Monday, April 17, 2017
Women and Eugenics
The intimate connection between women and eugenics begins with Victoria Woodhull. Being the first ever women to run for president in 1872, she was a leader of the woman's suffrage movement, the first female stockbroker and the first person to publish the Communist Manifesto in English in her paper Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. The paper was famous for promoting sort skirts and licensed prostitution along with other feminist ideas and included writings regularly from other prominent feminists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was perhaps the most influential of them all. The idea that marriage should be prevented by the government was pushed regularly by Woodhull. The term "eugenics" was defined by Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Darwin. It basically meant controlling human reproduction using the institutions of the state and the scientific establishment to prevent the lower class from breeding and to favor the breeding of the upper class or what they deemed genetically fit.
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I never knew that about Woodhull. It is very interesting to think that in 1872 women wanted to be involved in politics but were not allowed to. I think the concept of women and eugenics is something that we have only heard about recently. Women used to have no control over their bodies. Now that they do, we are experimenting with technology in ways unimaginable. I wrote one of my posts about designer babies and how women can choose whatever genes they want for their children. It is amazing to see how far we have come as women and our impact on something as large as eugenics.
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