The “Feeble-Minded” and the “Fit”: What Sanger Meant When She Talked about Dysgenics

запись из блога бумажного проекта, как всегда любопытно
13 Tuesday Dec 2016
Posted by Taylor Sullivan in Eugenics ≈ Leave a comment
TagsDysgenics, Francis Galton, Nativists, Unfit
The potential mother is to be shown that maternity need not be slavery but the most effective avenue toward self-development and self-realization. Upon this basis only may we improve the quality of the race.” (SANGER, “THE EUGENIC VALUE OF BIRTH CONTROL PROPAGANDA,” BIRTH CONTROL REVIEW, OCT. 1921, 5)

Margaret Sanger’s discussion of dysgenics provides some of the birth control advocate’s most troubling and problematic texts. Her complex perspectives have both frustrated supporters and offered fodder for those seeking to discredit her life’s work. Attempts by those with ideological, political, or other agendas to mislead opponents by avoiding fact and foregoing accuracy are not unique to the current environment. By extracting misleading soundbites from her forays into eugenics, detractors have painted Sanger as a racist and repurposed birth control as a means of controlling minority populations for decades. Manipulating Sanger’s words to support such a claim is historically inaccurate—a gross misuse of quotes without context. However, given the contested nature of the activist’s attempt to wed the function of birth control to the ideology of progressive eugenicists, exploring Sanger’s actual relationship with terms, such as dysgenics and eugenics, presents a valuable learning opportunity.

Before delving into Sanger’s actual views on the subject, it might be useful to first examine the terms dysgenics and eugenics as they were in the early part of the 20th century. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines dysgenics as referring to “Racial degeneration, or its study”—that is the elements that can lead to the deterioration of the human race or subdivisions within it. Eugenics, according to the OED, is the science of selective breeding designed to improve and strengthen the human race biologically, psychologically, behaviorally, etc.

Francis Galton

By the end of the nineteenth century, selective breeding as a means of controlling the country’s genetic destiny and evolutionary tract was gaining popularity as a social and political ideal in America. This movement, most popularly linked to nativist groups, possessed two notable influences. First, the popularity of biological determinism encompasses both dysgenics and eugenics and came on the heels of Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton. Galton has been credited as the father of modern eugenics and for having laid the scientific and ideological groundwork for biological determinism—for many of the selective breeding ideas American eugenicists would eventually trumpet (Selden, Steven, “Transforming Better Babies Into Fitter Families,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 149.2, June 2005, 202).

Then, following Galton’s numerous publications, changes in European emigration patterns began. Americans, who valued Nordic, Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon traits, reacted defensively to new waves of immigrants, who did not possess these traits. In an attempt to both preserve and strengthen the national qualities they valued as “real American,” nativists turned to eugenics. By the early 1920s, as the movement surrounding theories of selective breeding designed to build stronger, healthier Americans had gained notable popularity, applications expanded. No longer did dysgenics and eugenics belong to the American nativists, but to a host of different groups with varying social and political aims (Selden, Steven, “Transforming Better Babies Into Fitter Families,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 149.2, June 2005, 203).

It was in this atmosphere of blossoming enthusiasm that Sanger began to align the functionality of birth control with the ideology of biological determinism. In search of support from respectable professional groups, including eugenicists, Sanger highlighted how con

“The Eugenic Tree,” American Philosophical Society, 1932

traceptives could be used to pursue “the self direction of human evolution.” But, a result of Sanger’s alignment with certain dysgenic and eugenic principles is that her work continues to be challenged even today. Perhaps most deleterious to her character are modern assertions that Sanger was a “racist promoter of genocide.” While Sanger can be considered racist and classist to the extent that many people were during the twentieth century, it is erroneous to overextend that allegation and claim the activist was a proponent of race control (“The Eugenic Tree, Announcements of the Third International Eugenics Congress,” American Philosophical Society, 1932 and Katz, Esther, “The Editor as Public Authority: Interpreting Margaret Sanger,” The Public Historian 17.1, Winter 1995, 44).

Sanger, who aimed to enmesh dysgenics, eugenics, and contraception, was primarily interested in the “racial health” of the human race versus one particular race. What the birth control advocate sought was for contraception to act as a control for the passing of “injurious,” hereditary traits on to future generations. Commenting in 1934 on the German government’s sterilization program, Sanger distinguished which hereditary traits she viewed as injurious and which hereditary traits she did not wish to involve in her eugenic mission:

I admire the courage of a government that takes a stand on sterilization of the unfit and second, my admiration is subject to the interpretation of the word ‘unfit.’ If by ‘unfit’ is meant the physical or mental defects of a human being, that is an admirable gesture, but if ‘unfit’ refers to races or religions, then that is another matter which I frankly deplore.
Sanger rejects race control, but her statement is troubling. Employing birth control and supporting forced sterilization to curtail the reproduction of those with mental or physical challenges causes even her most staunch supporters to raise an eyebrow (Sanger, “Margaret Sanger to Sidney L. Lasell, Jr.,” Feb. 13, 1934).

