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MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School

Certificate for Approving the Dissertation

We hereby approve the Dissertation

Jennifer Cellio

Candidate for the Degree:

Doctor of Philosophy

______Director Dr. Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson

______Reader Dr. Katharine Ronald

______Reader Dr. Morris Young

______Graduate School Representative Dr. Mary McDonald

ABSTRACT

‘MORE CHILDREN FROM THE FIT, LESS FROM THE UNFIT’: DISCOURSES OF HEREDITARY ‘FITNESS’ AND REPRODUCTIVE RHETORICS, POST DARWIN TO THE 21ST CENTURY

by Jennifer Cellio

This project examines discourses of hereditary “fitness” and their variations at three moments when they seep into public and political circulation: the rhetorics of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century eugenics, of the twentieth-century birth control movement, and of late-twentieth-century assisted reproductive technologies. More specifically, it studies the construction of the label “the Unfit”—a phrase present throughout scientific and eugenic literature of the early-twentieth century. Informed by the concept of “survival of the fittest” as popularized by Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, hereditary “fitness” has been redeployed in scientific and public discussions of reproduction for sexist, racist, ableist, classist, and heteronormative ends. While the ability to produce offspring has always been intertwined with the notion of “survival of the fittest,” the misuse of these discourses, under the guise of science, results in discriminatory practices largely directed at women. By tracing its circulation at specific historical points, I reveal the social constructedness of hereditary “fitness” and complicate current beliefs about what it means to be “fit” for reproduction and/or parenthood. To establish the construction of hereditary “fitness” as a instrument of the eugenics movement, I examine several rhetorical formations within the discourses of science and eugenics—including definition, special topoi, kairos and audience, and figures of thought—to make visible the specific work each performs. In each chapter, I emphasize the ways these rhetorical formations participate in the production of women as fit objects and subjects for reproduction. Theoretical discussions of the power of language to shape, construct, and produce often stop short of showing the processes by and through which language works on a subject or object. Similarly, definitions of rhetorical elements can be abstract, often accompanied only by decontextualized quotes and excerpts for illustration. Here, I perform a deliberate, measured study of these rhetorical elements in an effort to lay bare the persuasive action of the elements themselves as well as their effects upon us.

‘MORE CHILDREN FROM THE FIT, LESS FROM THE UNFIT’: DISCOURSES OF HEREDITARY ‘FITNESS’ AND REPRODUCTIVE RHETORICS, POST DARWIN TO THE 21ST CENTURY

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of

Miami University in partial

fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of English

Jennifer Cellio

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2008

Director: Dr. Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson

Jennifer Cellio

2008

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication iv

Acknowledgements v

Chapter One 1

Constructions of “Fitness,” Rhetorics of Reproduction, and the Power of a Word

Chapter Two 31 Defining “The Unfit,” Reifying “Fittest,” A Discursive Paradigm Shift in Theories of Human Inheritance

Chapter Three 66

The ‘Female Moron’ and Her ‘Hyperfecundity’: Special Topoi of Eugenic Sterilization

Chapter Four 105

Responding to Risk: Birth Control, Eugenics, and the Role of Kairos

Chapter Five 130

‘Healthy, Accomplished, and Attractive’: Visual Representations of ‘Fitness’ in Egg Donors

Afterword 157

Unfit is Unfit is Unfit: Eugenics by Any Other Name?

Works Cited and Consulted 166

iii

DEDICATION

For Russell Miller: without you I truly would not have survived the work of this degree. I am deeply grateful for your constant support and encouragement.

And for Janet and James Cellio: with all due respect for nature, it was your nurture that shaped me into who I am and made this life possible.

Thank you.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you first to the two people who helped me most with this project: my Director, Cindy Lewiecki-Wilson, and my second reader, Kate Ronald. Though you have both taught me a great deal about rhetoric and writing and research, you yourselves have also given me two ideal examples of what it is to be an exemplary mentor. Thank you, Cindy, for your guidance, your invaluable insights, your generosity with your time, and your excellent advice. Your ability to see potential in my project always inspired me to work harder—even when I didn’t think I could. And Kate, I truly appreciate your careful reading and your willingness to sit down and untangle an idea with me. Working with you both has been a tremendous honor as well as one of the great pleasures of my years at Miami. Heartfelt thanks also to Morris Young and Mary McDonald, the other members of my committee. Your useful and insightful feedback pushed me to rethink my ideas on many occasions and my work is certainly richer for your input. Many others at Miami deserve thanks and credit. To Mary Jean Corbett, the primary reason I decided to pursue post-graduate studies at all. Had you not invited me to be your undergraduate associate I might never have realized my love for teaching and for English. To Shevaun Watson and Connie Kendall: thank you both not only for your savvy advice and support but for your camaraderie. Thank you to Lisa Shaver, Liz Mackay, Cristy Beemer, and Sarah Bowles for your friendship and for reminding me, as each of you finished, that this goal was within my reach. Being “in school” with you always felt less like work and more like fun. I am exceptionally grateful for the companionship and support of Susan Pelle; Susan, your combination of intelligence, optimism, graciousness, and passion for your work constantly inspired me. I simply cannot imagine a better writing partner and friend. No less essential to my ability to complete this degree is Katie Young—my oldest and greatest friend—who has cheered me on through many, many, many years of school. Thank you, Kate. I owe an enormous thanks to my parents, Jan and Jim Cellio, whose love, faith in me, and encouragement sustained me each and every day. I could not have done it without you. Finally, thank you to Russell Miller. You have given me the greatest gift of all in your unconditional support. At every step of the way—through classes, exams, and, finally, writing this dissertation—you buoyed my confidence, insisted I could finish, picked up my slack, and never once pressured me to sacrifice quality for completion. I can’t ever thank you enough.

Chapter One

Constructions of “Fitness,” Rhetorics of Reproduction, and the Power of a Word

It is precisely because of the large overlap between forms of scientific thought and forms of social thought that ‘keywords’…can serve not simply as indicators of either social meaning and social change or scientific meaning and scientific change but as indicators of the ongoing traffic between social and scientific meaning and, accordingly, between social and scientific change. —Evelyn Fox Keller and Elisabeth Lloyd, Keywords in Evolutionary Biology.

The idea of a value-free science presupposes that the object of inquiry is given in and by nature, whereas the contextual analysis shows that such objects are constituted in part by social needs and interests that become encoded in the assumptions of research programs. —Helen E. Longino, Science as Social Knowledge.

Meaning emerges not from objective, disinterested, empirical investigation, but from individuals engaging in rhetorical discourse in discourse communities—groups organized around the discussion of particular matters in particular ways. Knowledge, then, is a matter of mutual agreement appearing as a product of the rhetorical activity, the discussion, of a given discourse community. —James Berlin Rhetoric and Reality.

At its most elemental, this dissertation is about a single word—“unfit”—and the consequences that accompany its use, especially when it is deployed in discourses related to eugenics, heredity, and reproduction. Arguably, this single word—the many permutations of which emerge in a broad range of contexts and for diverse purposes, but are almost always derogatory—has served as argument and proof for some of the most appalling human rights violations of the past century: draconian immigration restrictions, involuntary sterilization, the Holocaust, “ethnic cleansing.” Constructed and popularized during the British and American eugenics movements, a period extending roughly from 1850-1930, the word “unfit” came to stand in for individuals and groups who existed outside the norm, who were viewed as raced, classed, gendered, or disabled in ways that marked them as “abnormal” or “inappropriate,” in a cultural and national hegemony that rested on upper-class, Anglo, patriarchal values.1 In fact, during much of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, the noun form (“the unfit”) “evoked an image of physically and morally weak people associated with society’s failures” (Carlson 9). The scientific culture of the period I examine (the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth

1 Though philosophies of selective citizenship and reproduction have been in place since the beginnings of Western civilization, my discussion of “The Eugenics Movement” as a specific period in British and America history ranges from the early 1860s to the late 1930s. 1

century) exhibited similar race, class, sex, and gender biases—the white, upper-class, able- bodied male served as the “normal” body against which all other departures from this norm were viewed as deviant and lacking.2 Indeed, as the quote in the title of this dissertation, “More children from the fit, less from the unfit” (taken from a 1919 volume of American Medicine) makes clear, the desire to reduce and/or eliminate individuals defined as “unfit” was once a legitimate goal of the medical community.3 Furthermore, this emphasis on selective reproduction and preventing the birth of “unfit” children did not exist solely in the purview of the medical community but instead circulated throughout scientific, eugenic, and public discourses concerning reproduction. A great deal of literature has been dedicated to researching and surfacing the consequences of the eugenics movement in England and America: a quick search of books available in Ohio’s library system brings up nearly 1500 titles under the subject/keyword search. Around 800 of these books were published after 1940, after the popularity of the eugenics movement began to wane as a result of connections to Nazi Germany, suggesting that for every pro-eugenics work published during the movement there is at least one later publication criticizing it.4 Some historians who examine the subject of eugenics and the American eugenics movement are scientists themselves, a position which enables them to address both the scientific and the social history of the movement. Many, such as Stephen J. Gould, Elof Alex Carlson, and Pauline Mazumdar use eugenics to surface the racist, sexist, classist, heteronormative, patriarchal underpinnings that lie just below the surface of their chosen fields of evolutionary biology and genetics; indeed, these authors often cite a desire to avoid such elements in their reasons for choosing the subject.5 Others, like Kenneth Ludmerer and Donald Pickens, write to distinguish

2 It is easy to homogenize the science of this period as wholly evil and discriminatory; however, this type of science has always been contested by competing rhetorics, however quietly. Even in the rhetorics of eugenics, dissenting voices existed, though they receive little attention in my project, as I focus on the work of Social Darwinists and eugenicists, perhaps the most flagrant offenders. 3 In his essay “Eugenics, Race, and Margaret Sanger Revisited” Alexander Sanger notes that this quote is often incorrectly attributed to his grandmother, Margaret Sanger. The quote actually originates in an editorial review of Sanger’s work published in American Medicine in 1919. 4 Certainly not all publications before 1940 were pro-eugenics, and not all after that date are anti-eugenics; however, the popularity of the eugenics movement all but evaporated when Hitler’s concentration camps were discovered during WWII, leading to backlash against eugenicists and their policies. In recent years, with the introduction of new genetic technologies, research in the history of the eugenics movement has again spiked. When sorted by publication date, just over 500 books on eugenics and eugenics-related issues have been published since 1990. 5 See Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man (1996); Carlson’s The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (2002); Mazumdar’s Eugenics, Human Genetics, and Human Failings: The Eugenics Society, its Sources and its Critics in Britain (1992).

between legitimate scientific/genetic pursuits and the specter of eugenics.6 Some trace the role of eugenics in medicine, public policy, and political science; for example, Philip Reilly, a legal scholar, and Greta Jones, a professor of politics and philosophy.7 And still others like Celeste Condit and Nancy Ordover write because they worry about the current technology of genetic screening and the potential for dubious practices like selective abortion, “designer babies,” and discriminatory insurance policies.8 The stain of the eugenics movement remains on a part of America’s social and scientific culture and history. As one more scholar investigating the consequences of eugenics and Social Darwinism, I had initially hoped to continue the important work of reevaluating our histories of science through an examination of misuses of the phrase “survival of the fittest.” However, as I began my research, I discovered few texts that specifically address the language of the eugenics movement—its origins, its rhetorics and persuasive strategies, its power, its material impact on the bodies of human beings. I also noticed, especially in more recent texts, a significant number of charged terms and phrases were employed by contemporary authors without acknowledging their troubling history. In particular, the label “the unfit” and the term “fitness” were at times used without quotation marks, as if their historical construction was tacit knowledge and required no additional scrutiny. Eugenicists used terms such as “race betterment,” “good stock,” and the “science” of eugenics without hesitation when speaking and writing about eugenics; today these terms are widely considered offensive and archaic and are noted as such. Yet “unfit” continues to be used without scrutiny, in part due, I believe, to its association with that most familiar tenet of biology: the “survival of the fittest.”9 In many ways, “survival of the fittest” has become a “meme,” a “complex idea that

6 See Ludmerer’s Genetics and American Society: A Historical Appraisal (1972) and Pickens’ Eugenics and the Progressives (1968). Ludmerer tries to rescue genetics from eugenics, whereas Pickens attempts to justify the appearance of eugenics as a natural byproduct of the Progressive era; that is, however misguided the Progressives were, their hearts were in the right place. Together, these two books illustrate what Marouf Hasian describes as a “eugenic tale,” a narrative that “gives the impression that it is only the misunderstanding of technological knowledge that creates social hazards” (4). 7 See Reilly’s The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991 and Jones’ Social Darwinism and English Thought: The Interaction between Biological and Social Theory. Sussex: Harvester, 1980. 8 See Condit’s The Meanings of the Gene (1999) and Ordover’s American Eugenics (2003). 9 With few exceptions, I avoid using what would amount to an abundance of quotation marks to highlight offensive terms like “race betterment,” “good stock,” etc. In stating here, once for all, that I employ these terms in order to illustrate the language choices of eugenicists and not my own beliefs on the subject, I hope to both acknowledge these terms while also sparing my reader the constant punctuation. However, in the case of “the unfit,” “the fit,” and “fitness,” along with a few other terms, I do use quotes for emphasis.

form[s] [itself] into distinct memorable unit” (Dennett 127), regardless of its contextual faithfulness to the original. A meme is a snippet of cultural “matter” that is, much like a gene, passed on from generation to generation, brain to brain, as a “unit of cultural transmission”; examples of memes are ideas such as the arch or the calendar, particular tunes like Beethoven’s Fifth or “Tequila” that carry into new generations, catch phrases (“a little dab’ll do ya), ways of performing tasks such as throwing a pot or building a wall (Dawkins 206). In addition, memes can be “good” (education, long weekends, glasnost) or “bad” (anti-semitism, intelligence testing, arms race), always with regard to particular socio-cultural biases (Dennett 129). As I continued to read, it occurred to me that Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and its continual transmission of “survival of the fittest” as a “meme,” gave the phrase “the unfit” a scientific legitimacy that occasioned its widespread use during the eugenics movement and arguably permits its largely unconscious use today. After all, science, as a discipline and a form of knowledge, is considered empirical, objective, factual, and based on logic and reason—as unbiased, unmotivated, and disinterested a subject as possible. A series of questions emerged as a result: How did a scientific concept such as “survival of the fittest” become the mantra for the pseudo-science of race betterment? How did “fittest,” an abstract concept used to describe the ability to adapt, become a concrete signifier for an ableist, sexist, classist, racist, and heteronormative view of humankind? When did the labels “the fit” and “the unfit” first appear in reference to human beings? How did definitions and classifications of “fitness” change as a result of the eugenics movement? My decision to examine this particular word—“unfit”—and its social and scientific meanings is inspired in part by a study of biological terms and concepts edited by Evelyn Fox Keller and Elisabeth Lloyd. In their 1992 collection, Keywords in Evolutionary Biology, the pair identify words they perceive as “indicators of patterns of scientific meaning,” indicators whose changes over time reveal the way scientific meaning is created and structured (4).10 In Fox Keller and Lloyd’s work, I encountered various social, historical, and cultural readings of these keywords, such as “adaptation,” “fitness,” “Darwinism,” and “progress,” all of which encouraged me to offer my own reading of “the unfit.” As I will argue throughout this work, the concept of “the unfit,” and its use as a tool for

10 Fox Keller and Lloyd in turn cite Raymond Williams’ 1976 text Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society as the genesis of their book.

labeling and classifying individuals demands greater scrutiny as an indicator of then-legitmate scientific thought. Furthermore, more attention to the language of science—the construction of its terms and their use in argument—is necessary in order to understand how these words become acceptable in our public discourses. To that end, I engage in a process much like that followed by Marouf Hasian, author of The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought (1996). In his effort to unearth the work of one pivotal theme in American eugenics rhetorics, Hasian traces the concept of “necessity” and its effects on the way eugenics-inspired discourse circulated and gained power. He argues that, as a part of “civic virtue, political participation, and social relationships,” the idea of an act being a “necessity” enabled transgressions of existing laws (those it was “necessary” to break for the good of the majority) and to encourage limitations, sacrifices, or restrictions on established rights (rations during wartime, for example, or a program of voluntary sterilization)—in the name of science, progress, need, or a combination of the three (2). I follow Hasian’s format to a degree in this introductory chapter, beginning with a short discussion of the theories and methodologies that inform my work, specifically my reasons for choosing rhetorical analysis as my primary critical framework as well as my use of what scientist and rhetorician Celeste Condit describes as “rhetorical formations.” In his book, Hasian emphasizes the way that arguments invented during the eugenics movement enabled “not only scientific rationalization of class and race prejudices but also explorations of how men and women of the modern era were to accommodate to changing standards of sexual and reproductive behavior” (5). While I agree with Hasian’s assessment of race- and class-based eugenic rhetorics, I take issue with his notion that eugenic discourse only explored arguments that might affect reproductive behavior. In fact, the rhetorics of eugenics brought about grave changes to beliefs about sex and reproduction. Thus, I also emphasize the importance of understanding rhetoric and language as having real, material, bodily consequences on individuals and groups. Using a materialist rhetoric allows me to go beyond the words on the page to examine how those words and labels, like “the unfit,” can be written on the body. As Elizabeth Grosz argues, our bodies serve as “inscriptive surfaces” upon which discourses operate and through which they function (Volatile 146). That is, through language, the customs, norms, and social, personal, and cultural values of the communities with which we identify (by choice and otherwise) can shape us (141-2). In the purview of this project, I will address the way that

discourses of “fitness” not only shape the way women and men talk about women’s reproductive bodies but, in some cases, how these discourses actually materially alter those bodies. I then offer a brief explanation of evolutionary theory and the phrase “survival of the fittest” and a short history of its role in the development of the eugenics movement. While by no means comprehensive, this section can give readers a basic understanding of Darwin’s work, its eventual adoption by eugenicists, and an appreciation for the effects of eugenic discourse on the reproductive rights of women. I close with a short description of the specific historical sites I investigate and a summary of each chapter and its significance for the project as a whole. As the quote by Fox Keller and Lloyd used in the epigraph suggests, some of the scientific community’s keywords make visible the many intersections between the social and the scientific. Despite general perceptions about science and the language of science as objective or disinterested, and about social groups and public discourse as partial and motivated, both science and language are human constructs and emerge from human thought and word. As explained by Hasian, before the 1970s, the natural and social sciences were thought to be immune to “politics, power, and human invention”: he writes that “within this popular paradigm, any persuasive elements that did exist in the production of scientific information were considered to be pernicious influences on a self-contained and self-correcting process of factual investigation” (6). Even now some of these perceptions persist, making the study of scientific discourse all the more urgent. The eugenics movement represents one such overlap, a place to examine the conflation of the scientific and the social, and the power of language in general—its ability to construct us, categorize us, shape us, to write us into being, to influence our perceptions of ourselves and others, and to accept, deny, and/or change our realities. And though much of my work here focuses on the negative consequences of this overlap, I hope that in revisiting the errors of the past I can offer up a critical lens through which to examine the current “traffic” between the social and the scientific in such a way that encourages positive change rather than negative. Just as the term “unfit” was constructed to identify, label, and classify individuals and groups in service to sexism, racism, elitism, ableism, and heteronormativity, it can be deconstructed and laid bare in all of its hollowness, emptied of meaning and stripped of its power.

Theoretical Frameworks and Methodologies Before I move into a discussion of my research methodology and my theoretical

frameworks, allow me to make clear a few subjects this dissertation will not address. As evidenced by the vast number of texts about the eugenics movement published in the last 20 years alone, this topic is large and multi-faceted. In the manner of many of these publications, I have chosen one sub-topic associated with the eugenics movement—various rhetorical strategies used to erode the reproductive rights of many women alive during its apex in popularity—in order to provide a deeper if narrower survey of its consequences. First, despite my use of Charles Darwin’s phrase “survival of the fittest” as a point of origin, this project will not include a detailed discussion of Darwin’s evolutionary theories apart from the influence of his work on the scientific discourse of the period and its role as a source for early theories of “race betterment” and the eugenics movement. Nor will it attempt to absolve or condemn Darwin himself as a progenitor of Social Darwinism or the eugenics movement.11 I attempt to read Darwin through a framework of eugenic thought and philosophy, considering first and foremost an interpretation informed by the eugenicists who used his work. Similarly, I will not here address Darwin’s status as a rhetorician or a writer, nor will I study his work for the presence or absence of one rhetorical strategy or another. Readers interested in this topic will find the work of Joseph Campbell, Nathan Crick, Jeanne Fahnestock, Stephen J. Gould, Alan Gross, or Phillip Sipiora both informative and engaging. Second, this project should not be considered a history of the eugenics movement. Although I rely heavily on historical documents and texts as well as the contemporary work of many historians of science, I envision this project first and foremost as a rhetorical analysis. As noted above, since 1990, a series of important critical and reflective accounts of the eugenics movement have brought to light the many injustices of the movement itself and of the scientists, physicians, politicians, educators, and public policy makers who fostered its popularity and power. While my work revisits these injustices with the hope avoiding them in the future, I do not attempt a chronological or historical account of the eugenics movement. Instead, I concentrate my attention on the networks of particular cultural memes and motifs, arguments, persuasive strategies, classifications, and vocabularies of “fitness” as they appear within the discourse of the movement. Third, this dissertation is not a study of rhetorics of science, nor does it attempt to lay out

11 For an interesting discussion of Darwin’s role in Social Darwinism see Steven Shapin and Barry Barnes’ article “Darwin and Social Darwinism: Purity and History” wherein they put Darwin “on trial” using a courtroom setting to adjudicate his innocence.

a formal program for performing rhetorical analyses on scientific texts. Insofar as I highlight several rhetorical elements operating within the discourses of scientists and eugenicists alike, my primary goal is to illuminate the construction of “fitness” and to emphasize how these elements participate in the production of women as objects and subjects. However, I do hope to bring both rhetoric and science together in a way that complicates each field. On one hand, my assessment of familiar rhetorical appeals in eugenic, medical, and scientific discourse underscores the pervasiveness of rhetoric and persuasion and its methods, even in disciplines traditionally noted for their objectivity. On the other hand, using rhetorical analysis can bring scientific arguments out of the laboratory and into the public realm where citizens can both contemplate and assess them as they would other knowledge claims. Finally, I want to address what might be perceived as gaps in my analysis of “fitness”: the issue of eugenics-based arguments for immigration restrictions and the racist, xenophobic elements of these arguments, the arguments for the sterilization of citizens labeled “homosexual” and/or “sexually perverse” that dovetailed those for eugenic sterilization, and the effects of the eugenics movement on individuals with physical and/or mental disabilities.12 When I began this project, I had hoped to touch on all three of these subjects in greater detail. However, as I moved forward with my research, I realized the impossibility of addressing reproductive rhetorics, subjects pertaining to eugenics and sexuality, immigration, and the topic of intelligence, testing, and “feeblemindedness,” to say nothing of the role of asylums and the treatment of individuals labeled “mentally retarded.” Chapters Two and Five mention two of these subjects—the consequences of being labeled a “moron” and the current push for prenatal screening, genetic testing, and selective abortion, respectively—but I recognize that my work only scratches the surface of both issues.

