Join us for the second seminar of our Spring Series, featuring Dr Mytheli Sreenivas, with the paper titled: ‘Heterosexuality and the “Happy Family”: Desire, Development, and Population Control in India, 1930s-1970s’ Wednesday 26th January 2022 at 4pm GMT Register for…
Tag: birth control
Margaret Sanger – Fighting for Reproductive Rights
Margaret Sanger treated many women who had illegal and dangerous abortion procedures. She fought for birth control information and contraception to be made available, and found it essential to women’s health for this information to be legal … It was very dangerous for Sanger to provide her services and information and she often risked jail time in order to help women.
In 1914, Sanger started The Woman Rebel, a feminist publication. She wanted to provide women with information about contraception. Sanger openly challenged the state and federal Comstock Act, which criminalized contraceptives (“American Experience: Margaret Sanger”). In 1916, Sanger was arrested for opening the first birth control clinic in the country. She worked toward better forms of contraception other than the diaphragm, which was expensive. Sanger helped with the creation of Enovid, the first oral contraceptive …
Young Adult Literature – Censoring Teenage Sexual Autonomy
In the novels by Blume, Klein, et al, ‘two nice kids, in love, have sexual intercourse and no one dies.’ In both Blume’s ‘Forever’ and Klein’s ‘It’s Ok if you Don’t Love Me’, the male love interests are the ones left alone, the girls having moved on and embodied the traditionally ‘masculine’ relationship role. The young women in these books enjoy sex, and their experiences are discussed in detail. Crucially, they enjoy sex as just one component of a rounded lifestyle, as with Blume’s Sybil: ‘Sybil Davison has a genius IQ and has been laid by at least six different guys.’
Forgotten Heroes
Why do some women receive publicity and public recognition of their achievements and others remain completely ignored? This is the case of Ellen Wilkinson MP, discussed in an earlier blog, and also her friends the birth control pioneers. There was an…