I first came to hear of Peter Bagge’s Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story through reading Sarah Boxer’s review at TCJ.com; an article which I approached with a mind to find articles to include in my Best Online Comics Criticism list for 2014.
Boxer’s article is congenial and engaging without getting into too many details. What emerges from it is a picture of Sanger as a tireless campaigner for women’s rights and their access to birth control; an individual with the ferocity and disposition of a saint who “martyred” her mind and body on the altars of alcohol and Demerol for the cause.
Boxer’s review takes its cue from an episode near the beginning of Bagge’s biography.
In Boxer’s words, Sanger was a
“…true hero, or a super-hero, if you will.” She was a “ball of energy, intelligence, and fury. She was also a proponent of free love…she practiced it (while married) with the writer H. G. Wells.”
And then there’s her She-Hulk like rage (and morally correct disposition):
“Censorship was Sanger’s goad to battle. From this point on in Woman Rebel, it seems that everyone’s eyes are bloodshot and crossed with rage, and you can see rubbery limbs swinging wildly on many a page. Sanger was at war with practically everyone, even those on her side.“
A look at Boxer’s conclusion reveals her train of thought:
“Woman Rebel, though on one level functioning as a superhero comic, also fits onto a certain growing shelf of books with other admirable short biographies…[Bagge] has transformed Sanger into a real live superhero who will herself live to see another day.”
The images produced in the review suggest a kind of absurdist, Far Side version of Sanger’s life. But more than this, there is the air of only marginal fallibility which is the hallmark of the superhero genre. While Tony Stark is allowed to be an alcoholic, Batman will probably still save the homeless man living in an alley way even if he’s suffering from alcohol-induced dementia; Superman rarely deploys his heat vision to sterilize children
I had almost forgotten another aspect of the Sanger story, one which I first came to know about nearly a decade ago. That story comes from Edwin Black’s book, War Against the Weak (2003) which charts the rise of the eugenics movement in America (and then abroad). Edwin Black has a short chapter on Margaret Sanger in his book. He approaches the topic with extreme caution and his introduction comes with a prominent disclaimer:
“Opponents of a woman’s right to choose could easily seize upon Margaret Sanger’s eugenic rhetoric to discredit the admirable work of Planned Parenthood today; I oppose such misuse.”
He also pre-emptively loads the section on Sanger with a long list of her achievements and descriptions of her admirable character. His reasons for doing so become quite clear once the reader reaches the chapter on “Birth Control” in his book. Read in isolation, it is a devastating portrait of a figure who, from the tone of Boxer’s review, seems more akin to the Mary Poppins (she could be quite strict and disagreeable) of Birth Control.
Black enumerates an appalling record of Sanger’s ideas through the early 20th century. Here are some facts and extracts from Black’s chapter on Sanger:
(1) She saw the “obstruction of birth control as a multi-tiered injustice” of which one was the “overall menace of social defectives plaguing society.”
(2) She “expressed her own sense of ancestral self-worth in the finest eugenic tradition.”
(3) She almost named her new movement, “Neo-Malthusianism” and was an “outspoken Social Darwinist”. Her book, The Pivot of Civilization (1922), contains a chapter titled “The Cruelty of Charity”. The epigraph of that chapter was from Herbert Spencer himself and it read:
“Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty. It is a deliberate storing up of miseries for future generations. There is no greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles.”
(4) From Sanger herself Black quotes:
“Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease…the surest sign that out our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents.”
“Such philanthropy …encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste.”
“The most serious charge that can be brought against modern ‘benevolence’ is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.”
(5) “Sanger…listed eight official aims for her new organization, the American Birth Control League. The fourth aim was “sterilization of the insane and feebleminded and the encouragement of this operation upon those afflicted with inherited or transmissible diseases…”
(6) Though she was not thought to be a racist, she allied herself with Lothrop Stoddard, author of The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy which warned that “if white civilization goes down, the white race is irretrievably ruined. It will be swamped by the triumphant colored races, who obliterate the white man by elimination or absorption.”
[In the interest of balance, I will mention this site recounting Sanger’s Negro Project which provides a dissent concerning her degree of racial discrimination. It is, however, quite clearly a pro-life site and needs to be read with proper caution. Some historical facts earlier in the article may, however, be of interest. Also see Anna Holley and Carl M. Cannon on the misuse of Sanger on this controversial issue.]
Sanger was probably an equal opportunity eugenicist who esteemed Whites, Jews and Blacks alike as long as they had good genes. I guess humanity is safe as long as there is a consistent definition of those “good genes”.
While Sanger held to these views well beyond the golden age of the eugenics movement, one mark in her favor is that she never held to eugenicide or eugenics-inspired euthanasia. Planned Parenthood is no doubt relieved by this.
* * *
I have only a cursory interest in the life of Margaret Sanger. Apart from the books mentioned above, I have only read Sanger’s The Pivot of Civilization and a short but glowing prose biography. From the perspective of a Sanger neophyte, these uncomfortable facts merely lead to more questions about whether these observations and extracts are accurate, and whether they have been taken out of context.
Contrary to what might be gleaned from most reviews of the comic (see below for exceptions), Bagge does actually cover Sanger’s tilt toward eugenics with a relative degree of thoroughness, devoting at least 3 pages to the issue out of a 70 page book (and another 3 refuting her purported racism) .
One problem with Bagge’s comic is the style he has cultivated over the years. It is little changed since his days working on Hate, especially the latter issues where he abandoned his more personal busy linework and delegated the inking to a number of hired hands. This works wonders during the two page episode with sexologist, Havelock Ellis, cited in a number of reviews of the comic but it is a distinct hindrance when faced with moments of violence and misery. Take for example the two page sequence where Sanger helps to create a death mask for her deceased brother. One presumes that some of the panels on the page in question are meant to denote stomach churning terror but the reader feels nothing of the sort. The tearful “reunion” of Sanger’s mother with the face of her deceased son should feel crushing in its futility but seems more like a scene from tawdry potboiler. Perhaps that was the intended effect.
