Joëlle has a round stomach that her summer dresses can no longer hide. On July 4, 1974, she celebrated her 20th birthday when she was six months pregnant. “It was the start of my life, a turning point,” remembers the person, 66 years old today. I was entering professional life, I was expecting a child, I was married. Things were in order, but inside I was in revolt. "
1974 was a pivotal year for the young woman, from a Catholic, conservative family, even old France. 1974 will prove to be just as much a turning point for the country, which, shaken up a few years earlier by May-68, will modernize and experience unprecedented liberalization of customs.
This year already marks a break with Gaullism. President Georges Pompidou, 62, died on April 2. His designated heir is Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Gaullist candidate and steadfast mayor of Bordeaux. Surprise, he was eliminated in the first round. In the second, François Mitterrand is beaten on the wire by a smiling liberal and uninhibited 48 years, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. He then became the youngest president that France has known since Jean Casimir-Périer, in 1894.
Joëlle did not vote. She did not have the right, as she did not have the right to get married the year before. "I needed the agreement signed by my father," she recalls. In France, the civil majority is still 21 years old. One of the first measures of the new president will also be to lower it to 18 years. On July 5, 1974, Joëlle was one of 2.4 million young French people, who, overnight, acquired the right to vote but also the possibility of signing a lease, of enrolling in university, of leaving for the foreigner or to marry in fair marriage, without parental consent. "Suddenly, I felt like I was no longer invisible," she recalls.
A church wedding to have peace
It must be said that she has not always been able to choose her life. Joëlle Brechenmacher was born in Périgueux (Dordogne). The father, of Alsatian origin, is an executive in a factory and a rubber specialist. The mother is trained as a seamstress but confines herself to running the house, “because my father never wanted her to work”. The education turns out to be rigid, and the parents not very affectionate towards their only daughter, who will even, for a time, be entrusted to the grandparents. If she stays in the South-West, the family moves a lot according to the paternal career.
As a teenager, Joëlle dreams of studying medicine. Problem: “My father felt that I did not have the intellectual means. He was putting me down. He always told me I was a pisser. »Nurse then? " Hours incompatible with a role of mother ," replied my father, who wanted me to become a teacher. With the holidays and the schedule of a teacher, you will be able to take care of your children. "The dad intends his daughter to National Education? So go for National Education.
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The Latin Quarter is far from the Dordogne. Joëlle has no memory of May 68. She was then 14 years old and lived in La Roche-Chalais, a town spared from strikes. But the protest movement transformed France. When Joëlle joined the Normal School of Périgueux in 1969, it had just become mixed. This allows her lover, Jacques, to also integrate the training. But if the duo lives their idyll in the shelter, inside the establishment, outside, relations are strained between the families. "Either we separated or we got married," recalls the person concerned. So, to have peace, we got married in 1973. In addition, at church, although I'm an atheist. "
Quickly, Joëlle becomes pregnant. How could it have been otherwise? “At the time, we weren't talking about a condom or pill,” recalls the 60-year-old. It was all taboo. "And for good reason, the law banned contraception and even" propaganda "on contraceptives until 1967. Authorized from there, the pill remains little prescribed, and minors must have parental authorization.
As for abortion, it remains punishable by two years in prison. A ban against which more and more voices are raised. In 1971, Le Nouvel Observateur published the names of 343 women who admitted having had an abortion and asked for the practice to be legalized. Among them, the writers Simone de Beauvoir and Marguerite Duras, and the actresses Françoise Fabian and Catherine Deneuve sign what will be called the “Manifeste des 343 salopes”. In 1972, a 16-year-old girl was tried in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis) for having aborted after a rape. The trial turns to the political platform under the leadership of Gisèle Halimi, the lawyer of the defendant.
Joëlle joined the MLAC, the Movement for the Freedom of Abortion and Contraception, which was created the following year. Founded in particular by doctors, the association fights for the legalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy. While her figure is rounded, she takes part in public meetings and demonstrations in the Dordogne, where her wrestling friends sometimes end up embarked by the police. Once a week, she has a permanence to advise women. Some arrive pregnant, like her, but don't want to stay pregnant. Joëlle refers them to activists able to accompany them to England, where abortion is legal.