Tables, Boxes, and the Social Construction of Science What this project will address is the role of language in the work of classification, the naming and categorizing of individuals as “fit” and “unfit.” Said another way, I hope to make visible the “scientific” terms used to identify, categorize, and describe individuals and groups of

12 Of course, there is no doubt that these issues form a network, that it is impossible to isolate one apart from another. In fact, all of these topics and more exist together in the subtext of much of the literature and rhetoric of the movement, breaking the surface when called upon for additional proof but more often lingering as a silent but implicit support in larger claims about “fitness.”

people and the manner in which they can be used to persuade. In The Order of Things, published first in 1966, Michel Foucault calls into question the permanence of systems of classification— any system of classification—by exposing the various grids, tables, and networks onto which we map our existence and our knowledge. By way of introduction, he describes his discovery of an encyclopedia entry dividing animals into groups such as “belonging to an Emperor,” “embalmed,” “tame,” and “that from a long way off look like flies” and his subsequent realization that this system, however unconventional, creates relationship between some animals while simultaneously marking others as outside (xv). Moreover, he explains, this example reveals the inherent construction of any system of classification. Using language, we can create a “table” where, for an instant, perhaps forever, the umbrella encounters the sewing- machine; and also a table, a tabula, that enables thought to operate upon the entities of our world, to put them in order, to divide them into classes, to group them according to names that designate their similarities and their differences— the table upon which, since the beginning of time, language has intersected space. (xvii) Foucault’s first example, the literal table, has a visible surface; the sewing-machine and the umbrella rest there together, and offer us a system by which to understand their relationship. As objects of a domestic interior, we might not expect to see a dirty gardening spade, a laboratory centrifuge, or a saddle on that same table, and we might subsequently rule out placing those objects there. However, the surface of the figurative table, the tabula of thought, can be more difficult to perceive. These tables we maintain in our minds, or accept knowingly or unknowingly as part of our social and cultural beliefs, our educational systems, our institutions, our relationships with other people, and/or our membership in one group or another. Foucault insists that these tables are neither permanent nor natural, however they may seem to us; in fact, he writes “there is nothing more tentative, nothing more empirical (superficially, at least) than the process of establishing an order among things; nothing that demands a sharper eye or a surer, better- articulated language” (xix-xx). Thus, the coherence we perceive or imagine or even desire, the work of establishing order, is “tentative,” arbitrary, and constructed. Even distinctions and similarities that appear to be natural and always-already visible are the work of a system that

creates order by imposing it (xx). According to Foucault, order is not discovered, it is not stumbled upon in a natural state; instead it emerges in our social consciousness through the scrutiny of “sharp eye[s]” and the infinity of linguistic signs, forever moving toward greater specificity and precision. As a discipline and a field of study, the sciences have a long history of classification and imposing order on the natural world by categorization and nomenclature. Nowhere is the empirical (yet superficial) process of creating order as concrete, or as fossilized; the system of organizing living organisms, developed by Carl Linnaeus in the 1700s, remains largely unchanged to this day, and the periodic table of elements has been supplemented but not restructured in its 139-year existence. And because scientific discovery appears based on experimentation and reporting of evidence, the “tables” upon which scientific knowledge is ordered seem to be at once visible, logical, and above all natural. Linnaean taxonomy demonstrates this visibility over and over: we can often actually see the relationships between categories of genus (for example, the genus Homo, contain primates who move with two legs, use tools, walk upright, and use some language) and the differences between species (Homo sapiens, taller, more upright skeleton v. Homo habilius, shorter, more ape-like skeleton) making it appear that these similarities and differences have always already existed. However, as historian of science Thomas Kuhn and others have demonstrated, the seemingly everlasting structures of scientific knowledge do change and develop over time, even those knowledge claims that appear to be most deeply entrenched. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn explores, among others, the period before and after the acceptance of Copernicus’ theory of a heliocentric universe and provides one historical example of a tabula upon which the order of the universe rested. Naming the sun as the “center” of the universe instead of the earth altered the way scientists identified and categorized the stars and planets as it simultaneously transformed the way that humans identified their place in the universe. Kuhn refers to this change as a “paradigm shift,” an event, gradual or sudden, that results when one knowledge system fails to account for all of the necessary information and a new system takes its place. Kuhn’s description of a “paradigm” also echoes Fox Keller and Lloyd’s claims about the connection between the social and the scientific; as “accepted models or patterns,” paradigms illustrate the shared beliefs of a scientific community as they shape how the community

understands and interprets the world (Kuhn 23). In essence, paradigms at once create and influence rules and standards for that community. Kuhn claims that paradigms gain status because they out-do other models and knowledge claims; until experience and evidence accumulate to such a degree that the paradigm can no longer “contain” them, they remain as preformed boxes into which evidence is “fit” (24). Though Kuhn’s metaphor of a box differs from Foucault’s table, it, too, points to the constructedness of science and scientific thought— neither is natural or permanent; both are products of human thought and language. These two ideas—the manner in which order is imposed and the concept of the paradigm shift—are important because they open up the possibility of challenging other “natural” categories and scientific knowledge claims. In the years since the 1960s when Foucault and Kuhn published, other historians of science and scientists have developed the idea that “doing science” is a human activity and therefore subject to all of the inconsistencies and alterations of any social act involving language and thought. Many offer reassessments, critiques, and deconstructions of science and its knowledge claims using specific historical moments or issues. Of particular interest to me, for example, is Lennard Davis’ chapter “Constructing Normalcy,” from Enforcing Normalcy (1995), providing a historical look at the cultural assumptions embedded in our understanding of “norms” and “normalcy” as they in turn inform our understanding of the disabled body. In this piece, Davis provides a clear chronology of the construction of “normalcy” by showing the work of language and definition, of statistics and ranking, and of literary reference, beginning with the fact that the word “normal” itself appears for the first time in the English language in 1840 (24). He demonstrates clearly that there is nothing at all timeless or natural about “normal.” Likewise, Gould’s 1981 The Mismeasure of Man offers a critique of the long-standing idea that intelligence and mental aptitude are hereditary and therefore innate. Gould identifies his interest in the subject as stemming from then-recent scientific claims attributing the consistently lower IQ scores of blacks to genetic differences—what Gould and others have termed “scientific racism.” Citing Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s work on race-based difference in IQ testing (first published in 1971 in the Atlantic Monthly and later published as The Bell Curve in 1994), Gould rebukes both the biological and statistical claims and reveals the work of two fallacies—of reification and of ranking—to undermine the concept of “biological determinism,” the mistaken notion that our genes alone account for our behaviors, traits, and

abilities. As Gould himself notes, his book could be a rebuttal of even the earliest arguments in service to “biological determinism” and scientific racism—he historicizes the eugenics movement to illustrate how the same specious arguments at work in Herrnstein and Murray’s work have been continually rehashed (and probably will be in perpetua). Both Gould and Davis clear a path for my work—to consider the rhetorical construction of “hereditary fitness” and the scientific/eugenic concept of “the unfit.” The work of Kuhn, Davis, Gould and many others make clear Helen Longino’s assessment of the field as presented above in the second epigraph: science and the language of science are not “value-free,” and objects of study are not “given in and by nature” but instead reflect our social needs and interests (Longino 191).

Rhetoric, Rhetorics of Science, and Rhetorical Formations In her work on the cultural implications of science and scientific language, Celeste Condit fuses together materialist, social constructivist, and rhetorical analyses. Like other theorists and scholars of science and rhetoric cited here, Condit studies the manner in which scientific discourses are socially constructed, focusing on the subjectivity of the scientists doing research, the provisional status of scientific “fact,” and the situatedness of the research— contingent, as it always is, on the particular time, location, social conditions, availability of information, humans performing it, subjects taking part, and so on. Insofar as notions of hereditary “fitness,” particularly the sexed, gendered, raced, and normalizing versions presented here, represent an overlap of the scientific and the social and depend on both for their creation, Condit’s work proves indispensible. As a bridge between science and scientific fact and the language and rhetorics of science, Condit’s work often takes into account the social constructedness of scientific research without ignoring the material realities that accompany it. Condit argues that “it is possible to portray language usages, including statements of ‘fact,’ as being responsive to a complex interplay among the three components of external material forces, social forces, and linguistic structuration” (“Bad” 85). Condit’s willingness to explore the blurry line between linguistic structure and material reality makes her an ideal model for me as I explore the “interface” between rhetorics of eugenics and reproduction and their material and social effects on women (“Bad” 86). As a student of rhetoric, the bulk of my work will focus on what Condit refers to as “rhetorical formations,” a blend of “discursive formations” and “rhetorical strategies,” that

enables her to consider the larger patterns in social discourses but in a way that also takes into account the role of overt public addresses and public policy decisions on her subject (250).13 Like Condit, my use of “rhetorical formations,” offers me a way to consider the eugenics movement through its “discursive structures” (252), narratives, definitions, topics, figurative language, culturally significant vocabularies used at the time. Condit writes: “Rhetorics operate through particular formal devices—metaphors, maxims, ideographs, narratives, and so on. These devices constitute focal points for research because they drive particular formulations of social practices and define the experiences of those practices” (252). In other words, locating and analyzing discursive structures can reveal sociocultural motifs and attitudes of a particular era as well as the effects of their use. In addition, I appreciate Condit’s desire to cite Foucault’s work as a starting point, but then to supplement his theories with rhetorical analysis. As she explains, Foucault’s attention to the discourses of an era, and the “discursive formations” in which they participate, reveal “unifying principles” that in turn “[shape] human practices at all levels” (251). However, as she notes, these principles tend to treat language and language use as “orderly” and “principled, rather than “multiple” and “independent” (251, 253). For Foucault, language commands, it shapes without asking, it dictates; the mechanism of language and discourse is all-powerful. But for Condit, language can always be contested; she argues that “rhetorical study presumes that language does not give commands to which humans beings respond as automatons. Instead, language seduces, it offers, it persuades” (253). By supplementing Foucault with rhetoric, Condit takes into account the unique rhetorical situation (the persuasiveness of multiple strategies working together at a particular moment in time), the many contingencies and customs involved. In doing so, she expands both classical rhetoric (which often failed to consider larger social forces) and discourse theories.

13 Condit avoids the term “popular” when discussing the kinds of discourse available for interpretation and critique. She argues that historians and rhetorical theorists cannot ever truly know how discourse operated in actual historical settings. So she uses the term “public” (following the tradition of rhetorical studies) to indicate discussions that “appeared in widely accessible venues such as newspapers, magazines, and television” (10) or those that might reflect a “public” opinion as manifested in the voting and bills of elected government officials. I will follow Condit in this practice. In addition, like Mark Largent, Condit illuminates a discursive history that ceases to focus solely on individuals (the lives of “great men”) to instead take into account more public, social elements—economic influences, human consciousness and ways of thinking, demographics, etc. She continues to include “great men” in her work, but states that they should be “now understood not as unique instigations of world trends but as focal nodes in a larger torrent of human discourse” (250).

With this goal of expansion in mind, I turn to rhetorical analysis, specifically the work of several rhetorical theorists who focus on scientific texts and the social construction of reality. Though I use classical rhetorical theory throughout this project, I do so with the guidance of scholars such as Alan Gross (The Rhetoric of Science 1990, Starring the Text 2006), Lawrence Prelli (A Rhetoric of Science 1989), Jeanne Fahnestock (Rhetorical Figures in Science 2003), and Celeste Condit (The Meanings of the Gene 1999). I believe, as these scholars do, that the work of “doing” and writing about science is inherently rhetorical. As a practice, science is a community-based form of knowledge construction—the peer-review of journals, the need to compare the work of one study to another, the discipline-wide conversations about new or innovative ideas and methods—and as such it requires communication. As Gross explains, “rhetorically, the creation of knowledge is a task beginning with self-persuasion and ending with the persuasion of others” (Gross Rhetoric 3). As such, both the actual texts of science and the practices of producing those texts, are available for rhetorical analysis. James Berlin’s quote above reminds us that rhetoric is epistemic, it is “a serious philosophical subject that involves not only the transmission, but also the generation of knowledge” (165). When we study rhetoric, in this case rhetorics of eugenics and reproduction, we are considering the ways that language shapes “all the features of our experience” (166).

From Abstract to Concrete: Materialist Rhetorics and ‘Survival of the Fittest’ Embodied In addition to considering rhetorics of and rhetorical formations used in science, Condit employs a “materialist rhetoric,” which depends on the collapse of the binaries of language/reality and idea/thing. Rather than rehash the “truth or rhetoric” debates ignited in some rhetorical analyses of science, Condit’s rhetorical starting point assumes that “both ‘material reality’ and the complex network of language have their own internal structure and forces, and that these are mutually interactive and responsive” (“Bad” 85). In doing so, Condit acknowledges the benefits of science and scientific research, but she also creates a space to challenge the manner in which this information is disseminated and circulated. This approach allows me to focus on the “material realities” of reproductive policies on women’s bodies. For many women, the choice to plan a pregnancy using birth control represents a miracle of science, a real, liberatory technology that improves their lives. Likewise, the practice of “voluntary sterilization” or tubal ligation can be performed as outpatient surgery, due

in large part to scientific research and experiment. However, for many the material realities of reproductive rhetorics are oppressive. By considering these discursive practices as they identify, name, and classify us as objects and subjects, as they label some individuals “fit” and others “unfit,” I want to make visible their corresponding work to shape us, discipline us, and subject us with material, bodily results. In “The Materiality of Coding: Rhetoric, Genetics, and the Matter of Life,” Condit raises a concern about the effects of language: “once one begins to talk about the social circulation of signs,” she writes, “one needs to account for how those signs have impact on the world” (“Materiality” 330). It is not enough to articulate what rhetorics of eugenics are; we must also take into account what these rhetorics do. This concern about the effects of language on bodies, women’s bodies in particular, highlights a final theoretical and methodological framework. I hope to advance a greater feminist goal—to turn a critical eye to the rhetorics and circulation of discourses of power that shape attitudes toward women and have an impact on their lives. The role of the patriarchy in the exploitation of women has been well-documented and well-theorized; many of these critiques focus specifically on the natural sciences, highlighting the ways that these fields (both willfully and unknowingly) use their considerable power to uphold the authority of patriarchal ideals and beliefs. I believe the power of these patriarchal discourses linger in our broader conversations within the sciences as well as resulting public policies. As Evelyn Fox Keller explains: “Judgments about which phenomena are worth studying, which kinds of data are significant—as well as which descriptions (or theories) of those phenomena are most adequate, satisfying, useful, and even reliable—depend critically on the social, linguistic, and scientific practices of those making the judgments in question” (Reflections 11). My work will follow the work of feminist scholars by identifying and naming these social and scientific discourses as a way to challenge the powerful patriarchal ideologies swirling through our public discourse on reproduction. It is not enough to merely state that rhetorics affect change or “rhetoric alters reality”; instead, I want to highlight these changed realities as they appear on the bodies of women.

A Short History of Evolutionary Theory and the Emergence of Eugenics Charles Darwin (1809-1882), eminent British naturalist, geologist, and biologist, first used the phrase “survival of the fittest” to clarify the complex process of “natural selection” in

his theory of evolution in the fifth edition (1869) of his ground-breaking book On the Origin of Species, initially published ten years earlier in 1859. In Origin, Darwin lays out his theory of evolution in which he argues that all organisms undergo/generate variations in structure and behavior over time as the result of changes in the environment and/or climate, the availability of resources, the presence or absences of predators, and/or the effects of chance events (a volcano, for example, or a fire as the result of a lightening storm). Unlike earlier theories of biological evolution that predicated these variations on the whims or desires of a deity (Deism, Christianity, Creationism), the supposed agency of the organism (Jean-Baptiste Lamarack’s theory of inherited acquired traits), or the periodic elimination of all species (Georges Cuvier’s “catastrophism”), Darwin’s theory challenged theological assumptions of a divine plan as well as the notion that an organism could “will” itself to change according to changing circumstances.14 This attention to the role of chance, the random process through which variations emerged and were “selected,” distinguished Darwin’s theories from others, but it also made them controversial and unpopular in many circles. Many readers (both then and now) resisted the idea that the survival (or extinction) of a particular species was not the result of efforts by that species to adapt. Others found the absence of a “Creator” blasphemous and/or terrifying. Not only did this position imply that a higher power did not exist, it also raised the question of humankind as the chosen species as presented in the Bible. That is, in a world created strictly by chance, humans become the product of one more variation, one more species “selected” on the basis of a random event such as a change in climate. Even now, at a time when both scientists and the public have a better understanding of the mechanism of natural selection, the role of chance is confusing and unsettling. Because we are able to look back through evolutionary history and observe the work of natural selection and evolution, we tend to interpret human existence as predictable and certain. But this perspective leaves out the role of chance. In Wonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould offers readers an illuminating and discomfiting metaphor for chance in his discussion of the development of man. About the history of life he writes: the “pageant’ of evolution [is] a staggeringly improbable series of events, sensible enough in retrospect and subject to rigorous explanation, but utterly unpredictable and quite unrepeatable. Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the

14 For an excellent history of evolutionary theory, see Edward Larson’s readable and engaging Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory, published in 2004 in the Modern Library Chronicles book series.

Burgess Shale [a fossil record in British Columbia]; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay. (“Wonderful” 14) As Gould notes, the possibility that the existence of any one species should or would occur if we rewind the tape of life does not factor into a Darwinian explanation of natural selection. Darwin’s theory and research insists on the role of variation as well as the chance events that prompt the selection of one variation over another. Darwin incorporated the phrase “survival of the fittest” into his fifth edition after reading the work of Victorian naturalist and philosopher Herbert Spencer, who himself published his 1864 Principles of Biology after reading Darwin’s Origin.15 Though Spencer may have officially coined the phrase, Darwin made it forever a part of the lexicon. Darwin uses the phrase in that edition to extend his readers’ understanding of natural selection, writing that “this preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest” (Origin 63). Natural selection occurs, Darwin explains, when “changes in the conditions of life give a tendency to increased variability” (64). In other words, the always-present but often subtle variations in structure and characteristics of an organism or species as a whole can make it better suited for life in a changed environment. But life in a changing environment also means more changes will emerge in the species, as those not as suitable or adaptable to the changing environment die off as a result of limited resources or more predators. As a result, organisms with characteristics suitable for any one particular environment have an advantage in that environment, and subsequently have the best chance to survive and reproduce. Furthermore, because each and every species is constantly changing and evolving, a variation in an organism’s structure or behavior might leave it more or less suitable for a changed environment, whatever the reason for the change. In Darwin’s theory, these most suitable, or “fittest,” will survive while

15 In one of the great feedback loops of scientific discourse, Spencer and Darwin read and used each other’s work throughout their publishing lives. In some ways, they are both responsible for the introduction of the phrase. Spencer wrote and published Social Statics in 1851 (addressed here in Chapter Two) in which he introduced the notion that some individuals were “more fitted” to life in a civilized society and would therefore continue to “survive” therein. After reading Darwin’s theory of “natural selection”—as outlined in Origin in 1859—Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” as an extension of his social and economic theories in the field of biology and represented it in his 1864 Principles of Biology. After reading Spencer’s Principles, Darwin employed the phrase in the fifth edition of Origin (1869) and all versions published after. It should be noted that Darwin himself worried over the potential for misreading presented by “survival of the fittest.” Even today, most scientists who study evolutionary biology use the phrase “natural selection.”