The same may be said for a sequence showing a self-induced abortion which might just as well be a ridiculous portrait of post-alcoholic stupor and diarrhea from an early episode of Hate.
There is a huge emotional chasm created by Bagge’s use of caricature to illustrate these scenes.
This same confluence of big foot cartooning and bright coloring creates a more congenial atmosphere when the serious issue of Sanger’s eugenic inclinations are discussed on pages 53-55 of the book.
Judging from these two pages, I would say that Bagge has done an impressive job padding Sanger’s often ugly ideas with seemingly logical arguments about the difficult but necessary job of social engineering. Who could possibly blame Sanger for her musings when even Theodore Roosevelt (and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. for that matter) were raving eugenicists?
Consider the first panel of the second page where Sanger speaks out in favor of “nurture” (i.e. environment) over “nature” (i.e. heredity). This line of thought emerges from The Pivot of Civilization (Chapter VII) and proves to be considerably more controversial then one would presume from Bagge’s dramatization .
It should be noted that almost everything in Sanger’s book is seen through the lens of birth control (and not “charity”—which is accounted useless). There she writes:
“While it is necessary to point out the importance of ‘heredity’ as a determining factor in human life, it is fatal to elevate it to the position of an absolute. As with environment, the concept of heredity derives its value and its meaning only in so far as it is embodied and made concrete in generations of living organisms….Our problem is not that of ‘Nature vs. Nurture,’ but rather of Nature x Nurture, of heredity multiplied by environment…”
“To the child in the womb, said Samuel Butler, the mother is ‘environment’ She is, of course, likewise ‘heredity’…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.” [emphasis mine]
As for the third panel on the second page where our heroine ponders the question of the “fit” and “unfit”, Sanger was less ambiguous than the stated, “And who’s to decide? Politicians? Faceless Bureaucrats?” Her qualms on this subject had nothing to do with the choice between intelligent individuals and imbecilic ones, but class, gender, and most importantly, the type of genius being cultivated. This too comes from Pivot where she writes:
“…we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the idea of ‘fit’ and ‘unfit.’ Who is to decide this question? The grosser, the more obvious, the undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. But among the writings of the representative Eugenists one cannot ignore the distinct middle-class bias that prevails… As that penetrating critic, F. W. Stella Browne, has said…’The Eugenics Education Society has among its numbers many most open-minded and truly progressive individuals but the official policy it has pursued for years has been inspired by class-bias and sex bias….’
“The trouble with any effort of trying to divide humanity into the ‘fit’ and the ‘unfit,’ is that we do not want, as H. G. Wells recently pointed out, to breed for uniformity but for variety. ‘We want statesmen and poets and musicians and philosophers and strong men and delicate men and brave men. The qualities of one would be the weaknesses of the other.’ We want, most of all, genius.”
Here is Bagge in further explanation from his extensive notes on this portion of the book:
(1) BAGGE: “The Pivot of Civilization…Her critics continue to mine it for evidence of her eugenic thought crimes, yet she spends a large portion of the book criticizing what were then established mainstream eugenic beliefs.
While agreeing with many of their most repulsive ideas I should add.
Much of The Pivot of Civilization is actually inoffensive description of the plight of women and children from the lower strata of society with Birth Control being the key to their (and civilization’s) freedom from the plague of overpopulation. For example, she links child labor with “uncontrolled breeding.” You could argue with the (social) science perhaps but not the intent. Where would one put structural inequality in this equation for example?
Sanger, while acknowledging civilization’s indebtedness to the “Marxians for pointing out the injustice of modern industrialism,” was largely dismissive of the Socialistic tendencies of the time. Of the “gospel of Marx” she wrote:
“It is a flattering doctrine, since it teaches the laborer that all the fault is with someone else, that he is the victim of circumstances; and not even a partner in the creation of his own and his child’s misery.”
The real problems begin with the fourth chapter of Pivot titled, “The Fertility of the Feeble-Minded” where she writes in her opening foray:
“Modern conditions of civilization…furnish the most favorable breeding-ground for the mental defective, the moron, the imbecile. ‘We protect the members of a weak strain,’ says [Charles] Davenport, ‘up to the period of reproduction, and then let them free upon the community…so the stupid work goes on of preserving and increasing our socially unfit strain.’”
And soon after:
“Modern studies indicate that insanity, epilepsy, criminality, prostitution, pauperism, and mental defect, are all organically bound up together and that the least intelligent and the thoroughly degenerate classes in every community are the most prolific.”
And to end:
“Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period….The male defectives are no less dangerous….Moreover, when we realize that each feeble-minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of defect, we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded.”
(2) BAGGE: “…Sanger addresses the idea of involuntary sterilization almost as default position, and then proceeds to raise the problems inherent in that idea. But in 1922, that was the default position at least amongst the intellectuals, academics, and progressives that she was trying hard to sway…they were faced with brand new social problems the likes of which humanity had never dealt with before: exploding population growth, rabid urbanization, and massive waves of immigration…All of this lead to increased rates of crime, poverty and mental illness that overwhelmed major US cites. In the face of all this, the idea of sterilizing…seemed like not only a good idea, but the most humane one, considering the options available at the time (another popular solution was to exterminate some or all of the above).
“What Sanger was trying to do was expand our options, so we wouldn’t have to resort to such extreme measures.”
As is clear from Sanger’s The Pivot of Civilization, the first part of Bagge’s statement is complete hogwash. Certainly some would contest the idea that involuntary sterilization was the default position of intellectuals of the time. Quite the contrary, there were some intellectuals who were violently against eugenics itself. Bagge, however, qualifies his statement with the proviso that these were only the intellectuals “she was trying hard to sway.” Since these individuals were largely engaged in the pseudoscience of eugenics, it stands to reason that involuntary sterilization would be popular among them. It is a somewhat circular argument.
