Kitty Marion, Broadway’s Local Suffragette Gets Arrested for Distributing “Obscene” Literature

Back in 1918 a familiar sight for New Yorkers was German-born Kitty Marion running up and down Broadway clutching a stack of the Birth Control Review and proudly waving them in the air,  most likely with the police directly behind her. Kitty was arrested for the ninth time in 1918 after again violating the law against the sale and distribution of obscene literature. She chose a 30-day sentence over the option of paying a fine of $500, saying “put the money into The Birth Control Review, I’ll stay in jail”.

 

That sentiment did not stop Kitty’s friend Mary Halton, one of New York’s eminent woman obstetricians, from bringing $500 in bags of pennies collected by the lovely ladies of the east side to the judge. Remember when Samsung allegedly paid a fine to Apple in all pennies? Your neighborhood suffragettes did it first.

Kitty didn’t abstain from her duty of spreading this “illegal” knowledge. Once she was released,  she was back at it the next day.

All types of people stopped to see what the fuss was about, why this woman kept coming back with a bag across her chest and papers in the air. Kitty ran into the types you would expect she described the as the “you oughts”

You ought- to be ashamed,- to be arrested,- to be in jail,- to be shot,- to be hanged, or, maybe what I ought to suffer was just ostracism. According to me good sisters, my action in selling The Review and advocating birth control, was disgraceful, disgusting, scandalous, outrageous, villainous, criminal, and unladylike! The poor dears!

Not everyone that passed by Kitty wished she’d simply just disappear.  The positive feedback she and her sisters received gave them hope to carry on, it inspired them when they met people who had a spark of desire to learn more and make a change for the better. People would shout “good luck!” or commend the women on their courage. Men, women, people of faith, all purchased a copy of this outlawed paper.

Arrested for informing the public on a topic otherwise termed taboo Kitty Marion proved that just one person who believed that she could make a difference, could make women’s lives better, even if it was at the expense of her own. Despite arrests and catcalls, she fought what she saw as the injustice of the Comstock law, quoting Helen Keller, when she said,

The dignity of human nature compels us to resist what we believe wrong and a stumbling block to our fellow man

 

 

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Rebels of Post Avenue

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birth control, edward mylius, history, margaret sanger, mary ware dennett, national birth control league, otto bobsien, robert parker, sanger, Woman Rebel

Margaret Sanger, c. 1915 (Courtesy of the Sophia Smith Collection)

As we move into the year 2014, we also come across a slew of new anniversaries to celebrate, and a look at the history of Margaret Sanger is no exception.  1914, the month of March to be exact, marks the 100^th anniversary of the publication of Woman Rebel, a radical feminist monthly published by Margaret Sanger publicizing what would be called “birth control” in just a few months.  The journal published the first use of the term “birth control,” a term that Sanger built into one of the most significant reform movements in the 20^th century.

This apartment building replaced Sanger’s original apartment in 1920.

The humble beginnings of Woman Rebel took place in New York City during January of 2014.  After leaving her husband, William Sanger, to paint in Paris, Margaret Sanger rented a “dingy” apartment at 34 Post Avenue in Upper Manhattan and moved in with her and the children.  From there, she and a group of anarchists developed the Woman Rebel and the early arguments of the birth control movement.  Who were these mysterious, unnamed men who helped Sanger get started?  Although often referred to as “secretaries,” Edward Mylius, Robert Parker, and Otto Bobsien were not only part of Sanger’s inner circle, but played an integral role in the creation of Woman Rebel.

Scarce documentation survives about these three men.  Edward Mylius was a British citizen who fled to the United States after publishing an libelous, anarchist paper in Paris “declaring that the King of England had once contracted a morganatic marriage” (My Fight).  He wrote one credited article in Woman Rebel (“Freedom in America, Union Square, April 4, 1914,” Woman Rebel, Apr. 1914, 11), but was dedicated to the feminist monthly.

