At Le Figaro Aziliz Le Corre interview Marie-Jo Bonnet (feminist and historian of the women's movement and homosexuality) and Nicole Athéa (gynaecologist and expert in adolescent medicine), author of Quand les filles deviennent des garçons (Odile Jacob editions). Translated interview here.
What is meant today by what you call the 'trans lobby'? Is this something to worry about?
Everywhere in the western world, the influence of transactivism has become very important and continues to spread. While this has led to the necessary recognition of trans people and their civil and legal rights, there are aspects of trans ideology that have become very problematic. Powerful associations have financially facilitated its spread: the Mermaids association in Great Britain, Dentons, which presents itself as the world's largest law firm, and the Reuters foundation aim to support militant organisations anywhere in the world to influencing policy (We told you about the principles developed by Dentons hereed.). They drew up a report compiling 'best practices' in trans lobbying, in order to change the laws. Also, Karey Burke, president of the Disney, promises to favour people who are part of the LGBT community... the list of associations and people who support and/or finance LGBT activists is long. In France, the influence of trans ideology is present in certain media and is very prominent on social media; the number of trans associations continues to grow, and some are state-funded, mainly through the Dilcrah (Délégation interministérielle à la lutte contre le racisme, l'antisémitisme et la haine anti-Lgbt); this legitimisation allows them to going into schools to do sex education. Political influence appears in the report on the health of trans people compiled by a trans activist and a trans doctor, requested by the then Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, and supported by the Igas (Inspection générale des affaires sociales). One observes a growing number of people in favour of trans ideology and more generally woke in the university. All this explains the importance trans ideology has assumed in such a short time in our country.
You have written about the girls who made the transitionthat 'they do not assume their desire as women for another woman's body, just as they refuse to fit into traditional definitions of the feminine'. Trans women would, in your opinion, be homosexuals who do not accept themselves... isn't it a bit caricatured?
In fact, that is not what we say. We do not deny at all that transitions can have different causes; however, Some girls who have detransitioned testify to their homosexuality and attribute their request to transition to internalised homophobia. We similarly see the high frequency of homosexual desires among adolescents, desires that disturb them greatly and that our clinical colleagues tell us about. These can influence the request for transition of certain teenagers, who are often carriers, on the other hand, of great psychic vulnerabilities. When girls become boys whose mates are often female, these desires become easier to assume.
How does the trans movement go against the grain of the second wave of feminism?
Our feminism recognises the right of women based on genderbecause it is gender that has generated the discrimination that women have experienced and may still experience. If we refer to gender, many women's needs are evaded, particularly those concerning motherhood. In certain disputes with transactivists, it is the sex to be taken into account and not the gender: for instance, the inclusion of trans women in the sporting competitions women is a problem because their physical strength no longer allows 'biological' women to be on an equal footing: the athletics federation has just recognised this. The entry of trans women in prisons also poses major problems. The massive increase in the number of young people who identify as trans is characterised by a particular numerical ratio: st is two and a half times more girls than boys ask for a transition. Such a large number of questions can only be explained through social factors, which we attempt to explain in our book. If these girls are in great difficulty with the feminine, there are many, however, who do not want to become boys. The significant number of girls thus 'erased' can be compared to a new form of social and medical 'feminicide'.
You, as feminists, did not participate in the disincarnation of the female body, particularly wanting to free women from motherhood?
Women claimed contraception and the freedom to abort in the name of re-appropriating their bodies and mastering their own fertility, as evidenced by the slogan 'A child if I want it and when I want it'. We defended the possibility of not being a mother if one did not want to, and we wanted motherhood in a chosen temporality, which would allow optimal conditions for establishing a good relationship between a mother and her child. Lo splitting of the feminine, which she calls 'disincarnation', is a reality of our neo-liberal era that made its debut with medically assisted procreation techniques (Pma). It has created a "jigsaw puzzle' of motherhoodbetween oocyte preservation, 'gift' of oocytes (which is actually a sale), GPA requested by men, in which all biological maternal filiation is cancelled, 'pregnant men', trans women declared biological mothers without gestation (in the name of the fact that they participated in filiation through their sperm), the erasure of mothers is at work through the exploitation of all female reproductive elements. One can understand why so many young women refuse to identify with the feminine.
translation by N.T.