(3) BAGGE: “Interestingly, since we now have more scientifically advanced forms of birth control, government agencies imposed temporary forms of forced sterilization on various wards of the state, such as “chemical castration” of paroled sex offenders or Norplant devices for impulsively promiscuous girls in the foster care system. All things considered, these are not unreasonable solutions…”
Of course, these ideas sound all too familiar even in an age when the “science” of eugenics has either gone into hiding or put on new clothes.
In the realm of popular culture, it is best exemplified by Nancy Kress’ novella (chapter 1 of the later novel) Beggars in Spain. Readers on Amazon.com have accurately labeled Beggars in Spain the “perfect book to read before or after Atlas Shrugged”…because it adds so beautifully to the basic arguments of the Have and the Have-Nots.” The soft-Objectivist SF novel which won it all is seen by some as the authoress’ conversation with the ideas of Ayn Rand and, by others, as a paean to the new Objectivism (specifically its ethics). Of course it doesn’t seem to have been promoted that way but you would only need to read 50 pages into the novel to sense the essence of its intent. I had not read 1/4 of the novella before I realized that what I thought were simple quirks were actually the entire measure of its premise.
Beggars in Spain is not completely adamant in its greed and selfishness but it is pretty certain in its diagnosis of one of the major ills of society: the fear, demonization, victimization of, and parasitic reliance on society’s highest achievers. Like Rand, Kress’ work displays an unabashed admiration for elitism but, unlike some of its esteemed forebears, finds a place in its heart for the moochers of society—the eponymous Beggars in Spain.
The metaphor hinted at in the novella’s title is explained in a parable told to Leisha, the protagonist of the work:
“What if you walk down a street in Spain and a hundred beggars each want a dollar and you say no and they have nothing to trade you but they’re so rotten with anger about what you have that they knock you down and grab it and then beat you out of sheer envy and despair?”
Leisha didn’t answer.
“Are you going to say that’s not a human scenario, Leisha? That it never happens?”
“It happens,” Leisha said evenly. “But not all that often.”
“Bullshit. Read more history. Read more newspapers. But the point is: what do you owe the beggars then? What does a good Yagaiist who believes in mutually beneficial contracts do with people who have nothing to trade and can only take?”
“You’re not–”
“What, Leisha? In the most objective terms you can manage, what do we owe the grasping and nonproductive needy?”
“What I said originally. Kindness. Compassion.”
“Even if they don’t trade it back? Why?”
“Because…” She stopped.
“Why? Why do law-abiding and productive human beings owe anything to those who neither produce very much nor abide by just laws? What philosophical or economic or spiritual justification is there for owing them anything? Be as honest as I know you are.”
Leisha put her head between her knees. The question gaped beneath her, but she didn’t try to evade it. “I don’t know. I just know we do.”
And there’s the compassion tacked on to the old elitism, the now passé form of Objectivism. Nancy Kress explains this more fully in an interview quoted by Nicholas Whyte in his review of Beggars in Spain:
“…although there’s something very appealing about [Ayn Rand’s] emphasis on individual responsibility, that you should not evade reality, you should not evade responsibility, you should not assume that it’s up to the next person to provide you with your life, with what it is that you need, whether that’s emotional, or physical… [it] lacks all compassion, and even more fundamental, it lacks recognition of the fact that we are a social species and that our society does not exist of a group of people only striving for their own ends, which is what she shows, but groups of people co-operating for mutual ends, and this means that you don’t always get what you want and your work does not always benefit you directly.”
Whyte goes on to say that
“…the central message of Beggars in Spain is that our humanity as individuals is bound up in our obligations to the rest of humanity, and if we forget that, we become less human.”
So much for intent, but what do we as readers find in the novella, that long short story which won a bounty of awards and recognition.
The protagonist of the novel is Leisha Camden who has been genetically engineered for sleeplessness. She is genetically perfect both in mind and body. Not so the fountainhead of her being, her mother.
Leisha’s mother, who rejects the protagonist’s genetic genius, is a cold, alcoholic wuss who abandons her daughter because she cannot see herself in that superior specimen of society.
Leisha’s “ordinary” sister is left shivering in the long shadow of her sister’s massive intellect and brilliance. She turns her frustration and anger inward; rejecting a planned admission to Northwestern University by becoming first an unwed mother, then an abused wife, and then, horror of horrors, obese! This before seeing the light, leaving her abusive husband, shedding the pounds, and applying to college. In this way, it is rationalized, the beggars don’t always have to be beggars. If only more “normal” people saw the light and changed their lives for the betterment of society.
Beggars in Spain is undoubtedly one of the most frightening novellas to have won both the Hugo and Nebula award. It can also be read as a metaphorical road map towards a caring Objectivist Utopia. The genetically altered Sleepless not only become more intelligent but also regenerate indefinitely—they are veritable demi-gods. The greatest and most intelligent in society are placid, rational, and calm. Many have almost immaculate personalities. Their intelligence and mental superiority is directly connected to morally upright behavior. It is a Libertarian fever dream where the plebs (lacking this intelligence and moral fiber) feel jealous and seek to deprive these individuals of their rights under the American Constitution.This is not so much a case of “America the Beautiful” but “America the Full of Shit.”
It is worth noting that the American eugenics movement largely thrived on the basis of philanthropy, in particular money from the Carnegie Institution but also funds flowing form finance, oil, and railways. In other words, the very demi-gods hailed in Beggars in Spain, a novella rooted in a preposterous (and certainly ahistorical) conception of human behavior. Many of these organizations have since repudiated their actions.
