thanks Courtney - history is so important and even feminists can be neglectful in appreciating it...could have something to do with how it's taught but that's another issue...as a 46 y/o feminist, I'm not sure what wave I fall into demographically,nor do I really care about age within this identity. I prefer to remember that there are lots of right ways to do the right things and it's easy to look back and be critical of how feminists have tried to create change. It takes more critical thinking to look back with appreciation. Remember we'll never know the true context that earlier feminist efforts took place within. We learn and carry the lessons forward, with awareness that future feminists will look critically at our current efforts as well. Margaret Sanger is one of my heroes as is Jane Addams, Elizabeth Cady Stanton...where would birth control, garbage service and the vote be without them?! Thanks again to you Courtney!!

Yeah, this generational divide bullshit is stupid. Most feminists nowadays have had at least intro to women's studies (thanks to second wave feminists) and have had enough fem theory to know the basics.

Also, I'm bummed that spasebo isn't in that "thank you" pic. Represent for Russian speakers!

Just wanted to say that I really love the idea for this as a recurring column--sometimes I have felt that second-wavers don't get enough recognition for all that they achieved from their political heirs (us), so I'm really glad to see this.

You're welcome...I am not a famous old feminist that can be quoted from published books or even articles...I'm like the millions of women who fought with my life for the changes I am glad are not being taken for granted, in this post.

May the gratitude spread far and wide.
The more grateful we are for the changes our foremothers fought for, the easier it is to continue efforts that contain more than enough challenge from the opposition. It's better to have gratitude within the movement.

That history was fascinating. Thanks for linking to it! I was familiar with the Comstock act, but was unaware that the loony also helped bar birth control. Fie on him.
Is anyone else scared, like me, that we seem close to losing our bc access thanks to modern Comstocks? These days, of course, they rely less on morality arguments than on "scientific" ones.

I'm always very wary of praising Margaret Sanger - great on choice, completely fucked up on eugenics. Not my biggest role model. :\

No, but her racism doesn't take away from the fact that she did provide free or low-cost birth control to women who were in dire need of it. She's neither wholly good nor wholly bad. I'm happy to castigate her for the racism, but I think we should also acknowledge the good she did.

Hey, Courtney, don't forget--Emma Goldman was part of the early birth control movement too!

I find it a little troubling that the first attempt to pacify intergenerational tensions by showing gratitude, leads to your thanking Margaret Sanger, who embodied some of the very qualities third wave feminists object to in our colleagues and predecessors.

Thanks, but no thanks to Margaret Sanger. Honestly, given the choice between no access to birth control and the eugenicist, racist, ableist arguments she made, I'd rather go without. I'm serious about that too. Her arguments are still affecting poor women, women with disabilities, and women of color negatively, as we can see in things like welfare reform and the stereotype of the welfare mother, as well as the financially coerced sterilization in the U.S. and around the globe. She didn't want to empower me. She wanted to stop me from burdening the fit with my diseased posterity. Thanks a-fuckin lot Margaret.

Here are just a few of her gems:

"It now remains for the U.S. government to set a sensible example to the world by offering a bonus or yearly pension to all obviously unfit parents who allow themselves to be sterilized by harmless and scientific means. In this way the moron and the diseased would have no posterity to inherit their unhappy condition. The number of the feeble-minded would decrease and a heavy burden would be lifted from the shoulders of the fit."

"such a plan would ... reduce the birthrate among the diseased, the sickly, the poverty stricken and anti-social classes, elements unable to provide for themselves, and the burden of which we are all forced to carry."

Thanks for the reminder Abbey and Commodoreo8! I am totally disgusted by that part of Margaret Sanger's past, but I also don't think that it makes the good work she did disappear. I'm a big proponent of acknowledging wrong (which I should have done in the original post), but championing right--even when it's all within one conflicted human being. And EG, thanks for the reminder about Emma. I know the problem with this column is going to be that once I start thanking folks, there will always be some left out...maybe I'll shy away from naming people?!