the “less fit” will not. Though Darwin employed the term “fittest” in its then-current sense of “suitability” or “adaptability” in relation to an environment, the phrase “survival of the fittest” quickly spilled over into popular contexts where its relational meaning was ignored or misunderstood or both. For better and worse it has since informed our perception not only of the existence of life on earth but also for the success in society and culture as well. Darwin took care to define natural selection and “survival of the fittest,” especially with regard to the notion of agency. He tried to separate social, economic, and religious interpretations by dismissing the role of a divine agent or “Creator.” He explains that “selection” does not imply a “conscious choice,” nor does “Nature” denote an “active power or deity” (63). Darwin’s tone sounds almost chiding as he emphasizes the figurative nature of his terms: “Every one knows what is meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are almost necessary for brevity” (63). However, from the start, readers interpreted the phrase within their own frameworks and for their own purposes. In her book Social Darwinism and English Thought, Greta Jones describes this transition from a scientific worldview that incorporated religion to a mostly secular interpretation of the natural world as one that gave voice to an idea of social hierarchy and social theory that did not rest on “God.” That is, the then-current social structure could be considered both “natural” and based on “scientific” data in a period when religion was increasingly losing power. Natural selection (especially in the wrong hands) provided “natural” reasons for existing hierarchies. If the “fittest” survive and prosper, the people in power—wealthy white males—had a scientific explanation for their positions of power. In Jones’ words, “social Darwinism substituted natural, scientific processes for God as the guarantor of social equilibrium” (xiii). Not surprisingly, Victorian scientists, often from the professional class, tended to publish work that supported this position. Perhaps as a pre-emptive measure against such biases, Darwin explicitly distinguishes between “survival of the fittest” as a natural occurrence and artificial selection as initiated by humans in the work of breeding animals and gardening. Clearly defining the role of nature in selection, Darwin writes: Nature, if I may be allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the fittest, cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being. [...] Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being

which she tends. (65) Thus, “survival of the fittest,” as Darwin employs the phrase, serves as a metaphor for “nature’s power of selection,” and not, as eugenicists and social Darwinists would later argue, as a concrete marker for categorizing humans and better or worse human abilities. I address the difference in Chapter Two where I argue that Darwin’s definition of “fittest” corresponds to the lexical version (adaptability, suitability) rather than a stipulative biological definition that emphasizes particular characteristics of “fitness.” Like his admonitions about attaching agency to natural selection, Darwin’s pleas to distinguish natural selection and survival of the fittest from artificial or “man-made” selection were ignored. Indeed, the phrase has been taken up in all number of discussions of social theory, arguments about economics, and contests of strength and sport, all in order to convey the value of competition to reveal the best, brightest, or strongest. Need justification for the benefits of free-trade? Invoke the notion of “survival of the fittest.” Hoping to attract an audience for your “Strongest Man” contest? Incorporate the phrase on flyers and posters. Interested in validating the place of standardized testing in the college application process? Remind trustees that doing so allows the college to identify high-caliber students who will succeed in college and beyond— naturally. In each of these examples, the concept of “survival of the fittest” points to a cultural motif of success in competition and struggle. And, because this phrase retains the idea of “natural selection,” it also suggests an unbiased, disinterested outcome, one that allows us to believe that, yes, in theory the best, brightest, strongest, most able, should be the ones to survive. To say that Darwin’s theories were controversial is an understatement of gigantic proportion. After centuries of belief in a divine power and the place of humans above all other creatures as presented in the Biblical book of Genesis, to suggest God had not specifically created humans and they were simply another species on the planet was at once blasphemous and revolutionary and ridiculous. Many of Darwin’s critics were mollified to an extent by Darwin’s carefully chosen examples—all “lesser” creatures from the animal, insect, and plant kingdoms. However, Darwin’s theory about the evolution of species was (and arguably remains) the single most paradigm-shifting text ever published. At no time was this phrase used more inappropriately, and with greater consequences, than during the eugenics movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Eugenicists of all stripes, including scientists, politicians, social theorists, physicians, and social

reformers, invoked the “survival of the fittest” to validate and lend legitimacy to their efforts for “race betterment”—the belief that encouraging more children from the “fittest” individuals and fewer from the “unfit” would result in the overall improvement of the human race. To this end, these eugenicists created a variety of measures of “fitness,” all of which revealed more about their own notions of what was “best” than Darwin’s specific meaning of the interaction between a species and its environment. Thus, eugenicists classified mental health, intelligence, physical appearance and ability, race and country of origin, the presence of disease, hereditary defects, and, at times, moral virtue, to distinguish between “the fit” and “the unfit.” These two labels, “the fit” and “the unfit,” were then used to define both individuals and entire groups of people. The work of these eugenicists had a profound influence on society as well, affecting immigration policy, welfare distribution, reproductive rights, civil rights, policies for people with mental and physical disabilities, and the treatment of people with mental illness. Without exception, historians of science and eugenics identify Francis Galton (1822- 1911) as the key figure in the origin and development of the eugenics movement. Like his cousin Charles Darwin, Galton was a naturalist and a geologist interested in all things scientific. As many historians also note, Galton demonstrated an aptitude for math and statistics as well as a deep distrust of religion, both of which influenced his interpretation of Darwin’s Origin and his own work on heredity, the transmission of characteristics and traits from one generation to another, and “race betterment.”16 After reading Origin, Galton began to contemplate the theory of evolution, specifically the “preservation of favourable individual differences and variations” and the manner in which they might be passed from one generation to another. His research began on a small scale, investigating what he believed to be the inheritance of intelligence and “character” in the families of “great men.” Using a series of biographical lists of eminent men, he calculated the frequency at which distinguished men in England and American had equally distinguished sons. Perhaps this notion stemmed from his observations of his own ancestry; as a member of the Darwin-Galton-Wedgwood family, he might have interpreted an interest in science as “natural aptitude.”

16 In my research, I read many of Galton’s publications. Two in particular stand out in my mind as examples of Galton’s feelings on religion and his keen eye for detail. First, in 1872 Galton published “Statistical inquiry into the efficacy of prayer,” in the Fortnightly Review, in which he “proved” that prayer did not improve one’s chances of surviving an illness. Second, historian Daniel Kevles cites a series of notes Galton made while at Derby Day wherein Galton, peering through opera glasses not at the horses but instead at the stands opposite him, describes the “strong pink tint” he sees arise in the “sheet of faces” of the British upper class as the horses gallop past the stands (Annals Pt. I).

However, when Galton published this first series of essays in 1865 on the subject, entitled “Hereditary Talent and Character,” scientists, theologians, philosophers and social thinkers alike were still debating the merits of his cousin Charles Darwin’s then nine-year-old publication On the Origin of Species. Of the scientists who accepted Darwin’s theories of natural selection and “survival of the fittest,” relatively few were willing to apply his theory to humans. As Galton himself points out in a lecture about heredity given over 30 years later in 1908, the work of evolution and the transmission of “favorable variations” was, at that point in the 1860s, murky at best: The notions connected with human inheritance by descent were vague and confused, for the subject had never been squarely faced. The prevalent feeling was that it certainly existed in animals and plants, but that men stood apart in a separate category. It was acknowledged that physical attributes were sometimes inherited in human families, but the heredity of mental qualities in man was stoutly denied… . There was much talk about men being equal and “masters of their own fate.” (“Eugenics”). As noted, Darwin identified examples of variation, transmission of traits, and the effects of natural selection in animals and plants; however, he purposefully avoided any statements about humans and their place in the system.17 Galton, however, chose not to avoid the subject. From his first publications in 1865 to speaking appointments and lectures like the one above given near the end of his life in 1911, Galton made the inheritance of traits and heredity in humans his life’s work. His goals were two-fold: first, Galton sought to isolate the manner in which human characteristics, traits, and “talents” were passed on from generation to generation, and second, he wanted to make this theory accessible to the public so that it might be useful to future generations in the form of “race betterment.” In both efforts, he was successful. In fact, by the time Galton spoke before the newly formed and highly influential Eugenics Education Society in June, 1908, his theories of inheritance were so widely accepted by the scientific community that Darwin himself had acknowledged Galton’s influence on his second major publication, The Descent of Man (Darwin “Descent” 32). Three years later in 1911, James Field published a summary of the eugenics

17 Darwin does address humans in The Descent of Man (1871), where he describes the effects of “sexual selection” on reproduction in a variety of plant and animal examples.

movement to date in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, citing, above all else, the key role Galton played in the field. According to Field, Galton had been given the rare experience of foreseeing and announcing a new branch of knowledge in advance of his generation and …of living to see a subsequent generation overtake his idea and gratefully adopt it. […] By his own achievements, by the kindling influence of his enthusiasm, and by the final gift of his main fortune, he has insured that the science he founded should go on. (24) Galton’s influence on the interpretation of evolution and natural selection, on the inheritance of characteristics and traits from generation to generation, and on the advent of studies in human heredity was profound. His work affected not only the culture of science and eugenics, but the social, economic, and political discourse of the period. However much attention he received from his professional peers, Galton understood implicitly that in order for his theories to be put into practice, he would need to educate the public about human inheritance. In the next chapter, I highlight an example of his efforts to curry favorable public opinion of his ideas about heredity and what he and others considered race betterment. Galton saw great potential in “eugenics,” his term for the applied science of race betterment, and believed his theories could improve the overall quality of the British population. Like all scientists (of his time and ours), Galton brought to his work his own biases and personal beliefs, and these beliefs were, in turn, reflected in his discussions of eugenics. Of special consideration here are an overlapping set of moral, economic, and social values that affected the way that Galton applied his theories. To Galton and other scientists involved in the study of human inheritance, every human trait could be transmitted to one’s offspring. In order to improve the population, which he and many other scientists and eugenicists felt was degenerating, Galton reasoned that particular traits should be increased and others decreased or eliminated. For example, an increase in crime, pauperism, a need for charity and other social services signified to these scientists a general decrease in vigor, work ethic, and inborn ability and intelligence of the British citizenry. To Galton’s mind, all characteristics qualified for scrutiny, categorization, and, in some cases, elimination in the name of eugenics. Although much of Galton’s work emphasizes “positive” eugenics by encouraging the proliferation of the “best” characteristics—all, like “virtue,” “intelligence,” “gentility,” and “good form,” were decidedly vague—many of his peers were more concerned with “negative” eugenics, a process

by which those with “bad” traits would be encouraged to forego having children so as to avoid passing on their defects.18 However, it should also be noted here that natural selection and “survival of the fittest” were at this point (late 1800s, early 1900s) already closely connected. In Darwin’s original theory, the “fittest” or most suitable for an environment had an advantage—in their ability to avoid predators, to stake out territory, to obtain resources, and so on—which scientists and social Darwinists believed in turn enabled them the luxury of reproducing and caring for offspring. However, the paradox inherent in the idea of having to curb the population of the “unfit” is seldom discussed in eugenic circles. Though eugenicists firmly believed the higher numbers of “unfit” individuals decreased the overall health of the British stock, they found it difficult to reason away the problem of “natural selection”; that is, if the “fittest” survived and reproduced, then how to account for the survival and reproduction of the presumed “unfit?” If, as eugenicists argued, the “least fit” were bearing the most children, did that not actually make them “the fittest” as represented by their ability to survive and reproduce? As arguments presented in the next chapter will reveal, many eugenicists blamed social services for supporting these individuals who would otherwise have perished. Some, like Galton, reconfigured “fitness” to represent individuals possessing particular criteria, usually based on sociocultural ideals of vigor, work ethic, moral righteousness, and intelligence, all of which he presented as “hereditary” traits. Others simply ignored the problem of this paradox altogether. Biographies and histories alike describe Galton as almost evangelical in his efforts to spread his theories of inheritance, though few agree on the underlying source of his fervor.19 Like so many of his peers, Galton linked science with progress—everything could be improved

18 While the distinction does not hold in every case, the majority of British eugenicists favored positive eugenics while a majority of American eugenicists favored negative eugenics. In Chapter Three I assess the arguments of American eugenicist in their efforts to legitimize and legislate a program of eugenic sterilization. In his book Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, American eugenicist Charles Davenport articulates a key philosophy of negative eugenics—that the unfit needed to be eliminated rather than treated or even committed to asylums. He argued that “It is a reproach to our intelligence that we as a people, proud in other respects of our control of nature, should have to support about half a million insane, feeble-minded, epileptic, blind and deaf, 80,000 prisoners and 100,000 paupers at a cost of over 100 million dollars per year” (4). 19 Some authors present Galton as a religious skeptic looking for rational, scientific responses to questions about human existence (Kevles, Hasian, MacKenzie). Daniel Kevles in particular hints at the deep feelings of shame and self-doubt that plagued Galton as a man and a scientist as a result of his religious upbringing. Raised in a deeply religious household (Galton’s father was a Quaker, his mother a devout Anglican), Galton referred to religion as “my old superstition” and praised Darwin for publishing On the Origin of Species. Kevles explains: “To Galton’s mind, the scientific doctrine of evolution destroyed the religious doctrine of the fall from grace. He appropriated Darwin to argue that man, instead of falling from a high estate, was ‘rapidly rising from a low one’” (“Annals Pt. I”; “Name” 60).

upon with the knowledge gained by experimentation and research—and his interpretation of evolutionary theory was no different. Galton read evolution through a framework of amelioration, one that implied constant progress toward perfection, and in this way eugenics emerged as a realistic, practical route toward human improvement, a statement of fact in opposition to the Bible and “against all ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated statements were contradicted by modern science” (Galton qtd. in MacKenzie 54). “Utopia” was not an impossible dream, but a very real and distinct possibility. He only worried it would not arrive fast enough if natural selection was the only mechanism at work. In addition, he and other eugenicists believed that social services and charities were prohibiting the “thinning of the herd” implied in the “survival of the fittest.” Others read Galton’s fervor as class-based, inspired by economical, social, and professional concerns rather than merely anti-religious sentiments, a reading that coincides with a number of eugenic ideals. In Statistics in Britain, 1865-1930: The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge, Donald MacKenzie cites the aspirations of the professional class (of which, as an academic and a scientist, Galton was a part) as the main reason for Galton’s enthusiasm for eugenics (18). By overlapping the existing social class hierarchy with nature and “natural ability,” the professional class emerges as the best and brightest. Although some of Galton’s contemporaries argued that the privileges of wealth and social status create more opportunities for education, and therefore intelligence, Galton subscribed to the idea that one’s intellect illustrated one’s inherent ability (Galton “Hereditary”). MacKenzie explains Galton’s position People differ according to their innate qualities and capacities; those at the top of the social hierarchy have, according to this model, the greatest quantity of good qualities and capabilities—the largest amount of ‘brains’. The lower the social class, the smaller the innate ‘civic worth’ of the individuals comprising it. (18) In this system, Galton and his professional peers held the top position—they superseded the old aristocracy as a consequence of their innate mental abilities. Below the professionals were the clerks and shopkeepers (useful if dull), and at the bottom were unskilled workers, poor people, and individuals cast out from society (29). Unlike earlier criteria of landed wealth and nobility, the new criteria of knowledge, mental prowess, and education gave professionals and academics more power and influence, which, MacKenzie argues, they employed to acquire and maintain

their dominance in political, social, and economic spheres. During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Galton’s suggestions for eugenics and “race betterment” found purchase in many different countries, under many different guises. In America, eugenics fueled immigration restrictions and the birth control movement; in England it was used to legislate The Mental Deficiency Act and other governmental mandates to segregate the “unfit”; in Italy, it fueled work in criminal justice; in Germany, it provided support for Hitler’s concentration camps (Field). Eugenics also influenced a wide array of social movements, charitable organizations, and political parties: ultra-conservatives and liberals alike found ways to employ eugenic discourse to support their policies, and vice versa (Freeden). As Marouf Hasian has argued, the rhetoric of eugenics permeated Western thought and social philosophies. Here in America, eugenics was especially popular; Steven Selden’s “Eugenics Archive” makes clear the ways the eugenics movement permeated all aspects of American life, from chapters in biology textbooks, to Sunday church sermons by esteemed members of the American Eugenics Society, to eugenic evaluation at the “Fitter Families Contests” at state fairs wherein “human stock” was judged to determine the most “fit” families (which were then heralded as examples of “eugenic health”). However, when the atrocities of Hitler’s systematic genocide came to light, the widespread popularity and use of eugenics ended and its philosophies and applications disappeared into the shadows of histories of science. What I have tried to offer in this section is a brief outline of the history of both “fitness” and “natural selection” and its subsequent adoption (to tragic ends) during the eugenics movement. Before Galton’s work on inheritance, several theories of heredity competed for dominance; by the time of his death in 1911, Galton’s theories were almost universally accepted. Not only did Galton initiate one of the most significant discussions of human inheritance and mental ability, he did so by bringing statistics to biology, thus creating a new, concrete method of assessment for the study of inheritance. Furthermore, Galton presented his theories in such a way as to appeal to both scientists and non-scientists alike, employing many of the same rhetorical strategies as did his cousin, Charles Darwin, to present his controversial theory of natural selection. As a result, Galton’s theories circulated beyond the academy and the laboratory and into the public forum, where they were rearticulated and redeployed for the next 40 years and beyond. Despite the large body of work on human inheritance, no one writer, theorist, or scientist affected as much change in the way we talk about heredity as Francis

Galton.

Sites of Inquiry In the chapters that follow, I explore three sites wherein these terms “fit” and “unfit” circulate throughout the discourses of science, medicine, public policy, and public opinion. More specifically, I examine a single issue, controls and constraints on women’s reproductive options/possibilities, as it emerges in three specific social contexts: the arguments calling for a program of involuntary eugenic sterilization in the first quarter of the twentieth century; eugenic- based arguments to encourage control of female fertility articles and editorials published in The Birth Control Review, many written by Margaret Sanger herself; and the descriptions and classifications of “fit” egg donors on egg donation websites and online forums about assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) as they appear at the turn of the most recent century. My first site highlights the practice of eugenic sterilization in the United States as it emerged in response to the perceived “degeneration” of the American gene pool. Most Americans associate eugenic or coerced sterilization with Hitler’s Nazi Germany and believe America flirted with but never settled down to an expansive program of population control and regulated fertility. In fact, America carried out coerced sterilization first (Indiana passed the first law in 1907) and sterilized over 60,000 Americans over a 60 year period.20 As Wendy Kline argues in her book Building a Better Race, “if we continue to approach eugenics as merely an embarrassing mistake with little historical significance, we will never understand the movement’s powerful appeal to generations of American’s concerned about the future of morality and civilization” (1). I agree with Kline and believe that the arguments for eugenic sterilization (as apart from discussions of coerced sterilization, which did not always have eugenic subtexts), in particular the development and deployment of two “special topoi,” demonstrate how pervasive and significant these rhetorics were to Americans of the early- twentieth century.21 In addition, I highlight the ways that arguments for eugenic sterilization target women in particular, a practice that forever altered the issue of women’s reproductive rights.

20 Source: The Eugenics Archive of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. http://www.eugenicsarchive.org. 21 The “Eugenics Archive” contains over 2000 images related to the American Eugenics movement, as well as virtual exhibits and links to other sources on eugenics. The site is managed by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, the same group that founded the Eugenics Record office in 1910 and funded the research of several prominent eugenicists.

My second site analyzes the work of Margaret Sanger as a pioneer of the movement for birth control and family planning. Sanger published extensively during her life; from her first column in The New York Times, entitled “What Every Girl Should Know,” in 1916 to her 1953 broadcast on Edward R. Murrow's “This I Believe” radio program for National Public Radio, Sanger promoted women’s rights to birth control and information about family planning. For many readers, Sanger’s work epitomizes an early, proto-feminist position on birth control; her many public lectures and publications argued for more education and more choices for women. However, Sanger’s works also incorporate arguments based on eugenic ideals—many of which she adopted from the campaign for eugenic sterilization. Interwoven within the liberatory discourses of choice are clear statements about particular groups of women who should not have the freedom to reproduce. Sanger’s works participate in the reification of terms like “fit” and “unfit,” which I make visible in an analysis of her lectures and publications. My third site includes current discourses surrounding assisted reproductive technologies (ART), specifically egg donation and egg donor websites, viewed by women and men who wish to have children but experience difficulties due to infertility.22 A 2002 National Survey of Family Growth illustrates the frequency of infertility: “7% of married couples in which the woman was of reproductive age (2.1 million couples) reported that they had not used contraception for 12 months and the woman had not become pregnant (2002 National Survey of Family Growth). As a result, many people who wish to start a family choose to use donor eggs or surrogate mothers. Insofar as the discourse on online egg donation and surrogate websites represents a starting point for research on these fertility treatments, they illuminate some of the current perceptions about what it means to be “fit” to conceive or carry a fetus to term. In particular, the images of donors and surrogates offer a clear visual representation of women considered “fit” while simultaneously suggesting that women who do not match these descriptions/images are “unfit.” The criteria for and definitions of “fitness” have shifted, but the discourses continue to reflect the persuasive power of the terms.

Brief Chapter Sketches Chapter Two, “Defining ‘The Unfit,’ Reifying ‘Fitness’: A Discursive Paradigm Shift in

22 The Department of Health and Human Services website (a government site associated with the Center for Disease Control) on Assisted Reproductive Technologies defines infertility as not being able to become pregnant after a year of trying. See for more details.