Peter Bagge is, I think, a Libertarian, or at least he sometimes identifies as one. This does not mean that he holds to any of Objectivism’s (or Rand’s) more distasteful views.
Bagge seems to suggest that the slant he provides in Woman Rebel was a strategic decision made against pro-life groups (from an article at Raw Story):
“Those groups also hype Sanger’s belief in the progressive-era theory of eugenics, which Bagge says has become synonymous with fascism and Nazism.
“During the progressive era, especially in the 1920s, when eugenic thought was at its peak, it was much more wide-ranging that that,” Bagge said. “There weren’t very many people who did believe in it along very specific racial lines.”
He says Sanger accepted the views of eugenics promoters to help promote her ideas about birth control among “men of science.”
“She wouldn’t rule out forced sterilizations in extreme situations,” Bagge said. ’Extreme,’ in her case, how she would define that is, a destitute woman who is, like, extremely mentally incapacitated and neither her or her family have any way of raising a child.”
Bagge’s view are of a piece with those of Ellen Chesler who is quoted by Anna Holley as saying that
“Margaret Sanger had no choice but to engage eugenics. It was a mainstream movement, like public health or the environment today. It was to sanitize birth control and remove it from the taint of immorality and the taint of feminism, which was seen as an individualistic and antisocial group that addressed the needs of women only, and immoral women at that’”
Bagge’s decision is probably understandable considering the fraught situation which still surrounds the issue in America. I, of course, speak from the relative “safety” of Singapore where these rights are secure, and both positive and negative eugenic solutions (see Graduate Mothers Scheme and here) were once advocated at the highest level of government as recently as the 80s. Still, there is little doubt that Bagge’s portrait of Margaret Sanger suffers from an excessive use of concealer.
Edwin Black’s portrayal of Sanger is considerably less sanguine. The line from the American eugenics movement to the Nazis and the Holocaust is crystal clear but Sanger was not involved in this cross fertilization. However, Black does suggest that Sanger’s interest in eugenics rose from a deeper ideological source which she carried into the 50s when eugenics was increasingly discredited (Sanger died in 1966):
“…on May 5, 1953, Sanger reviewed the goals of a new family planning organization – with no change of heart….Sanger asserted to a London eugenic colleague, ‘I appreciate there is a difference of opinion as what a Planned Parenthood Federation should want or aim to do, but I do not see how we could leave out of its aims some of the eugenic principles that are basically sound in constructing a decent civilization.”
Life is more strange and people more complicated than we give them credit for. A more truthful account of Sanger’s legacy would be a much needed admonition against the idolization of any human being no matter how beneficial their actions may appear to have been. If an idea is good and ethical, its practice should not be predicated on the saintliness of the individual(s) who first championed it. That is the preserve of religion. The future described by Kress in Beggars in Spain is now upon us. We now lie on the cusp of “self-directed evolution”. But the progress of science has never been at the heart of the problem. It has been merely an invitation to good or evil; and that choice, that problem has never left us since humans first began to think.
* * *
Further Reading
Hilary Brown at Paste Magazine on the comic.
“He presents the bad — her late-life addiction to painkillers, her difficulties with her children, her fricative relationships with other women of power — as well as the good with an even hand.”
Rachel Cooke at The Guardian on Bagge’s comic.
“Bagge is clearly on Sanger’s side, admiring of her pluck, determination and wildness…he acknowledges that she could be disagreeable, selfish and glory-seeking. This is important, for it was surely her flaws just as much as her virtues that kept her going when the struggle to make birth control legal seemed as though it would never be won.”
Rebecca Henely at Women Write About Comics.
“… he makes pains to defend her against the accusations of racism her memory has been asked to answer for. A notorious incident in which Sanger spoke to a gathering of women in the KKK, her use of outdated and offensive terminology such as “negro” and “imbecile,” and her association with the American eugenics movement have all led to accusations that Sanger’s activism was based on racial supremacy or even as proof that she was part of a conspiracy to wipe out black people, both among conservatives and even those on the left such as Black feminist activist Angela Davis. Bagge, however, argues through the pages of his comic and the afterword that while Sanger was no saint, most of this impression is due to smears that take her words out of context or ignorance of the past.”
A review at Motifri.com.
“Bagge deals with the accusation that Sanger was a eugenicist interested in wiping out non-white races of people by pointing out that Sanger was adamantly against defining one group of people as “superior” to another. Indeed, leaders in the black community sought Sanger out for help, and Martin Luther King was proud to receive an award named in her honor.”
It’s interesting that the excuse for Sanger’s embrace of eugenics in the past is based on political expediency (everybody was doing it, she had to talk their language) while the excuse for downplaying her embrace of eugenics is also based on political expediency (don’t want to let the pro-lifers win the argument.) Sort of raising the question, politically expedient for whom?
The compositions are weird in that bookstore interview sequence. It crosses the axis a bunch of times and at certain points seems to take the point of view of the easel. Weird.
I read it recently and there is certainly a jarring rift between the subject and the style used to communicate the narrative. It reminds me of nothing so much as the Paradox Press/DC Comics series of Big Books that I and a host of cartoonists contributed to in the 1990s: Big Book of Weirdos, Big Book of Vice etc. in which clusters of often factual short pieces on a given topic were given uniform script treatments to be realized in 9-panel-per-page layouts, which were then assigned seemingly at random to a range of artists. A LOT of people got work, but serious subjects were often handled in cartoony styles with a similar lack of cohesion to that seen in Bagge’s effort.
Great piece Suat. There are parallels here with the conversation on Walt Kelly. You’d think that comics would be a perfect platform to handle moral ambiguity, judging from its mixed bag of a history, but it doesn’t look like its reached that point yet.
As Suat sort of says, comics seems bound in many ways to the image of spotless superheroes and binaries of good/evil. Maybe it’s just our culture as a whole, though, I don’t know.
