Emotions and embodiment as feminist practice in the free abortion movement in France (1972

Abstract

This article explores the critical role of emotions and bodies in the individual dynamics of engagement as well as the construction of collective identities and action in women’s groups in the 1970s in France. Much literature on emotion work in feminist organizations has tended to discuss emotions stemming from women’s dominant socialization processes as, above all, alienating, thereby as barriers to their activism. The Movement for the liberty of abortion and birth control offers essential insights into how gendered dispositions can be primary determinants of feminist collective identity formation, and even spur innovative protest practices. With their specific organizational settings and action, some ‘dissident MLACs’ in Aix-en-Provence, Lille, Lyon and Paris – those which continued to practice abortion despite its legalization and in defiance of the 1975 law which forbade them to do so – mobilized reciprocal emotions and bodily experiences to sustain engagement and serve a political project. Drawing on a wide array of biographical interviews and archival sources centred on abortion practices, the article examines the distinctive emotion culture these groups constructed. Its anchoring in bodies, commitment to emotions like tenderness and compassion, but also domestic and relational skills consecrated a gendered repertoire of action which therefore notably appealed to women whose social properties did not predispose them to collective action.

Keywords

Abortion care work embodied experiences emotion culture gendered dispositions

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Achin

Naudier

(2010) Trajectoires de femmes ‘ordinaires’ dans les années 1970. La fabrique de la puissance d’agir féministe. Sociologie 1(1): 77–93.

Ahmed

(2014) The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Bateman-Novaes

(1979) La Demande d’avortement. PhD Thesis, EHESS, Paris.

Brown

Zavestoski

McCormick

, et al. (2004) Embodied health movements: New approaches to social movements in health. Sociology of Health & Illness 26(1): 50–80.

Coe

Schnabel

(2011) Emotions matter after all: How reproductive rights advocates orchestrate emotions to influence policies in Peru. Sociological Perspectives 54(4): 665–688.

Collins

(2000) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.

Ferree

(1992) The political context of rationality: Rational choice theory and resource mobilization. In: Morris

McClurg Mueller

(eds) Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, pp. 29–52.

Flam

(2005) Emotions’ map. A research agenda. In: Flam

King

(eds) Emotions and Social Movements. London: Routledge, pp. 19–40.

Glenn

(2010) Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

10.

Gould

(2002) Life during wartime: Emotions and the development of ACT UP. Mobilization 7(2): 177–200.

11.

Guenther

(2009) The impact of emotional opportunities on the emotion cultures of feminist organizations. Gender & Society 23(3): 337–362.

12.

Hercus

(1999) Identity, emotion, and feminist collective action. Gender & Society 13(1): 34–55.

13.

Hochschild

(1979) Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. American Journal of Sociology 85: 551–575.

14.

Hochschild

(1990) Ideology and emotion management: A perspective and path for future research. In: Kemper

(ed.) Search Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp. 117–142.

15.

Jasper

(1998) The emotions of protest: Affective and reactive emotions in and around social movements. Sociological Forum 13: 394–424.

16.

Kesselman

Booth

Rothstein

, et al. (1998) Our gang of four: Friendship and women’s liberation. In: DuPlessis

Snitow

(eds) The Feminist Memoir Project. Voices from Women’s Liberation. New York: Three Rivers Press, pp. 25–53.

17.

Krauss

(1996) Women and toxic waste protests: Race, class and gender as resources of resistance. Qualitative Sociology 16(3): 247–262.

18.

Lee

(2003) Abortion, Motherhood, and Mental Health. Medicalizing Reproduction in the United States and Great Britain. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

19.

Masclet

(2017) Sociologie des féministes des années 1970. Analyse localisée, incidences biographiques et transmission familiale d’un engagement pour la cause des femmes en France. PhD Thesis, Lausanne and Paris 8 Universities.

20.

Morgen

(1995) ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’: Emotional discourse in the work cultures of feminist health clinics. In: Ferree

Martin

(eds) Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women’s Movement. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, pp. 234–247.

21.

Murphy

(2004) Immodest witnessing: The epistemology of vaginal self-examination in the U.S. feminist self-help movement. Feminist Studies 30(1): 115–147.

22.

Murphy

(2012) Seizing the Means of Reproduction. Entanglements of Feminism, Health and Technoscience. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

23.

Naples

(1998) Grassroots Warriors: Activist Mothering. Community Work, and the War on Poverty. New York: Routledge.

24.

Pavard

(2012) Si je veux, quand je veux. Contraception et avortement dans la société française (1959-1979). Rennes: PUR.

25.

Reger

(2004) Organizational ‘emotion work’ through consciousness-raising: An analysis of a feminist organization. Qualitative Sociology 27(2): 205–222.

26.

Robnett

(1996) African-American Women in the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965: Gender, leadership, and micromobilization. American Journal of Sociology 101(6): 1661–1693.

27.

Ruault

(2017) Le spéculum, la canule et le miroir. Les MLAC et mobilisations de santé des femmes, entre appropriation féministe et propriété médicale de l’avortement (France, 1972-1984). PhD Thesis, Lille University.

28.

Taylor

(1995) Watching for vibes: Bringing emotions into the study of feminist organizations. In: Ferree

Martin

(eds) Feminist Organizations. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, pp. 223–233.

29.

Taylor

(1996) Rock-a-by-Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, and Postpartum Depression. New York: Routledge.

30.

Taylor

(2000) Emotions and identity in women’s self-help movements. In: Stryker

Owens

White

(eds) Self, Identity, and Social Movements. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 271–299.

31.

Taylor

Rupp

(1993) Women’s culture and lesbian feminist activism: A reconsideration of cultural feminism. Signs 19(1): 32–61.

32.

Taylor

Whittier

(1992) Collective identity in social movements: Lesbian feminist identity. In: Morris

McClurg Mueller

(eds) Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, pp. 104–129.

33.

Taylor

Whittier

(1995) Analytical approaches to social movement culture: The culture of the women’s movement. In: Johnston

Klandermans

(eds) Social Movements and Culture. London: UCL Press, pp. 163–187.

34.

Tuana

(2006) The speculum of ignorance: The women’s health movement and epistemologies of ignorance. Hypatia 21(3): 1–19.

35.

Whittier

(1995) Feminist Generations. the Persistence of the Radical Women’s Movement. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

36.

Zancarini-Fournel

(2003) Histoire(s) du MLAC (1973-1975). Clio 18: 241–252.

Emotions and embodiment as feminist practice in the free abortion movement in France (1972–1984)

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References