This is from a book review of Jonathan Eig's "The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution".
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The story begins in 1950, with a meeting one winter night “high above Park Avenue” between “an old woman who loved sex” and a scientist once compared in the press to Frankenstein. The woman was Margaret Sanger, who had spent 40 years in a crusade to start the organization that became Planned Parenthood. The scientist was Gregory Pincus, author of controversial attempts to breed rabbits in a Petri dish. Sanger explained to Pincus her lifelong dream, an idea so outrageous as to seem magical: a cheap, simple birth-control method that would allow sex to be spontaneous — no risking mistakes in the heat of the moment. A woman should be able to use it without her sexual partner’s knowledge. It had to be safe and reversible, so that if the woman wanted to get pregnant, she could. A pill would be best. Can you do that? Sanger asked Pincus. He thought he could.
It is hard to recall today just how radical this proposition was in 1950. Sanger’s quest was to free women to have sex without the fear or possibility of pregnancy, thus allowing them to pursue education, careers, equal footing with men. The available birth control, in the form of condoms and diaphragms, had a high failure rate. Women were desperate to control the size of their families.
-- Kate Manning at The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-the-birth-of-the-pill-and-the-reinvention-of-sex-by-jonathan-eig/2014/10/17/914acb3c-48c0-11e4-b72e-d60a9229cc10_story.html)
Oh, for Pete's sake! Yas, Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist, as such, she held some rather shitty views. But she was also a fighter for the right of a woman to control her own fertility. In an era when a person could literally go to jail for providing INFORMATION about birth control, much less access to actual contraceptive devices, Sanger did a lot of the former and worked to facilitate the latter.
In short, she was a woman with some shitty views who nonetheless did some very praiseworthy things for women. And guess what? It is actually possible to admire her praiseworthy accomplishments while at the same time deploring her shitty views. Funny how that works, huh?
Thos meme is incredibly disingenuous and childish. Nice try. Thanks for playing.
I'm sure you're balanced enough to tell of the rental practises of the Trump Management Corporation and how they were charged - twice - for rental discrimination against black people.
Oh, and the Central Park Five. Remember that? I wait eagerly for your explanation.
I realise that natural human bias creates a tendency for judging people unfairly and cherry-picking our lop-sided and misleading examples... but, at least in some cases, you must surely be fully aware of what you are doing? If so, what's the aim? Maybe the above memes might pass through the hands of a few overly-credulous Trump voters without being scrutinised too closely, but they were never going to survive contact with any group with people of mixed views.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2016-08-06 12:22 am (UTC)This is from a book review of Jonathan Eig's "The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution".
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
The story begins in 1950, with a meeting one winter night “high above Park Avenue” between “an old woman who loved sex” and a scientist once compared in the press to Frankenstein. The woman was Margaret Sanger, who had spent 40 years in a crusade to start the organization that became Planned Parenthood. The scientist was Gregory Pincus, author of controversial attempts to breed rabbits in a Petri dish. Sanger explained to Pincus her lifelong dream, an idea so outrageous as to seem magical: a cheap, simple birth-control method that would allow sex to be spontaneous — no risking mistakes in the heat of the moment. A woman should be able to use it without her sexual partner’s knowledge. It had to be safe and reversible, so that if the woman wanted to get pregnant, she could. A pill would be best. Can you do that? Sanger asked Pincus. He thought he could.
It is hard to recall today just how radical this proposition was in 1950. Sanger’s quest was to free women to have sex without the fear or possibility of pregnancy, thus allowing them to pursue education, careers, equal footing with men. The available birth control, in the form of condoms and diaphragms, had a high failure rate. Women were desperate to control the size of their families.
-- Kate Manning at The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-the-birth-of-the-pill-and-the-reinvention-of-sex-by-jonathan-eig/2014/10/17/914acb3c-48c0-11e4-b72e-d60a9229cc10_story.html)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Disapprove of birth control, do you?
no subject
Date: 2016-08-06 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-06 12:45 am (UTC)Oh, for Pete's sake! Yas, Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist, as such, she held some rather shitty views. But she was also a fighter for the right of a woman to control her own fertility. In an era when a person could literally go to jail for providing INFORMATION about birth control, much less access to actual contraceptive devices, Sanger did a lot of the former and worked to facilitate the latter.
In short, she was a woman with some shitty views who nonetheless did some very praiseworthy things for women. And guess what? It is actually possible to admire her praiseworthy accomplishments while at the same time deploring her shitty views. Funny how that works, huh?
Thos meme is incredibly disingenuous and childish. Nice try. Thanks for playing.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-06 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-08 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-06 04:26 am (UTC)Oh, and the Central Park Five. Remember that? I wait eagerly for your explanation.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-07 08:56 pm (UTC)I wouldn't hold my breath for it.....
no subject
Date: 2016-08-10 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-06 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-08 04:44 pm (UTC)