While unsettling to modern sensibilities, Sanger was not unique in her praise of forced sterilization. As early as 1907, the first compulsory sterilization law was passed in the United States. Specifically, the eugenicist statute passed in the state of Indiana applied to male “criminals, idiots, imbeciles, or rapists.” These groups—“criminals, idiots, imbeciles, or rapists”—coincided with Sanger’s understanding of the unfit. It is important to note that Sanger, along with other eugenicists, believed scientific studies that concluded that those with mental or physical challenges included criminals, alcoholics, drug addicts, etc. and that these groups were incapable of resisting their sexual urges. Her solution at the time, as was the state of Indiana’s solution in 1907, was sterilization. Sanger also considered gender segregation as a possible method for controlling the reproduction of the “unfit.” As science evolved its views, so did Sanger, and after the horrors of World War II, she significantly revised her views of forced sterilization (James B. O’Hara and Sanks, T. Howland, “Eugenic Sterilization,” The Georgetown Law Review 45, 1956, 22)

Beyond compulsory sterilization, Sanger’s alignment with dysgenics and eugenics materialized in her calls for the responsible breeding of the “fit” and the “unfit.” In Sanger’s eyes, “uncontrolled fertility [was] universally correlated with disease, poverty, overcrowding and the transmission of heritable taints”—in so many words, the proliferation of the “unfit.” As a result, she proposed “find[ing] effectual means of controlling & limiting the propagation of the mentally unfit, including feebleminded, psychotic & unstable, mentally retarded individuals.” Worth noting, Sanger specifically meant birth control, not abortion and never infanticide, when she spoke of controlling mentally and physically challenged populations. Her commitment to parents responsibly procreating, via the use of birth control when appropriate, long outlived her tryst with sterilization (Sanger, “The Limitations of Eugenics,” Typed speech, [Sept] 1921, Library of Congress Microfilm, LCM 130:0044 and Sanger, “[Birth Control and Controlling the Unfit Notes],” Autograph draft speech, [1938], Sophia Smith Collection, S71:1050).

Sanger

To summarize Sanger’s relationship with such heated terms as dysgenics and eugenics is a dangerous task. While she married her social mission to that of progressive eugenicists—primarily in an attempt to garner mainstream support for birth control—it is difficult to easily consolidate her beliefs on this complex issue. What we can deduce from the literature she has left behind is that claims of her racism are misguided to say the least and that her dysgenic aims were colorblind. We can also conclude that Sanger understood the eugenic value of contraception to lie in strengthening and empowering the human race. She believed that “the great responsibility of parenthood” was to help diminish the potential of biological weakness in all people, but such beliefs were tempered by the science and the biases of the day. Moreover, these statements are liable to over-simplify perspectives that were more complex in nature and should be taken as the less than exact overviews that they are. Ultimately, Sanger’s campaign for the eugenic benefits of birth control was a divergence from her core mission: that every woman be freed from the shackles of unwanted pregnancy (Sanger, “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda,” Birth Control Review, Oct. 1921, 5).

Condom History

Important Moments in Condom History Condoms have been used for centuries. Since the 19th century, they have been one of the most popular methods of contraception in the world. Below you'll find a few important dates in the history of condoms--click on a date to learn more. 1564 1605 1700s 1706 1855 1861 Gabriel Fallopius invents a linen sheath and tests it on 1100 men. The goal was to prevent syphilis, which proved successful! Having been found useful for prevention of infection, it was only later that the usefulness of the condom for the prevention of pregnancy was recognized. The first indication that these devices were used for birth control, rather than disease prevention, is the 1605 theological publication De iustitia et iure (On justice and law) by Catholic theologian Leonardus Lessius, who condemned them as immoral. In addition to the linen sheaths already used, condoms made from animal intestines became available. However, they were quite expensive and the unfortunate result was that they were often reused. The first published used of the word appears in the poem "The Scots Answer to a British Vision" by John Hamilton, Lord Belhaven. The first rubber condom was produced. The earliest rubber condoms had a seam and were as thick as a bicycle inner tube. The first advertisement for condoms was published in an American newspaper when The New York Times printed an ad for Dr. Power's French Preventatives. In 1873, the Comstock Law made illegal the advertising of any sort of birth control.

1920 1950s 1975 1980s 1993 Today Trojan brand condoms introduced, manufactured by Young’s Rubber of New York. Young's Rubber became the first company to produce a latex condom. Condoms made of latex, also invented in 1920, were both stronger and thinner than their rubber counterparts and also has a longer shelf life. Two improvements are made to the condom: lubrication (DUREX instroduces the first lubricated condom) and the reservoir tip. While the National Association of Broadcasters Code of Conduct prohibited condoms ads on televison in the 1960s and 1970s, station KNTV in San Jose broadcast a carry a condom commercial for Trojan in 1975. The first broadcast TV network in this country to air a paid condom commercial was Fox in 1991. The emergence of HIV and the AIDS epidemic results in strong encouragement to use condoms. Latex condoms are promoted to prevent infection with HIV. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the female condom for use in the US. The female condom is a polyurethane (plastic) pouch that fits inside a woman's vagina. The U.S. Agency for International Development encourages condom use in developing countries to help solve the "world population crises. Worldwide condom use is expected to continue to grow. One study predicted that developing nations would need 18.6 billion condoms by 2015. Condoms have become an integral part of modern societies.

