American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism
Works Cited Missing
Nancy Ordover argues that current attempts to regulate marginalized social groups are eugenicist movements couched in new language. While "today, the preoccupation with immigrant fertility is couched in concerns over expenditures rather than in classic eugenicist worries over the depletion of the national gene pool" (54), that supposed strain on the national economy presented by immigration is still located in immigrant's reproduction, although it is less frequently explicitly the "whiteness" of the nation that is threatened. This fear of reproduction by people cast as a drain on the nation is mirrored in attempts to control the bodies and reproduction of poor women, whose poverty is portrayed as a result of their lack of control over their own reproduction, an argument which at once frees social systems from responsibility for poverty and justifies the state in assuming control over women's bodies. These pressures fall particularly hard on women of color, whose bodies are already constructed as deviant, and subject to the control of the state. These political maneuvers and positions retain
the historical features of eugenic theory while presenting a new veneer, hesitant to argue outright for the inferiority of particular racialized or classed bodies.
This represents a change in avenue of attack, not a broad ideological shift from historic eugenic arguments. Similarly, the search for the "gay gene," while a relatively new scientific concept, is highly reminiscent of previous understandings of queer sexuality, which located deviance in physical and/or hormonal "abnormalities." The idea that queer people's queerness is loc...
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...deviance of poor women's bodies, then the American legal, political and social systems are not at fault, and do not need to be remedied. If queer people have queer bodies, then queer people are readily identifiable, and the boundaries between queer and normal people are therefore concrete, which relieves the cultural anxiety over a normal person slipping into deviancy. Eugenic ideology depends on an impulse to solidify boundaries by casting out the deviant group on whom society's failings can be blamed, as well as faith in technological fixes to social problems. These impulses, understood in their historical context, loom even larger, and the necessary political response can be obscured by rhetoric of free choice and national improvement. Ordover serves to pull the rhetoric away, placing recent eugenic movements in their proper historical and political context.
The eugenics movement started in the early 1900s and was adopted by doctors and the general public during the 1920s. The movement aimed to create a better society through the monitoring of genetic traits through selective heredity. Over time, eugenics took on two different views. Supporters of positive eugenics believed in promoting childbearing by a class who was “genetically superior.” On the contrary, proponents of negative eugenics tried to monitor society’s flaws through the sterilization of the “inferior.”
Margaret Sanger’s acclaimed speech is highly geared towards white aristocratic modernists of the 1920s, due to its intolerant view towards colored people and its emphasis of Social Darwinism. By artistically combining bigotry and science to convey to the audience that birth control is essentially looking out for the United States, she achieved her conception control stance. Had her speech been delivered in contemporary America, her shameful use of Eugenics would have made her the mockery of American society, as we are slowly progressing towards acceptance of knowledgeable topics through the use of equality and sensibility.
Margaret Sanger, controversial birth control activist and negative eugenic supporter, expressed her view in her book “Woman and the New Race”, which was all too common in a war-ravished world where rationing and bombing were an everyday occurrence and an astonishing 60,000 American's were forcibly sterilized, some as young as 10 years old, after their state deemed them mentally, or socially, handicapped.
Though cats are less likely to get cancer than dogs, there are many different types of cancers that a cat can contract. Some of the most comon are Lymphoma, Skin Cancer, Gingiva Oral squamous Carinomas or mouth cancer, and Osterocacroma. Lymphoma is a type of cancer that starts in the Lymphocyte Cells, a type of whote blood cell. Lymphocyte Cells play an important part in the immuine system. Lymphoma is found to be responsible for around 90% of blood cancers and about 33% of all tumors in cats. Its also the most common cause of hypercalcemia in cats. (Science Weekly, 2012) Skin cancer in cats often appears like a white plaque or a raised bump on the skin. The bump will often ulcerate with occasional bleeding. These type of carcinomas are usually malignant, early detection and treatment is best. These cancerous cells can easly spread just like any other cancer to other organs. Skin cancers are more likely in cats that live in high altitudes or cats with light, esspecially white, coats. (Crain, D, 2005) Gingiva Oral squamous Carinomas, or mouth cancer, is particularly deadly, moving quickly though the body, with usual fatal results. These tumors grow very rapidly and usually invade to nearby bone and tissue. These carcinomas are usually seen in oldercats. (PetMD, 1999- 2014) Osteosacroma is the most common milignant bone tumor in veterinary practice. This cancer is especially painful, the most comon places for these tumors are the humerus, femur, and ti...