. Honestly, given the choice between no access to birth control and the eugenicist, racist, ableist arguments she made, I'd rather go without.

Each to her own, but I wouldn't, and neither did the hordes of women who flocked to her talks and clinics. And given that for he opening of her first clinic she had leaflets printed up in Yiddish, I'm pretty sure that I fall into the group whose fertility she would've liked to control (though of course, and probably significantly in terms of my ability to take the bad with the good, in this country, Jews are almost never lumped in with people who need to be kept down in that particular way anymore). Eugenicist arguments are still being advanced to justify the oppression of all kinds of people, but those arguments were hardly unique to Sanger; they'd been around for a while before her and had a great number of proponents.

I dunno Courtney, I think that naming names is important in this context, as it helps us understand the complexity of feminist history--Sanger is an important case in point. She advocated terrible, disgusting things, but she also provided a great service to many women in need. Having both those qualities in one person is kind of a part of human history, and feminist history isn't necessarily any better than the general run of human history. So I think it's important to go on naming names, and to acknowledge the bad they did/advocated as well as the good.

The thing is, if you're living in a two-room tenement flat with a bathroom in the hallway and you have four children with another on the way and you've already had to take in three boarders to make ends meet, getting a diaphragm isn't just about sexual liberation--it's a fucking lifesaver. And if the woman who's handing you a diaphragm is also a disgusting racist, it doesn't make her gift to you any the less vital or important. Women were in screaming need for this kind of information and service--and it was outlawed by the Comstock laws. Emma Goldman was a wildly popular and charismatic speaker and even she wrote that nothing brought out the crowds like her talks and demonstrations on birth control. Interestingly, despite what was going to flower as her racism later in life, Sanger first developed her ideas about birth control when she worked as a visiting nurse on the Lower East Side, and witnessed the misery down there firsthand.

"Each to her own, but I wouldn't, and neither did the hordes of women who flocked to her talks and clinics."

For that matter, neither do the women and girls today who choose to use birth control rather than give their oppressed ancestors as many descendants as possible.

For that matter, what about when women do choose to give birth? For example, if a woman wants to have kids with her boyfriend instead of her double cousin, then is that eugenic discrimination against people with her grandparents' disabilities?

"And given that for he opening of her first clinic she had leaflets printed up in Yiddish, I'm pretty sure that I fall into the group whose fertility she would've liked to control"

Good point. OTOH, would keeping Jewish immigrants out instead have been anti-Semitic too? I'm reminded of the way some people say it's pro-Latina to offer services in Spanish as well as English and some other people say Planned Parenthood is targeting the poor when it doesn't limit access to the wealthy.

"She advocated terrible, disgusting things, but she also provided a great service to many women in need. Having both those qualities in one person is kind of a part of human history, and feminist history isn't necessarily any better than the general run of human history. So I think it's important to go on naming names, and to acknowledge the bad they did/advocated as well as the good."

Right on!

"The thing is, if you're living in a two-room tenement flat with a bathroom in the hallway and you have four children with another on the way and you've already had to take in three boarders to make ends meet"

...and your husband would leave if you use abstinence and you can't afford to lose his income...

"getting a diaphragm isn't just about sexual liberation--it's a fucking lifesaver."

Likewise, having more babies after the one on the way is born dosn't always feel liberating.

It's interesting how very critical we are of women who accomplished amazing things but had reprehensible views. Yet, we accept as revolutionary and heroic many men in history who also held deeply racist and misogynist views. We're able to criticize that aspect without diminishing their accomplishments much more easily than women.

Let us not forget that the 1965 ruling of Griswold v. Connecticut only applied to *married* women (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut). Bill Baird is consistently overlooked by many modern feminists, when it was his 1972 case (Eisenstadt v. Baird) won the right to legal access to birth control for unmarried women.

The case's wikipedia entry can be found at the link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenstadt_v._Baird

Let us also thank Bill Baird for HIS contributions as well, and not let his sacrifices and contributions be overlooked!!!!