The Racial Imperatives of Sex: birth control and eugenics in Britain, the United States and Australia in the interwar years

被引:25
作者
Carey, Jane [1 ,2 ]
机构
[1] Monash Univ, Monash Indigenous Ctr, Clayton, Vic 3800, Australia
[2] Monash Univ, Ctr Womens Studies & Gender Res, Clayton, Vic 3800, Australia
基金
澳大利亚研究理事会;
关键词
POPULATION; HISTORY; ENGLAND; RIGHTS; RACE;
D O I
10.1080/09612025.2012.658180
中图分类号
K [历史、地理];
学科分类号
06 ;
摘要
While most historical studies position Western birth control campaigns as arising out of the women's movement, this article suggests they were primarily eugenic, rather than feminist, even if many of the leading figures were women. Birth control gained support largely through its representation as a tool for (white) racial progress and population control, rather than as an issue of women's rights. Indeed, in the interwar years birth control and eugenics were so intertwined as to be synonymous. The article explores the Malthusian writings of Annie Besant; the remarkably similarly ways that Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger promoted birth control as a eugenic tool; the support for birth control within both British and American eugenics organisations; and finally Australia's largest eugenic organisation, the Racial Hygiene Association, which founded the country's first birth control clinic in 1933 and later reinvented itself as the Family Planning Association. Recovering these links allows us to see how birth control was fundamentally linked to broader, transnational discussions of race and reproduction, and of how sex should be harnessed for racial purposes.
引用
收藏
页码:733 / 752
页数:20
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