Hereditary Theory,” establishes “fitness” as a pivotal concept in rhetorics of reproduction. I examine definitions and representations of “fitness” in early theories of hereditary and human inheritance, noting in particular the changes brought about by the phrase “survival of the fittest” as popularized in the work of Charles Darwin. While definitions are generally thought to report fact or describe what “is,” here I read them rhetorically in order to expose their ability to create rather than merely report meaning. By reconsidering definitions of hereditary “fitness” as historically and rhetorically constructed, the circulation of these terms as scientific “truths” in social Darwinist and eugenic discourses, as well as the corresponding labels “fit” and “unfit,” can be reevaluated and challenged. The chapter opens with an example of the labels “the Fit” and “the Unfit” used as proper nouns in a 1908 speech by Francis Galton at a moment when the popularity of both Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement was beginning to take off in earnest. In doing so, I draw attention to the stability of these terms over the past 100 years; that is, few readers will be unfamiliar with these labels, despite their roots in the now discredited and almost universally abhorred eugenics movement. From there, I take readers back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, a period in scientific history when evolutionary theory, genetics, and hereditary theory as we now know them did not exist. Instead, various beliefs and speculations about the physical, psychological, and behavioral similarities between family members circulated in the speech and thought of scientists and non-scientists alike in phrases such as “What’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh,” “Like produces like,” and “Blood will tell.” More specifically, I examine the subject of “degeneracy” as during this period as it serves as a precursor to later descriptions of “the Unfit.” I trace a shift in the presumed reasons for degenerate behavior; before Darwin published On the Origin of Species, most physicians, scientists, and social thinkers talked about degeneracy as a moral failing or a product of a toxic environment. After Darwin published Origin, Galton and other Social Darwinists and eugenicists read these traits as part of an individual’s biological framework, the set of inborn characteristics pass on through reproduction. In Chapter Three, “The “Female Moron” and her “Hyperfecundity”: Two Special Topoi in the Case for Eugenic Sterilization,” I highlight the use of hereditary “fitness” as it emerges in arguments for eugenic sterilization in early-twentieth-century America. Specifically, I reveal the development and deployment of two special topoi, the threat of the “female moron” and

corresponding fears based on the myth of her “hyperfecundity,” or excessive reproduction, that work to position women as the main targets for sterilization. Generally, common topoi— comparison, definition, testimony, relationships such as cause and effect—provide rhetors with a means by which to locate appropriate lines of argument. Special topoi, topoi that operate in service to a specific subject, a type of argument, or a speech genre, give rhetors a template from which to develop an even more nuanced argument. In the case of the “threat of the female moron” and the presumed “hyperfecundity” of such women, eugenicists could invoke and employ these two topics in order to initiate broader arguments about “fitness,” reproductive rights, and the need for a comprehensive program of eugenic sterilization. This chapter builds upon the work of Chapter Two by demonstrating one consequence of the reification of “the Fit” and “the Unfit.” The notion that these labels indicated an innate, unchanging quality made it easier for eugenicists as they tried to convince lawmakers, politicians, and the public that eugenic sterilization was not only an acceptable option but also that it was the only surefire way to eliminate the threat of the “unfit” masses. In addition, this chapter explores a paradox of visibility at issue during the eugenics movement. On the one hand, eugenicists wanted to identify particular social behaviors as markers of a lack of “fitness.” On the other hand, they wanted to impress upon policy makers and the public the idea that the source of these markers is genetic and innate and therefore not visible to the untrained eye. This paradox emerges in much of the literature describing the female moron, a woman who looks beautiful and seems docile, but is actually “feebleminded” and therefore dangerous. In this way, women who did not possess the “right” qualities (white skin and/or “proper” country of origin, wealth, knowledge of “appropriate” social behaviors, particular kinds of intelligence) but who maybe had only their good looks to recommend them, could be singled out as “problems” and marked for sterilization or worse. Chapter Four, “Responding to Risk: Birth Control, Eugenics, and the Role of Kairos,” reevaluates Margaret Sanger’s timely adoption of eugenic discourses of “fitness” as part of her campaign for birth control. In many ways, this chapter “responds” to the previous chapter as the birth control movement “responds” to the eugenics movement; each employs the work of its predecessor to explain and support its claim. Though the campaign for access to birth control began under the guise of protecting women from the health risks associated with bearing and rearing too many children, it later co-opted arguments used in the campaign for eugenic

sterilization as its popularity increased. Thus, Sanger’s decision to act when she did led to the acceptance of birth control by those who initially rejected it. In short, I argue that the success of the birth control movement is based in part on existing discourses of mental and moral “fitness” as outlined in the campaign for eugenic sterilization. Established concerns about the “female moron,” her “hyperfecundity,” and the differential birthrate created an opening for then-taboo arguments for birth control precisely because it would work with sterilization to limit the number of the “unfit.” Further, like the arguments for eugenic sterilization, the birth control movement builds upon a series of perceived threats to make its case for the legal dissemination of literature on birth control as well as the presence and operation of clinics with the expressed purpose of teaching about and distributing birth control. In Chapter Five, “‘Healthy, Accomplished, and Attractive’: Visual Representations of ‘Fitness’ in Egg Donors,” I reveal the continued deployment of hereditary “fitness” in rhetorics of reproduction, this time focusing on websites dedicated to egg donations for assisted reproductive technologies. Analyzing both text and image, I confirm the continued use of now ossified representations of “fitness” as they appear in treatments of intelligence, mental health, class, sexuality, and race. In addition, I examine the rhetorical effects of analogy when coupled with the biological notion of homology, or similarities in characteristics due to shared ancestry. While homology suggests that “fit” donors ensure “fit” offspring, corresponding analogies reinforce eugenically-inspired comparisons between potential recipients and their “fit” egg donors. In “Unfit is Unfit is Unfit: Eugenics by Any Other Name?” I conclude by addressing what I believe to be another, broader analogy of “fitness” that brings together eugenic discourses and our current rhetorics of reproduction. Many of these emerging rhetorics of reproduction construct the “fit” mother or the “fit” parent and encourage a form of self-policing, driven by the medical-scientific industry, to be performed in service to the birth and care of a “fit” child. In addition, I challenge these emerging rhetorics with a social constructivist framework for science and scientific discourse. Using Helen Longino’s discussion of science in society as a model, I propose a way forward, one that encourages more attention to the social elements at work in scientific discourse.

Chapter Two

Defining “The Unfit,” Reifying “Fitness,” A Discursive Paradigm Shift in Theories of Human Inheritance

[D]efintions can be supported or validated by arguments; they themselves are arguments. —Chaim Perelman and Lucy Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric.

Definitions are rhetorical in the sense that they function as strategies of social influence and control. Definitions tell us when it is “proper” or “correct” to use words in a particular way, and, in doing so, tell us what is in our world. —Edward Schippa, “Arguing about Definition.”

The influence of public opinion, together with such reasonable public and private help as public opinion may approve of and support, is quite powerful enough to produce a large, though gentle, Eugenic effect. —Francis Galton, “Address on Eugenics” 1908.

Though originally employed by naturalist Charles Darwin as a metaphor to clarify the complex and dynamic process of “natural selection” in evolutionary theory, the phrase “survival of the fittest” quickly spilled over into public contexts where it has since informed our perception not only of the changes of life on earth but the “evolution” of society and culture as well. Indeed, the phrase has been taken up in discussions of conservative politics, laissez faire social theory, arguments about economics, and contests of strength and sport, all in order to convey the value of competition to reveal the best, brightest, or strongest. At no time was the phrase “survival of the fittest” used more inappropriately, and with greater consequences, than during the eugenics movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Eugenicists of all stripes, including scientists, politicians, social theorists, physicians, and social reformers, invoked “survival of the fittest” to validate and lend legitimacy to their efforts for “race betterment”—the belief that encouraging more children from the “fittest” individuals and fewer from the “unfit” would result in the overall improvement of the human race. To this end, these eugenicists identified categories of traits by which to measure “fitness,” including mental health, intelligence, physical appearance and ability, the presence of disease, hereditary defects, and, at times, moral virtue, and used them to distinguish between “the fit” and “the unfit.” These labels, “the fit” and “the unfit,” were then used to classify both individuals and entire groups of people. As mentioned in Chapter One, the use of these labels had a profound effect on society and culture, influencing everything from immigration policy and welfare distribution to reproductive and civil rights to policies for people with mental and physical disabilities and the treatment of

people with mental illness. In each of these examples, the concept of “survival of the fittest” points to a cultural meme of success in competition and struggle. And, because this phrase retains the scientific idea of “natural selection,” it also suggests an unbiased, disinterested outcome, one that allows us to believe that, yes, in theory, the best, brightest, strongest, most able, should be the ones to survive. Many books address the social and cultural effects of the eugenics movement.23 However, few texts specifically address the labels themselves, the language of eugenics—its origins, its rhetorics and persuasive strategies, its power, its material impact on the bodies of human beings. As noted in Chapter One, attention to language choices and “keywords” can reveal patterns of thought in both social and scientific contexts. Thus, a series of questions about “fitness” emerges when language is the focus: How did connotations of the scientific phrase “survival of the fittest” change to become the mantra for the pseudo-science of “race betterment?” How did “fittest,” an abstract concept used to describe the ability to adapt, become a concrete signifier for an ableist, sexist, classist, racist, and heteronormative view of humankind? When did the labels “the fit” and “the unfit” first appear in reference to human beings? How did definitions of “fitness” change as a result of the eugenics movement? And finally, why do so many contemporary authors continue to employ the label “the unfit,” at times without quotation marks, usually without making its historical construction visible?24 An association with one of the most familiar and quoted tenets of biology—the “survival of the fittest”—certainly explains part of the continued use of “fittest” as a superlative. However, I believe it is the rhetorical power of definition, and our willingness to read definitions as reports of fact, that not only initiated the use of “fitness” during the eugenics movement but also allows it to go largely unquestioned now. In this chapter, I address these questions and the role of definition in our understanding of hereditary “fitness,” a phrase I use to describe the belief that all of our traits, characteristics, and

23 See Chapter One, pp. 2-3. 24 A vast majority of the authors mentioned in Chapter One fail to address the construction of the term or its history; instead, these authors use scare quotes in initial references to show readers that the term is no longer acceptable. In most cases, only “the unfit” is highlighted—“the fit” and “fitness” are often not explicitly singled out. Two notable exceptions are Mark Largent and James Trent, both of whom explain to their readers their decision not to use scare quotes as a means to draw attention to the fact that these words reflect eugenicists’ beliefs and assumptions at the time, reminding readers of the near-universal acceptability of the terms during the eugenics movement. Marouf Hasian gives significant attention to the language of eugenics and its social construction but he does not address “fitness” in his work.

abilities are innate and indicative of our essential “nature,” and furthermore that these traits can once for all determine our “fitness” for life in this world. Said another way, the concept of “hereditary fitness” rests on the fallacy of biological determinism, a theory maintaining that all traits are genetic, and that environmental, social, and economic factors have no bearing on an individual’s developement. I trace the process by which this particular belief about “fitness” emerged in public thought, both as an element of heredity theory and as a means to differentiate between individuals and groups as “fit” or “unfit.” In particular, I highlight the persuasive power of definitions in the construction of hereditary “fitness.” I argue that the scientific legitimacy of hereditary theory, coupled with the perceived facticity of definition, together hide the social constructedness of scientific language and discourse in general and more specifically the discourses of pseudo-sciences like eugenics. By presenting definitions as having a rhetorical effect rather than simply reporting “fact,” I underscore the ubiquity of rhetoric and persuasive language, even in texts usually considered neutral or impartial. As Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca note: “A definition is always a matter of choice. Anyone making such a choice…will generally claim to have isolated the single, true meaning of the concept, or at least the only reasonable meaning or the meaning corresponding to current usage” (448). In addition, revealing the constructedness of definitions encourages more attention to rhetorical theories and practices; studying the ways definitions make meaning reminds us that the way a word is defined, by whom, for one audience or another, can affect the way we understand our world and how we live and act in it. To introduce this account of “fitness,” I offer definitions and timelines of usage for the terms “fit,” “fittest,” and “unfit” in order to make visible the changes over time. In concert with these etymological notes, I offer examples from the literature of the period, beginning not at its conception but instead at its conclusion, at a point when the labels “the fit” and “the unfit” appear in their concretized, reified forms. Using a speech delivered by Francis Galton in 1908, I contextualize my broader argument before delving into the details. As noted in the introductory chapter, Galton was known as the “the father of the eugenics movement,” a brilliant if misguided scientist and social thinker whose theories of human inheritance arguably did more for the science of heredity than anyone of his time. Then, in order to illuminate the contrast between Galton’s treatment of hereditary “fitness” in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and earlier seventeenth and eighteenth century theories that inform it, I go back in time to the

language of early theories of “degeneracy” that serve as foundations for Galton’s definition of “the unfit.” Although Galton questioned some of the evidence supporting these theories, he did retain the language and the moral righteousness of his predecessors, both of which figure in the rhetorics of the eugenics movement and definitions of “fitness.” Next, moving forward chronologically, I bridge the gulf between these two periods with a discussion of the language of nineteenth-century hereditary theory and “natural selection” by examining the work of Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, and economist William Rathbone Greg and the changes in definitions of “fit” that occur during this period. I close this chapter by returning to Galton and to social thinker Henry Chapin in order to reveal the interweaving of discourses of degeneracy, heredity, “fitness,” and eugenics.

“A stop should be put to the production of families of children likely to include degenerates.”25 In one of his final public appearances before his death in 1911, a frail but passionate Francis Galton spoke in London before the newly-formed Eugenics Education Society on the subject of his life and his life’s work: eugenics, heredity, and the possibility of race betterment. The speech, which took place in June of 1908, was reprinted the next day in the Westminster Gazette, giving Galton the public readership he had long wanted for his science of eugenics. According to Galton’s definition that June day, eugenics was a practical science that could “improve the inborn qualities of a race; … [and] develop them to the utmost advantage” through selective breeding and reproduction (Galton “Address”). Galton and his eugenicist peers believed that the human race (in particular, the Anglo-Saxon population of England) might evolve into a more intelligent, more robust, more civilized species adopting the same techniques of artificial selection that breeders and gardeners use to bring out particular characteristics and traits. Throughout his lifetime, Galton prepared and delivered many presentations on the subject of inheritance. However, this lecture in particular highlights two of Galton’s most troubling contributions to the history of hereditary theory and to science in general: the yoking together of Darwin’s theories of natural selection and eugenics, and the belief that some individuals are more “fit” for reproduction than others. When Galton published his first essay on the subject of inheritance, “Hereditary Talent and Character,” in 1865, scientists, theologians, philosophers and social thinkers alike were still

25 Galton, Francis. “Address on Eugenics.” The Westminster Gazette. June 25, 1908.

debating the merits of his cousin Charles Darwin’s 1859 publication On the Origin of Species (hereafter, Origin). In Origin, and to an even greater degree in Descent of Man (1871), Darwin presented his theory of evolution, a complex framework of ideas to explain variations in all living organisms both over time and as the result of geological and environmental changes. Most important to the development of eugenics and inheritance as a scientific theory was the notion that evolution was progressive and ameliorative, and that, through natural selection, the organisms best adapted to an environment (the “fittest”) would survive and reproduce. As Galton explained, even scientists who accepted Darwin’s evolutionary theory were hesitant to apply his concept of natural selection to humans. In his own work, and in this lecture, Galton challenged the belief that men were equal or “masters of their own fate,” performing study after study on the appearance of various traits in successive generations. In “Hereditary Talent and Character,” for example, he addressed the transmission of mental ability, claiming that sons of intelligent, successful men were statistically more likely to be intelligent and successful themselves. In essays and publications that followed, Galton revised and reiterated the same thesis and, over the next 40 years, his theories of inheritance (both mental and physical) gained gradual acceptance in the scientific community. Darwin may have been responsible for the suggestion of human inheritance, but Galton deserves credit for its development and subsequent popularity.26 The notion that all human traits and characteristics are innate rather than learned (the familiar “Nature vs. nurture” argument) begins here, with Francis Galton. With this concept clear to his audience, Galton turns his lecture to eugenics and the drawbacks of charity and social services, which he believed worked in opposition to the “laws” of natural selection. Charity, Galton reasoned, allowed individuals and groups who might not otherwise survive as a result of “natural selection” (the poor, the diseased, the disabled) to exist and reproduce; instead of being eliminated like other species that could not adapt to changes in their environments, these individuals were offered aid and assistance that extended their lives. This belief emerges in connection with another concern of Galton and his peers: the problem of “degeneracy.” Described as an all-encompassing decline of civilization, degeneracy was believed to account for increases in crime, insanity, poverty, and perversions, as well as

26 Galton is also responsible for introducing statistics, correlation, and quantification to biology and natural sciences, a connection that forever changed both fields. See Donald MacKenzie’s Statistics in Britain, 1865-1930 and Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man for excellent discussions of Galton’s contributions to these fields.

decreases in civility, propriety, and the birthrate of upper- and upper-middle class British citizens. The problem baffled scientists and social thinkers who, in light of Darwin’s progressive evolutionary theories, could not reconcile what they perceived to be a regression of civilization. If natural selection meant “survival of the fittest,” they wondered, why was degeneracy on the increase? Why weren’t the inferior qualities associated with degeneracy “weeded out” through evolution? Galton surmised that charitable assistance saved those who would otherwise perish in the struggle to survive. In keeping with the idea that science and modernization were panacea for all of society’s ills, Galton believed that the science of “race betterment” could eliminate degeneracy. What England needs, Galton explains, is a more eugenical approach to politics and social reform: A considerable part of the huge stream of British charity furthers, by indirect and unsuspected ways, the production and support of the Unfit. No one can doubt the desirability of money and moral support, now often bestowed on harmful forms of charity, being directed to the opposite result, namely, to the production of the Fit. (“Address,” capitalization in original) Galton’s argument would have resonated with his audience, especially those versed in the current literature on heredity and inheritance; because human characteristics were by then considered innate and therefore transmittable to offspring by parents, no amount of nurture could improve on what Nature had provided. And rather than offer specific examples of individuals who did and did not deserve such charity, Galton invoked Darwin’s metaphor for natural selection to distinguish between two types of people—“the Fit” and “the Unfit”—as embodiments of the phrase “survival of the fittest.”27 This use of nouns to define types of individuals enacts what Kenneth Burke calls “entitlement,” a process by which a word “sums up” a complex or abstract idea (361). According to Burke, “entitling…prepares for the linguistic shortcut whereby we can next get ‘universals’…,” which in turn serve as “receptacles of personal attitudes and social ratings” (361). In this case, Galton employed the term “the Unfit” to define the human embodiment of social, moral, economic, and physical transgressions he hoped to eliminate through his science of eugenics. And because Galton wore the mantle of progressive science and social reform, his

27 I use the proper nouns “the Fit” and “the Unfit” when referring directly to Galton’s use of the labels; when discussing the notion of “fitness” in general, I use “the fit” and “the unfit.”

definitions entered the discourse with all of the power and prestige associated with other philosophies of its kind. His language choices echo throughout the scientific and lay communities throughout the first quarter of the twentieth century as “linguistic shortcuts” that sustain the mistaken belief that “fitness” is an essential, fixed quality that can be defined and universalized. Discourse theory and rhetorical theory tend to give short shrift to the subject of definition; when addressed at all, definition is usually presented as part of a discussion of logic or as an introduction to metaphysical issues of “reality” and the “essence” of a thing.28 For example, Plato often incorporates arguments about definition in his Socratic dialogues: the question “What is X?” is at the heart of these disputes. However, as the epigraph at the opening of this chapter suggests, we must consider arguments using definition as support as well as the use of definitions as arguments themselves.29 According to Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, even logicians fail to engage in deeper discussions of definition: they suggest that most “continue to operate within the framework of the classical dichotomy between real and nominal definitions, the former being regarded as propositions which may be either true or false, and the latter as purely arbitrary” (211). That is, they debate whether or not a definition represents the “essence” of X (a “real” definition) or merely describes the way the word X is used (a nominal definition). The tendency to trust the veracity of a given fact or definition or, when in doubt, to seek the dictionary to resolve a definitional dispute is not uncommon. In Defining Reality: Definitions and the Politics of Meaning, Edward Schiappa revisits the role of definition in discourse and its participation in the construction of our realities, a position he acknowledges operates in contradistinction to these traditional views of definition. According to Schiappa, rather than providing language users with “strictly factual” accounts of what is, definitions are dynamic, persuasive, powerful, rhetorical (5, my emphasis). The decision to accept or reject a definition is, Schiappa argues, a decision to accept or reject a version of reality, a system of knowledge, and the consequences of acting on that reality. At the very least, “standard definitions represent temporary agreements of an audience as to how

28 This statement is not meant to infer that definition is never addressed in theories of discourse and/or rhetoric. Many rhetoricians and scholars have taken up the subject—Aristotle (Posterior Analytics), Plato (especially in Socratic dialogues), Cicero (De Inventione) are only a few—however, the argument that a definition can be persuasive was not developed until 1938 by C. L. Stevenson. With few exceptions (Burke, Perelman and Olbrechts- Tyteca, Richard Robinson, and, most recently, Edward Shiappa), this position remains quite under-represented. 29 I follow Schiappa’s pattern of italics in order to emphasize the subtle differences between these uses of definition.

particular words are to be understood” (Schiappa “Arguing” 404). As such, definitional disputes exist at the foundation of many of our most pressing social dilemmas, their outcomes potentially affecting the health and livelihood of human beings, the environment, our government, and international relationships. For example, responses to questions such as “What is a recession?” “What is life?” “What is death?” can have an immediate and critical impact, as evidenced by our current housing market and economic woes, recent attempts to revise to Roe v. Wade, and the Terri Schiavo case. Definitions are especially persuasive in the realm of science, where language use is believed to be at its most objective. When we consider the question, “What is gold?” for example, the answer seems immune to debate: “an element with atomic number 79” (Kripke qtd. in Schiappa Defining 70). However, as Schiappa notes, we tend to forget that the periodic table (and the concepts of electrons, protons, and atomic elements on which it rests) is itself a human construct. In the discourse of scientists, as in all other discursive communities, language sorts the world into “relevant” but not “natural” categories. Language is, after all, arbitrary. Schiappa notes: “what ought to count as X for a particular language community is a normative and prescriptive question; what we consider X ‘really’ to be is the result of our answer, not its cause” (Defining 71). Thus, when Francis Galton—respected scientist, pioneer of hereditary theory, father of eugenics—used a noun like “the Unfit” to define and stand in for individuals he (and others like him) perceived to embody degeneracy, the label seemed to contain the “true” nature of what it meant to be “unfit,” rather than Galton’s own opinions or beliefs. As a result, he not only affected the discourse of heredity; he presented a “reality” of social and civic worth that lingers in our collective consciousness to this day. Moreover, Galton’s use of “the Unfit” as a decidedly vague definition also reveals the work of an enthymeme, an informal syllogism that requires the audience to infer or assume part of the argument, which is missing. While a traditional logical syllogism contains two stated premises and leads to a conclusion, an enthymeme contains only one premise and a conclusion; the second premise is unstated.30 In the Rhetoric, Aristotle describes an enthymeme as a “rhetorical syllogism,” one based in opinion and therefore useful for persuasion (1357a 15-33). In this way, Galton’s argument might read: “Charity, welfare, and social services are problematic

30 The most common example of a logical syllogism is: “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Socrates is mortal.” An enthymeme, on the other hand, might read: “Socrates is virtuous, for he is wise.” In the enthymeme, the logic rests on the assumption that wise men are necessarily virtuous.

because they assist “the Unfit” and enable these individuals to survive where they should perish.” The enthymeme’s conclusion “charity is bad,” and its major premise “the unfit survive because of charity,” rest on the unstated assumption “‘the Unfit’ should not survive or exist.” Entailed in this assumption are several other unstated premises or warrants, including the idea that people can actually be categorized as “fit” or “unfit,” that anyone who requires assistance (at any time) is necessarily “unfit,” that helping others operates in opposition to natural selection, improving the “race,” or evolutionary theory as Darwin present it. However, more important to this discussion is Galton’s failure to clearly define “unfit” for his audience. As a result, the audience can fill in whatever qualities they themselves feel represent or signal “unfitness.” The reasoning supporting Galton’s argument is supplied by his audience, each member to their own prejudices and biases, “the Unfit” thus becoming Burkean “receptacles of personal attitudes and social ratings” (361). Schiappa describes our tendency to accept definitions uncritically as our “natural attitude” toward definition, “the often unspoken and unexamined belief that definitions unproblematically refer both to the nature of X and to how the word X is used” (Defining 7). For example, our definition of the word “red” does not reflect an essential “redness”; rather, it refers to our use of the term to denote a particular color. However, our “natural attitude” muddies this distinction: we believe that a rose is “red” because of an essential redness when in fact we’ve used the word to label a particular color of rose. In the same way, when we hear or use the terms “unfit” or “fit,” we may not mean to imply an innate or hereditary “unfitness,” but the association exists nonetheless. As Carlson points out, the term “the unfit” “evoke[s] an image of physically and morally weak people associated with society’s failures” (9). As I demonstrate in subsequent chapters, the definitions of “fitness”—constituted through assumptions about “the Unfit” and the ways the word “unfit” is used—have material, life-changing effects on those the term defines. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn notes that histories of science often impose an artificial order on the past; in their efforts to present a clear chronology of events and “discoveries,” historians and scientists tend to fabricate a cumulative, progressive account of science.31 In fact, histories of science are messy—dates overlap or do not jibe, feedback loops

31 Kuhn highlights the messiness of histories of science to challenge the way we understand science and scientific progress itself. My aims are not quite so high. I seek only to make visible the role of definition in scientific

between scientists merge, subtle revisions appear in later editions of work, language usage changes—and this chapter on definitions and language use is no exception. Rather than produce a year-by-year account of changes in the lexicon, I select examples of what Schiappa calls “definitive discourse,” discourse that defines and “stipulates a view of reality” (xi). In addition, I track the ways these definitions operate rhetorically: insofar as definitions are themselves arguments for a particular worldview, the “hardening” of what it means to be “fit” persuades language users that the label “the unfit” refers to the nature of the individual rather than the current pattern of usage. These increasingly “real” definitions, coupled with the ever- strengthening belief that all human characteristics are innate, permitted the widespread acceptance of “negative eugenics,” the focused effort to prevent the reproduction of “the unfit.” The concept of “the unfit” became a reality that circulated beyond the academy and the laboratory and into the public forum, where it was rearticulated and redeployed for the next 40 years and beyond. As later chapters will demonstrate, these definitions of fitness shaped and informed (and continue to do so) the debates about sterilization, birth control, assisted reproductive technologies, and genetic screening.