Aletta Jacobs

Алетта Якобс -- пионерка современного контроля рождаемости, первая женщина, выпускница Гронингенского университета

• про неё на сайте университета 
• в обеде (Бруклинского музея), вагинальные тарелки, её страница 
• англовики
• еврейской женской энциклопедии (англ), самы большой текст, автор = Harriet Feinberg
• Амстердамский институт женских историй, Aletta: Institute for Women's History, кстати, оч полезный сайт с историей евросексуальности

надо установить каким образом она связана с самым современным контрацептивом (Dutch cap)

упг: с сотрудником ежэ снюхался, обещано содействие, но уже праздники, и ваще подозреваю, что автора уже нет с нами

Affordable Care Act (ACA)

Beginning last week, August 1, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), all new insurance policies provided by employers are required to cover contraception without any co-pay or deductibles, making birth control more widely accessible for women around the country.

This mandate comes as part of a larger package of eight new preventive care services for women, including annual well woman visits, domestic and interpersonal violence counseling, sexually transmitted infections counseling, and breastfeeding support and equipment.

Nearly 100 years ago, Margaret Sanger began a global birth control movement, stating famously that “no woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body” (“A Parents’ Problem or Woman’s?” Birth Control Review, March 1919, 6-7). Today is a clear victory for this movement, though it continues to be challenged. In breaking down the financial barrier between women and their necessary health care, the Affordable Care Act takes in important step in fully granting what Sanger strongly felt was “the means by which woman attains basic freedom.” (“Woman’s Error and Her Debt,” Birth Control Review, Aug. 1921, [MSM S70:0911-2]).

As an activist, Sanger spent much of her time advocating for the poor and working class women who lacked both the education and the money to practice birth control.

“We know that the well-to-do and those able to have a private or family physicians are equipped with knowledge. But the mothers seeking medical advice from hospitals or dispensaries are refused all help even though the life of a woman is endangered by another pregnancy. This can be remedied only when public health policies include this teaching in state programs” (“Birth Control and Civil Liberties,” Community Church of Boston, Oct. 13, 1940, 3-18 [MSM S72:0216]).

Almost a century later, the economic burden of contraception continued to fall on women.  According to a study by the Center for American Progress (CAP), 55 percent of women ages 19 to 34 struggled with the cost of birth control, leading to inconsistent use. CAP also found that women of reproductive age spent 68 percent more on out-of-pocket health care costs than men did, largely due to contraceptive expenses. The ACA mandate reconciles these inequities; it is not only about safe sex and bodily integrity, but also gender equality and fairness. Women’s contraception is not about luxury, as some anti-birth control advocates ignorantly argue, but justice.

Sanger, writing in 1918–even before women achieved the vote–knew this well:

“ Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal” (“Morality and Birth Control,” Birth Control Review, Feb.-Mar. 1918, 11 [MSM S70:793]).

To be sure, yesterday’s mandate does not mark an absolute victory. For one, it only applies to insurance policies that began on or after August 1; many other plans that have been “grandfathered in” are exempt from the law’s requirements to includes these preventive services. In addition, uninsured women who don’t receive Medicaid will have to wait until 2014 to access co-pay free contraception, when the ACA mandates everyone to have insurance (or pay a monetary penalty).

And there is the possibility that the law will be overturned. Extremely dedicated opponents of Obama’s health care reform that continually seek to undo and undermine all that the ACA will accomplish. Some states have already pledged to reject the expansion of Medicaid that the federal government offers, thereby cutting health insurance–and thus accessible contraception–to many of its poorer citizens.

Today, we must all recognize–as Margaret Sanger argued passionately–that everyone benefits from the broad access to contraception. As Amanda Marcotte at Slate notes, if you take the irrational sexual hysteria out of the equation, this contraception mandate is equivalent to the government mandating seatbelts in cars: “Just as people who resisted mandatory seatbelts have benefited along with the rest of us from lower rates of traffic fatalities, they will also benefit from the reduced social and health care costs that stem from reducing unplanned pregnancies.”

As Sanger said, “No adult woman who is ignorant of the means to prevent conception, can call herself free. No woman can call herself free who cannot choose the time to be a mother or not as she sees fit. This should be woman’s first demand” (“Condemnation is Misunderstanding,” Typed draft speech, April-July 1916 [LCM 129:32]). The Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate finally delivers on Sanger’s demand: removing the barrier of co-pays and deductibles, all women–rather than their insurers–will control the decisions they make about their own bodies.

source

likely nice facts, but badly interpreted

Eugenics - the science of improving the human population via selective breeding or reproduction - is not a concept confined to past centuries and decades, nor to locales outside the United States.

That's the finding of recent research by University of Cincinnati historian Wendy Kline, who will present a case study on the topic - a case study that examines the use of the controversial contraceptive injection, Depo-Provera, as a eugenic tool - on Nov. 11 at a conference titled "The Study of Eugenics: Past, Present and Future" to be held in Uppsala, Sweden. Her presentation is titled "Bodies of Evidence: Activists, Patients, and the FDA Regulation of Depo-Provera."

It's research that is particularly timely given that recent national news coverage has featured North Carolina's current plans to compensate surviving victims of forced sterilizations that took place there from the 1920s to the 1970s.

UC HISTORIAN'S CASE STUDY ON 1983 DEPO-PROVERA HEARINGS

Kline's research into the debate surrounding Depo-Provera in the 1970s and 1980s began when she was visiting the Smith College Women's History Archive where she found a large box of materials still unprocessed and not yet catalogued. This was among 50 to 60 boxes from the National Women's Health Network.

