Working Class Dirt, Smell, and Sweat: Sanger and the Women’s Suffrage Party

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birth control, feminism, women

The first issue of Sanger’s The Women Rebel.

As one of the loudest voices in the early Birth Control Movement and the founder of what is now Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger was arguably one of the 20th century’s most influential champions of women’s rights. Thus, it may come as a surprise to people that she had several issues with the woman’s suffrage movement. Looking at some of Sanger’s earlier publications, one can see why Sanger and other early birth control advocates did not always see eye to eye with the Women’s Suffrage Party.

In her 1911 article “Dirt, Smell and Sweat,” Sanger recounts a meeting of the New York City Woman Suffrage Party. At the time, the organization was seeking a state-wide referendum on women’s suffrage. Anna Ross Weeks, the chairperson of the meeting, spoke of the men who oppose women’s voting because they “would be obliged to bump against the dirty, smelly and sweaty men at the polls.” Mrs. Weeks replied to this objection with the suggestion of removing “the dirty, smelling, sweaty men from the polls.” In response, Sanger writes,

But what about the women who are liable to be just as dirty, smelly and sweaty as their working brothers? Are they, too, to be removed? Dirt is dirt, smell is smell, and sweat is sweat, no matter on whom these unfortunate afflictions happen to be. And if the chairman and her class object to the smell of the workingman, so will they object to the smell of the working woman.

As this quote illustrates, Sanger was distrustful of the Women’s Suffrage Party because they ignored the concerns of working class women far too often. This middle class bias in the suffrage movement existed for years; many suffragists even employed tactics to demonize the poor. For example, in 1894, the suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt spoke about the danger she believed immigrants posed to American wealth:

There is but one way to avert the danger. Cut off the vote of the slums and give it to women.

The women’s suffrage campaign in New Jersey, taken from the Library of Congress.

Poor, black, and immigrant women were consequently alienated from the suffrage movement.

Also, unlike many of the wealthy women in the suffrage movement, working class women had more immediate concerns, such as fair wages and access to birth control. In fact, with the extent to which the working class was plagued by infant and maternal mortality rates, access to birth control became a question of life or death. Even when women and children survived childbirth, the problems did not subside. Many working class families had no choice but to send their children to work, exposing them to hazardous conditions and long hours.

For Sanger, all of these issues were intertwined. She called attention to the class issues inherent in the birth control movement when she wrote,

Both physically and mentally the children of the rich are developed to the highest degree. Schools, colleges, universities are built for them. The children of the working class are developed only that profits may be wrung from them as early in life or as soon as the masters dare to.

Thus, birth control provided working class women with agency over their own bodies within a sexual context, as well as within a system that exploited their labor and the labor of their children. For working class women, gaining that level of agency took precedence over the political freedom that came with voting. Margaret Sanger understood that the stakes were high for these women and she was committed to fighting for them. Ultimately, the Women’s Suffrage Party’s lack of an intersectional approach prevented them from understanding the dirt, smell, and sweat of working class women.

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Further Reading:

• Margaret Sanger, “Amusement,” Apr 1914.
• Margaret Sanger, “Dirt, Smell and Sweat,” 24 Dec 1911.
• Margaret Sanger, “Into the Valley of Death–For What?,” Apr 1914.
• William H. Chafe, William Henry Chafe, The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century, 1992.

S(anger) Goes Postal in “The Woman Rebel”

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birth control, margaret sanger, planned parenthood, Woman Rebel

Margaret Sanger, ca. 1916.

“To me it was outrageous that information regarding motherhood, which was so generally called sacred, should be classed with pornography,” Sanger recalled in her 1938 autobiography. The anger displayed in this quotation is the focus of an article by Emily Winderman, a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia, recently published in the Rhetoric & Public Affairs Journal. The article analyzes Sanger’s use of anger as a public emotion in The Woman Rebel.

As Winderman notes, several Sanger scholars have dismissed The Woman Rebel, which turned 100 this year, because of its angry tone. Even scholars who seem more sympathetic to the emotional tone of The Woman Rebel have encouraged those interested in the publication to look past the anger to see its value.

Winderman begins her article by analyzing the use of anger as a “public” emotion. She notes that it has historically been included in the repertoire of public emotions and that it can act as a moralizing emotion, but she also notes that women who dared to demonstrate anger were often diagnosed as “hysterical” and as lacking in sound judgment. Anger has the ability to unite and motivate people who feel strongly about similar injustices, but for those who do not experience an injustice, anger about it seems alienating and inappropriate.

A snippet from the March 1914 issue.

