[On October 16,
1916, Margaret
Sanger opened her first birth control clinic in New York City. So this week,
on the 100th anniversary of that moment, I’ll AmericanStudy Sanger
and other histories and images connected to this still-controversial subject,
leading up a special weekend post highlighting a great scholarly book on the
topic!]
Three
lesser-known sides to the woman known as the founder
of birth control (and of Planned
Parenthood).
1)
Her Writings: Sanger is mostly known for her
organizations and actions, but she was a prolific journalist and writer, and
indeed launched her public career with two sex education columns for the
socialist magazine New York Call: “What
Every Mother Should Know” (1911-12) and “What
Every Girl Should Know” (1912-13). A year later she began publishing her
own monthly periodical,
The Woman Rebel, which focused on
birth control but touched on many other issues of gender and sexuality as well
in its seven-issue run. By the time she opened that 1916 clinic, then, she had
thoroughly established her views and arguments on birth control in these journalistic
and public forums; she would continue to move back and forth between the two
realms for the remainder of her career, as illustrated by a second, much
longer-lasting periodical, The
Birth Control Review (1917-40).
2)
Her Views on Immigration: In recent years Sanger
has come under
fire for anti-black racism, a charge propagated not only by pro-life and
right-wing critics but also by leftist writers such as scholar Angela Davis. It
seems to me that many of those critiques are based on misrepresentations
of Sanger’s views
about African Americans and race—but there’s no doubt that she became later
in life an ardent supporter of certain forms of eugenics and population
control. In particular, Sanger became linked to the anti-immigrant sentiments
that drove the 1920s
Quota Acts and much of the nation’s immigration policy throughout the first
half of the 20th century; her 1932 essay “A Plan for
Peace” included some of her overtly exclusionary ideas and proposals for
immigration policy. Recognizing such flaws and failures in a Progressive
reformer is not, in
this or any case, about vilifying her entire life and career; but neither can
we engage with Sanger’s legacy without such recognition.
3)
Her Comic Legacy: As both of those prior items,
and most every hyperlinked piece therein, illustrate, Sanger’s legacy in American
society and culture is as wide and deep as any one figure’s. But in recent
years, public
historian Jill Lepore has found a particularly surprising and striking
addition to that legacy: the influence of Sanger on the creation and character
of Wonder
Woman. As Lepore documents, Wonder Woman’s creator William Marston was not only
generally inspired by feminist pioneers such as Sanger, but also dated Sanger’s
niece (and a former psychology graduate student of his), Olive
Byrne. The Wonder Woman story gets much stranger and more disturbing than
that, as Lepore’s book amply demonstrates; but nonetheless the connection
between Sanger and the comic book superhero illustrates just how wide-ranging
and potent have been the roles that this pioneering thinker and activist has
played in 20th and 21st century America.
Next post
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other histories or images you’d highlight?
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