She recalled, "The box contained hundreds of individual files, each detailing a woman's difficulties with the side effects of Depo-Provera or detailing how she had not been informed of those side effects or detailing how she had been given the injection without her consent or by means of manipulation. This coercion, lack of informed consent and testing of the drug has obviously been gathered together in preparation for a class-action suit by the National Women's Health Network that had never gone forward."

But the collection did provide Kline with a rich source of material of examining the history of this contraceptive and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's public board of inquiry on Depo-Provera held in 1983.

"The use of Depo-Provera captures all of the controversy of this century regarding controlling fertility and who's ultimately making the decision about who gets to reproduce. My research looks at coercion, risks not fully understood and how arguments were made for and against Depo-Provera at the time," she explained.

For instance, it was in the Depo-Provera hearings in Washington that the manufacturer and those in favor of the drug had to first contend with the greater organizational powers and force of the feminist movement - but where that feminist movement had to argue its case by focusing narrowly on the flaws in the scientific research methodology applied when testing Depo-Provera.

In other words, those combating the use of Depo-Provera could not make a case against the drug based on morality or sentiment even though it could easily have been argued that this was a case of eugenics since the testing of the drug in the 1970s at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital Family Planning Clinic involved mostly black women in public assistance.

Instead, because of FDA strictures related to evidence supplied at its board of inquiry hearings, opponents of the drug had to channel their arguments on the science then available on Depo-Provera.

"Of course," said Kline, "It was and is very difficult to separate science from the society that produced it. There was a reason, given the understood risks of Depo-Provera, that its testing was done on poor women in the U.S. and on women in developing countries."

Still, at the Depo-Provera hearings of 1983, those against the use of Depo-Provera were able to introduce the concept that the FDA's established cost/benefit analysis of a drug should include quality of life issues and that dismissing female patient's complaints about crippling side effects was not just "sexist," it was bad science.

Another outcome of the FDA 1983 inquiry into Depo-Provera and the publicity surrounding the hearings was the first national conference on black women's health held in Atlanta in 1983.

The larger message, according to Kline, is that eugenics is more than simply an embarrassing mistake of the past. The popular belief that technology and regulation of sexual fertility (?) would lead to healthier, stronger, more self-reliant population carried over in the 1970s, '80s and even today.

source:
Coercive Birth Control Used As A Form Of Eugenics

it is a salad of arguments ;( 

Happy World Contraception Day!

Sanger and other family planning leaders at the IPPF's founding meeting, theThird International Conference on Planned Parenthood, held in Bombay in 1952.

From the International Planned Parenthood Federation: today, September 26, is World Contraception Day.
On the WCD2011 website, specifically targeting youth, you can learn more about contraception and your rights when it comes to sexual and reproductive health.
The WCD2011 website includes a drop-down menu where you can select your country of residence (from a limited list) in order to get more information about where you can access contraception, background information on puberty and anatomy, types of contraception, and STIs, and other resources for teens and youth.
The other major facet of WCD2011 is their release of the results of a multinational survey of youth touching on topics of sexual and reproductive health and education, including access to and use of contraception. Some of the results, including a staggering statistic that

“42% of respondents in Asia Pacific and 28% in Europe who could not get hold of contraception when they needed it claimed it was because they were too embarrassed to ask a healthcare professional,”

are available in the press release for WCD2011. The full report is available here.
Income, location, language barriers, legal status within a country, religious/social/parental pressures, and a host of other factors can have an impact on young people’s access to contraception. The fact is that there are any number of ways which infringe upon one’s right to access safe, affordable, accessible, and non-judgmental health care, especially regarding sexual health and even more so as a minor. In the face of such inequality of access, the work that individuals and organizations in the field of sexual and reproductive health advocacy and research do is as important now as it was when Margaret Sanger was alive.
On World Contraception Day, then, it seems appropriate to both celebrate the advances – scientific and social – that generations of sexual and reproductive health pioneers have worked for, and to continue to agitate for truly equal access. So once again, Happy WCD and let’s continue the good work that Sanger began.

repost from MSPP

Сэнгер и кондом

In an ideal society, no doubt, birth control would become the concern of the man as well as the woman. The hard inescapable fact which we encounter to-day is that man has not only refused any such responsibility, but has individually and collectively sought to prevent woman from obtaining knowledge by which she could assume this responsibility for herself.  She is still in a state of a dependent to-day because her mate has refused to consider her as an individual apart from his needs.  She is still bound because she has in the past left the solution of the problem to him. Having left it to him she finds that instead of rights, she has only such privileges as she has gained by petitioning, coaxing and cozening. Having left it to him, she is exploited, driven and enslaved to his desires.”

