Eugenics Captures Feminism

[George_S]

One of the most important developments in the expansion of eugenics was its relationship with feminism. The alliance between the two movements was a curious tangle from the very beginning, and remains a tangle today. Feminists and eugenicists had very different goals, but some of them agreed about some things that they wanted in the short run. The person who brought the two movements together in an alliance that has lasted to this day was Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Sanger was an eloquent writer, but Planned Parenthood has not made much of an effort to publish and distribute her books for the last 50 years. But if her followers did not want people reading her books, her opponents did. When the copyright on her books finally expired and it became legal for anyone to publish them, Planned Parenthood's critics began to distribute her books, precisely because she was an eloquent eugenicist.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the legacy of Margaret Sanger still plagues us; she was an effective leader in the war to inflict contraception, sterilization and abortion on the world. She talked about the exaltation of joyful sex, but ended by trivializing human sexuality into barnyard activity. She talked about service to the poor, but she built an organization that has killed millions and millions of people, tiny children who were executed for the crime of being conceived in poverty. She helped to lay the foundations for global population control, pitting wealthy white nations against the rest of the world.

Despite her influence, her work is often misunderstood. She is generally seen as some kind of feminist hero, when most of her work is better understood in terms of eugenics. She subverted feminism, betraying the idealists to power-hungry men. One way to understand her life's work is to examine the alliance between feminists and eugenicists that she built, an alliance that lasts to this day.

http://www.eugenics-watch.com/roots/chap06.html

[msmcghee]

I went to read the link , but . .

. . with that background pattern it's too much trouble. Maybe they think I'll buy the book to avoid the eye strain.

Instead, I'll not buy the book to avoid supporting a company that would give me eye strain.

But your topic is interesting. Eugenics was the hot thing in the early 1900's. It was the popular outgrowth of Darwin's theories - poorly understand, or purposely mis-characterized to support white racial superiority.

The legacy continues.

Another good book that discusses this in detail is Stephen J. Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man".

PS - I have no idea why this posted twice.

[prodigal_green]

84. Stephen Jay Gould

was a personal hero of mine--an ardent Darwinist, he was vehemently opposed to social Darwinism on the argument that is was a horrible misreading of Darwin. I corresponded with him briefly about 6 years ago.

I was greatly saddened by his death.

[arcane1]

97. "The Mismeasure of Man" is a GREAT book

as was everything SJG wrote... his passion for science was palpable


yet another one I miss :evilfrown:

[msmcghee]

1. I went to read the link , but . .

. . with that background pattern it's too much trouble. Maybe they think I'll buy the book to avoid the eye strain.

Instead, I'll not buy the book to avoid supporting a company that would give me eye strain.

But your topic is interesting. Eugenics was the hot thing in the early 1900's. It was the popular outgrowth of Darwin's theories - poorly understand, or purposely mis-characterized to support white racial superiority.

The legacy continues.

Another good book that discusses this in detail is Stephen J. Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man".

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[REP]

7. Not Everybody Buys The Myth of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu

I'm one of them, and I'm hardly a right-winger. She let people die in agony, though she could have easily provided them with sufficient analgesic, and availed herself of the finest medicalcare on earth when she needed it. That's just one reason I think she was a vile publicity whore.

[RPM]

11. Seconded...

Thanks REP for saying what was on my mind - Even mother t was human, and subject to the weakness all humans are.

[politicat]

82. Not to mention taking stolen money from American old folk and failing

to return it when she was informed it was stolen in fraudulent business practices.

Charles Keating donated a large dollar figure to her, but the money came from the failure of his S&L schemes. He was ordered to a) serve jail time and b) make restitution; however, the funds that Aggie banked (because she never used the money given to her in good faith to serve the poor) could not be reclaimed.

Hundreds of thousands lost their homes and savings, many elderly who had been attracted to the better interest rates the S&Ls offered.

Pcat

[papau]

3. 99% of right wing conservative GOP were into eugenics - so Sanger was GOP?

Or maybe the GOP were the early backers of Planned Parenthood in the 1910 to 1920 era?

We know Bush the grandfather was into this eugenics stuff.

Interesting for all the information left out as this article was spun into an anti-choice article and edited so as to not offend the "GOP" side of the GOP abortion values base. I'm surprised the page did not feature a photo of a fetus - aborted of course.

[grasswire]

9. and...

..George Herbert Walker Bush was so enamored of the idea of depopulating third world countries (read lesser people) that his fellow U.S. Congress members gave him the nickname "Rubbers" -- which he hated. I truly believe that the Bush cabal holds little value for life when it is the lives of everyday folk under consideration. They believe in the old theories that the herds should be thinned, and it's the right of the elites to manage that thinning through war and other means.

[George_S]

64. Where do you get that stat?

It was a progressive movement. Sure Davenport and Laughlin, the leaders, were religious conservatives from the North, but the grassroots movement was progressive. The idea was to use laws and science to cure society, and which side of the political coin one was on had little to do with it. Sides were determined more by religious faith than politics. Catholics, as a whole, were against it. It took a long time for it to overcome the religious roots in the South, but it succeeded, in large part by the efforts of women.

Why did women so despise the world and life? Oh, the patriarchal society forced them to. It's all the men's fault.

[LeftyMom]

4. What's up with the test questions at the end?

Is this some sort of a textbook and if so who uses it?

Wierd.

[George_S]

14. Margaret Sanger, Birth Control, Eugenics and Hitler

For those who might be interested, I just completed the last topic of an 11-topic series on "Birth Control and Eugenics." The series explains the historical background the Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement that is today's Planned Parenthood. Included is a downloadable copy of my book, The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective.

_______________
Prowl the Internet and you'll discover that there is a war of sorts going on about exactly who Margaret Sanger was and what she believed. For the most part, it is a war among women who have so much invested in their side of our reproductive wars that they are unable to look at Sanger objectively and dispassionately. One group would paint Sanger as a saint with only a few understandable flaws. The other sees her as the devil in drag.

When Women's Studies departments first began to be installed on universities, some in history and the social sciences warned that it was it wasn't a good idea to isolate one particularly area of study from others. History in particular is an area where objectivity is often hard to achieve. It is an all too human tendency to want to past to confirm our prejudices. In a regular history department, areas of history that don't inspire strong emotions help provide a benchmark for areas in which feelings still run strong. Isolated and studying only a hot-button topic like women's history, Women's Studies departments would have no benchmark of objectivity. That seems to be what has happened. Women's Studies have become inbred and dogmatic. They won't like what I have to say here.

The fact these departments conceal from their students is not simply that Sanger was intolerant and prejudiced, intending for her birth control movement to squelch the birthrates of all sorts of groups that she considered inferior. That fact is all too clear from her writings, as the "Birth Control and Eugenics" series demonstrates. No, the problem runs far deeper. Feminism itself is deeply imbued with elitist attitudes that cause it to regard traditional, religious women as a threat and to treat their ability to have more children than their feminist counterparts as an attack on their progressive views about how history ought to be evolving.