Early Definitions of Degeneracy As Galton notes, before Darwin addressed the subject of inheritance, few scientists and social thinkers agreed on the sources or the means of transmission of particular traits. Most of the early theories focused on the problem of “degeneracies” in human beings, behaviors and characteristics associated with an absence of physical or mental ability and/or moral judgment. Scientists and physicians carried out studies on criminals and institutionalized subjects to determine the source of (what they believed to be) social ills such as epilepsy and deafness, insanity, criminal behavior, and pauperism. They circulated these theories within the scientific and medical communities in university lectures, case studies, pamphlets, and books. No one theory prevailed during this period; scientific findings and theories often contradicted one another, and the language used to explain degeneracy was ambiguous. As time passed, however, the definitions and descriptions contained fewer references to “moral” degeneracy and more to physical and mental degeneracies, prompting a change in the way human behavior was

discourse over a long period of time, necessarily requiring me to present a messy and partial history of eugenics and the language of fitness.

understood. In these definitions, the emphasis on degeneracy as a condition rather than a trait is especially noteworthy when placed in contrast with later hereditary theories. However, the definitions of “fitness” that would later appear in arguments for eugenics and Social Darwinism began much earlier in the language of religious and moral philosophies that identify “degeneracy” as a consequences of sin and vice. The surge of attention to “fitness” in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries belies a long history of concern about acceptable human behavior. As Elof Carlson suggests, transgressions that violated social, moral, or ethical codes—lying, prostitution, gambling, petty theft, insanity, sexual deviance—could be labeled as examples of degeneracy and the individual disciplined accordingly. For example, a disobedient son signaled an unwillingness to follow God’s laws, giving the community reason to cast him out or kill him as insurance against future evils (Carlson 18). Or, a child’s bad behavior might be described as “punishment for past ancestral sin,” placing the label on one or both of the parents (18). In other Biblical narratives, entire groups of people could be labeled “evil” by virtue of their failure to observe religious dictates and were then subsequently marked for extermination (19-20). However, as clear as the consequences were, the causes of such behavior were neither apparent nor definitive. The discourses of “fitness” and degeneracy shifted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as scientists and social thinkers looked to the body and to the natural world for more insight. While moral codes remained in the literature to define appropriate behaviors, the discourse became more “scientific” as more attention went to discussions of physical, physiological, economic, and mental degeneration. For example, the use of both religious and scientific language to define the “sin” of “self-pollution” blurs the line between science, medicine, and morality.32 Carlson highlights the work of Leopold Deslandes (1796 – 1850), a French physician whom Carlson credits for the first scientific discussion of onanism. According to Deslandes, onanism not only depletes the body of seminal fluid and threatens the mental

32 In The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault identifies the practice of “exhaustive description” that emerged in the scientific community during the 19th century as part of a larger effort to represent disease scientifically. He writes: “[d]escriptive rigour will be the result of precision in the statement and of regularity in the designation (114). As such, scientific (especially medical) discourse becomes a “measured language”: it measures and is itself precise and measured. Furthermore, by using a “constant, fixed vocabulary,” a description “authorizes comparison, generalization, and establishment within a totality” (114). Foucault highlights this shift as one that enabled the medical community to move beyond “observation” and into the realm of “prediction,” because in perceiving a particular sign or symptom, the clinician had description/diagnosis at the ready. As we will see, as descriptions of degenerate behavior become more precise, the ability of physicians, clinicians, psychologist and eugenicists to diagnosis one as “degenerate” increases.

health of the subject by causing shame and anti-social behavior. In an 1839 publication On Onanism, he explains that “Young men who previously showed considerable vivacity of mind and aptitude for study, become, after being addicted to this habit, stupid, and incapable of applying themselves” (Deslandes qtd. in Carlson 27). In addition, the abuser “turns from the gaze of those around him…ashamed of himself” (27). In this description, both the behavior and its effects signal degeneracy—the sin of masturbation is coupled with the threat of waning mental aptitude—and it quickly became known as the first “unfit” behavior to directly affect one’s physiology.33 Furthermore, Deslandes’ emphasis on the subject’s inability to “apply himself” anticipates Herbert Spencer’s concerns about civic worth and quality of character, both of which emerge in later definitions of what it means to be “fit.” When Galton referred to “vague and confused” theories of descent, he may have had in mind several descriptions of degeneracy published in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Many theorists incorporated then relatively novel language about evolution into their scholarship on degeneracy. For example, one early theorist, Benedict Morel (1809-1873), studied the effects of toxic environments on mental illness. In his search for the sources of insanity and other perceived mental degeneracies, he researched both the family histories and the living conditions of his subjects. He determined that chronic illnesses such as tuberculosis or syphilis and toxins such as alcohol or ergot led to degeneracy, which was then transmitted to one’s offspring in increasingly potent forms. Morel defines degeneracy as a morbid deviation from an original type […] contain[ing] transmissible elements of such a nature that anyone bearing in him the germs becomes more and more incapable of fulfilling his function in the world, and mental progress, already checked in his own person, finds itself menaced also in his descendants. (Morel qtd in Carlson 40) This definition presents several overlapping discourses of degeneracy—the problem of devolution over generations, the inheritability of degenerate behaviors, the connection between mental function and depravity—as well as the role of family history and environment. The fact that these discourses are emphasized instead of earlier moral and religious discourse illustrates a

33 Fears about the physiological effects of masturbation continued well into the 20th century and are referenced today, if only in jest. For example, the idea that one might go blind from too much self-stimulation circulates in movies and in the conversations of children and adolescents. However, jokes like these have their roots in the same serious beliefs that brought us Kellogg’s cereal, widespread circumcision, and occasional castration.

disassociation between moral failures and transgressions caused by mental disturbance or disease. Though the language of traits, genes, and heredity did not yet exist as we now know it, Morel’s “transmissible elements” suggests that degeneracy is hereditary, something passed on within families. In addition, as attention shifts from moral to social and mental inadequacies, the Victorian fixation with usefulness also appears: in their failure to be productive, or of sound mind, these individuals are degenerates because they cannot “fulfill [their] function in the world.”34 It is also worth noting that responses to Morel’s findings reflect a shift in beliefs about inherent degeneracy. Despite Morel’s convictions about environmental causes, Carlson shows that Morel’s readers and colleagues did not always agree that improvements in living conditions or other changes in public health administration could eliminate degeneracy. Perhaps informed by Morel’s own belief that victims of these illnesses and their offspring would eventually die off, these later readers saw no reason to act on his calls for education and awareness (Carlson 41). Although these definitions do not always denote an inherent depravity, the language choices made by these theorists do imply that something within these individuals accounts for their behavior, regardless of the source. In many cases, physicians and scientists speculate on the ways these characteristics can be transmitted from parent to offspring, providing a discursive groundwork for Galton and his eugenicist peers. In addition, this series of statements about degeneracy operates as an example of a “dissociative definition,” or a definition that “claim[s] to furnish the real, true meaning of the concept as opposed to its customary or apparent usage” (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 444). Considered in this way, the idea that degeneracy was inherent rather than environmental seems to operate as a scientific “revision” of an earlier, less informed description of degeneracy. According to Perelman and Olbrects-Tyteca, dissociative definitions work by dividing a concept or term into two parts, one of which the audience will find more appealing. Morel’s audience, as well as social theorists concerned with what they perceived as an increase in “degeneracy,” would have found the emphasis on heritability more in line with their beliefs. Emerging theories of heredity and early evolutionary theories placed more emphasis on nature of nurture and this shift, coupled with an increasingly secular view and a general disregard for the role of charity

34 In a later section, I address Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics, a treatise on happiness, usefulness, and social responsibility. Morel’s statement echoes Spencer’s criteria for happiness in “gratified faculties” published seven years earlier.

and welfare to improve living conditions, would have encouraged scientists to choose one over the other. This emerging definition of degeneracy as an inherent “deviation,” a behavior caused by a “transmissible element,” challenged the antiquated, non-scientific opinions about the sources of immoral or socially-unacceptable behavior at a time when scientific theory seemed the way to solve social problems and to explain the natural world. According to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, these newer definitions work to distance a concept and its accepted definition in any number of ways: by providing a novel usage, by claiming a more common usage unreliable, by challenging the reality prescribed by a current definition, or by extending one element of a definition by playing down another. (444) In this example, we see that Morel’s discussion of degeneracy calls into question a reality wherein particular behaviors signify moral transgressions and instead offers a new set of causes in environmental and inheritable elements. Edward Shiappa explains that when one offers an alternative definition, dissociation is “unavoidable” because “there are now two competing claims about what is the ‘essence’ or ‘real nature’ of X” (37). This type of dissociation occurs throughout the discursive history of degeneracy and “fitness” as each new theory claims to have determined the “real, true” meaning of the words. We can see another example of dissociative definition in the work of Henry Maudsley, who also sought to determine the sources of degeneracy by using his patients to study insanity and “idiocy” (Maudsley 42). Like Morel, Maudsley had a large readership and his lectures and writings were extremely influential. In 1870, he presented a series of lectures to the Royal College of Physicians (later published as a three-part book entitled Body and Mind) defining mental disorders as both innate and transmissible, “something in the nervous organization of the person, some native peculiarity,” that can pass from parent to child (43-44). Maudsley defines this condition as a “hereditary neurosis,” borrowing language from Darwin to argue that these degeneracies are not accidental but instead “come to pass, as every other event in Nature does, by natural law” (42).35 Maudsley also uses Morel’s family histories, along with his own observations, to cobble together a definition of “idiocy” that later reappears in discussions of feeblemindedness and “the Unfit” (a subject I address more completely in Chapter Three). For

35 Maudsley cites Darwin several times in Body and Mind, at one point stating that his own work might be useful “in support of Mr. Darwin’s views,” which he quite clearly understands and employs in his discussion of degeneracy.

example, Maudsley’s summary of one family’s history of “stupidity and family idiocy” includes conditions such as “immorality,” “depravity,” “moral degeneration,” “hereditary drunkenness,” and “maniacal attacks” in the first two generations alone (45). This summary aligns with Maudsley’s claim that a loss of “moral sense” serves as an early indicator of mental degeneracy; however, he insists that the source of the behavior is hereditary, which in turn gives strength to the emerging dissociative definition. And like Morel’s, Maudsley’s audience would have appreciated the version of the definition that highlighted the hereditary nature of insanity. It seems wise to pause here in order to highlight this subtle shift in the way “fitness” and degeneracy was being defined. In early definitions and descriptions, the nature of moral transgressions was clearly articulated even if causes for the behavior were vague. Increasingly, descriptions of specific transgressions disappear and more general terms such as “depravity” and “immorality” replace them as stand-in terms for any socially unacceptable behavior. At the same time, these vague signs of degeneracy were being attributed to an inheritable (though not fully understood) series of “elements.” This shift illustrates one of the most injurious aspects of eugenic definitions of “fitness”: their ambiguity. While all definitions are arbitrary, some are more concrete than others; defining a “fork” as “a flat, hand-held metal tool with two, three, or four tines used to spear pieces of food” is clearly less open to interpretation than “a metal tool for spearing.” In the same way, defining “degeneracy” using specific examples precludes its widespread application or incorrect use—“disobeying one’s father” or “chronic drunkenness” limits the number of individuals who can be labeled “depraved” in a way that not “fulfilling [one’s] function in the world” does not. In addition, these vague definitions serve as unstated warrants or premises on which rhetorical syllogisms can be built. For example, an argument about the implicit degeneracy of those who do not appear to “function in the world” rests on assumptions about what qualifies as “fulfillment,” what it means to “function,” and what, exactly, makes up “the world.” As I will show in Chapter Three, this type of ambiguity proves to be one of the key features in the campaign for eugenic sterilization. Maudsley’s physical descriptions of human degeneracy are similarly ambiguous and confusing; most compare his patients to apes or other wild animals with “filthy habits of all kinds”—“the savage snarl, the destructive disposition, the obscene language” (50-51). In this case, the language of Maudsley’s “physiological laws of evolution” presages Galton’s discussions of inheritance and character. Using descriptions of an evolutionary continuum of

development from the ape to the “well-developed European,” Maudsley argues that “unfavorable ancestral influences may occasion defects in the constitution or composition of the mind-centres which we are yet unable to detect” (57). For Maudsley and many others, these physical characteristics and behaviors could reveal degeneracy when no other symptoms existed. He explains [W]hen nothing abnormal whatever may be discoverable in the brains of persons who have a strong hereditary tendency to insanity, they often exhibit characteristic peculiarities in their manner of thought, feeling, and conduct, carrying in their physiognomy, bodily habit, and mental disposition, the sure marks of their evil heritage. (58) I quote here at length to underscore the double-bind for those individuals deemed “degenerate,” as well as the flexibility of the definition created by this description. On the one hand, as noted above, signs of mental disorder (however loosely defined—“depravity,” “immorality,” “drunkenness”) can define one as insane, idiotic, or degenerate, which in turn increasingly suggested an innate, “evil heritage.” Maudsley’s record of these peculiarities becomes part of a description of degeneracy—visual and linguistic confirmation of the label—and as a result, supports the idea that certain behaviors point to an inborn, transmissible problem. Recalling Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s discussion of dissociative definitions which “claim to furnish the real, true meaning of the concept” (444), these “pecularities of thought, feeling, and conduct” reveal an individual’s “true” depravity even as they appear “normal.” Perelman and Olbrechts- Tyteca also claim that a dissociative definition occurs “when the introduction of a new characteristic becomes the criterion for the correct usage of the concept” (445). In this case, outward signs of a mental disorder become the necessary definition for degeneracy, even when the brain itself appears normal. Using Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca’s example as a model, we might read Maudsley thus: “A person is ‘degenerate’ when he/she shows signs of a mental disorder” (445).36 On the other hand, because Maudsley and others define degeneracy as hereditary,

36 Again, Foucault’s discussion of the clinical gaze is illuminating here: in a chapter entitled “Seeing and Knowing,” Foucault describes the way the distinction between seeing and knowing was erased by tracing a shift from an observing gaze that merely surveys a patient to one that diagnosis as it scrutinizes. The observing gaze allows a truth to be revealed: “the clinical gaze has the paradoxical ability to hear a language as soon as it perceives a spectacle” (108). This gaze redirects the attention of the physician from the individual as a subject to an object, placing emphasis on the disease or the diagnosis rather than the individual as a whole.

individuals with a family history become targets for extra surveillance and scrutiny, using equally ambiguous criteria, regardless of their clinical symptoms. Even the most innocuous physical characteristics or habits could be used to diagnose an individual as “degenerate.” Thus, a woman suffering from post-partum depression, or a man who carries himself in a manner considered more “feminine” than “masculine,” might be defined as degenerate when their family histories are taken into account by their physicians. The family history, then, authorizes a diagnosis, enabling physicians to apply the label to just about any behavior they found questionable. This same method of classification occurs in later definitions of “fitness,” especially in descriptions of families such as the Jukes and the Ishmaelites as created by American eugenicists.37 These discussions of degeneracy and heredity were not confined to scientific texts and pamphlets; they also circulated in the popular literature of the period. Max Nordau, a physician in his own right, incorporated the work of Morel, Maudsley, and Lombroso in his book Degeneration, a critique of the moral and social degeneracy he saw around him. Nordau used the phrase “destroyers of culture and civilization” to define degeneracy and accused individuals with mental impairments, criminals, and those who abused drugs and alcohol of contributing to the “mass degeneracy” he perceived (Carlson 41). Emile Zola also incorporated the work of Morel, Lombroso, and Maudsley into his fiction. Carlson notes Zola’s clear understanding of the hereditary theory of the time: “[Zola] recognized the skipping of generations, the disappearances and reappearances of characters, the amalgamation of traits, and the strange combination of traits that prevail in a careful study of a kindred” (Carlson 49). In this sense, Zola presented, in fictional form, the current beliefs about inheritance and hereditary theory to both scientists and non-scientists alike. For the scientists of the time, these definitions represented real insight into issues of heredity and inheritance and, taken together, they give modern readers a sampling of the language and ideas, the scientific discourse, in use in discussions of degeneracy and fitness. They also reveal a keen interest in the problem of degeneracy. As Diane Paul notes, “the specter of evolutionary degeneration haunted middle-class Victorians” in the form of overcrowded cities, ever-expanding slums, and uneven birth rates between poor and middle-class families (6-7).

37 Many American eugenicists also depended on Caesar Lombroso’s definition of Homo deliquens to classify “the unfit.” Lombroso described his “criminal man” as a savage, primitive version of humankind whose inherent depravity could be confirmed by the shape of the skull and the size of the brain (Gould 142-173).

These theories and statements about degeneracy only supported what many Victorians already believed about the world around them during the mid-nineteenth century. As the anxiety about degeneracy increased, these definitions gained legitimacy and were subsequently circulated with a greater degree of authority.