A failed playwright, Robert Parker often served as Sanger’s ghost writer and editor.  Although Margaret Sanger claimed she invented the term “birth control”, it was actually Parker who suggested the term after connecting the importance of control with their goal of contraception.

“Margaret invited these men to her apartment for an emergency conference.  They decided that the first thing she needed was a catchier name for contraception than the delicate ‘preventative means.’  They considered ‘conscious generation,’ ‘Neo-Malthusianism,’ and several others.  Robert Parker offered the final suggestion.  He was a polio victim who was studying Yoga, in which control is an essential feature, hoping that control might help him with his partly paralyzed hand.  It occurred to him that control might apply to birth as well.  ‘Birth control,’ he mused.  ‘Birth Control … I think I like it.’  They all liked it.  As they put on their hats and left, they agreed that birth control was the best name for the movement.” – Margaret Sanger, Madeline Gray, p. 72

The name obviously stuck, as we use it a century after its coinage.

The first to use the term “birth control” in print was actually Otto Bobsien.  Bobsien joined the National Birth Control League, formed in 1915 after Sanger fled the U.S.  He used Sanger’s list of subscribers and friends of Woman Rebel for the new league, and Sanger felt betrayed, especially when its president, Mary Ware Dennett, refused to support her case when she returned.

It is not surprising that Sanger kept her helpers in the background.  The birth control movement was considered a special cause of women and Sanger would build it into her life’s work.  But these were the people that Sanger trusted most, and turned to when she needed help getting her paper off the ground.  Although the monthly had only seven issues, Woman Rebel helped express her beliefs and distribute them to a larger audience than her speeches alone.  Now exposed to new ideas and people, Sanger felt better equipped to continue on her path to social awareness.

______________

For a digital collection of the Woman Rebel issues and documents surrounding its publication and suppression, see http://wyatt.elasticbeanstalk.com/mep/MS/docs/ms-table.html.

Birth Control Review: A communication tactic

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birth control, Birth Control Review, Censorship, margret sanger, reproductive rights, women

Margaret Sanger began publishing the Birth Control Review in 1917 as a means to help build a birth control movement. By 1921 the monthly journal had become the official organ of the American Birth Control League, and included news of birth control activities, articles by scholars, activists, and writers on birth control, and reviews of books and other publications. The Review even included art and fiction in the form of cartoons, poetry and short stories.

Karla K. Gower and Vanessa Murphree recently published “Making Birth Control Respectable” in American Journalism, an article that looked at underlying messages about eugenics and Neo-Malthusianism (overpopulation) found in the Review.

To understand how eugenics and population were treated by the Review,  it is important to understand the context in which the journal appeared. Gower and Murprhee argue that the topic of birth control was not publicly acceptable in the 1920s. Anything that related to reproduction was thought to belong in the private sphere. Public discussion of such matters made people uncomfortable. The Gower and Murphree argue that women were “relegated to the home” and were expected to uphold the virtues of the cult of domesticity–piety, purity, submission and domesticity.[1] Thus, birth control was seen as taboo.

Mailing information about birth control was also illegal, thanks to the 1873 Comstock Act, which made it a federal offense to send information about contraceptives in the mail.  The Comstock Act also inspired states to further criminalize birth control.  Gower and Murphree indicated that fourteen states prohibited the verbal transmission of information about contraception or abortion, while eleven others made possession of instructions for the prevention of pregnancy a criminal offense.[2]

Page of the Morning Oregonian, published in June 1916. “Censorship is Attacked.”

But this did not stop Sanger and the American Birth Control League from mailing out the Review, though it probably had some impact the kinds of material the journal published.  The main goal of the Review was to secure public support for birth control, to attract the support of doctors, legislators, academics, and the middle class and wealthy society women who formed the backbone of local birth control leagues.

This is where the undertones of eugenics and Neo-Malthusianism come in.