(1920 Woman and the New Race pp. 96-97)

Important Moments in Condom History

Condoms have been used for centuries. Since the 19th century, they have been one of the most popular methods of contraception in the world. Below you'll find a few important dates in the history of condoms

• 1564 Gabriel Fallopius invents a linen sheath and tests it on 1100 men. The goal was to prevent syphilis, which proved successful! Having been found useful for prevention of infection, it was only later that the usefulness of the condom for the prevention of pregnancy was recognized.
• 1605 The first indication that these devices were used for birth control, rather than disease prevention, is the 1605 theological publication De iustitia et iure (On justice and law) by Catholic theologian Leonardus Lessius, who condemned them as immoral.
• 1700s In addition to the linen sheaths already used, condoms made from animal intestines became available. However, they were quite expensive and the unfortunate result was that they were often reused.
• 1706 The first published used of the word appears in the poem "The Scots Answer to a British Vision" by John Hamilton, Lord Belhaven.
• 1855 The first rubber condom was produced. The earliest rubber condoms had a seam and were as thick as a bicycle inner tube.
• 1861 The first advertisement for condoms was published in an American newspaper when The New York Times printed an ad for Dr. Power's French Preventatives. In 1873, the Comstock Law made illegal the advertising of any sort of birth control.
• 1920 Trojan brand condoms introduced, manufactured by Young’s Rubber of New York. Young's Rubber became the first company to produce a latex condom. Condoms made of latex, also invented in 1920, were both stronger and thinner than their rubber counterparts and also has a longer shelf life.
• 1950s Two improvements are made to the condom: lubrication (DUREX instroduces the first lubricated condom) and the reservoir tip.
• 1975 While the National Association of Broadcasters Code of Conduct prohibited condoms ads on televison in the 1960s and 1970s, station KNTV in San Jose broadcast a carry a condom commercial for Trojan in 1975. The first broadcast TV network in this country to air a paid condom commercial was Fox in 1991.
• 1980s The emergence of HIV and the AIDS epidemic results in strong encouragement to use condoms. Latex condoms are promoted to prevent infection with HIV.
• 1993 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the female condom for use in the US. The female condom is a polyurethane (plastic) pouch that fits inside a woman's vagina.
• Today The U.S. Agency for International Development encourages condom use in developing countries to help solve the "world population crises. Worldwide condom use is expected to continue to grow. One study predicted that developing nations would need 18.6 billion condoms by 2015. Condoms have become an integral part of modern societies.

While the National Association of Broadcasters Code of Conduct prohibited condoms ads on televison in the 1960s and 1970s, station KNTV in San Jose broadcast a carry a condom commercial for Trojan in 1975. The first broadcast TV network in this country to air a paid condom commercial was Fox in 1991.

The emergence of HIV and the AIDS epidemic results in strong encouragement to use condoms. Latex condoms are promoted to prevent infection with HIV.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the female condom for use in the US. The female condom is a polyurethane (plastic) pouch that fits inside a woman's vagina.

The U.S. Agency for International Development encourages condom use in developing countries to help solve the "world population crises. Worldwide condom use is expected to continue to grow. One study predicted that developing nations would need 18.6 billion condoms by 2015. Condoms have become an integral part of modern societies.

dates are linx to use them visit here

history of contraceptives

Dittrick Medical History Center in Cleveland pays tribute to history of contraceptives

Sunday, September 12, 2010

By Marylynne Pitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

CLEVELAND -- Women who were desperate to prevent pregnancy took some frightful health risks, such as eating a poisonous plant called pennyroyal or douching with Lysol.

This is just one horrifying fact in a concise exhibition about the development of the birth control pill, which became available in America in 1960 and turned 50 this year.

This show, "Virtue, Vice and Contraband: A History of Contraception in America," is on permanent view at the Dittrick Medical History Center and might surprise two generations of American women.

Gen X-ers and Millennials, who were born into a world where oral contraceptives are advertised on television, may not know about the scientific and political efforts that were necessary to make the Pill so readily available.
If you go

The center, part of Case Western Reserve University, owns a major collection of contraceptive literature and devices amassed over 40 years by Percy Skuy, a Canadian executive with the company Ortho, a maker of oral contraceptives. Donated in 2004, the 800-item collection also includes prototypes.

In the 1800s, literature about childbirth and reproduction was scant. American couples eager to learn about those subjects turned to "Aristotle's Masterpiece" and Charles Knowlton's 1832 book "Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People."

Condoms existed in America during the 1800s; their code names were "French letters," "safes" or "armour." They cost $1 when a week's pay was about $14. The French called them "redingotes," meaning "English riding coats."

A section devoted to sex during the Civil War reveals that more than 100,000 incidents of sexual misconduct resulted in courts-martial. The Union Army alone recorded 183,000 cases of venereal disease.

Alarmed by these statistics, Union Army leaders, from 1863-65, authorized government-sanctioned prostitution in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., and hired doctors to conduct regular medical exams.

There's a good reason many Americans understood little about conception. It wasn't until 1930 that two doctors, one Japanese and the other Austrian, discovered the time of a woman's ovulation, the period when she is most fertile.

That discovery led to the "rhythm method," a natural form of birth control in which intercourse was avoided when the woman was ovulating.

During a visit to Austria in 1930, engineer Gilmore "Tilly" Tilbrook had conversations with doctors about reproductive health. He invented a precise but complicated device like the "Rythmeter."

A 1915 graduate of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Mr. Tilbrook patented the daunting-looking device in 1944 and 1947. The inventor warned people not to use it to calculate the time of ovulation unless they had a record of a woman's previous nine menstrual cycles.

The man who tried valiantly to explain the rhythm method to Americans was Leo J. Latz, a physician, devout Catholic and author of "The Rhythm of Sterility and Fertility in Women."

By 1942, more than 200,000 copies of his work were in print; Roman Catholic priests often gave out the pamphlet as a prize to winners of parish bingoes.