The Reification of “Survival of the Fittest,” “Fit,” and “Unfit. I now turn to the discourse of evolutionary theory and highlight the impact of the work of Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, William Rathbone Greg, and Henry Chapin as a way to contextualize the idea of “fitness” entailed in the phrase “survival of the fittest.” In doing so, I surface the manner in which earlier theories of degeneracy mingle with and inform what I have termed “hereditary fitness.” To that end, I begin by examining the entries for “fit” and “fitness” in the Oxford English Dictionary in order to offer a chronological account of the changes in each definition. I then illustrate the manner in which “fittest” shifted from a metaphor for natural selection into an absolute descriptor used to mark human quality and ability. Because the language of evolutionary theory, and in particular Darwin’s discussion of “natural selection,” does not convey a precise set of characteristics necessary for the success of a given species, the ambiguous language lends itself to a variety of social Darwinist and eugenic interpretations. As Diane Paul notes, “even though Darwin may have meant for “fitness” to mean “adaptability,” reified uses of “fitness” and “fittest” were circulating in Victorian and post-Civil War America and “came quickly to imply that the socially successful deserved the rewards of their position” (“Fitness” 113). And, as the somewhat indefinite signifier “fittest” takes on then-current ideals of physical and mental ability and moral virtue, its opposite, “the unfit,” absorbs much of the meaning already imbued in the concept of degeneracy. In these examples, definitions for the concept of “fitness” and, more importantly, who qualified as “fit” or “unfit,” were stipulated by scientists and social reformers concerned with rising rates of purported degeneracy. In his comprehensive book on definition, Richard Robinson distinguishes and classifies four distinct types of definition: “real,” “word-word,” “lexical,” and “stipulative,” the latter two being variations of the most common category of “word-thing” definitions and relevant to this discussion.38 According to Robinson, a lexical definition (sometimes referred to as a “reportive”

38 Robinson breaks definitions down thus: “real” definitions (concerned with the “essence” of a thing in general; what X is) and “nominal” (concerned with things in particular, such as symbols; ) are the two major types. Nominal

definition) refers to “the actual way in which some actual word has been used by some actual persons” (35). Most standard dictionaries offer lexical definitions, usually in order of the word’s most to least popular meaning, and some dictionaries, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, provide chronological histories of a word’s usage over time. As Robinson, Schiappa, and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca note, most definitional disputes occur when two or more meanings vie for legitimacy as a lexical definition. The dispute arises when a person or group attempts to replace a current lexical usage with a stipulative definition, described by Robinson as an “explicit and selfconscious [sic] … act of assigning an object to a name (or a name to an object)” (61). Often used in technical, scientific, legal and legislative discourse, a stipulative definition imposes a specific meaning to a word in order to clarify or stabilize its use or convey a specialized connotation of that word.39 We can see the appearance of a stipulative definition of “fit” emerging in the Oxford English Dictionary. In the entry for “fit” as an adjective, the first definition (1.a.) reads: “well adapted or suited to the conditions or circumstances of the case, answering the purpose, proper, or appropriate” and the first use is dated 1440 (1010).40 The OED offers a series of examples of usage for this definition of “fit,” the last in 1875, verifying its status as the most common lexical definition until that point. However, an entry for the absolute form of the adjective (1.b.) is also provided directly below the first meaning, with a note that reads “esp. in survival of the fittest.” In this second listing, Herbert Spencer’s usage from Principles of Biology (1867) is noted: “by the continual survival of the fittest, such structures must become established” (1010).41 The

definitions can be further divided into “word-word” (definitions that use one word to explain another) and “word- thing” (definitions that offer a thing, event, situation, or example as identification.) As noted, the two variations of “word-thing” definitions are relevant here. 39 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s (1958) discussion of dissociative definitions nowhere incorporates Robinson’s concept of the stipulative definition (1950), though the concepts seem remarkably similar. Perelman and Olbrechts- Tyteca cite Charles Stevenson’s theory of “persuasive definitions” in order to explain the manner in which speakers “modify their descriptive meaning.” However, they note that such an effort may be “the result of an inner conviction which the speaker believes to conform to the reality of things” (447). This reading opens up the possibility of a speaker unintentionally creating a dissociative definition. Robinson’s stipulative definition, to my reading, implies an intentional act of redefinition. That is, for Robinson, the speaker knowingly presents a new definition, one that usually promotes a more technical, specialized meaning. Furthermore, on the subject of “technical” definitions, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca reveal some doubt about the influence of the new definition outside its sphere of usage, whereas Robinson allows that stipulative definitions can and do overtake lexical definitions. 40 According to the editor’s note, the adjective emerged before the first usage of the verb in 1574; in its earliest form as a verb, “fit” is defined “to be fit, seemly, proper or suitable” (1010). 41 Priniciples was first published in 1864; this citation is from a second edition. Also, Thomas Carlyle’s use of “fittest” in Past and Present (1843) aligns more closely to a personified, reified version of “fitness” than Spencer’s; the understood noun appears to be a person rather than a thing. He writes, “There is in every Nation and

second entry for “fit” as an adjective (2.a.) refers to social skills and manners and reads, “befitting the person or the circumstances, agreeable to decorum, becoming, convenient, proper, right” (1010). Like the first entry (1.a.), this entry denotes suitability and adaptability to circumstances, though in this case the emphasis is on social conventions. The electronic version of the OED also publishes updates to its entries online, many of which reflect a changing social consciousness about how our language is recorded and used. An additional entry for the adjective “fit” appears in a stipulative “biological” sense. The entry (1.c) reads “Biol. Hence of an organism: possessing fitness (see *FITNESS n. 1 c)” and marks the connection of the biological connotation of “fitness” to “adaptability” for the first time in 1911. The Encyclopedia Britannica receives credit for the first use of the term, published just three years after Galton’s 1908 speech. When we consider “fit” as an adjective, we see a variance in definition, one that brings a stipulative biological usage to the lexical definition pertaining to adaptability or suitability to circumstance. The entries for “fitness” also reveal a variance and the addition of a stipulative biological definition. In the OED entry for “fitness,” the first entry (1.a.) reads “the quality or state of being fit or suitable; the quality of being fitted, qualified, or competent. spec. the quality or state of being physically fit” (1011), connoting both suitability and health or physical fitness. Like the entry for “fit,” a second usage of “fitness” (2.) infers a suitability in social circumstances, reading “the quality or condition of being fit or proper, conformity with what is begin demanded by the circumstances; propriety” (1011). The “Addition Series” update offers another definition for “fitness” with the “Biol.” annotation (1.c) and reads “the quality of fulfilling the requirements of a particular environment for survival and reproduction; the capacity of an individual to survive and reproduce.” Interestingly, this entry is the only one labeled with a part of speech—a noun. Another quote by Herbert Spencer serves as an example of this usage of “fitness”: according to his Principles of Biology (1864), “the survival of the fittest must nearly always further the production of modifications which produce fitness.” Before moving into an analysis of these terms and their definitions as they construct meaning (and are, in turn, constructed) in the literature of social theory, evolutionary theory, and economics, allow me to summarize my argument to this point. In examining the entries of “fit”

Community a fittest, a wisest, bravest, best.” It stands to reason that Spencer would have read Carlyle, perhaps bringing a bit of this earlier usage into his discussion of adaptation.

as an adjective (used to describe a person or thing) and “fitness” (used to connote a quality of being fit), we see additional biologically-based definitions emerge in the lexicon. As “explicit and selfconscious [sic]” efforts to bring new meaning to the idea of “fitness,” these definitions stipulate a new, different way to understand what it means to be “fit” or to demonstrate “fitness” (Robinson 61). The following examples of definitive discourse illustrate not only the power of a stipulative definition to shape a lexical definition (especially as part of the day’s cutting edge science) but a smudging of the language of social and biological theories that paves way for social Darwinism and eugenics as well. As time passes, uses of “fit” and “fittest” to make clear the role of adaptation in the struggle to survive are replaced with uses that specify particular characteristics and traits. Furthermore, the latter gained popularity and enjoyed increased usage as the popularity of hereditary theories, and the anxiety about “degeneracy,” increased. The publication of Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics (1851) facilitated this change in meaning. Many of his publications on biology, social theory, and evolutionary theory epitomize the overlapping discourses of science, economics, and public policy in circulation at the time; a Rosetta stone of sorts, his views on social responsibility, sound health, and mental ability translated easily across disciplines. In Social Statics, for example, he concentrates on defining human happiness and its necessary conditions, a broad subject that lends itself to generalizations about ability, morality, society, and the value of work. Thus, while acknowledging that happiness is “relative,” Spencer nonetheless maintains that it “signifies a gratified state of all faculties” (Social 8). For Spencer, individuals who exercise their faculties to the fullest, who avoid the “discontent” of “insufficient” use, define happiness (8-9). The ambiguity of this definition plays a key role in Spencer’s philosophy of social “fitness,” which he reveals in a chapter entitled “The Evanescence [?Diminution] of Evil [sic].” According to Spencer, evil “results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions,” and can be eliminated when an organism’s “fitness for surrounding circumstances” undergoes appropriate alterations (28-29). With regard to human beings, he claims that the success of the social state depends on humans “becom[ing] fitted to” the current conditions of civilization and progress (31). In language that recalls Maudsley’s evolutionary continuum from “savage” to well-mannered European, Spencer locates the source of “the crimes and venalities we see around us” to humans’ “antecedent state,”

one that “clings to him, [leaving him] …unfit for the social state” (31).42 Here we see that Spencer’s use of the term “fitness” appears to align with the first OED entry: “the quality or state of being fit or suitable” to the conditions of a given environment (1010). Even his specific reference to humans offers no concrete descriptions of what it means to be “fit.” However, as Carlson notes, Spencer believed in “natural law” and felt people who could not adapt to their environments—the old, the weak, the infirm, the imperfect—should die off (Carlson 121). In addition, Spencer argued that philanthropy and charity worked against natural law, and when human sympathy interfered with the course of nature, he labeled it “pure evil” (Social 207). He states [Sympathy that works against natural law] favors the multiplication of those worst fitted for existence, and, by consequence, hinders the multiplication of those best fitted for existence—leaving, as it does, less room for them. (207) Taken together with Spencer’s philosophies of “happiness” and usefulness, a series of distinctions emerges between individuals Spencer perceived as fitted to the social state (of sound mind, able-bodied, morally upright) and those who were not (anyone unable to exercise their faculties to the fullest as the result of insanity, pauperism, vice, or degeneracy). As a result, lexical definitions of “fit” as “adaptative” begin to reveal some of the characteristics present in the biological (and later, eugenical) definition of “fitness.” This shift becomes clear in Spencer’s theory about then-current social ills and degeneracy: such “evils” occur because man’s “moral constitution” does not “fit him for his present state” (31). The sense of adaptability remains, but this usage seems to stipulate an alternative meaning of the concept of “fitness,” one that readers might accept as lexical despite its specialized undertones. Based on his earlier chapters about the importance of utility and progress, the evils of not “fitting into” a civilized society, and the role of charity and philanthropy in increasing the numbers of poor, weak, and imperfect, Spencer’s use of “worst fitted” and “best fitted” can hardly be read as references to organisms such as plants and lower animals. When Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” in his 1864 Principles of Biology (after reading Darwin’s Origin) to describe various criteria necessary to exist and prosper, his definition of “fit” shifted and the difference between the lexical definition and

42 In this example and all others, I maintain the gender-exclusive language of the authors and follow their pronoun usage for consistency. This practice in no way mirrors my own writing style or politics.

Spencer’s usage became even greater.43 As noted in the first chapter, Darwin incorporated the phrase “survival of the fittest” into the fifth edition of Origin in order to help his readers understand the work of natural selection. In a given environment and set of circumstances, he explained, the “fittest,” the most adaptable, for that particular environment will survive while those “less fit” will not.44 Moreover, Darwin insisted that his use of the term “selection” should not be inferred as a “conscious choice” performed by any individual or group, but should instead be understood as a metaphor for “nature’s power of selection.” He also underlined the role of chance and the random events that gave one species and advantage over the other. The “fittest” are not chosen, but are instead most suited and therefore endure where other species might not. Darwin also distinguishes between “survival of the fittest” as a natural occurrence and artificial selection as initiated by humans in the work of breeding animals and gardening. Darwin’s explanation of “natural selection” emphasizes the difference between man, who “selects for his own good” and nature, which is indiscriminate (65). By reiterating the disinterested, almost passive system of selection and the corresponding unintentional yet fortunate suitability of the species “selected” for survival, Darwin takes every opportunity to emphasize the common lexical definition of “fittest.” That is, when Darwin uses the term “fittest,” his definition corresponds to the lexical version (adaptability, suitability) rather than the stipulative definition that emphasizes particular characteristics of “fitness.” It was an economist, not a biologist or social theorist, who published the clearest connection between “fitness” in its lexical sense and in its emerging, stipulative biological sense. In his 1868 essay entitled “On the Failure of ‘Natural Selection’ in the Case of Man,” William Rathbone Greg presents a pointed critique of current social policies as they affected the work of natural selection. Greg’s work, published in Fraser’s Magazine one year before Darwin’s fifth edition of Origin in 1869, illustrates the already wide circulation of concepts like “fitness” and “natural selection.” The essay is noteworthy for many reasons: it represents the increasing overlap between scientific and social reform discourse (specifically biological and sociological);

43 Spencer wrote, “This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called ‘natural selection,’ or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life” (Principles). In a footnote, Carlson claims that Spencer’s use of “survival of the fittest” was more to “weed out the unfit or degenerate members of a species” as opposed to Darwin’s use as a metaphor for preserving and/or creating species (127). 44 According to Diane Paul, after the fifth edition was published, the phrases “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” are used interchangeably (113).

it presents a specific list of characteristics considered “fittest”; it exemplifies a growing concern about social welfare; and, most importantly, it frames “the struggle to survive” as one that occurs between individuals of the same species, an argument that presages a key claim of the eugenics movement.45 Greg’s major concern was the manner in which both fortune and charitable assistance had eliminated the ability of Nature to manage the population and quality of human beings. Blaming “social progress” for the blocking “natural selection,” he explains the indisputable effect of the state of social progress and culture we have reached […] is to counteract and suspend the operation of that righteous and salutary law of ‘natural selection’ in virtue of which the best specimens of the race—the strongest, the finest, the worthiest—are those which survive, surmount, become paramount, and take precedence. (356) Blending the discourse of evolutionary theory and social reform, Greg argues that both inheritance and welfare impede the “natural laws” of selection. Without the money they have to assist them in times of sickness and disease, many members of the upper classes would not survive or continue their family line. Likewise, the poor and infirm who receive assistance in the form of social welfare and charity are able to thrive and reproduce despite disease and hardship. Greg asserts that the theory of “survival of the fittest” fails when applied to humans. Furthermore, he presents a clear definition of what it means to be “fit” as he identifies his chief concerns about charity. In the first part of his definition, he claims that it is not the “fittest”— “the strongest, the healthiest, the most perfectly organized; [the] men of the finest physique, the largest brain, the most developed intelligence”—who reproduce generation after generation (359). Instead, he notes, [the] thousands with tainted constitutions, with frames weakened by malady or waste, with brains bearing subtle and hereditary mischief in their recesses, are suffered to transmit their terrible inheritance of evil to other generations, and to spread it through a whole community” (359).

45 Much of the literature on the eugenics movement highlights its discrimination on the basis of “race” as ethnicity or country of origin; that is, eugenicists labeled people of color, people from non-northern European countries, and/or people who practiced religions other than Christianity as “savage” or “uncivilized” races, which in turn marked them as “unfit” and not worthy of survival or reproduction. Greg’s essay posits competition between British citizens themselves, creating another set of qualities by which to distinguish between “fit” and “unfit”—the work of “race betterment” could also take place within “races.”

Greg’s detailed definitions of both “fittest” and “unfittest” construct a new, science-based reality about human beings by providing examples of natural selection as he perceived it operating in humans. It bears notice that Greg’s examples of “fittest” in humans are decidedly vague when compared to those Darwin provides; Greg offers no mention of environment, climate, or resources and instead reinscribes the elitist, racist, and ableist norms of the late Victorian period.46 In giving voice to an idea that, until that time, had lingered in the margins of other sociological readings of biological and evolutionary theories, the essay authorized the definitions as legitimate. More importantly, the words Greg chooses to define “unfittest” come entailed with meaning; like other terms, Greg’s contain unstated assumptions or warrants upon which larger arguments rest. “Tainted constitutions” recall Morel’s work on environmental poisons and transmissible diseases. Likewise, Greg’s emphasis on “subtle hereditary mischief” in the brains of individuals echoes Maudsley’s earlier fears about “unfavorable ancestral influences” that could be present but undetectable (Maudsley 57). Even a phrase such as “inheritance of evil” reminds readers of Biblical associations with degeneracy and sin. Greg’s audience might infer a loss of productivity or the sin of sloth in the “wasted frames” of these individuals (Greg 359). Of particular relevance to this project is Greg’s suggestion that these qualities or ills are not conditions but rather traits: innate, unchanging characteristics that rendered one destined for failure in the struggle to survive. In this way, Greg’s essay produced a new social knowledge through definition, a process that gave readers what Edward Schiappa describes as “a shared understanding among people about themselves…and how they ought to use the language” (Schiappa 3).47 Finally, Greg’s interpretation of “survival of the fittest” as a socio-economic struggle between the “fit” and the “unfit” represented a deviation from other readings; rather than describe the struggle as one that takes place between different species of animals and plants in nature, or between “civilized” and “uncivilized” nations of the world, Greg presented it as one that occurs within nations, within cities, within neighborhoods.48 Thus, stipulative definitions of

46 In his chapter on Natural Selection, Darwin identifies the specific characteristics that make an organism “fit” for its environment: “A structure used only once in an animal's life, if of high importance to it, might be modified to any extent by natural selection; for instance, the great jaws possessed by certain insects, used exclusively for opening the cocoon--or the hard tip to the beak of unhatched birds, used for breaking the eggs.” 47 Greg expanded on this essay when he included it in his book Enigmas of Life (1876). I chose to use this version in order to show exactly what readers of Fraser’s would have read in 1868, nine years after the first edition of Origin. 48 Diane Paul notes that although Greg believed that only members of the elite should have the right to reproduce, he also recognized that few of his peers would support such invasive governmental power (6). He saw welfare as

“fit” and “fitness,” which presented biologically-based description of what it means to survive, circulated with greater frequency and authority.

A Broader “Mismeasure” of Man In The Mismeasure of Man, his famous refutation of The Bell Curve, Stephen Jay Gould challenges the fallacy of biological determinism, a belief that “shared behavioral norms, and the social and economical differences between human groups—primarily races, classes, and sexes— arise from inherited, inborn distinctions and that society … [and that these norms are] an accurate reflection of biology” (52).49 In other words, biological determinism asserts that we are who we are based on our heredity; our place in society, our economic status, our physical and mental abilities, the way we look, feel, and live, all are determined by our genetic makeup50. Like Greta Jones’ assessment of the uses of natural selection for hegemonic purposes, Gould, too, notes the ways in which a “natural,” “scientific” philosophy such as biological determinism can be used by the powerful to maintain a position of authority. As a belief system based on “empirical” scientific evidence, it has been responsible for many of the most egregious examples of scientific racism, sexism, ableism, classism, and ethnic discrimination. Biological determinism has been used to support slavery, to argue for the superiority of men over women, to justify the Holocaust, to rationalize the use of intelligence testing, to deny the distribution of welfare. In Mismeasure of Man, Gould highlights two related fallacies—of reification and of ranking—that serve as support for a biologically deterministic reading of intelligence. Gould

further hampering the already too-slow process of “natural selection” that he hoped would eliminate the “unfit.” Without discounting the clearly racist and imperialist beliefs at play in a contest between “civilized” and “uncivilized” countries, it is nonetheless important to understand how Greg’s article changed the way “survival of the fittest” was interpreted. For example, responding to social issues such as poverty, welfare, mental disease, and disability would have earlier been regarded as necessary charity work—the duty of good government and good people. Greg’s publication encouraged readers to question the “good” being performed, if that good meant that those “unfit” for reproduction and survival could continue to do so. 49 Published in 1994, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve reexamines the connections between intelligence and class in America. One of the most controversial sections in the book argues for clear race-based differences in levels of intelligence. In the years following its publication, much of the data has been reassessed and the verity of the claims called into question. The most common complaint by critics was about the amount of statistical wrangling performed to make the differences between blacks and whites as stark as possible. 50 Although many scientists acknowledge the role of genes in some of our behaviors and traits, very few accept a “strong” biological determinist position wherein all of our traits are genetic in origin. The “nature vs. nurture” debate is seldom cast as an “either/or” in scientific discussions. In addition, research and study of the genome reveals a the continually changing and unpredictable nature of genetic material; expansion, deletion, and mutation provide constant variation.

explains that the fallacy of reification describes “our tendency to convert abstract concepts into entities (from the Latin res, or thing)” (“Mismeasure 56). This process permits the regrettable practice of using one word, “intelligence,” to define the broad and complex ways humans perceive, think about, react to, interact with, and understand the world. As a result, we tend to speak and think of intelligence not only as “unitary thing” (56), we also tend to value “book smarts” over other kinds of intelligences. In addition, as soon as intelligence becomes a thing, our next impulse is to locate, study, and characterize it, resulting in the second fallacy of ranking. Gould argues that scientists’ propensity to catalogue and order variations of type along a scale (especially during the late-nineteenth century) meant that “the measurement of intelligence [came to be seen] as a single number for each person” (56). Thus, the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test was (and continues to be) used to divide people into groups by number. These two fallacies also appear in the language of eugenics, especially negative eugenics, a subset of eugenics specifically interested in eliminating and/or prohibiting from reproduction those individuals deemed “unfit.”51 As I demonstrate in the next section as well as the following three chapters, once Galton’s reification of hereditary fitness gained popularity, particular conditions, behaviors, and qualities of human beings, once abstract, became fossilized and read as concrete traits and hereditary characteristics. Gould describes the mistaken equation of “heritable” and “inevitable” that most non-biologists create: “in our vernacular,” he explains, “‘inherited’ often means ‘inevitable,’” precluding the roles of both environmental conditions and gene activation and suppression (186). As I will show, Galton’s work solidifies this connection between “heritable” and “inevitable”—after his article entitled “Hereditary Talent and Characteristics,” for example, mental ability was no longer a variable quality that could change with education; instead, this “trait” was fixed and transmissible. That the scientists of this period had not yet discovered DNA and genetic material did not prevent them from speaking of these traits as physical entities transmitted through one’s “gemmules” or the “germ plasm.” In addition, this reification of the concept of hereditary fitness occurs alongside a corresponding hardening of definitions of “fit” and “unfit.” In this final section, I highlight Francis Galton’s role in reifying the abstract concept of “fitness”: his two terms, “the Fit” and “the Unfit,” become Burkean “entitlements,” linguistic shortcuts that serve “perfect forms” for describing and defining “fitness” in universal terms (Burke 361). Especially in the case of “the

51 In this chapter, I focus on reification alone.

unfit,” all of the “innateness” of degeneracy—the “inborn” traits associated with immorality, criminality, weakness, depravity, mental disability, physical difference—come to inhabit the term, which can then be used by those in power to label and define others. During the period between Galton’s first publication in 1856 and his death in 1911, the definition of “unfit” underwent a change that corresponds to shifting theories of heredity. The most popular and earliest definitions of “unfit” available in the OED connote an inappropriateness or failure to adapt—they read as the opposite of lexical definitions of “fit.” The first entry of “unfit” (1.a.) reads “Of things: Not fit, proper, or suitable for some purpose or end” (3504, my emphasis). Used to distinguish something as unsuitable, examples given are necessarily negative, but they highlight “unfit” as an adjective to describe bad timing, inappropriate language, or unsuitable materials for a given task. A second meaning (2.a.) reads “Of persons (or other agents): Not fitted, suited, or adapted for some end or action (3504). This usage does refer to people, but specifies an “unfitness” for a task or duty, not an inherent characteristic or quality. And while the last usage example for this meaning, dated 1882 (from a newspaper called The Nonconformist and Independent) reads “The survival of the unfittest, instead of the fittest,” it, too, serves as an adjective and does not incorporate specific characteristics (3504). Like entries for “fit” and “fitness,” this entry for “unfit” has been updated in the “Additions Series” online. An additional meaning (5.) is listed, emerging for the first time in 1912. Corresponding directly to Galton’s usage and labeled with an “n” for “noun,” it reads “A person whose mental or physical health falls below a desired standard” (“Unfit”). Two examples follow this definition, both of which clearly refer to eugenics-inspired beliefs about degeneracy and heredity. The first, from the Quarterly Review, reads “The statistics…showing the enormous number of ‘unfits’, made clear the havoc wrought by the modern city”; the second, from a 1925 edition of Scribner’s Magazine employs the term as part of a proposal for eugenics: “By cutting off the reproduction of these social unfits,…we can go so far.” Just one year after Galton’s death, the reification of the term is in circulation in public, non-scientific magazines. Before I close this chapter with an analysis of Francis Galton’s eugenic discourse, I want to put his contribution into context. Outside of the scientific community, few people have heard of Francis Galton. Fewer still recognize the profound impact he had on hereditary theory. This oversight is not born of ignorance; instead, I believe the desire to put eugenics behind us makes

Galton a particularly troubling character in the history of science. When it comes to advances in hereditary theory, we think back to Gregor Mendel and his pea plants. And no wonder—what’s not to like about a gentle monk/botanist whose paradigm-shifting research on genetics was realized, tragically, well after his death? However, our revisionist histories cannot hide the enormous influence Galton had on his peers, and on us, particularly the way we talk about heredity.52 The confusion between “heritable” and “inevitable” that Gould describes can be traced back to Galton’s work. The popularity of Galton’s theories of inheritance initiated the inaccuracy, and I believe his use of the terms “the Unfit” and “the Fit” sustain it and embed it in our comprehension of evolutionary theory.

