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Last updated on August 8th, 2017 at 05:24 pm
Florida Cracker salutes Margaret Sanger, a true Shero of Herstory:
Before Robert Altman, before Eddie Vedder, before Alec Baldwin, a woman’s voice rang loud and clear with the threat to leave the country if a candidate she didn’t like were elected president.
She also pioneered backtracking on that threat. Here’s to you, Margaret!
- Does a Margaret Sanger come with cheese? White bread too, I presume.Posted by entropy on 2006 11 26 at 10:11 AM • permalink
- Chicken with yellow mustard on stale bread.Posted by crittenden on 2006 11 26 at 10:41 AM • permalink
- Then, once its delivered, you change your mind.Posted by crittenden on 2006 11 26 at 10:42 AM • permalink
- Shero is an appropriate term since Fred Shero was the leader of the infamous “Broadway Bullies” that featured in an episode of The Simpsons.
- Margaret Sanger taught Hitler a thing or two.Posted by Some0Seppo on 2006 11 26 at 11:27 AM • permalink
- The only surefire contraception methods are the word “no” and a concealed-carry permit, but for some reason Planned Parenthood et al don’t seem to feature those two items in their literature.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 26 at 12:01 PM • permalink
- I’m with you, Rebecca. Sanger was a screwball (politically, at least, from what that Wikipedia article said), but she certainly helped create some much needed social changes.Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 11 26 at 02:47 PM • permalink
- I don’t know about Rebecca, Auntie KC, but I am cherry picking here. I acknowledge the deed, even though the Shero in question is a person painfully similiar to many leftwing nut jobs of today. I saw one application of Blair’s Law in that Wikipedia entry.
There is one major difference, though. Manger put her money where her mouth was, and made a positive, measureable contribution to the condition of the human race. That’s something few other leftie nutjobs of today can point to for themselves.
I suppose this is yet another symptom of the decline of liberalism, such that we have to use the labels “classic liberal” and “progressive” to identify the fracture points.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 11 26 at 04:03 PM • permalink
- Thank you, JeffS, you put it better than I did. Sanger’s more nutball philosophies have no more credibility today than they had in her day (in some cases, much less), but she made life for ordinary women immeasurably better by making herself a lightning rod. I believe that if she hadn’t pushed her unpopular agenda, women in our society today would still be having six to ten children each and burying half of them (much as they still do in those third world countries where birth control is a taboo subject).
And yes, when we dump on left wingers (I’m as guilty as anybody), it’s worth reminding ourselves to distinguish between those that might actually accomplish some good, and those that are just loony.
“…women in our society today would still be having six to ten children each and burying half of them…”
Gee, as the daughter of a number six and a number ten, that stings. None of them died though, so I’m also feeling a little left out in the family tragedy department.
Americans now have reproduction completely under control, and though our birthrate is so low we’re barely sustaining our population, luckily we have lots of immigrants (1/3 illegal) to take the places of our nonexistent children and sustain our society. It’s a trade-off, I guess.
- I know there’s a price to be paid for every bit of progress anyone makes. I’m a beneficiary of part of Sanger’s crusades. In a small way, I’m even glad she fought the fight. It just strikes me as frightening – and so very sad – almost like saying that some of the things Hitler did were good, even if there was that Final Solution thing to deal with, of course. They were both monsters, but such is the world G-d gave us that we deal with them the best way possible, I guess.
- #15, you misunderstand me. I’m not putting down women who have a lot of children if that’s what they want. The key here is choice, or opportunity if you prefer, to have as many or as few children as you like, and to space them out in a healthy way. Not so long ago (within my lifetime) women didn’t have that kind of control, and I can remember when the public debate over birth control was conducted mostly by men. Margaret Sanger, for all the bad ideas she pushed, at least changed that part.
Also, my mother had five children and buried two.
- While Sanger’s efforts to help the cause of women’s health are laudable, I’m not sure she’d be so happy about the results of widespread use of contraception these days, which isn’t so much to keep women from having so many babies they die of exhaustion as it is to be able to have all the sex we want without having to worry about the inconvenience of pregnancy.