Dr. Latz believed couples could use the "rhythm method" to space the births of their children. Two years after he published his research, he was fired from his teaching job at Loyola University in 1934. Apparently, Dr. Latz was ahead of his time. In 1951, Pope Pius XII sanctioned rhythm as a natural form of birth control.

This show highlights the work of Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood and coined the phrase "birth control." Ms. Sanger worked closely with suffragist Katharine McCormick, who earned a biology degree at M.I.T. and was the heiress to a large fortune from the International Harvester Co. Mrs. McCormick bankrolled research on oral contraceptives in the 1950s. Contraception also became part of popular culture. The exhibition includes a recording by country singer Loretta Lynn, who was married at 14 and had six children. By the time the songwriter wrote and recorded her own anthem, "The Pill," in 1975, millions of women were taking oral contraceptives.

Ms. Lynn's lyrics express the freedom from repetitive childbearing that oral contraceptives gave women.

"This old maternity dress I've got is goin' in the garbage. The clothes I'm wearin' from now on won't take up so much yardage."

The drug of choice

SOCIETY: America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation, by Elaine Tyler May, Basic Books, 171pp, $25.95
IT WAS going to cure everything that ailed us – marital strife, unwanted pregnancies, war. By lowering the birth rate in the developing world, it would create healthy markets and decrease poverty, acting as a “magic bullet” against communism. As the first nearly-one-hundred-percent-effective form of birth control that required neither the co-operation nor the knowledge of men, it would enable women to take control of their lives. It was the pill, and it is celebrating its 50th birthday.
In her new book, American historian Elaine Tyler May traces the pill’s development, reception, and social, political and cultural ramifications. The pill was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1960 for use as an oral contraceptive (it first became available in Ireland in 1963 as a “cycle regulator”). It grew out of the combined efforts of several individuals – scientists Carl Djerassi, John Rock and Gregory Pincus, along with feminist activists Margaret Sanger and Katharine Dexter McCormick (McCormick effectively bankrolled the R&D). Highly controversial, it created unlikely bedfellows on both sides of the divide. Would-be social engineers allied both with feminists and with the Playboy brigade, who celebrated the pill because it liberated female sexuality for men.
The Church was against it. But so were male Black Power leaders (claiming it promoted genocide) and certain Beats. Poet Richard Brautigan equated his girlfriend’s use of the pill with the Springhill mine disaster, in which scores of miners died. Many men felt it undermined masculinity, by nullifying their procreative power.
The pill quickly became embroiled in policy debates. US presidents from Kennedy to Carter supported family planning programmes as part of foreign aid. Reagan reversed the position, suspending government support to any agency at home or abroad that used its own funds to support abortion services, counselling or referral. Clinton reversed the ruling five days into office. George W Bush restored it three days into his term. Four days after his swearing in, Obama reversed it again.
The pill’s safety record was initially troubling. As May points out, it was linked in the early years with blood clots – fatal, in some cases. It carried an increased risk of stroke. (While a minority of women today experience negative side-effects, the lower hormone dosages have resulted in decreased risks.) May also looks at efforts, so far unsuccessful, to develop a pill for men, and asks whether the hurdles are physiological or psychological. She notes that Viagra, a drug that enhances the potential for men to impregnate women, was the most successful prescription drug ever launched in the US.
The pill serves throughout the book as a keyhole through which to view history. “Without the political and cultural upheavals of the last 50 years,” May writes, “ . . . the pill would have been just one more contraceptive . . . Instead, it became a flash point for major social transformation.” Debates around its safety contributed to standards of informed consent in medical research and regulations on consumer information. It disrupted power relationships between genders, and – in light of the Church’s continued ban on artificial birth control – it weakened the power of the official Church and turned many Catholics away altogether.
May’s interesting and accessible history also illuminates how the world has changed around the pill. Once, young women had to pretend that they were married in order to obtain it; now they sometimes complain of being pressured into it when other forms of contraception are more suitable. Women use the pill for reasons their foremothers wouldn’t have dreamed of – to arrest menstruation during military service, for instance. And, what once seemed a boon to women – taking full responsibility for their fertility – now seems to many an unfair burden.