“Peter Bagge is, I think, a Libertarian, or at least he sometimes identifies as one. This does not mean that he holds to any of Objectivism’s (or Rand’s) more distasteful views.”
Bagge’s Spiderman one-shot actually deals with his relationship with Rand and her views and I assume is meant to be some sort of conversation with Ditko’s interpretation of Rand. I believe he was critical of some of the problematic views that you’re talking about but it’s been years since I read it and I’ll admit that I didn’t even know who Rand was when i read it.
He has a whole strip about Rand on the Reason website:
http://reason.com/archives/2009/11/10/will-everyone-please-stop-frea
Bagge’s libertarian strips are about the only aspect of Reason that I like (no offense, Noah). Did anyone else see their cover story several months ago about the greatest threats to freedom in the world? It included dead people, so presumably Stalin and Mao were in the running, but Michael Bloomberg came it at #1. Jenny McCarthy was in there, too. What a bunch of morons.
Thoughtful and well-written piece, but I have to admit that my very favorite part is when Tony Stark becomes Batman in an alcoholic blackout.
Sigh. Fixed.
Noah>> Sort of raising the question, politically expedient for whom?
The consistent factor would be the importance and the fragility of the right to Birth Control in America. Sadly, there were also some links between early feminism and eugenics – which makes sense since Sanger is such an important figure in women’s rights as well. Just curious, is the right to Birth Control in America (as opposed to abortion) that brittle?
Kailyn: Why do you think that comics are especially suited to take on ambiguity (moral or otherwise)? Non-comics readers tend to say otherwise, citing the “concreteness” of the images in comics.
Hmm, actually I remember virtually nothing about Bagge’s Spider-man comic except that I may have read it. Or was that some other Spider-man parody…?
I would say the right to birth control isn’t especially brittle, though there are definitely battles around the edges, mostly facilitated by the fact that our health insurance is routed through private businesses, which then feel they can weigh in on what sort of health care their employees get.
Regarding the last sentence of the piece, some cursory research indicates that while it is true, it is not the whole story. Dr. King was for contraception and against abortion. Sanger was absent the night he received the ward due to failing health. Dr. King was also absent, but his wife Corretta attended and read his acceptance speech. I could not determine whether he was aware of Sanger’s advocacy of eugenics, although one unconfirmed source asserted that he was not. According to the same unconfirmed source, Planned Parenthood discouraged abortion as a family planning option in 1966. The civil rights leader’s niece, Alveda King, is an outspoken pro- life advocate.
Also, Noah, I think people generally like to sort other people into good and evil bins, regardless of culture. It’s a gross oversimplification and impractical as a heuristic, but that doesn’t seem to stop us.
I keep thinking of one more thing to say. Suat, I especially appreciated your thorough research on this piece and your obvious, careful commitment to accuracy. I concur with you and my fellow commenters on the incongruity of the cartooning style and the serious subject matter. For some reason though, when Ryan Dunlavey does it, I’m fine with it. Maybe the difference is execution.
>> Planned Parenthood discouraged abortion as a family planning option in 1966.
Do you mean they were against abortion or do you mean they advised the public that non-invasive birth control measures were preferable to minor surgery (which is pretty commonsensical)?
Speaking of Heroes of Good and Evil, this piece at The New Republic on LBJ Liberal Hero was just published today –
“Should LBJ be remembered as a “liberal hero”? If in labeling someone hero, we’re presumed to be ignoring or airbrushing his faults—then of course not. Does anyone really have heroes anymore, at least in this sense? My generation, born at the tail end of the 1960s, has never been able to regard any leader as a hero the way earlier generations did…But maybe we don’t need to label Johnson a hero. Maybe it’s enough to say he did some heroic things, and that, as the state of American politics today suggests, is rare enough.”
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117369/lbj-accomplishments-make-him-liberal-hero-despite-vietnam
Suat, based on the pro-life site I saw it on, I’d say the former. Either one would’ve surprised me, really. Here’s the quote;
“Dr. King did in fact receive the Margaret Sanger Award in 1966. But it is also a fact that in 1966, Planned Parenthood was still (at least publicly) anti-abortion. They were still using a pamphlet they wrote and published in 1963 titled Is Birth Control Abortion?. The pamphlet read:
‘Is birth control abortion? Definitely not. An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control merely post-pones the beginning of life.’ (Is Birth Control Abortion, Planned Parenthood pamphlet, Aug. 1963, p.1)
Planned Parenthood was anti-abortion until the early 1970s because of two reasons:
1) Some of its members and directors were anti-abortion.
2) PP did not wish to hurt their campaign to promote and legalize birth-control by advocating legalized abortion.”
END OF QUOTED TEXT
The site was http://www.lifenews.com/2011/07/22/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-had-pro-life-view-opposing-abortion/.
That’s an interesting semantic point about heroes. If people have to be faultless to be heroes, the word will become a fantasy term like unicorn or jabberwock. I prefer to think of heroes as flawed people doing heroic things. Some people are both hero and villain at different points in their lives.
One of Bagge’s points in the talks he gave about this books is that Sanger went along with the then-popular eugenics movement and is today completely branded by it particularly by anti-abortion and anti-Planned Parenthood groups, whereas with the prominent men who followed it (as you mention, among them Theodore Roosevelt and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., also GB Shaw) it’s just tut tutted away. He was trying to ameliorate this double standard.
Yep, I get that but then the fault actually lies with those people who try to gloss over the particularly unpleasant aspects of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. et al, who seems to have been a pretty impressive person nonetheless.