That is why in 1927, Victoria Woodhull would not only tell an AP reporter that she supported the forced sterilization of women, but proudly (and quite correctly) claimed to have been advocating just that since the 1870s. It's why in her 1915 feminist and utopian novel, Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman could have some rather authoritarian Over Mothers determining which women could or could not have children. Sanger's zeal for getting rid of poor immigrant women was not new to feminism. You might even say the eugenics is deeply entrenched into feminist ideology. But since openly expressing such ideas is no longer fashionable, Women's Studies departments typically cover up and explain away their own history. It does not fit with their "men exploit women" way of looking at history. In the real world, sometimes a woman's greatest foes are other women.

http://www.inklingbooks.com/inklingblog/C1190411607/E302325959/

[Ripley]

26. So? Some of the Founding Fathers had SLAVES.

Do we trash their words of wisdom about Democracy because they were racists? No, we celebrate their words daily in government and even put their faces on money we handle daily.

I question your motives at this particular time in history when the Noise Machine and Religious Right are joining forces with huge legislative and societal changes in the effort to roll back much of the progress feminists have fought for.

Your sexist remark about women's studies "men exploit women" way of looking at history should be alerted on. But I know it won't do any good. This type of blatant misogyny is allowed on DU nowadays.

You may think you can fool a lot of people by hiding behind the cloak of academics, but your writing sounds eerily similar to Michael Savage. Inventing horrific stereotypes of feminists (or do you secretly use the word FemiNazi?) in order to bring down the movement is also reminiscent of the way Repukes treated MLK and Liberals for that matter.

[greenohio]

57. Good post.

[George_S]

65. What are you talking about?

I didn't write any of that. Someone asked why the guy wrote the book. He explains it. Of course, anything you don't like is sexist and misogyny.

That's getting very OLD. Can't you come up with something original, you know, think for yourself? Those sound-bytes don't cut it anymore.

But I want to thank you all for teaching me I'm not a 'true' Democrat.

[muriel_volestrangler]

87. When your posts start straight in with "I just completed ..."

without any indication that it's a quote you're posting, and then a link to a blog, most people will assume you are the writer of the blog. It's very difficult to find anything in your first few posts in this thread that point to any disagreement of yours with the links you post from the inkling site. That's why we assumed you hold the views of it, and were probably the originator.

[George_S]

89. Very difficult to ask me?

I'll have to admit though that I approached the subject in the wrong way and should have checked to see if it was from a right wing site. I found the link at eugenics-watch.com and didn't look further than the linked page. But even if it is a right wing site, that doesn't make it all a lie.

I am very passionate in my disdain for eugenics, and think the movement is taking hold again from many directions, from the left and from the right.

That does not mean I want women barefoot a pregnant (another sound byte that is supposed to end the debate). That is not to say I think there is anything wrong with a pregnant woman going barefoot if she choses not to wear shoes. Maybe her feet are swollen and hurt.

[jdj]

93. that's exactly right.

some conservative freak figures out a way to discredit feminism and you post it here to piss off all the feminists, and then say that women or people who don't like it feel this way as a matter of personal taste and not as a valid reaction to the posting of bigotry by an apparent bigot.

[George_S]

115. Your entire post is...

... VERY bigoted.

But I'm sure you can't see that at all.

Yeah, I just posted it to piss of the feminists. As if that's hard to do.

Sarcasm off.

[jdj]

126. if the bigot fits, wear it.

oh, I'm sorry, you already were.

Did your mommy not breast-feed you?

Damn that similac! Feminists must pay!

[jdj]

92. Hey, but Washington freed his posthumously, and Jefferson

had his children, so

what liberal white men do cannot be reproached.

[George_S]

111. Now you're getting it!

[stanwyck]

28. swiss cheese scholarship

with an agenda. Hey, it works for the Bushies. Decide your thesis then write backward to make your case. Ignore all that contradicts. Like, providing contraception empowers women and decreases poverty. Not the reverse. And your statement that elitist women are resentful of religious women is bizarro rightwing radio speak.
What I take away from your ramblings is that you are resentful of women. That's my thesis and you're making my case for me.
I doubt you'll find an audience for your work, except with fundamentalist preachers. Academics will tear you apart.

[libnnc]

29. I concur to your post

...and I love your screen name!

Big Stany-fan here :hi:

[loyalsister]

33. Did you include the Early 20th Century Progressives?

In the USA, the great eugenicists of the first half of the 20th century were the "Progressives". As it says here:

A significant number of Progressives -- including David Starr Jordan, Robert Latham Owen, William Allen Wilson, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Robert Latou Dickinson, Katherine Bement Davis, and Virginia Gildersleeve--were deeply involved with the eugenics movement.
And as we read further here:

The second stage in the development of the eugenics movement extended from 1905 to 1930, when eugenics entered its period of greatest influence. More and more progressive reformers became convinced that a good proportion of the social ills in the United States lay in hereditary factors....

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10004

As the poster below noted, the fact that people lived with the times does not invalidate the basics. Planned Parenthood is what the name implies planning to become a parent as opposed to having it happen. Anyone who tries to deny that the increased availability of birth control has been a bad thing has a faulty construct. The general influence of PP has been positive.
Smearing Margaret Sanger, PP, and feminism in general is a backlash tactic that has been long in practice to try to turn the public against all of these things. The increase of Women's Studies programs has inspired them to increase their efforts.
This is a deliberate pairing of timing of commonly accepted conceptual principles by conservatives AND Progressives.
The Conservatives already reject feminism, PP, etc. Now they are working on the Moderates and the Progressives.

[Tansy_Gold]

43. As a recent WST grad, let me tell you, George S, that you are

wrong.

I took my first WST class in 1998, and one of the first women studied in that class was Sanger. Studying her biography, we examined the contradictions her actions posed for us on the cusp of the 21st century as well as how they reflected on the broader context of her times.

By pulling "women's history" out of the dark shadow of "history," a women's studies program does not ignore the greater context of women's experience. Rather, it looks at that experience from a combination of new AND OLD perspectives.

Oh, and by the way, for your information, I did not come to WST as a wide-eyed idealist in the first blush of adulthood, eager to play radical games and dance on the graves of forgotten foremothers. I went back to college after a 25-year hiatus, at the age of 50, and took with me a lifetime of experience as both a non-feminist and a reluctant feminist.

Sanger, like every one of the rest of us, was a product of her times. She saw promise in eugenics, as did many other Americans. She also saw promise in the ability of women to limit the number of children they bore. That she did not see the ends to which eugenics might be taken should not be laid as blame for the holocaust at her feet.

There are many here on DU who will continue to argue the merits of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings with nuclear weapons, whether such events saved American lives (at the expense of Japanese lives, which are of course worth much less /sarcasm off/) and shortened the war. Regardless which side I take in that debate, I trust that everyone on both sides believes sincerely in the merits of their case. The issues of nuclear proliferation, application of nuclear power to peaceful uses, the disposal of nuclear waste, the PR effort that promoted nuclear-generated electricity as a primary activity and the production of enriched uranium as a tangential by-product -- these are all issues that have been discussed at length. But the true answer to the dispute will not come in our time. History will judge, as it has in every case.

