind: what do the authors of these firebrands who publicly call for the Planning to be deprived of its funding want? Who can dare to claim that we deprive all these people, including a majority of women, of essential care and support? Do they realize, these intellectuals, doctors and psychoanalysts, that they are playing the anti-abortion game? Do they not see that they thus offer legitimacy to the violence of the extreme right, of which Planning is regularly a victim? Do they not see that they are aligning themselves with the programs of this part of the political spectrum which has been carrying, for years, this demand for the abolition of public subsidies to feminist movements?

You have 45.05% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.

source site-27