Black, Edwin. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. Dialog Press, 2012. Print.
The eugenics movement originally started in the late 1870s because of the idea that inferior classes, criminals, poverty, feeble-minds, and disease were hereditary and reproducing would create an unfit population in the United States. Forced sterilizations and the introduction of birth control began with the demand to wipe out populations that were constructed as inferior. The early history of the birth control pill was a form of eugenics, and was not only oppressive towards women of color but to women across the United Sates.
And many stressed the need to protect the sanctity of motherhood and the chastity of white women; abortion, after all, supported the separation of sexual intercourse from reproduction. For many physicians and others, all of these concerns were generally more trenchant in the nineteenth century than the issue of fetal life. Solinger - 5 p.m. To further compound this, Solinger discusses the issue of eugenic laws and the sterilization of individuals who were deemed to be unsuitable for reproduction. These standards applied to women who were either poor, minorities, or women who had a disability (Solinger 2015). Solinger describes the use of “coercion” to get women who fall under these categories to be sterilized (Solinger, 2015).
Teenagers run great risk when they decide to drink unsupervised and undergo binge drinking. The effects can be dangerous and even fatal, but not only for the drinker but for their peers as well. Each year, approximately 5,000 young people under 21 die as a result of underage drinking, including 1900 deaths from vehicle crashes, 1600 from homicides, 300 from suicide, and hundreds more from other miscellaneous injuries such as burns, falls, etc. (“Underage Drinking”, 11) These death rates are quite alarming and should be paid more attention to, yet teenagers still want to run the r...
One of the greatest accomplishments of my life is earning college degree as a first generation graduate. With complex family background, my parents always focused on education that they interpret it as “an infinite opportunity if you work hard with good ethics, do no harm, and stay compassionate towards the dream.” Earning Bachelor of Science in Nursing from University of Connecticut (UConn) and passing NCLEX was the beginning of my proud achievements and a journey of lifelong compassionate care.
Smith, Karen. “Alcohol Use by youth and Adolescents: A Pediatric Concern.” Pediatric American Academy of Pediatrics. 12 April, 2010. Web. 26 March, 2014. .
I have always had a passion for nursing. As a child, I watched my mother getting up early, putting her scrubs on and headed out the door for a 12 hour shift. She was always content, and at ease to go for a long shift and even overtime at times. I love the fact that after work, she would always come home, satisfied with the day no matter how hard it was for her. She would sit and tell my brothers and sisters how she enjoyed the conversations that she had with her patients and what impact she had on their lives that day. Listening to these stories as a child, I knew that I wanted to become a nurse and listening to the same stories and helping people, making their day feel better. I wanted to follow my mom’s footsteps. At the end of a long shift, it is a rewarding profession, knowing that I am saving people’s lives, making them comfortable when they are near of dying, advocate and teaching them. As nurses, we care for patients through illness, injury, aging, health. We also promote health, prevent diseases and teaching the community; that’s what I love about nursing. I believe that this is the right profession for me because I have all the qualities that a nurse should possess when
Apple has made reasonable management of its human and material resources since its innovational approach demands effective strategic allocation of its resources to the development and utilization of its productive resources to support its innovative investment strategies. Effective strategic control brings power to Apple’s decision-makers to allocate its resources to confront the technological, market, and competitive uncertainties which are inherent in the innovation
When one contemplates the concept of eugenics, few think of modern contraception and abortion when in reality they are one in the same. The American Eugenics Society, founded in 1923, proudly proclaimed that men with incurable “conditions” should be sterilized. However these conditions were often none that could be helped, such as, one’s intelligence, race, and social class (Schweikart and Allen 529-532). The purpose of the society was to create the perfect class of men; elite in all ways. Likewise, Margaret Sanger’s feminist, contraceptive movement was not originally founded with this purpose. It was marketed as a way to control the population and be merciful to those yet to be born, again determined also by race and intelligence. The similarities in purpose actually brought the two organizations together to form a “liberating movement” to “aid women” known today as Planned Parenthood (Schweikart and Allen 529-532). The name may sound harmless, but the movement hid a darker purpose, to wean out the lower and less educated in order to create a perfect class.
Somerville, Siobhan. "Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body." Gender, Sex, and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University, 2009. 284-99. Print.