So Sanger was wrong on eugenics, not because she was wrong but because subsequent events altered the perspective from which we view her. Subsequent people took the eugenics movement in a direction history has labeled "evil," and so some -- including you, George S? -- now want to slap the same label on Sanger and on all the feminists who believe she did some good.

That's where you're so terribly wrong, George S. Sanger's one negative contribution -- which was not even hers directly -- is being used by you to tar all feminists with the same brush. Never mind that there are different feminists, including those who believe "women's nature" as nurturers and mothers should be emphasized.

In essence, pal, it's my humble opinion that you don't know what you're talking about, but you found a nice little morsel to support your own prejudice. Whoop dee do.

Tansy Gold

[George_S]

66. I'm not a WST grad, so please help...

... and point out where I said Sanger didn't do any good. I'm just a stupid man, ya know, and say things I didn't say, and need these things explained to me.

Thanks.

[MaraJade]

50. So what you are implying is

that we "throw the baby out with the bathwater," (pun intended)and
dismiss women's need to control their biological destiny because
ONE of the founders of the modern birth control movement had a sideline belief that was wrong?

Sanger's belief in eugenics was wacko, therefore Sanger's movement to
make birth control available to women was wacko?

Or is it that Sanger's movement to make birth control available to
women was wacko, therefore womens' desire to use birth control to
free themselves from the burden of unwanted pregnancy was (is?) wacko?

I am a religious woman, and I can see nothing enobiling at all about
having a house full of children, especially in today's world, where
so many children are in need of families and where population pressures in so many places have destroyed the environment.

[George_S]

67. Why the hell didn't anyone click on the link

AND SEE WHO WROTE THAT?

[bloom]

60. Also on the inkling site - Support for the Swift Boat Guys

SwiftVets, Yah Gotta Love Them Guys!

The latest SwiftVets television ad is now online. You can read the text here and view it online.

Posted at 01:34 PM   Politics & Elections   Read More  

Tue - August 24, 2004



Twice Brave: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out

Here's the full text of the second Swift Boat Veterans Ad along with an introduction in which I explain why what they are doing is important.

Posted at 01:23 AM   Politics & Elections   Read More  

Fri - August 20, 2004



http://www.inklingbooks.com/inklingblog/index.html

[ThoughtCriminal]

5. What's the real agenda here?

"Inflict" contraception?
"built an organization that has killed millions and millions of people"

[REP]

6. Typical Pro-Lie Garbage

Yes, her work *is* misunderstood - mostly by those who put up these ridiculous websites. I've seen this type of argument about a thousand times from foaming at the mouth antiabortnoids who like to quote a passage or two out of context and ignore everything else.

[pnorman]

8. In my opinion, that article has much merit.

Refute it (my own instincts ran that way the first time I saw Sanger linked so closely with "Eugenics"). but DON'T shut your eyes to it. That's the Freeper way.

More than a few socialists (but NO anarchists), turned out to hold similar opinions. Much of the racism of the Nazis were closely influenced by the Eugenic/Sterilization laws that were already on the books here in the USA. Live with it, and DEAL with it.

pnorman

[papau]

10. female control of their own body has what to do with Eugenic/Sterilization

"DEAL with it" equates to pointing out the stupidity of the discussion of a 1915 association between women’s right to vote/right to anything movements and the Eugenic/Sterilization movement if you are discussing today's Planned Parenthood and the question of Choice.

You can not "deal with stupidity/ignorance" - you can only teach logic, the concept of straw men, and the value of an argument being on point.

[JerseygirlCT]

12. "war to inflict contraception"???

take it somewhere else, maybe. This is garbage.

[George_S]

13. This is somewhere else.

The goddess was a eugenicist.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

"Analyzing the early campaigns , a 1912 report by proponents of eugenic sterilization concluded that the first sterilization laws 'have usually been put through by some very small energetic group of enthusiasts,' with the chief credit going to women and physicians. This report could have been submitted twenty-five years later to cover events in Georgia, where physicians, experts at at state mental health institutions, and an energetic group of women took advantage of Depression Era interest in progressive reforms to spur consideration and passage of America's last eugenic sterilization law."

Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South, p 131.

While it is true that Davenport and Laughlin, the leaders of the movement, were religious conservatives, the majority of the grassroots movement were Dem progressives.

Over 60,000 people were castrated or sterilized, the majority of them in California, and most were women and young girls, some as young as 11 or 12.

Swill that.

[tigereye]

15. how did her organization kill millions?

how does anyone make that assessment?

[George_S]

21. I don't believe that.

Maybe he's talking about all the generations who would be alive. Who knows?

It is the spirit of the eugenics era that fascinates me. During the early 1900s, before Hitler came to power, Germany had the most liberal and compassionate programs for the disabled and "unfit" in the world. At the same time, eugenics flourished in the United States and influenced Hitler in important ways. Hitler enacted some laws derived from American laws and closed down all those programs, public and private.

[K-W]

34. The text of the original post assumes abortion is murder.

Which is a good indication that, while some of the points have value the overall POV is quite off that of most people here.

[George_S]

68. I'm not arguing for or against abortion

But do suspect there is a new eugenics movement in progress. Different wording, different tactics, different solutions, but still eugenics.

That was the point of bringing it up.

EDIT: I have seen some pro-abortion arguments here though that imply if the mother isn't wealthy or educated enough yet, she should get an abortion. That struck me as elitist, as if only those who are successful American women or American-like, should have a baby. And that doesn't seem very pro-choice to me.

[Ripley]

79. Funny you act like the victim here, yet look at your thread title.

You blatantly bait feminists with the title. Then you post excerpts that imply feminists were akin to Hitler. Then you insist it's NOT ABOUT ABORTION. Do you really think people are writing attack smears on Sanger because she simply wanted to give women freedom to control their destiny instead of being pregnant all the time? Whenever family planning and PPH are brought up today it is for one purpose: Abortion in politics. No matter that 90% of what PPH does is educate, provide health care and prenatal care and a variety of birth control methods...Abortion is what the issue is.

If you wanted to talk about a "new eugenics movement in progress" why didn't you talk about that? Or are you saying modern day feminists are using Eugenics, if so who by name? Who is elitist here and who is pro-abortion? There is no such thing. It is pro-choice. Get with the program DUDE.

[George_S]

120. Oh, now, I'm far out numbered in the victim department

No use in competing there.

[bloom]

59. I don't know

what your agenda is - but this was on the same page as one of your previous posts and negates the argument you seem to be trying to make.

"Quite a few American eugenicists did support the eugenic programs in Nazi Germany, as Stefan Kühl documents in The Nazi Connection. But Sanger was never was a eugenicist of the Nazi sort and in a strict sense she was never a eugenicist of any sort. "

http://www.inklingbooks.com/inklingblog/C1190411607/E302325959/

[George_S]

81. Sheesh

Where did I say Sanger was a eugenicist of the Nazi sort? The fact is, the entire eugenics movement was a blur of politics and each and every part of it led to the Holocaust, even if not intentionally.

[bloom]

105. Sheesh yourself

it also said "she was never a eugenicist of any sort. " but you seem to want to ignore that.

[George_S]

113. What is "it"?

She was a eugenicist.

What's the big deal?