Next, Winderman turns to the role of The Woman Rebel in challenging the accepted virtue of “Republican Motherhood” and the cult of domesticity: the idea that upper- and middle-class Anglo-Saxon women would rear sons who were both moral and politically-minded. This virtue was unavailable to lower-class and non-white women. Comstock’s morality laws – the same laws under which Sanger was prosecuted for attempting to mail The Woman Rebel – were designed, he said, “to protect the morals of the youth and inexperienced.” These morals were the same morals that would be instilled by proper republican mothers.

Winderman then turns to The Woman Rebel itself, studying it through the lens she has laid out previously. Sanger recast the relationship between mothers and the body politic as a parasitic relationship, in which political institutions supported themselves on the backs of unwilling poor mothers. Then, The Woman Rebel calls for women to

recreate the revolutionary spirit of your class, the ardor of which you yourselves have enchained in thousands of cases.

By inverting this traditional relationship, Winderman argues, Sanger creates a space where poor women can feel legitimate moral outrage at their treatment.

Rhetorical devices such as metaphors like the one just described and anaphora (“the repetition of the same word or phrase in several successive clauses”) helped to build anger and a sense of solidarity among the working women who were the target audience of The Woman Rebel. Another technique to instill anger and solidarity was the clear demarcation of enemies, including the state, the church, and wealthy suffragettes, who were privileged with knowledge of contraception. Collective identity was also forged through a set of rallying precepts such as:

REBEL WOMEN WANTED: WHO deny the right of the State to deprive women of such knowledge as would enable them to take upon themselves voluntary motherhood…

Finally, the letters from the public which were published in The Woman Rebel substantiated this common sense of anger and moral outrage.

Speaking on the eve of her trial, Sanger told her audience:

They tell me that The Woman Rebel was badly written; that it was crude; that it was emotional, and hysterical; that it mixed issues; that it was defiant, and too radical. Well, to all of these indictments I plead guilty.

In her conclusion, Winderman notes the role that anger played throughout Sanger’s career and in the history of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which has used the phrase “Be Brave and Angry” throughout its history.

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For a complete set of the Woman Rebel, see “Margaret Sanger and the Woman Rebel,” a digital edition created in 1997; for searchable versions of Sanger’s Woman Rebel articles, see The Speeches and Articles of Margaret Sanger. For Sanger’s complete speech, see “Hotel Brevoot Speech,” Jan. 17, 1916.

Emily Winderman, “S(anger) Goes Postal in The Woman Rebel: Angry Rhetoric as a Collectivizing Moral Emotion,”Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2014, pp. 381-420. (Link–must have Project Muse access)

What Did Sanger See in Nietzsche?

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birth control, eugenics, morality, Nietzsche

Sanger was an avid reader of Nietzsche [1844-1900], a German philosopher known for his work on religion, morality and mass culture. He was perhaps best known for his insistence that “God is dead”, suggesting that modern secular society had ‘killed’ the Christian God.

“No Gods No Masters” was Sanger’s interpretation of a French saying Nietzsche quoted, “Ni dieu ni maître!” (‘Neither God nor master’)

Sanger found this fascinating because Nietzsche proposed that the Christian God was the basis for moral thinking for centuries. This meant that the figurative death of God placed traditional morality in question. Sanger was not a supporter of traditional morality in any sense; it seemed to only hinder her goals. She believed that “Nietzsche philosophy not only calls in question the moral law itself it challenges & attacks the foundation of all moral law.” (Frederick Nietzsche).

Nietzsche called for the defeat of traditional religious morals, seeing no need for people to be restrained by them in a post-Christian world. He rejected the idea of a universal moral law, offering instead the individual ability to recreate a system of values. Nietzsche’s philosophy, for Sanger, represented the break from the traditional morality that imposed itself against her work. Birth control was often considered immoral in its potential for “abuse” by unmarried couples. Sanger’s concerns fell elsewhere; she saw herself acting morally by educating adults in the best methods of protecting themselves and offering control over family size. She was then able to allow people to create the best lives for themselves and their families that they could—she placed value on individual choice.

Margaret Sanger in 1914.

Perhaps important for Sanger was Nietzsche’s claim that those who are in power determine the morality of the masses. Nietzsche did not promote the elimination of a structured morality, rather, he suggested that it was good for the masses. He did, however, encourage anyone able to create their own ethics by following their own “inner law”. Sanger likely supported his individualistic morality, and she certainly recognized the imposition of morality on the people. Particularly notable was the burden of upper-class values on the working class. Large families, for example, were very difficult to maintain for working-class parents, who may not have had the money to support them. These imposed values were problematic because they did not represent the realities of people’s lives.

