Theoretische en praktische problemen van mannelijk feminisme. De strijd voor het recht op abortus in Frankrijk (1970-1975)
Auteurs
Philippe De Wolf
Samenvatting
While most autonomous feminist movements
of the 1970s excluded men from their ranks,
the French social mass movement for
contraception and abortion rights enabled
male feminists to engage in political activism.
However, between 1970 and the legalisation
of abortion by the Simone Veil law of 1975,
strong ideological divisions existed between
the various pro choice activists (feminists,
doctors, extreme left groups) with respect
to the political definition of abortion. Some
considered it as a gendered issue of male
domination over women and/or as a tool
of social power of physicians over nonphysicians.
On the one hand, some activists
struggled for access to abortion as a way
of women’s emancipation against male
hegemony and/or in order to fight against
a perceived illegitimate social and moral
control of doctors over their patients. On the
other hand, other pro choice activists didn’t
share a feminist view on the issue and/or
didn’t seek to restrain medical power: their
mobilisation for abortion rights was part of
a larger struggle against social inequalities,
religious authorities and state control. This
article tries to make clear that both types of
antagonism (abortion rights from a gender
versus a non-gender perspective, and
abortion rights from a medical versus a nonmedical
perspective) are not to be reduced
to an opposition between men and women
or between physicians and non-physicians.
Finally, the feminist convictions of some male
activists are more easily identified if feminism
is defined as a political ideology that is not
based on biological sex.