[jdj]

94. so birth control and Planned Parenthood is a tool of the Nazis.

safe sex is no longer p.c.?

do ugly man-hating dykes hate you and steal your girlfriends?

What is your point?

It kills me that you are attempting to blame FEMINISM for things that happened before women even had the right to VOTE.

Pitiful, but banal and predictable.

[George_S]

114. The reaction here is banal and predictable.

And pitiful.

Maybe they practiced eugenics because that is the only form of power they had since they couldn't vote. They had to hide their resentment of life and the world behind the mask of improving it. "The despisers of mankind."

Maybe not. Maybe they were just self-righteous and thought some people didn't deserve living or to have children, or maybe some weren't good enough to speak on a "liberal" (what a laugh) message board. Ya know?

I'm starting to think Rush was right.

[jdj]

131. "starting to think"?

you are not fooling anyone.

[Undercover Owl]

71. I second that motion! This is BS!

Thanks, guys, for getting riled up about family planning being "inflicted" upon poor women!

Everyone knows poor women around the globe should have at least 12 kids!

(am I just not understanding this thread, or what?) This is an asinine argument.

[agitpropagent9]

16. concentration camps for the "dysgenic" groups

sanger called on the government to "apportion farm lands and homestead for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives."

that's right, forced labor for people who shouldn't be allowed to breed:

"the first step would be to control the intake and output of morons, mental defectives, epileptics.

"the second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary groups, such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces for as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct.

"having corralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on a basis of health instead of punishment, it is safe to say that fifteen or twenty million of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense - defending the unborn against their own disabilities."

**source: margaret sanger, "a plan for world peace" the birth control review, april 1932, p. 108

[George_S]

18. I don't think she wrote that...

... though it was published in her Birth Control Review. She did condone camps though, something like our modern day boot camps.

What is fascinating about the period is the flux and merging of the Left and Right. They all had their different agendas and the apex was extreme elitism on both sides.

[starroute]

17. Beliefs of that sort were widespread c. 1900-30

If you read as much old science fiction as I have, you can't help being aware that a majority of people back then believed in a very narrow form of Social Darwinism, in which the poor were evolutionarily inferior to the rich and the fact that poor people had more babies than rich people was a threat to the entire future of the human race.

There was all sorts of crap going around to prove that moral depravity was hereditary, like the famous study of the Jukes and the Kallikaks (which I believe has recently been debunked.) And promoting birth control or sterilization for the poor was considered the liberal position, as opposed to outright extermination.

Some of the eugenics movement was blatantly racist -- and it was racists like Jesse Helms who kept promoting it longest, when it had been discredited everywhere else -- but mostly it was just anti-poor. It wasn't until the Depression came along to demonstrate that *anybody* could be poor through no fault of their own that attitudes began to change.

So, yes, Margaret Sanger was a woman of her day, and she did express attitudes which are embarrassing to people who see birth control as a means of liberating women, both affluent and underprivileged, from the negative social and economic effects of unwanted pregnancies. But she wasn't alone, and there is no *special* relationship between feminism and eugenics.

[George_S]

20. Agreed.

That is only one chapter in the e-book. However, without feminist support, the eugenics movement could not have taken hold like it did.

Granted, they had the best of intentions, but so did Hitler.

The ideal was a better future. Kind of hard to argue against that and it is very easy, even when reading anti-eugenics works, to fall into that reasoning and agree with much of it.

That is why it is so dangerous.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

52. Baloney! Eugenicists got wide support from the psychiatric community

feminism was not even on the richter scale when eugenicism made it's mark.

[Susang]

83. Feminists were hated and feared at that time

So I can't really see how one individual feminist's support of the eugenic's movement made much of a difference to the new world order. :eyes:

[jdj]

99. oh c'mon, you know how they always try to blame the farts on the wimmins

goes back to Eve.

it's a man thang.

[jdj]

98. Margaret Sanger wasn't a "feminist"

there was no such thing as "feminism" at that time.

Don't you know anything about history? Ever even studied the early suffragists Elizabeth Cady Staunton and Susan B. Antony and their work with Frederick Douglas and the Abolition movement? (which pre-dates the the period you are discussing).

Ever heard of the civil war? (There actually was human history before the 20th century).

If you read eugenics texts and find yourself in agreement with them then I feel sorry for you. I've never heard that stated here, but there is a first time for everything.

[SoCalDem]

27. Exactly.. Times were different then. People believed lots of things

Remember too. that LOTS of people who were adults in the 20's & 30's would have been LUCKY to have had a "post-6th grade" education.The depression knocked the stuffing out of lots of people, so in the 30's the obvious "solution" to all the poverty would have been to "just have fewer poor people"..:eyes:..

Farmers were just getting interested in selective breeding in livestock (cows that need less water, survive better in a drought)..same went for seeds..Remember...there were way more rural people back then too..Ideas in one area, often migrate to others, so the transferrance to humans was not a big stretch.

Uneducated people "knew" they were uneducated, and people who were educated were looked up to, and their ideas taken seriously.

We all know that when people are severely stressed, they "act differently", and are deprerssed. Back then "odd" people were often locked up. In hindsight, we can see that probably most of them were NOT insane, but if society said they were, they were likely to have been looked down upon and were targetted for childlessness.

Is it a "good idea" for poor and uneducated people to have 8 children? Of course not, but if you are running a farm, and have seen children die from "now eradicated" childhood diseases before they reached 4 or 5, you too would have continued to have children. Family farms (the norm back then) needed lots of farm help. Large families were common, birth control or not.

Just as China is finding out now, over regulation of childbearing is not necessarily a "fix" for the problem.

[JaneDoughnut]

91. Great post

You have helped put the rest of this tough-to-follow thread into context.

I have always believed Eugenics was a pretty nasty belief system, and would find it difficult to admire any of its advocates, but thank goodness there have been activists who helped make birth control and PP possible, even if we disagree with their motives.

[Cocoa]

19. I don't trust this article

I Google'd "Margaret sanger plan for peace" and all I got was pro-life sites.

[George_S]

23. True, they use it for their propaganda.

And they go over the top with it. That doesn't mean the entire article is false though.

[Cocoa]

24. I'm assuming it's false, for now

this article itself has an agenda, plus the results of my Google search, make it look like disinfo.

[greenohio]

56. What did you find?

My search seemed to confirm that Sanger did subscribe to eugenics. That said, I don't think that means that abortion is murder, as the article seems to imply.

[libnnc]

22. seems to me...

as someone who's spent hours in feminist theories/women's studies classes of late--this feminism/eugenics connection sounds like just another way to marginalize women's issues and feminist studies by tethering them to a horrible ideology.

Call me a sensitive woman-centered thinking lesbian :shrug:

My white, hetero-centric, patriarchy detector is beeping like crazy.

[Tansy_Gold]

55. Well, I'm white and hetero, but my patriarchy detector

is screaming like a bain sidhe .


Tansy Gold, who has noticed that fragile and tangential and incidental connections are always deemed important when they're between feminism and some outrageous and/or discredited ideology but major connections are always dismissed when they're between the dominant rightwing theopatriarchy and an outrageous and/or discredited ideology.