“A living and growing science, with high and practical aims”53 Francis Galton was nearing the end of his life when he spoke before the Eugenics Education Society on June 25, 1908. In a letter to Karl Pearson (a colleague in the new “science” of eugenics) dated just over a month earlier, Galton describes his most recent bout with bronchitis and asthma and savors the prospect of leaving his bed for the first time in ten days (Pearson “Life” 339). In keeping with his other works on eugenics, this speech incorporates Galton’s theories on hereditary improvement and “race betterment.” However, it also deviates in important ways from his many other publications and speeches. In addition to changes in his narrative style, his tone, and his discussion of the scope of eugenics, Galton also offers perhaps his most concrete discussion of how eugenics operates as an applied science. In this final section, I argue that Galton’s speech heralds not only a new direction for the eugenics movement but a new venue as well, a change in the way that eugenical discourse was circulated. Before Galton, most of the information remained within the realm of scientific publications—it did not get much public press. However, when Galton spoke to the newly formed Eugenics Education Society, he made a difference in the way that people, many of whom had a cursory understanding of evolutionary theory or hereditary theory, talked about eugenics.54

52 I do not wish to imply that Galton was the sole perpetrator of the eugenics movement. However, his enthusiasm for his work made him a prolific writer and a popular spokesperson. 53 Galton, Francis. “Address on Eugenics.” The Westminster Gazette. June 25, 1908. 54 Arguing that one speech encapsulates an entire lifetime of thought on a subject would be a foolish undertaking at best. No one utterance can stand in for an author’s knowledge and beliefs about a subject, and Galton is no exception. Furthermore, Galton’s speech cannot possibly encompass the whole of eugenical discourse. A/the “rhetoric” of eugenics does not exist as a single item but instead must be imagined as a network of discourse with larger and smaller nodes of influence and power.

As historian of science Daniel Kevles notes, Galton’s name and his work became synonymous with the wider goals of “race betterment.” After Darwin published The Descent of Man—in which he acknowledged and supported Galton’s theory of intelligence as a hereditary trait— Galton’s popularity rose in scientific communities as did the credibility of his eugenical theories For Galton, this particular audience represented the culmination of his efforts to bring his theories to scientists and non-scientists alike. From his earliest publications to his final addresses, Galton emphasizes the need for public understanding and acceptance of the theories of eugenics and, as historians Donald Mackenzie and Lyndsay Farrall note, the Eugenics Education Society included members from a wide variety of professions, including lawyers, social workers, headmasters, politicians, housewives, and physicians (Mackenzie 22-23, Farrall qtd. in Mackenzie 22-23). Somewhat surprisingly, a young, twenty-one-year-old widow named Sybil Gotto founded the Eugenics Education Society. Like many women of her day, Gotto claimed membership in several other charitable and social activist organizations; however, she gave her full attention and enthusiasm to the eugenics movement after reading Galton’s work (Mazumdar 28). According to Pauline Mazumdar, Galton did not join the Society right away, preferring to attach his name only to successful social organizations. When he did join, his membership boosted the popularity and status of the organization considerably; by the time he spoke in 1908, the Society was a well-funded, well-organized, and extremely active enterprise operating in the name of eugenics. Like Gotto, many members of the Eugenic Education Society also held positions in or belonged to other social organizations, such as the Moral Education League, the Charity Organisation Society, the National Association for the Care and Protection of the Feeble Minded, the Society for the Study of Inebriety, and the National Association for the Promotion of Social Sciences. As a result, the groups often shared common goals and ideologies as well as members. Mazumdar cites Lyndsay Farrall’s analysis of the Society’s membership to provide some additional insight into the constitution of Galton’s audience in June 1908. By that time, just two years after its inception, the Society had well over 300 members, most of whom were well- educated and middle class (Mazumdar 8). Many of the members were academics or university- employed social and biological scientists and “nearly 80 per cent of the early membership was eminent enough to be included in the Dictionary of National Biography” (Mazumdar 8). Thus,

while the majority of its members hailed from the academy, roughly a quarter of even the earliest members were not affiliated with the university but were instead professionals, charity workers, housewives, and physicians (Farrall qtd. in MacKenzie 22-23). After more than 40 years of work, Galton could have no doubt about the importance of this particular address. For much of his life, he highlighted the importance of public awareness and public opinion; the sentiment of the final epigraph for this chapter—assessing the power of public opinion and financial backing—appears with frequency in Galton’s lectures and publications. As early as 1873, Galton’s writings impress upon his readers their “moral duty” to “render their individual aims subordinate to those which lend to the improvement of the race” (Galton “Heredity”). With so many respected and powerful members of the public at hand, Galton took great care to construct a message to “influence [the] public opinion” about the practicality of and need for a program in eugenics. In many of his earlier writings, Galton depends heavily on existing metaphors and analogies used by Darwin and others to illuminate the connections between breeding and heredity. By 1908, most of Galton’s audience would have been at least somewhat familiar with Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, so Galton builds on this knowledge as he outlines the source of his theories about heredity: It gradually became more and more clear to me that man was not such an exceptional creature after all in respect to heredity, but that what applied to other animals and plants probably applied also to him. I perceived that the importance ascribed by all intelligent farmers and gardeners to good stock might take a wider range. […] All serious inquirers into heredity now know that qualities gained by good nourishment and by good education never descend by inheritance, but perish with the individual, whilst inborn qualities are transmitted. It is therefore a waste of labour to try so to improve a poor stock by careful feeding or careful gardening as to place it on level with a good stock. (“Address”) Galton compresses his interpretation of Darwin’s work into a paragraph, effectively reminding his readers of what they may already believe about nature vs. nurture and natural selection and then offering them a new way to interpret that knowledge. Galton takes his audience along with him in his thought process, creating what rhetorician Phillip Sipiora refers to as “eunoia” or

“good faith” in his authority.55 Galton acknowledges an objection to his argument, allowing that “the methods used in animal breeding were quite inappropriate to human society,” but then asks if there may not be “gentler ways of obtaining the same end” (“Address”). He answers his own question: “‘Yes,’ and in this way I lighted on what is now known as ‘Eugenics’” (“Address”). In addition to leading his audience through his discovery, Galton then describes himself as an unassuming observer of the world around him; in much the same way that his cousin Charles Darwin did, Galton acknowledges inductive reasoning as his methodology: “The question was then forced upon me—Could not the race of men be similarly improved? Could not the undesireables be got rid of, and the desireables multiplied?”56 By appearing to stumble upon such insights, Galton diminishes his own motivations for endorsing eugenics and instead emphasizes the “common sense” roots to his solution. While the presence of these narrative elements demonstrates Galton’s desire to connect with this audience, the lack of statistical data is perhaps more telling. Both Galton and his protégé Karl Pearson published extensively in the fields of statistics, biometrics, and inheritance in an effort to prove the inheritability of particular traits and characteristics. In this case, however, Galton’s goal is public consumption of his work, not scientific scrutiny. The charts, graphs, and meticulous analyses are not at all referenced in this speech. Galton’s tone is also noteworthy. He speaks as a teacher, not a scientist—not only does he take the time to explain how to pronounce “eugenics” (“with a soft g”) but he also gives his listeners a short history of the word “heredity,” which he claims he was one of the first to use (“Address”). As in other pieces, Galton defines his terms, but here he is perhaps most concise in his treatment of “eugenics”: “The study of those agencies under which social control might improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally” (“Address”). He also avoids the scientific theorizing of his earlier work, focusing instead on analogy and practical applications. The scope of Galton’s argument encompasses more than science. When Galton details his plans for eugenics, he incorporates a short discussion on the differences between charitable

55 Phillip Sipiora. “Ethical Argumentation in Darwin’s Origin of Species”. Ethos: New Essays in Critical Theory. Eds. James S. Baumlin and Tita French Baumlin. Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist UP, 1994. 265-292. 56 See Sipiora and John A. Campbell, whose work on Darwin is essential reading for anyone interested in rhetorics of science, natural selection, or evolutionary theory. On Darwin’s “inductive” reasoning, Campbell highlights Darwin’s efforts “to redescribe his path to discovery so that it appeared to conform with conventional standards of Baconian inductionism” (“Charles” 77). I see the same effort in much of Galton’s work as well.

and governmental intervention. Ordinarily, Galton avoids the subjects of government, charity, and philanthropy in lieu of strictly scientific subject matter; in fact, more often than not, Galton downplays the role of government in eugenics, calling instead for individuals to consider their own “moral duty” to the race when they consider whether to reproduce or not. In this address, Galton expands the scope of his discussion to address both the governmental and charitable forces, noting their shortcomings before presenting eugenics as a balanced and practical solution. He writes: If a man devotes himself solely to the good of the nation as a whole, his tastes must be impersonal and his conclusions appear to a great degree heartless… . If, on the other hand, he attends only to certain individuals in whom he happens to take an interest, he becomes guided by favouritism, oblivious alike to the rights of others and of the well-being of future generations. Statesmanship is concerned with the nation; Charity with the individual; Eugenics is concerned with and cares for both. (“Address”) Unlike the limited efforts of governmental and charitable organizations, eugenics can serve both individuals as well as society as a whole. His audience, made up of politicians, charity workers, and professionals, could not fail to feel implicated in this statement. If we read this address as part of Galton’s effort to appeal to a larger audience, these slight changes make sense. Leaving out the more challenging mathematic and statistical proofs and incorporating more personal history render his theories more palatable and comprehensible to the non-scientist members of the EES. Likewise, his tone is appropriate for a more informal speech and his references to politics and his appeal to the “public” create avenues of action for attorneys, lawyers, and housewives alike. However, Galton’s somewhat reductive treatment of his subject also produces a particularly insidious result. In essence, Galton marries the language of evolutionary theory and “race betterment” in his discussion of inheritance and heredity. As shown in the first section of this chapter, Galton’s choice of terms like “Fit” and “Unfit” echo Spencer’s and Darwin’s use of the phrase “survival of the fittest,” giving his audience a “pre-entailed” metaphor for his categories of humans. His audience would have been accustomed to some of the language of heredity—“characteristics,” “traits,” “inheritance” would have been relatively familiar terms. And because these individuals had an interest in issues of “race betterment,” they would recognize terms like “feebleminded,”

“residuum,” “depraved,” or “degeneracy.” In much the same way that Greg reifies “fittest” and “unfittest,” in this speech, Galton collapses several positive behaviors and qualities into one term, “Fit,” and several negative behaviors and characteristics into another, “Unfit.” Thus, these terms emerge in the then-current lexicon and provide the EES and its many influential members a set of shorthand labels by which they can easily refer to individuals and/or groups of people. In October of that same year, 1908, Galton published his autobiography, Memoirs of My Life, which, in addition to providing readers with a more detailed narrative of his life and his work, included a section on the practical benefits of a nation-wide program in eugenics for England. In the final chapter entitled “Race Improvement,” Galton argues that humans have the power to “replace Natural Selection” with eugenics, a process he considers “more merciful and not less effective” (“Memories” 323). I quote here at length to illustrate not only Galton’s now- popularized views on race betterment, but also another use of the noun forms of “the Unfit” and “the Fit.” He writes This is precisely the aim of Eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the Fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; Eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock. (323) As in the speech delivered to the EES, this final paragraph in Galton’s memoirs delivers an elastic version of “fitness” used in concert with Darwin’s theory of natural selection and “survival of the fittest.” Gone are the specific references to adaptability, environment, and resources, gone are Darwin’s examples of a bird’s beak, an insect’s camouflage, a plant’s many seeds, a hawk’s keen eyesight. In their place is Galton’s shorthand, a Burkean entitlement ready to operate as “receptacles of personal attitudes and social ratings” (361). At the end of his speech, Galton implores his audience to “make the Society known to your friends, and … persuade them as best you can to help on its good work” (“Address”). Armed with a shorthand vocabulary and a cursory understanding of heredity, Galton sends these professionals out to spread his word and his science. This unfortunate moment in the history of science and hereditary theory underscores the power of definition. Perelman and Olbrechts-

Tyteca remind us that definition is not only used to support our arguments, but that definitions are in and of themselves arguments about our reality (447). In this case, Galton’s terms create a reality wherein people can be divided into two groups: “the Fit” and “the Unfit.” And as I will demonstrate in the next three chapters, these distinctions also have real consequences, especially for women and their reproductive rights.

Chapter Three

The “Female Moron” and her “Hyperfecundity”: Two Special Topoi in the Case for Eugenic Sterilization

To the young men of my audience I wish to say, ‘Shun the attractive, frivolous girl.’ She is found in nearly every community. The object of the eugenicist is not to multiply her kind, but to exterminate her. —Victor Vaughan, “Eugenics from the Point of View of the Physician.”

[W]hen we find that all authorities are agreed that defectives breed and multiply much more rapidly than normal people—[…] from two to six times as fast—and that most authorities believe mental defect to be increasing rapidly, we have, to say the least, food for thought. —Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, The Survival of the Unfittest.

The commonwealth is greater than any individual in it. Hence the rights of society over the life, the reproduction, the behavior and the traits of the individuals that compose it are, in all matters that concern the life and proper progress of society, limitless, and society may take life, may sterilize, may segregate so as to prevent marriage, may restrict liberty in a hundred ways. —Charles Davenport, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics.

American histories of science tend to minimize the popularity and influence of the early twentieth-century eugenics movement, especially the campaign for eugenic sterilization that took place in the first quarter of the century.57 Despite America’s powerful presence in the development and dissemination of negative eugenics in particular, many Americans associate eugenics and sterilization with Hitler’s Nazi Germany and believe America flirted with but never settled down to an expansive program of population control and regulated fertility. In truth, eugenicists in Germany and elsewhere saw in America a successful model of effective eugenic policies and often mimicked the rhetorical strategies used to establish and support them. America not only passed pro-sterilization legislation first (Indiana’s law passed in 1907), but it sterilized over 60,000 Americans over a 60 year period.58 According to historian of science Daniel Kevles, eugenicists in other countries “envied the American legislative victories,

57 I choose the term “eugenic sterilization” deliberately. As Mark Largent and others have noted, not all coerced sterilizations were in service to the eugenics movement; in some cases individuals were sterilized as punishment or therapy in response to particular types of crime, especially what Largent identifies as “sexual perversions” in the eyes of the law, such as anal and oral sex, pedophilia and pederasty, bestiality, and rape (6).Although I agree with Largent’s reasons for his use of the term “coerced sterilization”—he argues that the term was used most often by those trying to legislate and that his own use of the term reminds readers of the power of those laws in the hands of authorities—I use “eugenic sterilization” to emphasize the role of sterilization in the eugenic goal to “eliminate the unfit.” 58 Source: The Eugenics Archive of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. http://www.eugenicsarchive.org. Other texts offer lower numbers, but this source reflects the data contained in the original Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories in New York.

particularly the sterilization statutes that … were on the books of twenty-four states and had been made constitutionally secure by the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Buck v. Bell” (“Annals” Pt. III 92). This landmark decision, passed down by United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, upheld an earlier court ruling in the Virginia State Supreme Court in favor of compulsory sterilization. In deciding against Carrie Buck, the United States Supreme Court stated that compulsory sterilization was not unconstitutional. Historians Paul Lombardo and Nancy Ordover note that this powerful precedent that remains in place today. It has not yet been overruled (Lombardo, Ordover 135). The case against Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old woman from Virginia, rested on her presumed feeble-mindedness, what eugenicist H. H. Goddard defined as a “mental defect from birth or from an early age due to incomplete or abnormal development,” andwhich American eugenicists believed to be a fixed hereditary trait (261). Using a narrative account of Buck’s family history—her own illegitimate birth and the later birth of her daughter, also “illegitimate”—prosecutors demonstrated the mechanism and path by which feeble-mindedness and immorality were passed down from generation to generation.59 This simplified version of Mendelian inheritance theory focused the bulk of the debate not on Carrie alone but on the unsavory “inherited” traits of other women in her family. Described by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. as “a feeble-minded white woman…. the daughter of a feeble-minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble-minded child,” Carrie Buck embodied the fears about degeneration of the nation circulating during the early-twentieth century (Buck v. Bell). Insofar as Buck herself was “unfit,” she was a nuisance, a defective in need of institutionalization and treatment. But as a woman of child-bearing years, she came to represent a greater threat in the minds of American eugenicists worried about the future of America’s “good stock.” When Justice Holmes handed down his now infamous decision, arguing “Three generations of imbeciles are enough” (Buck v. Bell), his words reflected the sentiment of eugenicists and many in the scientific, political, and academic communities as well (Buck v. Bell). With those words, the United States Supreme Court upheld the existing Virginia State Supreme Court ruling that permitted the eugenic sterilization of those deemed feeble-minded.

59 Lombardo notes, as does Stephen J. Gould, that Carrie’s pregnancy was the result of rape by one of Carrie’s foster parents’ relatives. See Lombardo’s “Eugenic Sterilization Laws” and Gould’s “Carrie Buck's Daughter: A Popular, Quasi-scientific Idea Can Be a Powerful Tool for Injustice” from “This View Of Life.” Natural History. July- August 2002.

Until the decision against Carrie Buck, the majority of sterilizations in America were performed on males. Many physicians practicing during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries envisioned sterilization as a solution to a range of “degenerate” behaviors, including excessive masturbation, insanity, sexual “crimes” such as sodomy, as well as criminal traits in character, such as habitual drunkenness and pauperism (Carlson 203-12).60 By 1907, this vision was a reality—Indiana passed the first law permitting the sterilization of the “unfit” and by 1935, 35 states had sterilization laws in effect or pending (Laughlin in Carlson 221). For a time, men remained the primary target of the laws; vasectomies on men (the cutting of the vasa deferensia) occurred far more often than salpingectomies, or the removal of a portion of the fallopian tube, on women. According to one proponent of eugenic sterilization, performing the surgery on a woman not only meant greater risks to her health but also, and more importantly, a greater cost to the taxpayer: “a woman who is sterilized spends two weeks in bed at the expense of the community; a man may be put to bed for a week … and is able to go about his work again almost at once” (Whitney 29). Another noted that the “greater difficulties” attendant to surgery on women: “any sterilization by surgical means demands in the female a much more severe type of operation… In fact, it may be said that there is no entirely satisfactory surgical method of sterilizing the female which does not involve castration” (Pearl “Sterilization” 5). As a result, males made up a majority of sterilizations. In 1925, 53 percent of 6244 eugenical sterilizations in the U.S. were performed on men (Laughlin 60).61 However, in her book American Eugenics, Nancy Ordover suggests that the Buck ruling initiated a discernable increase in the numbers of women sterilized in the U. S.; surgeries performed on women jumped from 47 percent to 67 percent in the period between 1928 and 1932 (135)62. The case against Carrie Buck was, in Ordover’s words, “part of a deliberate and determined effort to situate women as the primary candidates for sterilization” (135). This increase belies the considerable complications attendant to performing the surgery on women and the dangers to the women themselves—the more invasive surgery, the longer recovery time,

60 The removal of the ovaries and/or uterus in females, and occasionally the castration of males, occurred before this point as treatment for hysteria or melancholia; however, my focus in this chapter is the use of sterilization as a eugenics-based means to prevent the reproduction of the “unfit.” 61 Lombardo, Largent, and Ordover note that this number is probably too low—it stands to reason that an official count like this one would not have included all surgeries performed in jails and asylums. 62 According to a chart posted in the Image Archive of the American Eugenics Movement, the number of sterilizations nearly doubled in the years between 1928 and 1931, going from 8515 to 15,156. Source: http:www.eugenicsarchive.org.

the inability to work, the cost to the taxpayers (Whitney, Landman, Popenoe “Birth”). However, despite these obstacles, the records show the effort to target women was successful, the result, I believe, of the rhetorics and discourses of “hereditary fitness” circulating within the American eugenics movement. In this chapter, I locate and historicize a series of arguments used in the campaign for eugenic sterilization as they bear out Nancy Ordover’s claim; these arguments serve as the groundwork for the ruling against Carrie Buck and the corresponding effort to make women the objects of eugenic sterilization. Specifically, I highlight the use of two special topoi—the threat posed by the “female moron” and her presumed “hyperfecundity”—as they are drawn upon by eugenicists to generate effective lines of argument for their chosen audiences.63 As collective concepts held by eugenicists, many scientists and physicians, policy makers, and portions of the general public, these two special topoi, or topics on which arguments can be made, play a significant role in the gradual acceptance of eugenic sterilization as a viable solution to the growing numbers of the “unfit” in America. These special topoi also reveal a then-current attitude about women and “hereditary fitness” that not only prevailed in our nation’s highest court fewer than 75 years ago, but also constructed a reality about the nature of “fitness,” motherhood, and the right to reproduce that lingers to this day in our national consciousness.64 To begin, I describe the rhetorical situation—the reason for the argument, its exigency, the audience(s), and the constraints on and contexts of the situation—as it existed when the push for eugenic sterilization began. The final 15 years of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth century was a period of great scientific achievement, of economic uncertainty, of demographic change due to immense waves of immigration, and of intense nationalism in America, all of which affected the discourses surrounding eugenics and sterilization. As I describe the rhetorical situation, I first locate the exigence for the argument for sterilization—the perceived “differential birthrate” between the “fit” and the “unfit.” I then offer a brief

63 As in the earlier chapters, I refrain from using quotation marks to highlight terms we today find offensive— moron, imbecile, defective, feeble-minded, and many others. I do so in part to promote ease of reading but also because, like James Trent, I believe that seeing these words in their historical context helps us to understand the sensibilities (or lack thereof) of the people who used these words to refer to other human beings (Trent 5). 64 In Chapter Five, I examine the use of analogy, metaphor, and visual illustration in rhetorics of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and egg donation. Many of the biases that emerge during arguments for sterilization resonate in statements about what makes a good, “fit” egg donor. I am also reminded of recent arguments for the sterilization or mandatory use of birth control for women who, while on welfare, continue to bear children as well as the arguments by some to sterilize individuals with mental and/or cognitive disabilities.

description of the audience, both within the eugenic and scientific community and the public at large, including legislators, politicians, educators, social service workers, and the general public. Finally, I provide some context by surfacing two concerns more salient to the audience: the changes in science brought about by the “rediscovery” of Mendelian inheritance theory and what Wendy Kline and others refer to as “the girl problem,” a euphemism for the perceived “sexual delinquency” eugenicists and others interpreted in women’s ever-increasing independence and sexual freedom. Taken together, these two issues represent two powerful social mindsets, a progressive view of science and a fear of racial/social degeneration at the hands of “the new woman,” held during the period when eugenicists crafted this argument. Embedded in this discussion is a claim of my own, one that I will return to in the three chapters that follow as well. In essence, I argue for a science that, like all knowledge-making enterprises, employs rhetorical appeals and strategies (appeals to reason and community values, invention and arrangement, appropriate stylistics and formats, appeals to authority, considerations of timing) as it presents “truth” and knowledge and reports fact. As the chapter continues, I identify the work of invention and the use of special topoi to demonstrate the process by which a scientific community works to discover appropriate lines of argument after it settles on a specific problem or point of stasis, the grounds on which an argument is based. In this case, eugenicists answering the question “How can we convince lawmakers of the benefits of and need for a program of eugenic sterilization?” (a procedural concern) found the special topics of the “female moron” and her seemingly excessive number of children to be especially effective with regard to the rhetorical situation of eugenics. Produced in part with attention to the hopes and fears of the community, the two topoi emerge as convincing and finally successful supports in the campaign for eugenic sterilization. Widespread in essays on what was then called feeble- mindedness, in university lectures, in public magazines, and in published and widely read field studies, these topoi take on an air of authority and scientific “truth” that portends, and I believe contributes to, the Supreme Court’s ruling against Carrie Buck.