---

Molly McCloskey is a novelist, essayist and short story writer

Everything you wanted to know about condoms

NYC condoms. victoriapeckham via flickr.com

By Mark Hay

7:16 am Jul. 14, 2010 | Tweet this article

“Oh, please tell me those aren’t used,” said a frumpy little woman who declined to be named for fear of association with something she considered so unseemly.
She gazed at a shovel full of blacked condoms, most likely used, collected from the trash cans and floors of London’s notorious gay and fetish club, FIST, and encased in resin by Franko B. B’s found-artifact sculpture is one of the first works visible upon stepping through the door to the Museum of Sex’s recent and self-explanatory exhibit, “Rubbers: The Life, History and Struggle of the Condom.”
The exhibit, occupying half of the museum’s second floor, is composed chiefly of curios—half-century-old condom tins and prophylactic propaganda through the ages—and a handful of artistic pieces. Progressing along the wall, the artifacts trace the historical and social evolution of the condom from a Papua New Guinean penis sheath mounted on the wall, through the linen condoms of the 1500s (after the 1493 syphilis outbreak, graphically depicted) and animal intestine wrappers of the 1700s, and straight to the Obama/McCain/Palin novelties of today.
Fittingly, the exhibit features, although not prominently, artifacts that reveal the special resonance of the condom’s history with New York City. A 2006 replica of a brittle pre-rubber sheep-intestine condom is modeled on the process used by Julius Schmid, 46th Street’s late-19th-early-20th-century condom innovator and later father of the Fourex, Ramses and Sheik brands, among others. The display of a frayed copy of Margaret Sanger’s 1915 What Every Girl Should Know recalls her 1916 founding of a Brooklyn family planning clinic, the forerunner to Planned Parenthood.
To reach “Rubbers,” patrons must first walk through “Action: Sex and the Moving Image,” a ground- floor installation with wall- and floor-mounted screens looping clips of mainstream sex scenes and pornographic film stretching back nearly a century. Many patrons do not make it past, their eyes glued to Chloe Sevigney’s non-simulated oral sex scene from “The Brown Bunny,” a couple demonstrating positions from the Kama Sutra narrated by what sounds like a telemarketer, or midcentury “Jungle Quest” films of nude African women suckling small animals.
Patrons must then pass a line of BDSM artifacts, real dolls with their erogenous bits hanging out to be fondled by visitors, and a sketch by Wally Wood of various Disney standards engaged in non-Disney behavior, among other sexual miscellanea.
Past the gamut, last night, 10 or fewer patrons milled around the “Rubbers” exhibit, a third of those in “Action,” and few stayed very long. This is perhaps a reflection of the fact that he exhibit is ... challenging. “Rubbers” is a text-heavy exhibit, with most of the artifacts serving to frame or illuminate a P.S.A.-style narrative. It even includes a P.S.A., one of the only audio-visual components, although it is a unique one. Corners of the exhibit meander into tangential territory, abandoning condoms to discuss H.I.V., S.T.I.s, and sex education.
The dispassionate academic voice of the exhibit fits with the sociological mission of MoSex, scrawled across the second floor wall: "The Museum of Sex is dedicated to the preservation of an ever growing collection of sexually related objects, which support its mission to present the history, evolution and cultural significance of human sexuality." But many patrons come for eroticism as much as edification, even if that is not MoSex’s intent. It is easier to get hot and bothered to “Action” than “Rubbers,” as a forty-something whitebread couple groping in front of a video display of transsexual/transvestite porn demonstrated.
Blatant product placement for the exhibits' sponsor, Trojan, also detracts from the total effect.
“How far is a Trojan required to stretch before breaking? More than seven-and-a-half times its original size!” boasts the narrator on a looping behind-the-scenes Trojan promotional visual. The audio fills at least half of the room.
Among the historical trinkets there lurk a few attempts at fun.
One wall is covered in 60 contemporary euphemisms for the condom. Though many are familiar, favorites include: bishop, blast shield, DNA lounge, English riding coat, French tickler, hazmat suit, Manhattan eel, and zucchini beanie.
Across the room, a series of paintings by Masami Teraoka, especially “Kanzashi Pond,” embody the spirit of the exhibit, designed in the classical ukiyo-e style while encoded with references to AIDS, cultural condom controversy, women’s liberation, and a slew of other themes. Nearby hover mechanical contraptions flapping their inflated condom appendages. A glass case sits at the end of the toy array containing a purple dress meticulously crafted of condoms.
Even the often-dry textual narration has its moments.
“The female condom is longer and wider than a male condom,” explains Douglas Blair Turnbaugh in a quote posted next to his photograph of a man, face down, with a condom protruding from his rear. “Once the condom is inserted, the anus will close over it leaving the outer ring looking rather like the bulls eye of a target. As the entering virile member, or whatever, does its business, in out in out in out, the condom stays in place.”
A footnote of explication reveals that the quote relates to a little-known use for the female condom in gay culture. The condom may be applied at any time, allowing for easy sex without the mood-killing reminder of the AIDS epidemic’s toll on the gay population that so many men feel when applying a male condom.
This is the first sign of nuance to the otherwise peppy pro-condom note of the exhibit. A plaque offers observations from the Kinsey Institute. Many men experience allergic irritation to latex; 37 percent of men lose erections when psychologically fazed by putting on a condom; massive variations in penis girth mean that discomfort can come from a tight fit; and many condoms lose their efficiency when ripped while being unwrapped using a nail or tooth.
One note of caution about this exhibit: whereas viewing erotic objects is often thought of as a solo activity, viewing them as sociological artifacts appears to be a couples’ activity. Patrons move in twos and, although viewing the objects in a sterile museum setting, if you go, either get comfortable with the idea of circulating among pairs of silent, eyes-forward spectators, or bring a partner.

BMJ

нашол наконец-то БМЖатниковый ресурс про лонгитюдное обследование 46 тыс тёток, которое дало впечатляющие результаты: здороье-то их не ухудшилось, скорее наоборот,
в общем, явного вреда нет
хотя метод оспорят -- тут сомневаться не стоит даже

БМЖовые Press releases Monday 8 March to Friday 12 March 2010

BMJ 1999;319:386 ( 7 August ) -- старьё
Letters
Mortality associated with oral contraceptive use

а вот это любопытно:
J Epidemiol Community Health 1999;53:258-260 doi:10.1136/jech.53.5.258
Type 3 errors, pill scares, and the epidemiology of oral contraception and health.
* K McPherson

Вот основное:

(4) Contraceptive pill not associated with increased long-term risk of death
(Research: Mortality among contraceptive pill users: cohort evidence from Royal College of General Practitioners' Oral Contraception Study)
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/340/mar11_1/c927