[jdj]

100. brilliant rebuttal Tansy Gold!

beautifully put!

[La Lioness Priyanka]

25. what exactly is your point...i fail to understand it?

[stanwyck]

35. beware feminists

I guess. He's very loosely threaded eugenics with early feminism and then gone on to marrying the two philosophies. It's all pretty flimsy and silly. I believe he "misunderestimated" his DU audience.

[K-W]

37. Well, the ties are very real to early feminists, not feminism.

And with the death of popularity of eugenics nationally, it stopped being related to feminism. The problem with this article is the logic, not the history. We should not whitewash the fact that many early supporters of birth control thought that genetically inferior people were having too many kids.

[stanwyck]

39. where did the

elitist women resenting religious women "facts" come from...what valid research exists for that hypothesis?

[K-W]

41. Dont confuse me with the starter of this thread.

I have made no claims even remotely resembling what you have in your post.

[eridani]

76. So what?

Many advocates of women's suffrage used the nasty argument that men of 'inferior' classes could vote but the wives and mothers of the elite coutld not. Is that supposed to mean that women should no longer get to vote?

[jdj]

96. honey these people existed before wide use of birth control

and if birth control disappeared tomorrow they would still exist.

They seized upon reproductive control and family planning as a way to realize their prejudices in the real world, but these things did not arise because of the bigots that misused them.

And "Feminism" the terminology didn't even exist in the time-frame you are placing it in. Back then women's suffrage was the terminology used, and it went HAND IN HAND with the abolitionist movement. These two movements had a huge split when black men got the right to vote, as the suffragists had worked their asses off to get the vote for women and ex-slaves and then found themselves pushed to the back of the room legislatively because "America isn't ready" to have both women and African Americans voting, so women were the sacrificial lambs.

Then in the late 60's and 70's came the "women's liberation" movement, fresh on the heels of the civil rights movement. "Feminism" as it is being referred to here, is a phenomenon of the mid-1970's forward.

[K-W]

36. ignore

ignore

[oldcoot]

61. Good question

The fact that Sanger advocated eugenics is not new information. However, this fact should not be used to discredit Planned Parenthood. Even Edwin Black, author of War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, praised Planned Parenthood for its cooperation and described Planned Parenthood's current work as "admirable" (xxiv).

[George_S]

62. Glad you mentioned that...

Throughout 1936, the American eugenic leadership continued its praise for Hitler's anti-Jewish and racial polices. 'The last twenty years witnessed two stupendous forward movements, one in our United States, the other in Germany,' declared California raceologist C.M. Goethe in his presidential address to the Eugenics Research Association. He added with a degree of satisfaction, 'California had led all the world in sterilization operations. Toady, even California's quarter century record has, in two years, been outdistanced by Germany.'

"Eugenicist Marie Kopp toured 15,000 miles across Nazi Germany, and with the assistance of one of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, was able to undertake extensive research on the Nazi program in cities and towns. Kopp was even permitted access to the secret Nazi Heredity Courts. Throughout 1936, Kopp wrote articles for eugenic publications, participated in promotional reoundtables with such luminaries as Margaret Sanger, and presented position papers praising the Nazi program as one of 'fairness.' Kopp was able to assure all the 'religious belief does not enter into the matter,' because Jews were defined not by their religious practices, but by their bloodlines.

"At one American Eugenics Society luncheon, Kopp emphasized, 'Justice Holmes, when handing down the decision in the Bush versus Bell case, expressed the guiding spirit... 'It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crimes or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.'"

Same book, p 316.

Of course, everyone should just shut up if a woman is getting uppity. What could else could it be besides misogyny?

The thread proves the point. I'm arguing that much of the same intent is in "progress" today, even if it is dressed differently.

But wait, there's more:

'But Sanger was no racist. Nor was she anti-Semitic.

"But Sanger was an ardent, self-confessed eugenicist, and she would turn her otherwise noble birth control organizations into a tool for eugenics, which advocated for mass sterilization of so-called defectives, mass incarceration of the unfit and draconian immigration restrictions. Like other staunch eugenicists, Sanger vigorously opposed charitable efforts to uplift the downtrodden and deprived, and argued extensively that it was better that the cold and hungry be left without help, so that the eugenically superior strains could multiply without competition from the 'unfit.' She repeatedly referred to the lower classes and the unfit as 'human waste' not worthy of assistance, and proudly quoted the extreme eugenic view that human 'weeds' should be 'exterminated.'
...
"The feminist movement, of which Sanger was a major exponent, always identified with eugenics.

SAME BOOK, p 127.

You can yell and call me names all you want, but if you look at where you agree you may start to define yourself as a eugenicists.

It was progressive then; it can be progressive now. In fact, it already is.

[oldcoot]

72. What name did I call you?

I did not call you any names in my original post. I just did not understand what your point was. If your point was that we should be careful about using the term "progressive" to describes ourselves because early twentieth-century progressives (including many feminists) tended to be racist and support eugenics, fine.

If your point is that twenty-first-century feminists and progressives share the same views as feminists and progressives during the early twentieth century, then you are incorrect. I am not a eugenicist because I believe that individuals should have the right to decide whether or not to have children. I feel that it is immoral for the state to interfere in such decisions by mandating the sterilization of certain individuals. However, I also feel that it is equally immoral for the state to force people to have children that they do not want.

However, if you are worried about a modern eugenics movement, you should be concerned about any attempts by the federal and state governments to control women's bodies. If the courts find that laws banning abortion and certain forms of contraception are constitutional, then it is possible that state governments might successfully pass laws to mandate the sterilization of some women.

[George_S]

73. Thank you for your post

And I agree with all you say.

Now, like then, doesn't have any carefully defined and segregated eugenic cause. A person can be extremely anti-eugenics in one sphere, but pro-eugenics in another.

Take porn, for example, though not eugenics, the support for and against is varied. Various groups can have different reasons for condemning it, but their reasons don't matter when the mob gets big enough. There are Dem and Repub factions trying to stamp it out. I'm not arguing for against porn (though I could), but am only saying the politics and motives becomes blurred and irrelevant once enough momentum is built. If a strict anti-porn law is passed, there will be no mention in the law of the politics of those who pushed it through.

As to the name calling, I was responding to the tone of the thread in general. Sorry it seemed I singled you out on that one.

[muriel_volestrangler]

88. Are you accusing someone of being a present day eugenicist?

You said: "I'm arguing that much of the same intent is in "progress" today, even if it is dressed differently. ... if you look at where you agree you may start to define yourself as a eugenicists."

By "intent", do you mean a eugenic intent? If so, who (on or off DU) are you accusing? (Your follow up "you may start..." seems to mean you think some people heer on DU are tending to eugenics. That's quite a serious accusation, and I think you need to back it up with much more than what some earlier feminists and birth control advocates said. You are not making clear how much the quotes you link to you agree with. If your purpose is just to point out what certain people argue, then be clear about that.

[jdj]

106. that sounds just like the GOP war on entitlements.

they stay true to form through time.

I don't know how to put this gently so I'll spell it out for you.

Margaret Sanger is dead.