If you read just about any short bio of Margaret Sanger you would have to admit that she was a pretty impressive woman. She’s like the Disney/Amazon Princess for older girls who have outgrown the smiles, gowns, and cheap heroics of the cartoon/comic franchises. She was a committed atheist and early Socialist, rose from poverty to become self-supporting on the lecture circuit, was largely an autodidact, effectively chose her career over family, fought valiantly against organized religion (specifically the Catholic Church), defied laws which reduced the rights of women, was an enemy of prudish fools like Anthony Comstock, was sexually liberated, was a defiant defender of First Amedment freedoms, divorced her husband when it suited her (and when it wasn’t fashionable), married a very wealthy man who was at her beck and call (she obtained a prenup guaranteeing her personal freedom in various ways) etc. etc. She’s obviously a very presentable role model and her life had more than enough drama in it to fill a movie (I haven’t seen the TV movie starring Dana Delany).
As mentioned earlier in this thread, there are echoes of the Walt Kelly conversation here, but in ways both good and bad. Like some of the people commenting on Kelly, Suat falls into the pernicious habit of equating contextualization with apologia, as if trying to understand the background for someone’s behavior or thinking were the same as giving them a complete moral pass. (We see this pernicious habit fairly often in foreign policy debates, where raising the question of what motivates terrorism is equated with forgiving terrorism).
In terms of evaluating Sanger’s support of eugenics, the crucial bit of contextualization that is missing here is a consideration of the larger gender politics of both Sanger as birth-control-advocate-and-eugenicists and her opponents. Suat rightly notes that there were those at the time who opposed eugenics. But who were they? Eugenics had support from across the political spectrum in in many faith communities but the anti-eugenics position was almost entirely articulated by the Catholic church and it’s intellectual apologists and fellow travelers. It’s not surprising that the anti-eugenics intellectual Suat sites is G.K. Chesterton, who became one of the most famous Catholic converts of his age.
The salient point about the Catholic church’s opposition to eugenics was that it can’t be taken in isolation as an admirable position the church took — this anti-eugenics policy was part of a much larger package deal that includes the churches opposition to all attempts to “artificially” control human reproduction (i.e. opposition to abortion and all birth control except the unreliable method of natural family planning). And of course, Catholic social thought being an organic web, it’s impossible to separate this opposition to all real attempts to control reproduction from the Catholic church’s reactionary gender politics. It’s worth remembering that Chesterton, Suat’s chosen anti-eugenicist champion, opposed female suffrage and women participating in the economy as equals to men.
From my point of view at least, both Sanger’s position and the Catholic (or Chesterton) position are flawed, but Sanger’s is far preferable. It’s easy enough to amend Sanger’s position by saying that eugenics shouldn’t be part of birth control. It’s very hard to change the Catholic (or Chesterton) position because it’s part of an intricate view of natural law and inherent gender divisions which are centuries old.
All of this takes us a bit far away from Peter Bagge. I’ll just briefly note that Bagge’s portrayal of Sanger seems much more nuanced and attentive to human frailty and fallibility than Suat seems to think (and is certainly more complex than Suat’s own view of Sanger).
I also want to take issue with this: “She’s like the Disney/Amazon Princess for older girls who have outgrown the smiles, gowns, and cheap heroics of the cartoon/comic franchises.” It’s really offensive to compare Sanger to a Disney princess — why not compare her to the social activists who were her peers? Sanger was a towering figure like Jane Addams, W.E.B. Du Bois, Eugene V. Debs, Emma Goldman, etc. All of them had their flaws, but also their greatness. The only thing Sanger has in common with a Disney princess is her possession of XX chromosomes, which seems to be a source of anxiety here.
Hi Jeet, I’m wasn’t actually comparing Sanger to a Disney Princess (at least not in a favorable way). I was trying to relate this back to the Boxer review (see top) which made Sanger out to be a “superhero” of sorts. What I’m trying to say is that when girls are done with the superficial heroics of those fictional characters, they could easily look to someone like Sanger who, for all her flaws, was pretty impressive. Not to mention considerably more interesting than any superhero character I’ve read.
Anyway, getting back to contextualizing eugenics…I think the body of Bagge’s Sanger comic downplays Sanger’s interest in eugenics and some of her unfortunate ideas. In that sense, it is an apologia or, as Heidi seems to imply, an attempt at rectifying some perceived wrongs.
I think this is a mistake not least because it reduces a complex person to a series of “famous” situations and humorous anecdotes. The “staging” of some of these famous events was also less then exemplary – his depiction of the riot at Sanger’s appearance at the 1921 American Birth Control Conference in NYC is an artistic failure clearly hampered by his decision (by and large) to use a single page for each climatic event.
It is one thing to say that Margaret Sanger was drawn into the ideas of eugenics because they were commonplace among leaders of American society, quite another to consider to what extent they informed her person and her actions. The story becomes reduced to a simplistic tale of how Sanger saw poor women (including her own mother) with no access to birth control and set things right. But it never grapples with how (or whether) her Malthusian conceptions of society added fuel to the fire. I feel that her incredible stubbornness and zeal for birth control needs to be complicated by more than a “superhero” origin story. (I guess someone is going to tell me that it’s only a 70 page comic book).
The battle with American pro-lifers has meant that Bagge’s comic biography had to skirt these issues, and I find this unsatisfactory. The short biography I read (which is clearly aimed at high school students or lazy college ones) seemed more forthright on this issue. If memory serves, even Ellen Chesler’s long biography of Sanger makes no bones about how Sanger carried some of these ideas well beyond their sell by date (perhaps to the detriment of her cause). Some Sanger expert can correct me on this point.
I would go well beyond your criticisms of Chesterton. There are certainly traces of homophobia in his Eugenics and Other Evils, not to mention the use of a pretty horrendous racial caricature. Nothing surprising there. Yet, none of this should detract from the basic thrust of the book which must be, in some tangential way, related to his religiosity. What strikes me about Eugenics and Other Evils is how often he relates his arguments back to personal liberties and the basic humanity of each individual. He finds it repulsive that they should be discussed (sometimes treated) as if they were farm animals. Yet contrast this with his ideas on race and gender–why the sharp divide?