Women in the UK who have ever used the oral contraceptive pill are less likely to die from any cause, including all cancers and heart disease, compared with never users, according to research published on bmj.com today.
The results show a slightly higher risk in women under 45 years old who are current or recent users of the pill. The authors stress that the effects in younger women disappear after about 10 years. Furthermore, the benefits in older women outweigh the smaller excess risks among younger women.
The study continues to find a higher rate of violent or accidental death among oral contraceptive users compared with never users. The authors are unable to explain this persistent finding.
In May 1968, the Royal College of General Practitioners' (RCGP) began the RCGP Oral Contraception Study, one of the world’s largest continuing investigations into the health effects of oral contraceptives.
Early reports from the RCGP study suggested an increased risk of death among oral contraceptive users, mainly due to an excess of strokes or other vascular problems among older women or those who smoked. Although a later report suggested that these effects disappear once the pill is stopped, at the time there were relatively few cases of different types of cancer.
These latest results, led by Professor Philip Hannaford from the University of Aberdeen, relate to the 46,000 recruited women, followed for up to nearly 40 years, creating more than a million woman-years of observation.
The results show that in the longer term, women who used oral contraception had a significantly lower rate of death from any cause, including heart disease and all cancers (notably bowel, uterine body and ovarian cancers) compared with never users.
This equates to 52 fewer deaths per 100,000 woman-years.
Slightly higher rates were found among younger women who had used oral contraception, with 20 more deaths per 100,000 among those younger than 30, and four more deaths per 100,000 among 30-39 year olds.
But by the age of 50, the benefits outweighed these modest risks, with 14 fewer deaths per 100,000 among 40-49 year olds; 86 fewer deaths per 100,000 for 50-59 year olds; 122 fewer deaths per 100,000 for 60-69 year olds; and 308 fewer deaths per 100,000 for 70+ year olds.
Hannaford says: "Many women, especially those who used the first generation of oral contraceptives many years ago, are likely to be reassured by our results. However, our findings might not reflect the experience of women using oral contraceptives today, if currently available preparations have a different risk than earlier products."
The authors conclude that their results, derived from a relatively healthy UK study group, show that "oral contraception is not significantly associated with an increased long-term risk of death . . . indeed a net benefit was apparent." However, they point out that "the balance of risks and benefits may vary globally, depending upon patterns of oral contraception usage and background risk of disease."
Contact:
Philip Hannaford, Centre of Academic Primary Care, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Email p.hannaford@abdn.ac.uk

Elaine Tyler May

Campus Progress caught up with Elaine Tyler May, historian at the University of Minnesota and author of the digestible new history America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation. She tells us why she got so interested in the subject in the first place, speculates on male birth control’s future, and talks about how LGBTQ people fit into the debate over birth control.

The pill LJ

link

Contraception, abortion, and the eugenics movement

What Sanger’s liberal admirers are eager to downplay is that she was a thoroughgoing racist who subscribed completely to the views of E. A. Ross and other “raceologists.” Indeed, she made many of them seem tame.

Sanger was born into a poor family of eleven children in Corning, New York, in 1879. In 1902 she received her degree as a registered nurse. In 1911 she moved to New York City, where she fell in with the transatlantic bohemian avant-garde of the burgeoning fascist moment. “Our living-room,” she wrote in her autobiography, “became a gathering place where liberals, anarchists, Socialists and I.W.W.’s could meet.” A member of the Women’s Committee of the New York Socialist Party, she participated in all the usual protests and demonstrations. In 1912 she started writing what amounted to a sex-advice column for the New York Call, dubbed “What Every Girl Should Know.” The overriding theme of her columns was the importance of contraception.

PP does not target minorities

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself, a longtime supporter of Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement: "There is 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."

The real issue is disparities in health-care access, something the African-American community experiences across the country

Suggesting that the Women's Right to Know Act [what is this?] would help reduce abortion in the African-American community is insulting. That implies that women of color are incapable of or unable to make this very personal, difficult decision. In reality, this bill is designed to shame women, to intimidate them when they are in a vulnerable situation. That's not health care, and I definitely cannot equate it to the comprehensive, compassionate options counseling - which includes our adoption services and access to prenatal care - that is provided to every woman facing an unintended pregnancy at a Planned Parenthood center.

We cannot continue to allow myths about family planning to be presented as fact.

contraceptives promote promiscuity and lewd behavior

Initial birth control laws had little to do with right-to-life issues, but instead reflected the view that contraceptives promoted promiscuity and lewd behavior.

The major players in this should-we or shouldn’t-we drama were Anthony Comstock, who presented the federal government with an anti-obscenity bill, and birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger.

Read full txt


The author = Rosemary E. Bachelor

She descends from three Mayflower pilgrims and numerous pre-1650 immigrants to New England.
She also wrote about birth control history

ulinx

ЖЕНЩИНА В МИРЕ МУЖЧИН. КУРС ВЫЖИВАНИЯ
http://www.litportal.ru/genre11/author18/book16853.html
Грегори Пинкус
http://www.peoples.ru/science/biology/penkus/
Оральные контрацептивы влияют на восприятие запаха партнера и могут навредить отношениям
http://www.ethology.ru/news/?id=490
там же ссылка на половые отношения