But don’t listen to me, here’s what Sanger herself thought about the matter:
“Every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and woman who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells thinking deeply, are never sensual.” Sexuality, for her, was a kind of weakness, and surmounting it indicated strength:
Though sex cells are placed in a part of the anatomy for the essential purpose of easily expelling them into the female for the purpose of reproduction, there are other elements in the sexual fluid which are the essence of blood, nerve, brain, and muscle. When redirected in to the building and strengthening of these, we find men or women of the greatest endurance greatest magnetic power. A girl can waste her creative powers by brooding over a love affair to the extent of exhausting her system, with the results not unlike the effects of masturbation and debauchery.
Suddenly that champion of birth control doesn’t seem so user-friendly.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 26 at 08:46 PM • permalink
- I never thought she was user friendly, Andrea. I merely pointed out that Sanger did one good thing, as any woman who wants to use birth control will attest to. Or men for that matter; vasectomies might not have been legal otherwise. People have a choice, even if people make it for stuid reasons, but that’s true for any choice made by humans.
If it helps, remember that even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 11 26 at 09:06 PM • permalink
- #19 By 1921 the birthrate was already half of what it had been. Since we need 2.0 kids just to replace ourselves, and we’re at 2.1 or so, it bodes ill for the future. So everybody getting to hold the pickles, hold the lettuce and have it their way is not without consequences.
As an aside: My parents and my 36 aunts and uncles all reproducing during the dark ages managed to have fewer children than my grandparents, so the reproductive-control situation couldn’t have been so very bleak. They were surely more inconvenienced than us modern folk though, and doubtless couldn’t have sex whenevah.
The good ol’, bad ol’ days were neither as good or bad as people claim, and eugenics-queen Margaret Sanger was about as saintly as Peter Singer.
- The good ol’, bad ol’ days were neither as good or bad as people claim
I agree with this statement.
and eugenics-queen Margaret Sanger was about as saintly as Peter Singer.
No one claimed she was. If you believe she didn’t achieve at least some good, then you and I will have to agree to disagree.
And now I’m done explaining my explanations.
- People tend to play up the birth-control-champ facet of Sanger’s career as opposed to the more boring (if more important) women’s health advocate part. Birth control is much more interesting to young people than dull treatises on the need for clean maternity wards and competent midwives. This is what irritates the pro-life crowd, more than Sanger’s ideas about eugenics, which were common to her time.
I’ve nothing against birth control per se, just against human beings and their tendency to turn everything to its worst advantage. Sanger had the best intentions with her promotion of birth control, but the end result is the same: people are selfish and will seek their own pleasure above all other things if you give them half the chance. The wide availability of birth control wouldn’t be a problem if we hadn’t thrown over the morals that kept us (well, more of us then than now) from misusing it. Birth control only used to be available to married couples. Then at some point it became available “in case she gets raped.” There sure must have been a lot of rapes. That pretense didn’t last long—it was really to “level the playing field” of bed-hopping and give women the same “freedom” men had (to be horny 24/7, I guess). Now women are mostly free not to get called the next day if they say “no, I don’t believe in unmarried sex.” It’s nice to know, though, that men can still be sent into a panic at the thought of getting their root-of-the-evening preggers. I’ll take my tradition where I can get it.
Sanger didn’t intend all of this to come about, but it came about, in part because she helped to make certain subjects less taboo, and all for the best of reasons. We’ll be healthy, but our civilization may not last much longer.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 26 at 11:39 PM • permalink
- The reason mothers don’t bury half the children they bear now isn’t because of Margaret Sanger. It’s because of antibiotics and an ever more sophisticated understanding of immunology, medical science, and treatment.Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 11 26 at 11:59 PM • permalink
- Antibiotics, definitely. It’s very freeing to not have to die from a cold sore.
I have a theory that if there’d been some anti-conception plant widely available in the environment, none of us would be here. There’d have been too much opting out—all for excellent and deeply personal reasons, of course.
- #27: I don’t believe that. Most want kids I think. Can’t imagine life without them.
We had two, intended more, but economics came into it. Very expensive if you want good education etc, even after giving up home ownership for the cause.
Maybe less financial planning & we would have been greater in number & happier. Who knows…
- Speaking of Margaret Sanger, scratch any pro-abortionist deeply enough and you find a racial purist.
It is the very rare member of the cult of baby sacrifice that doesnt fall back to the “but what about that (insert name of currently trendy 3rd world culture/race here) that has (insert ridiculously large number of children here)!?!
The foundation of that particular rhetoric, prior to the wash and spin, was about mud people and their taking over our polite society by polluting our genepool with their nasty offspring.
Monster Sanger was a unapologetic racial purist.
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