I fuck now.

The two are not related.

[George_S]

116. If she is dead and doesn't matter...

... why is everyone so upset?

This is really amazing.

[jdj]

129. oh come now.

don't feign surprise

you'd never have posted this if you weren't sure of this reaction.

If it weren't for bad vibes you'd give no vibes at all.

Must be terrible to have to feed off of negative attention.

[noonwitch]

30. That is not what the modern feminism/Planned Parenthood is about now.

That's like saying that because of Jim Crow laws 50 years ago, and slavery 150 years ago, every white person in the south is racist today.

This person assumes that abortion is murder, that's obvious from the post. That's a matter of one's own ideology. Planned Parenthood is about more than just abortion, anyways, it's about low-cost prenatal care for pregnant women, low cost contraception, encouraging young women to take care of their bodies and get regular exams, etc. I'm a feminist because I think that I deserve to be paid the same as a man for the same job, that traditional "women's jobs" (teachers, social workers, nurses) should get paid the same as men in jobs requiring similar educations, and to support women who pursue leadership roles across the country.

I'll get flamed for saying this by at least some people, but I do support the sterilization of developmentally disabled women, if the woman's family requests it (not by government mandate). Women who are severely disabled in that way are not able to care for children, some are not able to even understand their pregnancies and child birth, and many end up pregnant because they are exploited by some men who think they can get access to the SSI checks.

I've worked with low-functioning people in my job in Children's Services. It is better for most of them to avoid getting pregnant, and avoid the heartache of losing their children to relatives or the state. The only way for a parent to ensure that this does not happen, short of never letting them leave the house, is to get their tubes tied. It's more humane than depo-provera shots or the pill, which can have some serious side effects.

[AngryAmish]

31. Can't blame Planned Parenthood for eugenics

It would be like blaming the Democratic party for Jim Crow. Obviously, the Democrats were in the lead in promoting Jim Crow. But times changed. And now the other side wants to bring back Jim Crow.

[bloom]

32. I think it looks like a stupid web-site

Further into the article they accuse her of "gasp" believing in over-population and thinking it would be better if women "gasp" actually planned their pregnancies.

On their front page they say,
"Eugenics is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created unequal and the food is running short; that, in the struggle for food, those who have an inherited advantage prevail and pass the advantage on to their children who prevail even more; that this is how evolution, Yale and the English aristocracy happened...."

Yet they make no claim that Margaret Sanger was working on promoting the population on whites over any other race.


Good thing to post if you want to get people riled up though.

--------
On edit:

I can't say there were no feminists involved in eugenics - though it sounds to me in this article that Rockefellar et al. didn't need any help from women (feminists or not) to get his sterilization agenda across (and to influence Hitler).

http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:32556

[Ripley]

38. Truth:

Sanger and Eugenics
Eugenics is the study of improving hereditary qualities by socially controlling human reproduction. Margaret Sanger was not a racist, an anti-Semite, or a eugenicist. Eugenicists, like the Nazis, were opposed to the use of abortion and contraception by healthy and "fit" women (Grossmann, 1995). In fact, Sanger's books were among the very first burned by the Nazis in their campaign against family planning ("Sanger on Exhibit," 1999/2000). Sanger actually helped several Jewish women and men and others escape the Nazi regime in Germany ("Margaret Sanger and the 'Refugee Department'," 1993). Sanger's disagreement with the eugenicists of her day is clear from her remarks in The Birth Control Review of February 1919:

Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother (1919a).

Margaret Sanger clearly identified with the issues of health and fitness that concerned the early 20th-century eugenics movement, which was enormously popular and well-respected during the 1920s and '30s, when treatments for many hereditary and disabling conditions were unknown. However, Sanger always believed that reproductive decisions should be made on an individual and not a social or cultural basis, and she consistently repudiated any racial application of eugenics principles. For example, Sanger vocally opposed the racial stereotyping that effected passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, on the grounds that intelligence and other inherited traits vary by individual and not by group.

Maybe guys who want wimen barefoot and pregnant should not be spreading blatant lies on a liberal board.

[bloom]

40. thanks

it sounded like the other site was an anti-birth-control site.

I know there a some people who really don't give any credibility to over-population and apparently think everyone should all have 10 kids or something. (I am related to such a person so I have heard such ideas first hand.)

[Ripley]

42. You're welcome.

I don't understand how people are allowed to post such misogynistic crap and get up to thousands of posts and not be banned. It happens daily around here.

I guess the rules about not attacking groups of people doesn't apply to half the population of the world.

[K-W]

44. You define eugenics properly, then misuse the definition.

Sorry, but you dont have to be a nazi to be a eugenicist.

And even if you believe in a relatively mild and unobtrusive eugenics, you are still a eugenicist.

Anyone who holds the false belief that human beings can be adjudicated on quality and through any process improved based on that is a eugenicst and wrong.

[Ripley]

45. Those are not my words.

The OP made the outrageous statement that Feminists, especially Sanger helped Hitler and equated their beliefs. The snip I provided proved that a lie.

It is from this link:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about/thisispp/sanger.html

[K-W]

47. Then why did you type them?

She held false and wrong views about genetics.

I am not the original poster, nor do I agree with him. But I also dont agree with whitewashing the fact that Sanger expressed false and wrong views.

But you are right, in context they are fairly benign.

[agitpropagent9]

46. so...

anyone critical of sanger is de facto a "guy who wants wimen barefoot and pregnant?"

she wasn't a racist, you say? was she preaching tolerance when she spoke at a klan rally in 1926?

was she being an objective scientist when she said the aboriginal australian was "the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development"?

[Ripley]

48. More lies.

Got a link for that klan rally speech or that other laughable crap, or do you just like to make shit up? Honestly, why do you guys HATE women so much?

snip>
Sanger's Outreach to the African-American Community
In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist support for contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family planning to women who were denied access to their city's health and social services. Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Urban League, and the black community's elder statesman, W.E.B. DuBois.

Beginning in 1939, DuBois also served on the advisory council for Sanger's "Negro Project," which was a "unique experiment in race-building and humanitarian service to a race subjected to discrimination, hardship, and segregation" (Chesler, 1992). The Negro Project served African-Americans in the rural South. Other leaders of the African-American community who were involved in the project included Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. The Negro Project was also endorsed by prominent white Americans who were involved in social justice efforts at this time, including Eleanor Roosevelt, the most visible and compassionate supporter of racial equality in her era; and the medical philanthropists, Albert and Mary Lasker, whose financial support made the project possible

A passionate opponent of racism, Sanger predicted in 1942 that the "Negro question" would be foremost on the country's domestic agenda after World War II. Her accomplishments on behalf of the African-American community were unchallengeable during her lifetime and remain so today. In 1966, the year Sanger died, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. . . . Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her.

[agitpropagent9]

49. before you call me a liar...

perhaps you should read up on the icons you celebrate. my "made up shit" and "lies" come from this book, which was named "choice magazine's outstanding academic books for 2004".

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f02/sanger.html

it's called 'the selected papers of margaret sanger'.

crack open a book, son...

[George_S]

63. why do you guys HATE women so much?