Conquered by Arlette Laguiller
We understand that Joëlle feels close to the left, like many of her fellow teachers: “It must be said that at the Normal School, the teachers were either engaged on the left, or very committed! She reads the thinkers of socialism (Feuerbach, Engels and Marx), buys the newspapers of Lutte Ouvrière and of the Revolutionary Communist League, and Le Monde as well. If she did not vote in the May 1974 presidential election, she was won over by Arlette Laguiller, the Lutte Ouvrière candidate and the first woman to run for a French presidential election. “She was a woman, she spoke on behalf of the workers, she brought modernity”.
In July 1974, when Valéry Giscard d'Estaing created a Secretary of State for the Status of Women - a first for the country - and placed journalist Françoise Giroud at its head, Joëlle did not find her "far enough on the left, too big mouth. ". In this right-wing government, however, a minister finds favor in the eyes of the activist, that of Health: Simone Veil. “She had this rigid style with her eternal bun, but when I saw her debate in front of this National Assembly filled with men, she forced my admiration. In November 1974, Simone Veil succeeded in getting the right to abortion voted, despite noisy opposition from part of her camp.
Her pregnancy deprived her of a trip to Larzac
But we are still in the summer. Graduates, Joëlle and her husband are waiting to take their classes. The couple of teachers moved to Sarlat-la-Canéda, still in the Dordogne, in a dark furnished apartment in front of a church. On the radio, Daniel Guichard prances at the top of the charts with “My old man”. He will soon be dethroned by Dave and his thunderous "Vanina". The ABBA group has triumphed at Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo.
But Joëlle prefers to listen on her record player to the “infernal trio” as she calls them, Ferré, Brel and Brassens, and also two Americans, Janis Joplin and Joan Baez. Or relax reading science fiction novels by Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and also, Ursula K. Le Guin "because she's a woman." »No TV in the accommodation, she takes advantage of the small cinema in Sarlat to discover the first films of Woody Allen and also" Les Valseuses ", by Bertrand Blier, with Miou-Miou, Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere. “It was raw. It could not come out today. But it is another film, erotic this one, which causes scandal. "Emmanuelle", featuring Dutch actress and model Sylvia Kristel, was doomed to be censored by the Pompidou government.
The arrival of Giscard d'Estaing has reshuffled the cards. The film will benefit from the appointment of a new Secretary of State for Culture, Michel Guy, who wants to break with the censorship of his predecessors. The feature film is released in theaters on June 26, at the cost of slight cuts, of course, but simply prohibited for those under 16. It will make nearly 9 million entries in the country. “It showed the pleasure of women, remembers Joëlle. I remember feeling very uncomfortable. Guilty even, in front of what I had integrated like a prohibition. "
But it's time for vacation at the start of summer. Joëlle and Jacques bought a tent, filled their sky blue Renault 4L, to go to a campsite in Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). July must rhyme with beach and sun. Except it's raining. A lot. Arriving on the coast, the young woman feels cramps in the stomach. A gynecologist receives her urgently. “He yelled at me: A pregnant woman shouldn't drive so much. She must stay at home , ”recalls the teacher. The couple folds up the tent and returns to Sarlat earlier than expected.
And Joëlle, reasonable, does not accompany Jacques who leaves a month later in Larzac (Aveyron). A political turn: the local peasants refuse to be expropriated to make way for a military camp. In mid-August, more than 100,000 people came together for a “Third World Harvest”. For two days, the Larzac plateau becomes the epicenter of counter-power, the breeding ground for what will soon be called alter-globalization movements. Jacques celebrates and manifests before returning to his wife. "He returned with the feeling of having participated in something important", assures Joëlle, who evokes friends of the time, whose families had fled Franco's Spain. “In 1974, Franco was dying. In Greece, it was the end of the colonels' dictatorship. In Portugal, the Carnation Revolution led to the downfall of Salazar. At the time, we had the impression that the world was changing around us and that we could participate in it. "
Joëlle gave birth to Laurent in October 1974, Jacques by her side: “It was unusual. Men were kept away from childbirth. Five years later, for my second boy, everything had changed. The rooms were repainted in yellow or blue, and dads could be present in the work room. A little Julien completed the family in October 1979. Although she changed jobs several times, Joëlle spent her entire career in National Education, especially working with children with disabilities. When she retired in 2015, she was assistant principal in a college in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne). Divorced in 2000 from Jacques, she moved to the Lot with her new companion, André. They live together without being married, proof that customs have changed. “But I still listen to Janis Joplin! »Assures Joëlle.