Sanger understood that there needed to be political accommodation in order to publish material on birth control. The Comstock Act, along with similar state laws, still existed. So Sanger and her supporters had to find a way to disseminate the information that they needed to without engaging in a full on battle with the law.

The answer lay in appealing to a greater audience and breaking their belief that birth control was a taboo. This audience was the white middle and upper classes.

But why would the BCR want to reach these classes? Were not most of the writings concerned with the impoverished classes, the women who could not afford to have undesired children?

In Sanger’s autobiography, My Fight for Birth Control, she writes:

The answer was to make the club women, the women of wealth and intelligence, use their power and money and influence to obtain freedom and knowledge for the women of the poor. The women of leisure must listen. The women of wealth must give. The women of influence must protest.

(p. 191)

(For more on this subject see, “Women of Wealth and Influence.”)

Sanger concluded that although it was working class women who needed the most aid, it was the “club women” who would have the necessary influence and resources to promote the birth control movement.

Although the article demonstrates that the subject of eugenics in the BCR was a matter of tactic, it is important to note that
for Sanger, eugenics wasn’t just a strategy.

Eugenic theory developed in the United States during the early twentieth century. Individuals, including Margaret Sanger, believed that there were certain ways to promote a healthier population. Sanger, in particular, established ideas on when women should avoid giving birth. These ideas included women being at least 22 years old so that she can “attain a ripe physical and mental development” and when she is working since “society remains indifferent to the needs of her offspring and forces them to toil in mills and factories.

(Vol. 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928, p.243-244)

The BCR was a magazine serving as a publication to discuss the justifications of birth control.[3] The upper class readers of these stories would have emotional reactions to reading the unfortunate stories and letters of poor women.[4]

By speaking to this audience, the topic of birth control would be public and legal with social changes could come to fruition.

What this audience tended to want to  hear during this time were discussions on eugenics and Neo-Malthusianism.

These topics concerned the strengthening of gene pools and the controlling of overpopulation, respectively. More importantly, the supporters of both were concerned with quality over quantity.[5]

Does this sound familiar?

Quite. Think about the BCR and the birth control movement in general. The primary goals included decreasing the number of undesired births in poorer populations in order to improve the quality of life for the poorer families.

Now, Sanger and the BCR editors had to be careful about using eugenics to further promote birth control in the public sphere. The idea was not to make greater white middle and upper class families, rather, the intersection of these movements was to support the idea to ensure that families had the right to control the size of their family and that women had the right to control their bodies.[6]

The following excerpt describes the general perspective on eugenics in the birth  control movement:

Margaret Sanger and leaders of the birth control movement, predominantly women, believed that people should be empowered, by education, to make choices to limit their own reproduction. In a society that frowned on open discussion of sexuality and where physicians knew little about the biology of reproduction, Sanger advocated that mothers be given access to the scientific information needed to thoughtfully plan conception.

(Eugenics Archive)

(For more on eugenics in the birth control movement see, “Birth Control and Eugenics: Uneasy Bedfellows?”)

The conclusion of this intersection, in the perspective of the BCR, was that the access to knowledge about contraceptives and effective family spacing would give women the ability to “eliminate the unfit [population].”[7]

Cover of the BCR published in February 1926. Slogan, “Fewer Children Better Born,” suggests that birth control would lead to a healthier population.

In addition to addressing the question of  increasing an “unfit” population, there was the question of overpopulation.

Neo-Malthusians supported using scientific advancement, in this case birth control, to impede the growing world population as it was assumed to be constrained by inadequate food production.

Sanger, after hearing a speech given by Frank Vanderlip concerning the growing population of Europe and their possible reliance on American food sources, saw the potential in incorporating this argument in the birth control movement.[8]

Though Murphree and Gower emphasize that the inclusion of Neo-Malthusian ideals was a way to reach a broader range of supporters, it is important to understand that Margaret Sanger’s ideas had been influenced by the Neo-Maltusian movement. In 1914, Sanger found herself in England being introduced to the leaders of the Malthusian League. This is where she first learned of the advocacy for using artificial contraception to control population growth. The League’s program gave Sanger new arguments that would increase the appeal of the legalization of birth control
(Vol 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928, p. 94.)