A better question is, Why do you HATE men so much? They aren't allowed to express an opinion?

Fuck that. Even if they are wrong, fuck that.

[REP]

74. Who's Stopping You From Expressing Your Opinion?

"Disagreement" isn't the same as "not allowing expression of opinion." You reposted a hackjob from a fundie site and got called for it. Not quite the same as being silenced, now is it.

Here's a suggestion: actually read Sanger's works for yourself. There are lots of antiabortnoids who have made her into their archenemy and when her writings don't fit their needs, simply make things up. By taking the word of the author of that website, you have been had, and rather badly - unless your intent was to deceive.

[George_S]

117. There is an earlier post...

... from someone saying they were going to alert it, but since EVERYONE is so used to "misogyny" there was no point.

Yeah, right.

I can see why the reaction against feminism is so strong nowadays: it is so irrational.

[REP]

123. Translation: "Waaah! Waaaah! Waaaah!"

You cribbed your argument from a webiste and have obviously never bothered to read Sanger yourself. You got caught, and nobody is agreeing with you, and now you're crying about how nobody's being nice. Boo hoo.

[MaraJade]

51. This is all about fear. . .

A man's fear that women are now so free and undependent that they
can reject any involvement with a man if they so desire. Relationships are now on OUR terms--and that's as it should be.

We feel no pressure to get married or stay married; we don't feel
any economic or societal pressure to yoke ourselves to any man anymore. And with birth control being freely available, we can control the most basic of our live circumstances without the counsel
or permission of any man. We can have education and careers just as any man can. We can want a man, but not NEED one.

We can take him or leave him!

This is what he's afraid of. The genie is out of the bottle (has
been for quite some time now). This is a desperate attempt to get her
(literally) back in.

[Tansy_Gold]

58. As long as many young women understand this, we'll be in

great shape.

The fear many over-40 feminists have is that too many of the younger generation will take these gains toward equality for granted and not understand that the war hasn't been won. And, admittedly, the reason it wasn't won was because the feminists of the 60s and 70s didn't reach out enough.

And now, the present administration is making great strides toward returning women to their pre-Sanger state of dependency -- on biology, on male support, on religion.

What pisses me off more than anything is that there are those on DU who continue to spout this shit -- no, not you, brensgrrl; I'm speaking in general now. I shouldn't let myself get dragged into discussions like this, but I've been off DU for a while and I guess I needed a "fix."

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

53. Exactly and thankyou

Sanger's work lies independent of what MALE RACIST POLITICIANS and the medical community did with her work.

[agitpropagent9]

54. fair enough

but if she's exempt from having her work filtered through the tremendous social and scientific advances of the 20th century, she should also be exempt from revisionist apologists that say "hey, it was a different time back then. LOTS of people thought sterilizing and/or locking up the poor and addicted in concentration camps and prohibiting them from breeding..."

[George_S]

69. Liberal board? Where can I find one?

Few here are actually liberal. Dem, maybe, but not liberal.

Hell, how liberal is it to suggest someone shouldn't post here just because it is controversial? If I were a freeper troll, that would be one thing, but I'm not.

No worries, I'm searching for a truly liberal site and will leave once I find it. Maybe an anarchist or libertarian site would be better for me. Not sure. But a few months here convinced me I'm not this kind of Democrat.

[REP]

75. "A Poor Workman Blames His Tools"

The ideas posted weren't controversial; they are simply wrong. It is obvious that your reading of Sanger is second-hand at best, and that you are relying on third-hand sources to make outlandish claims.

[Ripley]

78. This board is for Liberals and Progressives, not exclusively

Democrats. I am not a Democrat and a lot of posters are not. Maybe you need to read DU's mission statement.

So, you take the old diversion tactic huh? Claim that I'm not a liberal because I suggest people who post blatently sexist posts should be banned. Yep, people do get banned for just that, well, a pattern of that anyway.

The information you display is used heftily by people on Free Republic and other Conservative anti-choice groups. Maybe Sanger did make some racists statements, I don't know. But since she did a lot of work in Harlem and had prominent blacks of her time praise her efforts, including Martin Luther King, I would take their words over some bible-thumping, woman-hating group of modern day Bush supporters.

So, keep searching for your truly liberal site...one that obviously does not promote the notion that women should have the freedom to choose their own reproductive paths.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

102. sexists should be banned....

and also people who post blatantly misleading things....

this thread should have been titled: SANGER LINKED TO EUGENICS....

which may/maynot be true. but FEMINISM linked to eugenics is just plain sexist.

[George_S]

112. Uh, oh, everyone shut up

The S word is in action.

Isn't banning a lightweight form of eugenics?

[George_S]

70. The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought

For Marouf Hasian, author of The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought, the appeal of eugenics in English and American minds has never diminished but only taken on new names. From Francis Galton through Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin and right up to Murray and Herrnstein, the only significant challenge in Anglo-American thought to the value of eugenics has been some semantic backpedaling to make sense of Nazi Germany.

In the meantime, genetics has burst forth, able to offer a way to combine "democratic" values and deliberate improvement of humans by "geneticizing" social problems and urging parents to "choose" their offspring with tools such as amniocentesis and gene therapy.

Hasian is obviously sympathetic with the arguments of Daniel Kevles, for whom discussions of genetic engineering clearly belong in discussions about eugenics. And while he is no Jeremy Rifkin, he is certainly cautious when James Watson (yes, that Watson), first director of the Human Genome Project, warns that it is an "act of true moral cowardice to allow children to be born with known genetic defects."

The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought is reviewed at The Net Net, in the July 19, 1996, issue.

http://www.marmoset.com/60minute/Webnav/eugen.html

[Bridget Burke]

77. Yes, studying the eugenics movement is fascinating--if somewhat horrifying

But what does this have to do with feminism?

Feminism has not been "captured"--she's still out there, on the prowl. Be careful!

[George_S]

80. Figures.

EUGENICS, SPIRITUALITY, AND SEX DIFFERENTIATION IN EDWARDIAN ENGLAND: The Case of Frances Swiney.

Get unlimited access to HighBeam Research with a FREE TRIAL »

Journal of Women's History Journal of Women's History; 9/22/1998; Robb, George

Frances Swiney, a Theosophist and Edwardian suffragist, argued women constituted a higher evolutionary position than men and were therefore entitled to more responsible positions in British society. Swiney redefined eugenics as a spiritual enterprise where women could affect evolution through their wills. Swiney argued human development would reach its highest form as the species was feminized.

http://www.highbeam.com/library/docRef.asp?docid=1G1:53499889&refid=blog_2030486&openRef=1&COOKIE=NO

[Bridget Burke]

85. Yes, the past is full of interesting stories.

Are you in fear of being feminized? Is that what's bothering you?

[Susang]

90. There does seem to be an agenda here, doesn't there?

I wonder what it is? :freak:

[George_S]

119. Yeah, the agenda is all this, uh, reaction...

I mean, BIG DEAL, I posted a recent post and even said I should have checked it out before doing so. I didn't know it some wacko site.

But look at this thread and all the over reaction.

Frankly, now I could care less if it was accidental or not.

