Laura Briggs's work Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico continues a recent trend in connecting colonial histories to that of domestic issues affecting imperial powers, “colonialism was not something that happened ‘over there,’ with little or no effect on the internal dynamics and culture of the imperial power itself …. On the contrary, colonialism has had a profound effect on the culture and policy of the mainland.” Additionally, Briggs work pushes back against the traditional belief that U.S. colonial policy forced the sterilization of a large segment of the island’s female population. This argument was made famous by the documentary film “La Operacion”.
Sexual regulation of women did not rise and fall with the American Empire. Rather Briggs carefully traces the transnational developments between empires and colonies that provided the foundation of future U.S. policies from the nineteenth century British Contagious Disease Acts passed by Britain to the segregated districts of American cities in the early decades of the 20th century. In
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fact, Briggs argues that an international policy of prostitution regulation developed in these years. Subsequently, it became very easy for venereal disease to be associated with such occupations and the populations officials believed practiced. Thus, the conflation with disease not only with the visible “other” but also with swamps and tropical locations fed ideas about the promiscuity and diseased nature of native women. As with Suffragists in the Imperial Age, Briggs locates the influence of women’s groups/associations such as the WTCU and the LNA (Ladies National Association) in Puerto Rico and what that meant not only for natives of the Island but also Americans domestically. This space enabled women to take a visible role in the public sphere domestically and in Puerto Rico but also promoted the interests of Puerto Rican elites as the WCTU allied itself with local ladies clubs of patrician cast. It also sparked debates about citizenship: “As in other empires, U.S. prostitution policy on the island was tremendously important area of debate over the nature of colonial modernity and the struggle over the meaning of Puerto Rican citizenship took place specifically with reference to prostitution.” Critically, Briggs notes that jailing convicted prostitutes began in the colonies such that by 1918, the practice appeared stateside in numerous metropolitan areas. Moreover, the WTCU participated in the incarceration of prostitutes in both the Philippines and Puerto Rico. At the same time, these jails were recast as “hospitals," and several U.S. cities following WWI established similar institutions, notably SF, SD, and New York. “Between 1917 and 1918, then, gender and women’s bodies became a significant idiom in which colonial relations were negotiated. North American politicians, reformers, and missionaries identified the victimization of women, or, conversely, the danger they posed, as an important reason for massive repression and intervention. The increasingly visible poor women of the dislocated rural classes appear in this literature as “loose” women in need of containment.” Puerto Rican elites and the colonial government combined to enact programs of regulation. Such attempts helped to solidify what Briggs argues “would become a constant feature of Puerto Rican politics: from eugenics to population policy to sterilization, the sexuality and reproduction of poor women would become the battleground – symbolic and real – for the meaning of the U.S. presence in Puerto Rico.” What this meant for the domestic U.S. becomes concrete as mainland migrations continued. The colonial government’s utilization of the discourse of gender to intervene in the lives of working class Puerto Ricans provides a “genealogy of the demonization of poor women in the welfare reform debates of 1994-97.” Though Briggs does not make this argument, one can imagine such approaches melding easily with the social science discourse that emerged over the same period stateside. As the academic discourse came to dominate discussions about the regulation of female bodies, Cold War concerns imposed themselves on U.S. policy. “Third World women’s sexual behavior was rendered dangerous and unreasonable, the cause of poverty and hence of communism and needed to be made known, managed, and regulated.” The language of social science emerged as the new battleground. Briggs certainly suggests that the work of social scientists did as much to obscure issues/individuals while perpetuating negative and often inaccurate conclusions. Another aspect of Briggs’ argument regards the development of the birth control pill.