So you see? Both the incorporation of eugenics and neo-Malthusian ideas were also communication tactics!

Sanger effectively used the appeal of the eugenics and overpopulation movements to further the birth control movement.

What was the BCR able to communicate with these associations?

Everything converged to demonstrate that birth control would give women the liberty to control their bodies and therefore, control the number of children they had. This would naturally lead to a healthier population.

Everyone would hopefully be content.

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[1] Gower, Karla K. & Vanessa Murphree. “Making Birth Control Respectable.” American Journalism 30,2 (2013) : 213.

[2]McFarlane, Deborah & Kenneth J. Meier. The Politics of Fertility Control. New York: Seven Bridges, 2001, 30.

[3] Gower, Karla K. & Vanessa Murphree. “Making Birth Control Respectable.” American Journalism 30,2 (2013) : 219.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 227.

[6]Birth Control Review, June 125, front cover.

[7] “Birth Control the True Eugenics–Mothers Who Refuse to Bear Unfit Children,” Birth Control Review, August 1926, 248.

[8] Gower, Karla K. & Vanessa Murphree. “Making Birth Control Respectable.” American Journalism 30,2 (2013) : 233.

Monsters in the Birth Control Review?

Tags

Birth Control Review, margaret sanger

As an avid True Blood fan, I have my Sunday tradition of getting a fill of monsters. Interestingly, this continued once I came in to work on Monday morning and I saw the  recently published article by Aimee Wilson, “Modernism, Monsters, and Margaret Sanger” on my desk. the title was catchy. I am a sucker for alliteration.

Cover of the November 1923 issue of the Birth Control Review.

Wilson’s paper critiques aesthetic autonomy and examines how it appears in the  Birth Control Review, the monthly journal of the American Birth Control League, edited by Margaret Sanger between 1917-1928.  In addition to providing the news of the birth control movement, the Review also published articles on birth control and related topics written by a wide range of scientists, scholars, and activists. Perhaps surprisingly, it also published fiction.

Now at first, I was surprised that fiction was written for the Birth Control Review. I really wondered what kinds of plots and characters would be created to convey some of the heavier themes of the birth control movement.

But then, I thought about the stories that were a part of True Blood. Though a majority of the appeal is the fantastical elements of the show, the audience is exposed to serious themes such as discrimination.

So, I read the two pieces of fiction that Wilson referenced in her paper:  “On the Dump” by Rita Wellman and “The Magnet” by Mary Heaton Vorse.”

What was I able to extract?

These examples of fiction were written to cast the reader into the plight of a character who is struggling with their own physical body. The physical body wants to associate itself with the socially-accepted identity of the time while the mind wants to gain control.

This socially-accepted identity is that of a woman being a mother. Wilson describes the body as a machine, acting separately from the mind. This reproducing machine would leave women in the mercy of their bodies and unable to take control of their own bodies. Their bodies were seemingly betraying them.

Wilson examines this plight in terms of the autonomy of the maternal body and its association with science, specifically the technological advancement of birth control. Wilson structures the analyses around what she calls, a modernist conception narrative, which uses gothic features, such as neo-gothic vitalism, in order to depict the maternal body as “an organism with an autonomous will to reproduce.”[1]

Whew! Let’s try to unpack that.

As I gathered from my reading of this article and references to other sources, aesthetic autonomy refers to the art object—in this case the fiction in the Birth Control Review— achieving independence from social, political, and historical forces given by the viewer or the reader.[2] In a modernist conception narrative women attempt to reduce the autonomy of the maternal body from its position outside of the public sphere while also, trying to gain a greater independence. Wilson uses the poor women often depicted in the Birth Control Review’s stories as the individuals wrestling with the autonomy of their maternal bodies and seeking this independence. The independence in this case is the greater control over their reproduction.