And the actions of the Catholic church against Sanger and birth control were clearly despicable. I’m not a Catholic but I think it would be perfectly easy for the Catholic church to change their views on women and birth control since there is no sound biblical basis for them. Not to mention the fact that a lot of Catholics just choose to ignore those antiquated ideas in the first place.
Sanger’s achievement is one of the most important in American history. Allowing the human resources of half our population to be unlocked by allowing women to control their fertility is a major advance in civilization. And to do it Sanger had to be quite a major player herself—probably more important than Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Obviously she had flaws but they have far outweighed her achievements because of of the politics of those achievements, not because they were not immensely important.
Absolutely agree with Heidi on this. Sanger was an enormously important historical figure whose positive impact is hard to overstate. Her failures and limitations should be discussed but its absurd to understate her achievement. And to be honest, I think Bagge gives a good run-down of what her flaws are (contra Suat, the book is far from a hagiography — and in fact Bagge’s exaggerated, Wolverton-inflected art suits his “warts and all” approach to history).
This is a side point but I think this can be contested: “I think it would be perfectly easy for the Catholic church to change their views on women and birth control since there is no sound biblical basis for them.” Church doctrine on these issues grows not just out of the Bible but also centuries of Natural Law teaching, which are deeply ingrained in Catholic thought. It’s possible that the church will change on these issues (as it and other Christians did on issues like slavery) but I it will be very hard, I think, despite the fact that ordinary Catholics by a wide margin disagree with the Church on this stuff. I’m not a Catholic either but that’s my sense of it. Also, and I hate to say this, but church (and also conservative Christians of other denominations) can in fact find Biblical grounding for their sexism. Of course, as on other issues, the Bible is complex and their are opposite messages that can also be pulled out (and are pulled out by liberal Protestants) but still we shouldn’t pretend that Christian sexism doesn’t have some basis in the Bible.
Jeet, I’m a Christian, I’m pro-life, and I occasionally comment regarding those topics on HU. I want to thank you for what I think are fair and knowledgeable comments on the church, Chesterton, and Christian positions on these issues. The Bible, especially the writings of Paul, acknowledges both the equality of men and women and differences between them. As you say, it is a complex book, and Christians disagree on the interpretation and reconciliation of these passages. I don’t know much about Chesterton’s positions on race and gender, but if, as you say, they are inconsistent with his position on the great value of each human life and our equality before God, then I regret it. None of us fully live up to either our role model or the principles he professed, of course, but the gap is more disappointing in someone who articulated the faith so well.
Jeet: It would be easy in the sense that neither sexism nor opposition to birth control are core tenets of the Catholic faith – neither are sacraments for example.
It’s true that some Christians look to the Pauline letters to bolster their poor treatment of women but those same sections of the Bible have been interpreted in a more feminist vein by modern academics. It’s a question of to what degree people are willing to bring their studies of the text.
I don’t think that’s surprising since mere words will always be used for either good or ill by the humans that read them. Just like the passage from Darwin’s ideas to Social Darwinism and hence to eugenics and assorted other ills. That doesn’t mean we have to dispense altogether with the ideas of Neo-Darwinism.
And that’s also remarkably accurate and even-handed, Suat. I don’t mean to gush, but I’m accustomed to some evidence of ignorance, defensiveness, or spin from both sides of any faith-related debate, especially when the debate is as open to the public as a comments thread. I probably shouldn’t be surprised by now, but the community on this website continues to impress me.
Not sure I have a ton to add…but just quickly I’d say that both pro-choice and pro-life groups have a painful baggage of racism and sexism in their respective histories. I think it’s more useful for each side to confront theirs rather than telling the other folks that their baggage is bigger or more difficult to change.
Not to say you can’t criticize the other side; of course you can and should. Just saying that using the other sides actions as an excuse not to deal with your own history is not helpful (and not that anyone here is necessarily doing that; it just seems like a good thing to keep in mind.)
Noah Berlatsky says:
“telling the other folks that their baggage is bigger or more difficult to change.” To clarify, if I emphasized that the Catholic Church will have a hard time changing it’s stance on gender & sexual issues (including its opposition to all forms of birth control aside from natural family planning)I wasn’t doing so simply in an accusatory spirit. I take the Catholic Church intellectually seriously and think their stance on these issues isn’t simply a matter of whim or chance but actually grounded in a complex worldview that has centuries old roots, a worldview stepped not just in the Bible but also the Natural Law tradition of both antiquity and the Middle Ages. Of course the Church can change its mind and has on important issues (notably slavery or, more recently, democracy). Still, I think it’s important to understand how deeply rooted the church’s position is and how many big issues they would have to rethink. Conversely, secular folks who supported eugenics (not just feminists but also many liberals and conservatives) were able to jettison their position on that issue relatively quickly in the 1940s and 1950s, in the face not just of Nazism but also new discoveries in science.
The Nazis were a pretty big deal, though, I think. And Catholics have tended to abandon anti-semitism after Nazism as well, right, even though that was certainly a tradition with long, deep roots in the Church.
I’m just skeptical of the argument that Catholicism is innately or necessarily slower to change than other traditions. It seems like the Church came very close to changing quite substantially in the recent past. There were specific reasons why it didn’t, but my sense is those are better understood in the context of particular historical events rather than the nature of the church per se.
Every institution has aspects of continuity and a potential for change, it seems like. Anti-abortion is really central to the church now; I’d be surprised if that position reversed in my lifetime. Still, the church also has a longstanding belief in miracles.
“I’m just skeptical of the argument that Catholicism is innately or necessarily slower to change than other traditions.”