Tropes regarding Puerto Rico and the Third World generally conflated the global south with overpopulation: “Overpopulation provided a sociological explanation for Third World poverty, one that denied a role for international capitalism or colonialism in producing these conditions.” Similar fears surfaced in Puerto Rico, helping to enable large pharmaceutical companies to invest in and develop the birth control pill. As Briggs argues, fears of overpopulation created the ethical space to justify such experimentation: “Reproductive research produced the pill as a specific technological fix to the Third World problem of overpopulation. In doing so, it rendered the account of overpopulation as more plausible by associating it with science and technological solutions at the height of the Cold War belief in
them.” Finally, Briggs’ work refutes previous arguments that suggest the colonial government imposed “forced sterilization.” Instead, Briggs offers evidence (sociological studies/surveys, financial information as in defunding) that some women requested the operation and few reported complaints. However, Briggs cautions that “it is not an argument that working class women chose to be sterilized, it is an argument that there is no evidence that there was a representative campaign to force them.” In connection with sterilization and larger birth control debates, Briggs points to a fundamental problem that mainland feminists faced. Nationalist pro-independence groups promoted natalism while the colonial government encouraged sterilization. As Briggs notes, despite the best intentions feminists could not escape the “terms of U.S. national, colonial, and racial discourse … when mainland feminists … accepted the nationalist version of the subaltern – the women are victimized – while rejecting or ignoring the perspective of feminists like those in Pro Familia as duped, bourgeois pawns of colonialism, they accepted a pro-natalist anti-feminism because it carried the banner of the subaltern.” U.S. anti-colonialists “demanded that the only ‘authentic natives’ were those that could occupy the position of the ‘people’. Puerto Rican feminists failed to fit the bill because they were middle class professionals and intellectuals who differed with charismatic nationalist leaders.”
Each chapter contains numerous sources which complement the aforementioned themes, to create a new study on cultural history in general but women specifically. Her approach is reminiscent of Foucault, with a poststructural outlook on social definitions and similar ideas on sexuality and agency. Power cannot be absolute and is difficult to control, however Victorian men and women were able to grasp command of the sexual narrative. She includes the inequalities of class and gender, incorporating socioeconomic rhetic into the
They thought that rich women kept contraception a secret. Wardell included that women in poverty had to work longer hours to support their numerous children. Wardell’s article involved a survey that stated that the number of the child deaths grew exponentially in those times, because there was little to no contraception available for women living in poverty. Therefore, less fortunate women were more vocal about their need for birth control, when Sanger went to trail, ninety-seven per cent of the public favored Sanger’s views – a great support for Wardell’s article’s argument
At the beginning of the 1900s, there was a “sexual revolution” in New York City. During this time, sexual acts and desires were not hidden, but instead they were openl...
This essay will analyse whether the iconic representation of the roaring twenties with the woman's new right to sexuality, was a liberal step of progression within society or a capitalist venture to exploit a new viable market. Using Margaret Sanger's work in comparison with a survey conducted by New Girls for Old, the former a more mature look at the sexuality and ownership to a woman's body and the second a representation of girls coming of age in the sexually "free" roaring twenties. Margaret Sanger is known as "the mother of planned parenthood", and in the source she collates a collection of letters to speak of the sexual enslavement of motherhood through the fulfilment of the husbands desires. While Blanchard and Manasses of New Girls for Old suggests the historical consensus that the flapper is a figment compared to the reality where promiscuity was largely condemned.
The debate on Puerto Rican Identity is a hot bed of controversy, especially in today’s society where American colonialism dominates most of the island’s governmental and economic policies. The country wrestles with the strong influence of its present day colonizers, while it adamantly tries to retain aspects of the legacy of Spanish colonialism. Despite America’s presence, Puerto Ricans maintain what is arguably their own cultural identity which seems largely based on the influence of Spain mixed with customs that might have developed locally.
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, and especially after the War of 1812, America has taken on yet another revolution. In this time period, the country saw a rapid expansion in territory and economics, as well as the extension of democratic politics; the spread of evangelical revivalism; the rise of the nation’s first labor and reform movements; the growth of cities and industrial ways of life; a rise in abolitionism and reduction in the power of slavery; and radical shifts in the roles and status of women.
Such inequality was not the only thing early Puerto Rican migrants experienced on the island. They also experienced severe economic set backs. Under the domination of the United States, Puerto Rico did not have control over their means of production. Instead, the United States possessed that power and transformed their island into a metropolitan economy. Workers were subjected to the changing demands of US capital expansion, and their migratory movements were shaped accordingly.
Subsequently, the provided documents on the birth control movement did show the push and pull factors of the complicated and multifaceted debate. Americas push towards industrial growth, and technology demanded that the subsequent progressive reforms were needed for a society ushering in a new era. At the same time, fear and reluctance to abandon tradition and religious custom acted as the pulling factor. The birth control debate was a complicated and heavily charged debate teemed in religious, social, political, and racial rhetoric. Historical documents help shed new light on the things taken for granted today, even the most seemingly innocuous things like birth control were fought for, so that men and women today could be in charge of their own destinies.