In other words, think of the vampires in True Blood. In this example of fiction, there are characters that struggle with their physical body. Instead of reproduction, their struggle is an issue of thirst for human blood. What is the technological advancement that would let the vampires dissociate themselves from their public identity as bloodsuckers?

TrueBlood of course! Like birth control, the creation of TrueBlood would allow for vampires to gain control over their physical bodies and gain control over their thirst.

To further flesh out the modernist conception narrative, Wilson implements certain gothic features to her analyses. Neo-gothic vitalism relates to the mechanization of the maternal body and its autonomous decisions and desire to reproduce. Tying back into True Blood, this mechanization can be analogous to the vampires, as Wilson characterizes both as “pursuing a purpose unthinkingly and in a way that confuses the border between life and death.”[3]

For women, the purpose is reproduction while for vampires it is fulfilling their thirst for human blood. The second part of this statement shows that women who have dominating maternal bodies are brought closer to death with the more life that they bring into the world.

In the case of vampires, I’m not so sure how this works. We could simply say that vampires are the walking dead who, if unable to control their physical thirst, will drink more and more life to remain the living dead. It’s kind of a stretch.

After I began to piece together the philosophical terms of modernism, I looked to the stories that Wilson presented in order to gain a better grasp on the connection between modernism, monsters and Margaret Sanger.

“On the Dump” published in the BCR in December or 1918.

“On the Dump” tells the story of a Mrs. Robinson returning home after grocery shopping. As she is walking through the tenement neighborhood, she spots something shiny on a dump heap. This sparkle reminds her of her wedding ring. These thoughts lead her to reflect on her current state of life. She realizes her disintegrating marriage, her unplanned pregnancy and the amplified poverty that will come with the birth of another child. Mrs. Robinson concludes that “the prize of life” is death.[4] Suddenly she slips down towards the river below, barely catching herself on a tree stump. As she is dangling, something in her mind changes and she lets go. Too late she recognizes that she does not want to die this way but she drowns in the river, regardless.

Wellman included a second ending to her story. As Mrs. Robinson is falling, her pleas for help are answered by a birth control reformer who pulls her to safety.

Here, the presence of a “monster” can first be seen.

Image accompanying “On the Dump” in the December publication of the BCR in 1918.

Can you spot it?

The “monster” is Mrs. Robinson’s autonomous maternal body. Wilson describes this as the female body being an organism with an autonomous will to reproduce.[5]

For Mrs. Robinson, her body and mind are separate. Her body has punished her with an undesired pregnancy. Her body takes control and the repeated reproduction only brings on “poverty, ignorance and war.”[6]

The autonomy of Mrs. Robinson’s identity as a mother is a punishment. According to aesthetic autonomy, Mrs. Robinson, as a maternal body, is separate from the traditional political and social institutions that affect an individual’s identity.

But what does that mean?

Well, according to Rita Felski, an identity that is autonomous from the public sphere is autonomous from social change.[7]

How could this be an achievement as aesthetic autonomy suggests?

This is the critique that Wilson focuses on; the reality that the aesthetic autonomy, when present in the birth control movement, is rather a punishment than an achievement.

In the instance of Wellman’s story, the aesthetic autonomy of being a mother has led to Mrs. Robinson’s death. She loses her life because her maternal body has too much life.[8]

“The Magnet” published in the BCR in March of 1921.

The next story that Wilson uses to support her thesis, “The Magnet,” also concerns a tenement family.

The Telura family consists of Tony and his parents. At the beginning of the story, while Tony is playing with a magnet, he hears his mother’s screams from childbirth. Tony’s father, realizing that there is no way for him to support his family with another child, convinces himself that they are better off being sent to an asylum for widowed women and orphaned children. He therefore commits suicide.