Supporters of traditional morality, very often opponents of birth control, also sought to preserve values like “purity”. Sanger saw instead that this opposition was propagating the poverty that lead to prostitution, criminal behavior, and suffering. She strived to abandon these imposed values of conventional morality.

Let us turn a deaf ear to the trumpet-tongued liars clamoring for Protection, Patriotism, Prisons, Police, Workhouses and Large Families. (No Gods)

Frederich Nietzsche, 1869

This is where Nietzsche’s other famous idea, the “Übermensch” (overman, superman, or super-human) comes into play. The overman is a beyond-human figure who creates new values, rising above notions of good and evil and the morality of the masses. The overman is an ideal human, someone who has developed his or her own ability to determine moral issues. While the overman served as the “goal” for humanity within Nietzsche, it seems to be an ideal he presented for the sake of encouraging new cultural values. Christian morality focused on Heaven—the world beyond this world—whereas Nietzsche sought to emphasize love for the current world and mortal life.

Where did Sanger stand on Nietzsche’s philosophy? She certainly appreciated a re-examination of traditional morality, and recognized that it would require a shift in values. She interpreted from her readings of Nietzsche that the individual is the creator of his or her own values. If we create our own values, then the standards we hold ourselves to in relation to those values (morality) are also created by us. In her notes on Nietzsche, she suggested that “the individual is the original source & constituent of all value. No other standard of obligations for you or for me than that set by our personal ends & ideals” (Frederick Nietzsche).

The “overman” that Sanger appreciated is one of Nietzsche’s more controversial ideas due to its appropriation at times by eugenics supporters. Speaking of Nietzsche, she stated “we have a right to extract from this or any philosophy that which we can use for our own purpose” (Frederick Nietzsche).  She picked out whatever peices of Nietzsche she found suitable to support her cause. Sanger’s interpretation of the overman emphasized the “human ideal” not as a biological goal, but for its potential to recreate cultural values.

To our society apologists, and to their plausible excuses for modern oppression, the only adequate answer is–we have done with your civilization and your gods. We will organize society in such a way as to make it certain for all to live in comfort and leisure without bartering their affections or their convictions. (No Gods)

Sanger argued for elimination of those values she so despises—including large families—which stood in opposition to her stance on birth control. What she seemed to extract from Nietzsche’s philosophy was the potential for humanity it held—freedom from traditional morality and the creation of a new morality, perhaps more along the lines of what she observed within the world.

Sanger’s Conversations with a Hen: A Highly Modern Drama

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birth control, drama, feminism, fiction, hen, Lexington Herald, margaret sanger, play, sanger

Well, really the title and description go more like this: An Egg Rebuked Her: A Highly Modern Drama on a Gripping Subject From the Intense Pen of Helen Bullitt Lowry.  And, a message from all of us here at the Project, we sincerely thank Helen Bullitt Lowry for the smiles you have given us from reading this play.

“Pullet 707?”

It is not often that we come upon a piece of fiction related to Sanger at all and all the more rare when it is this weird.   We spend our time sifting through hundreds of Sanger’s speeches and articles.  But on March 18, 1917, the Lexington Herald published a short, 3 scene play by Lowry depicting none other than Margaret Sanger on her quest to inform women that their lives are meant for more than simply propagation.  In this case, however, the women Sanger is trying to reach are represented by a single hen, Pullet 707.  Sanger meets Pullet 707, specifically a White Leghorn pullet, on the poultry division of Experiment Station Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, where she has stopped to speak.  Sanger is distressed, for Pullet 707 refuses to break her egg-laying streak, one egg per day for 68 days, for the birth control Cause.  Although she seems to understand Sanger’s Cause, Pullet 707 is still, by the end of the play, unwilling to upset her natural flow and pride of her keepers’ affection for the sake of the Cause.

Sanger appears here as a straight woman, distressed by the hen’s refusal to practice birth control:

But the Cause! The Cause! Think of the women of the slums! Consider the life of the woman with six children. Don’t you realize that she is nothing but a slave? And hens like you are fastening the shackles all the tighter with your criminal laying. Sixty-eight eggs without stopping for a single day! And to think I have suffered a hunger strike all in vain! Won’t you have one of my pamphlets and read what is your duty to down-trodden women?

While the play itself is lighthearted, I am positive that Sanger would not have appreciated its message.  In essence, Lowry seems to be generalizing women as hens, whose only purpose is to lay eggs and be eaten.  Lowry asserts that the Cause as being lost, believing instead that the every-day woman would think it unnatural to control when they have children and how many they have.  She also views the every-day man, portrayed by the two Professors who supervise the hens’ egg laying, as totally in charge of the “hens” they care for.  Sanger is truly brokenhearted at the end of the last scene when Pullet 707 continues her egg-laying streak rather than commit to Sanger’s Cause.