This lecture on the Pill will focus on the introduction, controversies, and outcome of women’s control of contraception during the mid 20th century. It will also discuss how the Pill became an influential stepping-stone for women activists. I chose to focus this discussion on three questions. First, what did the Pill teach us about the role of women in the middle 20th century? Second, what were the arguments for and against the Pill? Lastly, how safe was the Pill and what effects did women experience from taking it? By centering in on these questions, I hope to provide insight on the struggles women faced before and after this birth control technology became readily available to women in the United States.
This pill “eliminates the external causes of death” by protecting the user from all known forms of sexually transmitted diseases, providing an unlimited libido, and extending youth and by serving as a “sure-fire one-time-does-it-all-birth-control pill” for men and woman (294). In sum, it “was designed to take a set of givens, namely the nature of human nature, and steer these givens in a more beneficial direction” (293). The pill would take everything about a human’s nature and change it in a way to benefit society and create a beneficial society or a utopia
Although the majority of Caucasian Americans practiced racism and classism, it was the stigma of birth control that caused many citizens to dislike Margaret Sanger’s ideas intensely. Women who used birth control tended to be flappers who were the social symbol of sexual liberation which caused conservative Americans to carry animosity towards pregnancy prevention, due to the dishonorable stain it carried. American conservatives considered birth control to be immoral because they speculated that pregnancy prevention would fuel the abhorrent actions of the flappers and cause the social demise of America. Sanger faced fierce opposition for her ‘immoral’ public conduct and her seemingly devilish thinking. However, Sanger’s acclaimed speech “The Morality of Birth Control” advocates that pregnancy prevention will aid the advancement of modern Anglo-Saxon American society, while stating that in order for that to occur we must disregard traditional views.
La autora Puertoriqueña Rosario Ferré sin duda pertence a ese grupo the escritores que critícan la sociedad en la que les tocó vivír en sus creaciónes literárias. Ferré nació en Ponce, Puerto Rico la ciudad mas grande y poderosa del sur de la isla. Su familia es una de las mas importante economicamente y politicamente poderosa. Su padre fue gobernador de la isla durante los años del 1968 al 1972. Como todas las mujeres en esa época se casó y comenzó una familia, destinada a una vida como dama elegante y ociosa. Pero se dió cuenta que su vida pertenecía a la literatura. Ella rompió un taboo y molde cultural, que convertía a las mujeres de clase media alta, en muñecas. Esa generación de mujeres exigiendo cambios en la sociedad se encontraban en el medio de la revolución femenina. Cualquier mujer que quisiera cambiar su vida o trabajar era considerada extraña o loca. Esta opreción se convirtió en su inspiración. Ferré nos comunica a travez de esta novela, la realidad de la mujer puertoriqueña a mediados de siglo. En La Bella Durmiente, Rosario Ferré muestra la mujer como sujeto y objeto. Esta obra es un manisfiesto de los derechos de la mujer y del inconformismo femenino que eventualmente lleva a la mujer a rechazar la realidad. Analizare y demonstrare por medio de este ensayo, los papeles que le toca jugar (a la mujer) en esta sociedad, la corrupcion moral y social que le rodea y su reacción ante todo esto resultando en un trágico final.
Heavily influenced by a patriarchal order in society, women’s power and status depended upon a husband’s standing, giving way to the exclusion of females from political, economic, and even familial matters. Brown cites the numerous laws passed to regulate marriage and women’s sexuality in the late seventeenth century as example to illustrate the seriousness of limiting female power. However, in two instances Brown provides situations in which women, English and African- American had power even if it was small and
"People and Events: The Pill and the Sexual Revolution." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 12 May 2014.
Religious, racial and ethnic biases fuelled the class distinctions in the nineteenth-century. As fears increased over the declining birth rate, concerns about racial integrity intensified and were publicly expressed, promoting a climate where exercising control over a woman’s fertility was not only seen as warranted, but necessary (Falconer 2002). The introduction of the term “race suicide” was used to describe the declining birth rate among the “the better class of inhabitants” in both Canada and the United States. The ideal upper class woman was viewed as selfless, dependant, sexually subservient and chaste, a mother and homemaker (Falconer 2002). These women were supposed to provide “sex on demand for their husbands along with preserves, clean linen and roast meat” (Hall 1988). Throughout the nineteenth century, Britain and its colonies came to view motherhood, childbirth, and child-rearing as a “matter of imperial importance” and central to the role of empire building (Davin 1978; Falconer 2008; Summers 1991).