The Jewish example you cited goes against this point. In the early 1960s, obviously in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Vatican finally rejected the longstanding teaching holding the Jews (as a collective entity) responsible for the death of Christ. That was many decades after mainstream Protestants had rejected this teaching.
On October 31, 1992, Pope John Paul II officially apologized for the persecution of Galileo in 1633. The church by the way had forbidden the reading of any book teaching heliocentrism until 1758 i.e. more than a century after the persecution of Galileo.
The Catholic Church is one of the world’s oldest continuously functioning institutions and much of its authority derives from its antiquity. Almost by definition, it is slow to change. I suppose you can site a few specific examples where some other institutions were even slower (say the Southern Protestant churches in America in regards to slavery and Jim Crow). But, really, the Catholic church is surely high on the list of slow changing institutions. That in fact is part of its charm or distinctive quality. I don’t see any reason to deny it.
Does it have a history of dramatic reversals of position that it attributes to miracles?
Above is a response to Noah’s “Anti-abortion is really central to the church now; I’d be surprised if that position reversed in my lifetime. Still, the church also has a longstanding belief in miracles.”
Termagent, that is admittedly more a Mormon church thing.
Noah, regarding your comments about the rights of birth control and the battles at the fringe, once you enter into the realm of forcing someone to pay for something, they inherently have a right to have an opinion on what they should be able to pay for. For example, many have claimed the Hobby Lobby owners are refusing to pay for “birth control,” which while technically true by some people’s definition of BC, intentionally mistates the position. The owners are specifically opposed to 2 or 3 specific things that they have labeled abortifacents (because it acts after conception but no implantation, correct me if I’m wrong.)
I think they are right in that gray area that divides this country almost perfectly. It’s why one side is misrepresenting the Hobby Lobby position to make it seem less gray area. I believe that if it were accurately portrayed to most people, they would err on the side with Hobby Lobby since they are actually fine with providing most kinds of BC. Just not post-conception BC because of religious views. Even the irreligious don’t want to force people to go against religiuosly held beliefs without compelling reasons.
Well, the problem is that once you start mucking in people’s choices about their health, you end up raising a lot of disturbing questions.This piece is a nice summation of some of the difficulties. Among other things, people might be using those medicines for other health reasons. Should they have to explain their medical history to their employers? Should an employer have a veto on a drug which is proscribed by a doctor?
Basically doing it through employers is stupid in the first place. But if you’re going to do it that way, you need some pretty strong controls on invasion of privacy.
Granted the anti-contraceptive brigade probably won’t care one way or another but the Traci Loxley article you link to concerns quite a different issue from that brought up by Robert D.. Robert is talking about emergency contraception and Loxley about hormonal regulation for chronic gynecological problems. So the former is presumably a religious issue in America (also emergency contraception is relatively inexpensive). You’ll have to pretty stupid or selfish to deny your employees access to the latter since chronic hormonal treatment can be expensive depending on the brand used.
Your point on an employee’s right to privacy holds though.
@Robert D It is Hobby Lobby that is misrepresenting its objections. The four types of birth control which they refuse to provide are not abortifacients according to the medical definitions of conception. Made up science does not belong in the US Supreme Court.
There are much better written explanations for the absurdity of the argument that the any employer should even know about an employee’s medical care.
The Greens’ religious beliefs do not trump their employees’ religious beliefs and the 80+ procedures, devices, checks, etc., that are required to be provided without co-pay by the ACA were developed by non-partisan public health professionals because those 80+ items will lead to healthier men, women and children and a lot less money spent on health care in the US which is good for everyone.
Regarding Sanger, I would guess that she did believe in some form of eugenics. Having worked with neglected and abused children for most of my life, I’ve seen many a man and woman for whom I would vote for sterilization having seen what they did to their children. Today, I spent two hours with a woman who has four children with two different men and is pregnant with a baby with a third father (a known sex offender.) Both fathers have been to prison several times for drug charges and domestic violence. None of these three people has adequately parented their children. The four for which I am the guardian ad litem were taken away from their mother almost two years ago. When I met the mother, one of the first things that she told me was that she couldn’t wait to get pregnant again. Now, she has which means that she will receive Section 8 housing and food stamps because there is no open case on the new baby. All three parents intend to fight for custody of the children even though none of them has done anything to straighten up their lives in the last two years. The children, all under seven years old, have been in EIGHT different placements in the past two years because these supposed adults are no more than tall, spoiled and lazy children themselves. Btw, the men both have children with other women, none of whom they are supporting. If it were up to me, I would sterilize all four adults with not a moment’s regret. The pain that these children have already endured is unimaginable and I’m fairly certain that the older two are permanently and severely damaged already.
The saddest thing is that this is not an unusual case. Margaret Sanger saw these situations all the time and she saw them in every racial and cultural group.
Btw, Sanger opposed abortion throughout her life so this foolish accusation that she participated in some kind of black genocide is ridiculous and unsupported by any evidence at all. Sanger believed that every woman should have knowledge about birth control and access to birth control devices. That does not equal genocide.
I think defending Sanger on eugenics by saying, hey, we need more eugenics, is not really very effective. Rhetorical fulminations against those people backed by eugenic proscriptions just have way, way too unpleasant a history.
I’m catching up on this thread a little late here, but I wanted to add that Margaret Sanger comes up regularly in my Superheroes course. Last week I projected this NYTimes headline from January 1922: “Mrs. Sanger Says Superman Is the Aim of Birth Control.”
Coincidentally, I believe DC owner/publisher Harry Donnenfeld was one of Sanger’s distributors for her Birth Control Review, which was illegal because it sometimes came with a condom (forgive the pun).
It’s only a joke if you also say that comics still often come sheathed in condoms. Double condoms even.
If you’re still reading, can you enlighten me as to why Sanger comes up in your Superheroes course so regularly? Apart from the interesting Superman link of course. I know eugenics comes up in your articles quite often.