Mrs. S.-“With your record which was brought all the way to Lexington to protest, you could be a great influence on all pullets

Pullet 707.- “Oh. Don’t you think that woman’s place is in the home? I do.

Mrs. S.- “Let me speak to you as a sister. Let us, as sisters, go forth and scatter our propaganda abroad, daring prison and hunger strikes. Let us die for a pamphlet.

Although this play denounced Sanger and her teachings, I find it satisfying to know that Lowry’s “predictions” have been proved false almost 100 years later. Today, it is the “every-day” women that Lowry characterized as hens who are fighting for their right for birth control and refusing to be thought of as egg-laying machines.  While the article sought to ridicule the movement, I think we can all agree that women are not chickens and want to control their reproduction.

To see a PDF of the entire article, click here

The International Woman

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Baird, birth control, Eisenstadt, Griswold, inspire change, international women's day, margaret sanger, olympics, sarah burke, Sochi, supreme court, women

Although we at the Margaret Sanger Papers Project like to believe that women are important every day of the year, it is on March 8^th that it is socially acceptable to tell this to the world with multiple exclamation points!!!  And so, we wish to say to you, in underlined, bold, capital letters, HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY!!!

Each International Women’s Day is different.  I like to believe that it is because each of us has grown in our own special way since last March 8^th, but more literally it is because every International Women’s Day has its own theme declared by the United Nations.  While each one is empowering, the themes give women and men alike a time to reflect on ways in which to make the world around them a better place.  2012 urged Empowerment to Rural Women and ending poverty and hunger, while 2013 called for an end to violence against women.  2014’s theme, however, is especially close to our hearts in that the United Nations urges us this year to Inspire Change.

At the 2009 Winter X Games, Burke of Whistler, British Columbia, poses with her gold medal after winning the women’s skiing superpipe at Buttermilk Mountain in Aspen, Colo.

While a slightly general topic, inspiring change means something different to everyone with a dream.  Remembering the Sochi Winter Olympics, Sarah Burke comes to mind as a woman who devoted her whole life to change.  She successfully lobbied the International Olympic Committee into adding the ski halfpipe event for men and women to the 2014 winter games schedule.  Though she passed away due to an accidental fall during a practice, Burke, a four-time Winter X Games gold medalist, was considered a shoe-in for a medal at Sochi.  Although gone from our physical lives, Burke will always be remembered in her dedication to advocating her passion.

There is no question that Margaret Sanger also had that passionate devotion for her cause of inspiring change.  Sanger risked enormous fines, substantial time in jail, and the separation from her family for extensive periods of time for the chance to give women the information she knew they needed and deserved.  The amount ground Sanger covered is tremendous enough – not only did she travel throughout the United States and Canada, but she also traversed Europe and Asia to reach the most remote pockets of people she could find.  And those people responded to her with open arms and an outpouring of gratitude.

Sanger prepares to speak in front of the Senate, 1934

But Sanger would be nothing if only a world traveler.  Not only did she speak around the world, but she challenged the American government’s laws that blocked her path in the first place.  Sanger testified often before Senate committees about changing the Comstock Law, section 211 of the U.S. Penal Code, which made it so difficult for women to obtain even the smallest amount of information about contraceptives.  After a so many failed efforts to win legislative change, Sanger and her team turned to the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit for a judicial victory.  In U.S. v. One Package Containing 120, more or less, Rubber Pessaries to Prevent Conception (U.S. v. One Package), Sanger and Hannah Stone, one of her clinic physicians, orchestrated a package delivery of a box of pessaries, another word for diaphragms, to be sent from Japan to Hannah Stone.  Sanger and Stone informed the U.S. government about the delivery, and because at this time not even physicians were allowed to receive contraception by mail a lawsuit was created.  Through years of battles, the suit traveled all the way to the Supreme Court, where Sanger and Stone won the right for physicians to receive contraception information and devices through the mail.  Although the Supreme Court decision was not made until 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut to grant the right to privacy to married couples and their contraceptive uses, Sanger was able to see her dream realized before her death a year later.

Sanger’s influence stayed with women long after her death.  In Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) the Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that laws limiting contraceptive use to married couples was discriminatory, and that all people should have equal access to birth control.  From Justice Brennan’s majority ruling: “If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”

This International Women’s Day challenges you to do something that inspires change.  Whether it is a small change, like drinking water rather than soda to improve health, or a bigger change, like lobbying for a new Olympic sport or a change in the federal law, each change in the direction of improvement is a change worth working toward.

For more information see:

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/default.asp#.UxDFz-NdXfU

http://sarahburkefoundation.com/

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/