The discipline and disciplining of Margaret Sanger: US birth control rhetoric in the early twentieth century

Margaret Sanger\u27s rhetoric in the US birth control movement demonstrates the social forces that act upon rhetors and women\u27s bodies, conforming both to established gender norms even as they attempt to violate those standards. This project studies Sanger\u27s birth control rhetoric to understand how her arguments for women\u27s right to contraception conformed women\u27s bodies to traditional feminine notions despite her early efforts to contradict such dictates of domesticity. Research on nineteenth-century feminist rhetors demonstrates a pattern of women challenging feminine ideals by speaking publicly but replicating the familiar themes that women must care for others. To explain such a pattern, this study combines the theories of interpretation and genealogy to analyze texts\u27 meanings with a respect for the ways that social forces conform speakers to already established norms and themes. This project follows genealogical demands for a complex history by discussing the discourses that challenge and support early twentieth century birth control rhetoric . Early themes in Sanger\u27s rhetoric focus on issues of class and women\u27s personal liberation. Analysis shows that Sanger begins by addressing the class oppression working class experience before engaging in class maternalism in which she condescends to lower class women setting upper class women as examples of bodily discipline. Sanger\u27s early themes of birth control as women\u27s liberation give way to an emphasis upon women using birth control to better serve their families, thereby fulfilling their maternal duties. Later themes in Sanger\u27s rhetoric emphasize birth control\u27s utility to the state for managing the rate and quality of women\u27s reproduction. The movement from earlier to later themes in Sanger\u27s rhetoric shifts from speaking about women as subject with control of their bodies to objects whose bodies must be controlled. Employing capitalistic themes, Sanger argues that women\u27s rate of reproduction must be controlled to safeguard national security. Using notions of social evolution, Sanger engages in eugenic discourse to demand the control of women\u27s bodies who produce unfit offspring. The sweep of Sanger\u27s rhetoric proves the utility of genealogical interpretation to understand the dynamics of power and discourse that conform feminist speakers to accepted gender definitions