But the family is left worse off by this decision. As his father lays dead under a sheet and his mother lays motionless in the bed, having become an “empty shell” after her body decided to reproduce again, the burden is left on Tony.[9]

Again, the aesthetic autonomy, the ideal position of mothers to remain outside of the public sphere, is a punishment. Mrs. Telura, having been cursed with unwanted pregnancy, has also been cursed with incessant poverty and widowhood.

Like Mrs. Robinson’s body, Mrs. Telura’s body acts on its own accord. It is autonomous from her mind and control. It has left her plagued with continued hardship. Even from the description that Vorse gives of Mrs. Telura after she has given birth, there is a sense that she appears to be the walking dead.

Both women were unable to gain control of their maternal bodies and their reproduction. They both became states of death; Mrs. Robinson floating down the river and Mrs. Telura laying unmoving in her bed.

Like some of the vampires in True Blood, these women were made into monsters by the autonomy of their physical bodies.

The use of such pieces in publications such as the Birth Control Review, created a medium through which the significant impact the access to contraceptives on impoverished families could be discussed.

Both stories involve a specific reference to technological advancement.

The second ending that Wellman provides in “On the Dump,” Mrs. Robinson’s rescue by a birth control reformer, is an obvious attempt by Wellman to represent how birth control can save a woman; in this case from the death and torture of involuntary motherhood. The technological advancement in this case is the development of new methods of contraceptives. The narrative implies that a woman’s access to these contraceptive methods allow her to re-gain control over her body.

A public health nurse in New York visits a mother in slum district during the early 1900’s.

As for the story of the Telura family, the benefits of technological advancement are embodied in the magnet that Tony is holding.

Vorse’s story describes that as Tony is playing with the magnet, a nail nearby “leaps the gap.”[10] Analogous to the spatial gap between the magnet and the nail is the emotional gap in Tony’s life due to the loss of his father and the current state of his mother. Vorse’s conclusion suggests that such a gap, or burden, can be avoided by technological advancements such as contraceptives.

With the engineering of TrueBlood, vampires are able to come out of hiding and live freely in the world as the beings that they are. TrueBlood allows them to quench their hunger without feeding on humans and gives them the choice to spend their time as they would like.

Working on this post has made me even more anxious to catch up with this season.

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[1] Wilson, Aimee A. “Modernism, Monsters, and Margaret Sanger.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 59 no. 2. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

[2] Wimsatt, William K. and Cleanth Brooks. Literary Criticism: A Short History. New York: Random, 1957.

[3] Wilson, Aimee A. “Modernism, Monsters, and Margaret Sanger.”

[4] Wellman, Rita. “On the Dump.” Dec. 1918: 7+. Birth Control Review 1-3. Nabu, 2011.

[5] Wilson, Aimee A. “Modernism, Monsters, and Margaret Sanger.”

[6] Ibid.

[7] Felski, Rita. The Gender of Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

[8] Wilson, Aimee A. “Modernism, Monsters, and Margaret Sanger.”

[9] Vorse. Mary H. “The Magnet.” Birth Control Review. Mar. 1921: 8+. LifeDynamics. Web.

[10] Ibid.

Margaret Sanger on the Boardwalk — Again!

Top: Top: An image of the letter from Margaret Sanger (though this is clearly not her signature) that accompanied the Birth Control Review.
Bottom: The February 1923 issue of the Birth Control Review.

Margaret Sanger made another appearance on the most recent episode   of HBO’s series, “Boardwalk Empire,” which aired on October 21, when the character of “Margaret Schroeder Thompson” (played by Kelly MacDonald received a copy of the February 1923 issue of the Birth Control Review, accompanied by a letter from Sanger. The “Schroeder” character had recently opened a women’s clinic in Atlantic City which offered instruction in hygiene and reproduction, though because it was sponsored by a Catholic hospital, contraception could not be discussed.

In Season 1, the character had obtained a copy of Sanger’ pamphlet, Family Limitation, for her own use. Kudos to the producers/writers of the series for their portraying an historically accurate version of  the state of the birth control movement  in  the early 1920s