[George_S]

118. Next step

You say I'm gay and cool, right?

[txaslftist]

86. She's dead, right?

I mean, miss Sanger?

She might have been a racist, maybe not. She's still dead.

We are democrats and liberals. We beleive contraception is a right, involuntary sterilization is wrong, eugenics is wrong, correct?

Some of us go either way on abortion, but generally we are 'right to choosers' and 'privacy advocates', right?

Why are we debating the cannonization of Ms. Sanger?

seems pretty damn trivial to me, although obvious flamebait.

[jdj]

101. It's the Crucible for eugenics

Them wimmins made us be nazis, with their evil tempting bodies, and their fertile wombs. We was just walking around being godly men, and them wimmins they seduced us and threw they sheets over our heads and gave us torches. We didn't know what we was a doin', we was under they spell. They some kinda witches, really, they is.

[txaslftist]

110. LOL!

[La Lioness Priyanka]

95. A LOT OF WHITE MEN HAD SLAVES

A LOT OF WHITE MEN LYNCHED BLACK MEN

white men are thereby racist killers....


:eyes:

[Jesus H. Christ]

103. Jesus Christ believed in slavery.

I won't go around saying Christianity is morally reprehensible if you don't go around saying that me taking Depo is racist.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

104. depo?

[jdj]

107. Jesus is a girl?

Wow, that's neat.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

108. did you ever hear the tori song

we both know it was a girl back in bethlehem

[LiviaOlivia]

109. The Theocratic Fascist Right believe that they have Roe vs Wade

all but gone, now they are going after contraception. Pharmacists refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, government denying funding of various domestic and foreign aid programs that involve women's health, etc., etc. Their bottom-line is the suppression of women and this is what the op is really about. The TFR want to force breeding for cheap labor, canon fodder, sexual enslavement and their god.


"One way to understand her life's work is to examine the alliance between feminists and eugenicists that she built, an alliance that lasts to this day."

What lasting feminist-eugenics alliance? That's bullshit unless one believes contraception=eugenics.

Sanger is a paradox but for a complete look at Sanger I recommend Ellen Chesler's 1992 bio of her*. She details Sanger and the eugenics movement and Sanger's brave fight to redistribute power to women in the bedroom, the home and the community. Sanger was one of the great emancipators.

But then Sanger is not the real issue of this thread. IMHO.


*"Woman Of Valor: Margaret Sanger And The Birth Control Movement In America" by Ellen Chesler

[George_S]

121. No, she's not.

Eugenics is.

[LiviaOlivia]

128. Give it up

You're not going to get any converts for any Operation Rescue-esque organization here. The "eugenics-Sanger-feminism alliance" talking point is so tired and obvious. Don't like the comments your getting? Well there are plenty of other boards on the internet.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/demonization_of_ms.htm
"The Demonization of Margaret Sanger"

On May 5, 1997, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial piece titled "The Repackaging of Margaret Sanger," by Steven Mosher, vice president for international affairs of Human Life International, an anti-abortion group based in Front Royal, Virginia. Mosher objected to a Planned Parenthood award named for Margaret Sanger that was given to "The Dying Rooms," a BBC documentary on China's state-run orphanages. While Mosher praised the documentary (in which he appeared), he was "personally offended" that the award bore the name Margaret Sanger, someone he claimed had "contempt for the Asiatic races." He went on to attack Sanger for what he called her "bigotry," "racist views," and her associations with eugenicists. In doing so, he misappropriated several Sanger quotations, highlighted seemingly inflammatory Sanger comments without providing any context, and indicted her for the words and deeds of several prominent eugenicists who supported birth control.

The frequent misuse of historical resources on Sanger is further evidence for the need to provide a complete, accurate and accessible edition of her papers. There is certainly a credible, well-researched body of scholarship that argues persuasively that Sanger naively or carelessly accepted too much of the racist and nativist rhetoric that characterized early twentieth century eugenics. These writings are the product of good faith efforts that rely on the proper use of historical resources and a comprehensive understanding of Sanger's life. They further a valuable ongoing discussion about a highly controversial figure. Sanger's writings should be the subject of intelligent debate rather than an opportunity for preconceived distortion.

The Mosher piece is typical of many anti-Sanger letters-to-the-editor written by representatives of anti-choice groups that have appeared over the past few years whenever Sanger is mentioned in the context of an article on Planned Parenthood or contraception. In fact, the Mosher piece and many others like it borrow freely from anti-Sanger materials that have been in circulation for at least twenty years, including an offensive little pamphlet entitled Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society written by Elasah Drogin, a Catholic nun. The pamphlet, written in 1979, "exposes" Sanger as a eugenicist, racist and war-monger, but is most intent on proving her a sexual maniac with insatiable desires. It displays a portrait of Sanger on its cover, her head rising up above a modern metropolis, war planes swirling above her and a Nazi prison camp in the foreground. While this is one of the more absurd examples of anti-Sanger material in circulation, the Drogin pamphlet and most other attacks from anti-choice groups rely on the same small group of Sanger documents over and over again, including letters she wrote in the late 1930s to birth control movement contributors and black leaders expressing her concern that blacks living in the South would view her "Negro Project" as an attempt to limit their race. For instance she wrote to philanthropist Clarence Gamble in 1939: The ministers work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the (Birth Control) Federation (of America) as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.
Anti-choice groups attempting to discredit Sanger frequently extract the line "we don't want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population" without offering context or intelligent explanation.

Such written attacks on Sanger often fail to divulge the author's identity and real agenda. In the case of the Wall Street Journal piece readers are not told that Mosher is part of an extremely conservative Roman Catholic organization that not only opposes abortion and the work of PPFA, but strongly opposes contraception as well. Human Life International accepts only "natural" family planning, the "one worthy of the dignity of man," according to an article on the organization's web page (see www.hli.org). It is clear from this Internet site that HLI's goal is to undermine the PPFA and international family planning, by attacking Sanger, who it portrays as the ideological foundation of the pro-choice and family planning movements.

<snip>

The frequent misuse of historical resources on Sanger is further evidence for the need to provide a complete, accurate and accessible edition of her papers. There is certainly a credible, well-researched body of scholarship that argues persuasively that Sanger naively or carelessly accepted too much of the racist and nativist rhetoric that characterized early twentieth century eugenics. These writings are the product of good faith efforts that rely on the proper use of historical resources and a comprehensive understanding of Sanger's life. They further a valuable ongoing discussion about a highly controversial figure. Sanger's writings should be the subject of intelligent debate rather than an opportunity for preconceived distortion.

<snip>

[George_S]

122. My last word on this...

Some time ago I got jumped all over for asking why pro-choice didn't frame their argument better. Why is the right winning the PR war?

Now I know.

[REP]

124. Pro-Liars *Aren't* Winning; Majority of US is Pro-Choice

Strawman argument.

You lose.

Again.

[George_S]

125. My vote still counts.

That's all tha matters.

You lost this one because I'll be voting pro-life from now on.

[REP]

127. Not To Me, It Doesn't

Declare victory and run away, like they all do.

Call it what it really is - Pro-LIE.

[jdj]

130. "from now on"?

don't you mean "as always"?