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Originally Posted by Mavdog
let's see...her first writing was a column for a nyc rag titled "what every girl should know". uh, it wasn't titled "what every strong, intelligent, wealthy girl should know". it was directed to all girls, rich and poor, smart or not smart.
no eugenic philosophy there.
then there was the "the woman rebel", from wikipedia: "with the slogan "No Gods and No Masters" (and coining the term "birth control"[6][7]) and that each woman be "the absolute mistress of her own body."
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She made some statement somewhere along the way that weren't unmistakeably eugenic, therefore she really wasn't a eugencist. This is your argument?
How about something else from
The Pivot of Civilation(1922):
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There is but one practical and feasible program in handling the great problem of the feeble-minded. That is, as the best authorities are agreed, to prevent the birth of those who would transmit imbecility to their descendants.
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"Feeble-minded" here is a catch-all phrase commonly used by eugenicists of the day...sort of means everything from really dumb to learning disabilities to mentally retarded...anyhoo...I think it's fair to say that someone who advocates the possibility of improving the qualities of human population by discouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits is, by definition, a
eugenicist.
That she may not have always made her arguments on starkly eugenic lines doesn't mean she wasn't a eugenicist, it just means she didn't always make her arguments on strictly eugenic lines.
The main point of the book-->
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The great principle of Birth Control offers the means whereby the individual may adapt himself to and even control the forces of environment and heredity....Birth Control must be recognized...not "merely as the key of the social position," and the only possible and practical method of human generation, but as the very pivot of civilization. Birth Control which has been criticized as negative and destructive, is really the greatest and most truly eugenic method, and its adoption as part of the program of Eugenics would immediately give a concrete and realistic power to that science. As a matter of fact, Birth Control has been accepted by the most clear thinking and far seeing of the Eugenists themselves as the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health.
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Which is to say, if we can keep the dummies and darkies from breeding so much we won't have to deal with all the damn problems they create.
It's a compelling argument and she argues it well. No wonder that the eugenics movement made such headway and that Sanger was such a prominent figure....
That's not to say it isn't morally repugnant, but give the devil it's due so to speak.