The Rhetorical Situation: Negative Eugenics, Mendel’s Laws, and “the Girl Problem” Before examining the work of special topoi in arguments for eugenic sterilization, the nature of the rhetorical situation must be taken into account. As defined by Lloyd Bitzer, the rhetorical situation includes three elements—an exigence, the reason or purpose behind the

persuasive document or speech; an audience, the group of people who hear or read the speech as well as anyone who might be concerned about the exigence; and a series of rhetorical constraints, the values, beliefs, and ways of knowing held by the audience when considering the persuasive effort made by the author. Said another way, the rhetorical situation describes the relationship between the rhetor, his or her reasons for persuading, his or her audience, and the beliefs and values of that audience. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, the perception that the rate of birth between individuals considered “fit” and those labeled “unfit” was uneven emerged in scientific literature, eventually seeping into other, more public forums. Eugenicists and scientists alike feared the numbers of the “unfit” were every day outstripping the numbers of children born to the “fittest,” and they cited several reasons for their claim: More women attending college and/or taking professional jobs resulted in fewer children from the “educated classes”; waves of immigration meant an increase in the population of “non-native” Americans; and social services such as public assistance and charity prolonged the lives of the “unfit,” who went on to produce more degenerates and defectives in their turn. As such, the “differential birthrate,” as it was called, became part of the exigence for arguments about eugenic sterilization, accompanied, in many discussions, by dire forecasts about the end of civilization. For example, in his essay “The Eugenics Movement as a Public Service,” Harvard biologist G. H. Parker wrote: It appears that in many of our civilized populations to-day, the defective classes are increasing more rapidly than any other constituent of the community and that quite aside from the enormous cost that their care entails upon the public at large, their very growth threatens our civilization with future submergence, if not with annihilation. (343) Published in the journal Science in 1915, Parker’s position on the differential birthrate also reflects the broader influence of evolutionary theory and social Darwinism. His fears about the “annihilation” of civilization, held by myriad other eugenicists, were in part prompted by the idea that, in nature, the “obviously unfit” were destroyed, but in the humane but flawed efforts of social services “unfit” humans were protected and therefore able to pass their defects on to their children (343). This adoption of the ideals of Social Darwinism, and the accompanying concerns about the interference of social services, permeated American social and political beliefs. Historian Kenneth Ludmerer notes the pervasiveness of Social Darwinism: “its catchwords of

‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘struggle for existence’ gave biological force to the notion that nature allows only its ‘fittest’ to survive and that such competition results in social progress” (13). The second part of the rhetorical situation is the audience itself: the eugenicists efforts to address the problem of the differential birthrate can only be realized if an audience exists to be persuaded. For my discussion of topoi here, I will expand the audience to include non-scientists such as legislators, judges, policymakers, and the public. As Mark Largent points out, the eugenics movement generally, and specifically the campaign for eugenics sterilization, cannot be written off as the work of a few determined scientists or physicians—“support for coerced sterilization was widespread, and actually still remains well supported in many corners of American society” (2). The version of history that would downplay the scope and wide use of eugenic discourse, which Largent refers to as “great man history” does not hold. Thus, within the context of the Progressive Era, the rediscovery of Mendel’s Laws, and the perception of the “girl problem,” eugenicists worked to target not only each other and their colleagues in the sciences, but members of the academy, social theorists, politicians, legislators, public policy makers, and the public at large as well. A 1932 issue of The Eugenics Review heralds the work of the Eugenics Society to spread the message of the eugenics movement. The piece highlights a series of communities “our propaganda has reached,” including universities and lower schools (student societies, teachers’ colleges, and public schools); churches and “religious bodies” (brotherhoods, sisterhoods); social services (“local authorities,” students of social work, police); and “citizens” (Agricultural Organizations, Rotary Clubs, Women Citizen Societies, Women’s Institutes, Scouts and Guides, Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs”) (23). In addition to this long list of communities the Society was able to reach in the previous ten years, the article also touts the use of “up-to-date” methods such as film and radio and traveling exhibits, all in service to “the democratizing of eugenics” (23, 24). The political climate of the period was ripe for such arguments, especially when presented in forum like Science and written by a biologist from one of America’s most esteemed universities. As historian of science George Daniels notes, those living in the Progressive era (roughly 1890-1920) had a strong faith in science and truth and believed that “if problems were ever to be solved, science would play a role in their solution” (288). Furthermore, the emphasis the Progressives placed on progress—intellectual, moral, social, and especially scientific— seemed justified: The late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century had seen unparalleled

improvements in public health in both the eradication of disease and in food and drug safety legislation, in technologies such as the telephone, electric lights, steam engines, and airplanes, and in technological advances in warfare that lead to victory in the first World War (Daniels 290- 292). Though it is impossible to detail every possible constraint held by every possible audience, I observe two beliefs or ways of knowing at work in the acceptance of arguments for sterilization: the rediscovery of Mendel’s Laws and the “girl problem.” Historians who study eugenics also highlight the rediscovery of Mendel’s research on pea plants as a major turning point in the advancement of Progressive Era hereditary theory and genetics (Kevles, MacKenzie, Ludmerer, Paul, Jones).65 Daniel Kevles notes that eugenicists were “unquestionably stimulated” by Mendelian genetics, especially at this time when Social Darwinism “had brought about a number of proto-eugenic writings that foreshadowed the salient concerns of the post-1900 movement, particularly the notion that ‘artificial selection’…was replacing natural selection in human evolution” (“Name” 70). In essence, these early writings lacked a mechanism, a means by which the innate traits and characteristics of the “unfit” were passed down from one generation to the next, and Mendel’s Laws provided that mechanism. Briefly, what we now refer to as Mendel’s Laws are the processes of segregation and independent assortment. The law of segregation states that the two elements in a gene that make up each trait (say, color in peas) are split when gametes (eggs and sperm) are created. When these gametes are brought back together in reproduction, the elements are rejoined independently of the original sequence—the law of independent assortment. Using laws of probability, geneticists and others can determine the frequencies of particular combinations. In the case of pea color, for example, one character for green and one for yellow might bring green-green, green-yellow, and yellow-yellow in a 1-2-1 ratio. And though the green-yellow combination might have been expected to yield a blend of the two colors, Mendel’s work shows the actual outcome to be three green-pea bearing plants and one yellow-pea plant due to the presence of what would later be referred to as “dominant” and “recessive” traits (“Name” 41-42).66 Mendel’s work confirmed the existence of what we would today call “genes” by demonstrating the transfer of particular hereditary traits from parent to offspring. Using pea

65 Kevles attributes the period between the publication of Mendel’s work in 1866 and its “rediscovery” and acceptance in 1900 to the focus on evolutionary change (adaption of species to environment) over stability (the way traits reappeared from generation to generation) (“Name” 42). 66 I followed Kevles’ excellent summary of Mendelian laws in order to condense a complicated and intricate process.

plants, fruit flies, and other organisms with limited genotypes (most simply, the genetic information located on a strand of DNA) and phenotypes (expressions of the genotype), biologists, geneticists and eugenicists could plan, predict, and then verify the genetic outcome of each new generation. Thus, for eugenicists, Mendel’s theory not only provided a mechanism for predicting and plotting out the transmission of traits, it also introduced the concept of “dominant traits,” enabling eugenicists to make the argument that the bad heredity of one “unfit” parent might well overcome the good traits of a “normal” individual. Unlike the statistical and biometric theories of inheritance developed by Galton and his colleague Karl Pearson (which argued for “degree[s] of similarity” between organisms and depended on statistical correlation) Mendelian inheritance demonstrated, from generation to generation, the transfer of genetic material from organism to offspring (MacKenzie). While many British eugenicists clung to biometrics out of respect for Galton and Pearson, American eugenicists embraced Mendelian heredity immediately and almost unanimously (Kevles “Name” 43). Historians who study the American eugenics movement highlight the work of Charles Davenport as pivotal in American acceptance of Mendel’s laws. As the director of Cold Spring Harbor (eventual home of the Eugenics Record Office), Davenport and his cadre of biologists and geneticists, many of whom were also eugenicists, performed copious research using Mendel’s laws. Eventually, Davenport’s work extended from the realm of animals and plants and into the area of human breeding using data from family pedigrees, from “family records forms” that solicited information from the public, and from field workers who visited and recorded what they saw in the homes of individuals declared “unfit” (“Name” 46). In this data, Davenport discovered what he believed to be clear “unit characters.” Kevles explains that “wherever the family pedigrees seemed to show a high incidence of a given character, Davenport concluded that the trait must be heritable and attempted to fit the heritability into a Mendelian frame” (46). In addition to abnormalities and diseases, Davenport sought out and therefore discovered patterns of heritability in alcoholism, insanity, criminality, and feeble-mindedness (46). Because Davenport was a respected and prolific researcher and writer, many eugenicists— as well as otherwise legitimate scientists—accepted his interpretation of Mendel’s laws. According to Kevles, it was not long before many “mainline” eugenicists (eugenicists who held facile understandings of genetics and were prone to simplistic interpretations of Mendelian theory) adopted a reductive interpretation of “unit characters” to argue their racist, sexist,

classist, and ablelist positions on difference. They believed they would eventually locate a “deaf gene” or a “pauper gene,” or even a “genius gene.” Kevles explains Mainline doctrine presumed that like produced like, that superior or inferior parents spawned superior or inferior offspring, respectively, through the transmission of traits by single Mendelian characters—‘unit characters,” as they were known. It was here that the principal disjunction lay between mainline ideas and the advance of genetics. While geneticists knew that many physical characteristics were inherited, and a number of them thought that there might indeed be a biological basis for mental and behavioral traits, they also knew that even in the simplest version of Mendelism like did not necessarily produce like. (“Annals” Pt. III 124) Though geneticists by and large approached Mendel’s work with care and exactitude, eugenicists were eager to make the “one trait, one gene” connection, and their research illustrates this proclivity. In their work, not only did they “prove” that eye color was the result of one particular “unit character,” but that drunkenness, pauperism, sexual immorality, and feeble-mindedness were as well. This interpretation of Mendel’s work illustrates a context in which arguments about eugenic sterilization and other forms of “negative eugenics,” the branch of eugenics most interested in eliminating “the Unfit,” could prosper.67 If these characteristics were hereditary, eugenicists reasoned, eliminating those with such characteristics would also eliminate the faulty genes. Eugenicists used this easy transition from simple to complex examples of the “one trait, one gene” connection to educate their audiences, reinscribing a misunderstanding about the differences between traits as biological categories and traits as social constructs. The appearance of charts, graphs, and diagrams illustrating the mechanism of Mendelian heredity bears out this simplistic approach; many popular and well-published eugenicists, including Charles Davenport, Paul Popenoe, H. H. Goddard, and Mary Brown, the author of a popular eugenics textbook, incorporated Mendelian diagrams into their publications, often introducing the concept with a basic trait like eye color before moving into traits associated with degeneracy, such as alcoholism, feeble-mindedness, or sexual promiscuity (Davenport, Popenoe and Roswell,

67 “Positive eugenics,” which sought to raise the overall level of civilization by encouraging more children by “the fit, was considerably more popular in England.

Goddard, Brown). In these books, the biological and the social were conflated. So, as an example of the biological trait, the fact that someone who has blue eyes actually possesses only recessive genes for eye color would coincide with that particular genotype (however muddled the genetics become in the case of hazel, green, gray, or violet eyes). However, in the case of a “trait” such as mental aptitude, alcoholism, having a “green thumb” or a predisposition for breast cancer, there are many mitigating factors, placing this idea of “trait” in the realm of social construction. Said another way, characteristics connected with having a “green thumb” or living with alcoholism are as much the result of our interpretation of good gardening skills or over- consumption as they are elements of our genetic makeup. In addition, eugenicists like Davenport who performed and published research tended to focus on small populations where the process of “genetic drift” was more visible. Briefly, genetic drift is the process by which the frequency of one gene or trait becomes established in a population. Though entirely based on chance and probabilities, the reproduction of one trait over another in a small sample can result in that trait becoming more common while another disappears. While genetic drift and natural selection work together, in smaller populations genetic drift seems more prominent, and one specific trait can become “fixed” in that population over relatively few generations. And because Davenport and others conducted their research on small populations with rare but serious diseases or what they considered abnormalities (for example, albinism, Huntington’s chorea, deaf-mutism, cleft palate), their research findings seemed to prove the speed at which “unfit” characteristics and traits could spread through a population. Whether the eugenicists did not understand the distinction between natural selection and genetic drift or ignored it altogether makes little difference to this discussion. The effects remain: during this period in time, eugenicists believed Mendelian laws all but proved that characteristics associated with “the unfit”—criminality, pauperism, epilepsy, feeble-mindedness, promiscuity, deafness, insanity—were the result of a bad inheritance, a biological “fact” that eliminated the possibility for social reform, rehabilitation, and/or therapy. The final significant factor in the rhetorical situation and, therefore, used as a special topoi in lines of argument, arose from the anxiety about the changing role of woman, what historian Wendy Kline refers to as “the girl problem.” During this time, social and economic changes (such as immigration, war, and the growing working class population), coupled with fears about women’s increasing freedom, challenged the dominant Anglo, middle-class,

patriarchal worldview and complicated the future of existing racial, class-based, and gender hierarchies (Kline 2). Of special concern was the “new woman,” who “demand[ed] ‘rights and privileges customarily accorded only to white middle-class men’” (Kline 10). Increasingly, middle-class white women were embracing their right to attend college, to marry late if at all, to live independently, to enjoy some sexual freedoms, and/or to eschew childbirth altogether (16- 31, 32-60). These changes were not viewed with a kind eye. Referred to as “race criminals” by Progressive Era President Teddy Roosevelt (1901-1909), women of “good stock” who refused to have children prompted eugenicists to turn their attention to the role of women in “race betterment.” One British eugenicist and physician criticized the United States for educating women: “the so-called higher education of these girls has been proved in effect to sterilize them—and these the flower of the nation’s girlhood, and there, rightly, the very elect for motherhood” (Saleeby 101). In keeping with the American movement’s emphasis on “negative eugenics,” eugenicists dedicated most of their time not to “racial uplift” by encouraging women to balance their professional lives with motherhood or improving conditions for women in general, but to the “dysgenic threat” of sexual immorality and the reproduction of “the unfit,” a problem they felt eclipsed the low birthrate of “the fit.” In her book Building a Better Race, Kline describes the competing roles eugenicists assigned to women in the early-twentieth century. One role cast mostly white (Anglo), middle- class women as “mothers of tomorrow,” charging them with the task of propagating the “good stock” of old American families as a counter-measure to economic, social, and demographic changes (3). The other role characterizes the “female moron,” whose feeble-mindedness, unrestrained sexuality, and supposed hyperfecundity threatened to destroy the integrity of the gene pool (3). According to Kline, the distinction marks an effort by eugenicists to “make motherhood an exclusive privilege rather than an inherent right by encouraging the ‘fit’ (primarily the Anglo-white middle-class) to have more children while restricting the ‘unfit’ from doing so” (2). As we will see, the publication of field studies of “unfit” families, as well as the popularity of “Fitter Family” contests, sought to make this distinction clear to those outside the scientific community as well. Before moving into the next section on the work of special topoi, I want to address the significance of these two roles for women and the problems they present to eugenicists. As categories, these roles leak into each other, descriptions of the qualities and characteristics of the

“female moron” often corresponding to those used to describe the ideal “mother of tomorrow.” For example, the ideal woman did not need formal education per se (which might tempt her to pursue a career other than motherhood), but she should have “common sense.” Being attractive was a positive description, unless she was “seductively” attractive. As a result, eugenicists employed a series of diverse, often contradictory, arguments about behavior, heredity, mental ability, beauty, femininity, womanhood, and reproduction together to make women the target of sterilization. In many cases, competing discourses appear in the same piece, in service to the same goal, their authors seemingly unfazed by the contradictions. Important to the development of these two special topoi is the use of social and behavior “traits” as evidence of and support for the application of Mendelian laws of inheritance. Despite their insistence on certain “fixed” human traits, and their vehement dismissal of environmental factors (economic differences, social customs, inadequate living conditions and sanitation, poor schooling) in social problems, many mainline eugenicists constructed their arguments using language that depended on environmental and social categories of characteristics. As a result of this specific rhetorical situation and their desire to use eugenic sterilization as a solution to the differential birthrate, eugenicists might highlight only one characteristic in particular to implicate a woman or a group of women—her social class, her nation of origin or ethnic background, her need for charity, her very status as a woman. Ordover highlights this idea in her discussion of eugenics as a “nimble ideology.” She argues that eugenic discourse “cannot be isolated from the movements it bolstered and was conscripted by: nationalism, ‘reform-oriented’ liberalism, out- and-out homophobia, white supremacy, misogyny, and racism” (xxvii). Thus, arguments made in service to one cause (for example, eugenic sterilization) also support other, overlapping causes (racism, classism, sexism, ableism, and nationalism). The case against Carrie Buck illustrates this flexibility. While the case against her seemed to rest on her purported hereditary feeble-mindedness, the fact that she allegedly transgressed the boundaries of acceptable sexual behavior appears in the testimony of Dr. Albert Priddy, the superintendent at the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and the Feeble-minded (Lombardo). Priddy argues that because Buck’s mother had “a record of immorality, prostitution, untruthfulness and syphillus,” Carrie Buck had certainly inherited these traits (Lombardo). Her own illegitimate child, Vivian, served as living proof of this claim. In addition, Buck’s class status is used against her; records describe the Bucks as “a people

belong[ing] to the shiftless, ignorant and worthless class of anti-social whites of the South” (Lombardo). Finally, the entire case can be read as an example of what Ordover calls “reform- oriented liberalism.” In his written ruling, Justice Holmes argues that it will be “better for all the world” if sterilization could eliminate the possibility of “degenerate” offspring before they become criminals or “starve for their imbecility” (Lombardo).68 The various arguments deployed by proponents of sterilization do not always cohere, nor do they dissolve into neat categories, but the special topoi of the “female moron” and her “hyperfecundity” appear consistently as foundational “places” to discover lines of argument. As agents in the “nimble ideology” that is eugenic discourse, the deployment of these topoi participate in the racist, homophobic, sexist, and nationalistic movements operating alongside the eugenics movement.

Common Topoi, Special Topoi, and the Invention of Eugenic Arguments In his translation of Cicero’s Topica, H. M. Hubbell notes the origins of the term “topos”—the Greek, τόπος, translates to “place” or “region, “giv[ing] the adjective τοπικός, [of the place or region] from which ‘topic’ is derived” (386). He also mentions Aristotle’s use of “τόπος” as a way to “denote the pigeon-hole or region in the mind where similar arguments are stored” (386).69 Though brief, these notes on translation illuminate the relevant characteristics and roles of special topoi in arguments about eugenic sterilization. Topoi are used by rhetors to locate or discover lines of argument suitable to a given audience in a given situation. In the introduction to Topica, Cicero describes topoi as “a system developed by Aristotle for inventing arguments so that we might come upon them without wandering about” (383). Offering an analogy, Cicero follows Aristotle’s lead and explains that these topics act as “regions” in the mind, places a rhetor may return to over and over again to discover an argument (383). In The

68 Lombardo’s essay suggests that Carrie Buck’s lawyers collaborated with the prosecutors to uphold the ruling against Buck. He points out that Buck was not, in fact, sexually promiscuous but was instead raped by a relative of her foster parents, who committed her to the institution. Also, her child Vivian went on to earn high marks in school—she was not “feeble-minded.” 69 Cicero wrote Topica in an effort to clarify Aristotle’s discussion of topoi for a friend. And no wonder: as Lawrence Prelli and others note, Aristotle’s treatment of general and special topoi is confusing (70). Both Prelli and D’Angelo point to the often contradictory work of scholars of Aristotle: while one argues that the general and special topoi concern “form” and “matter,” respectively, another points to degrees of “field dependence” vs. “field invariance” to describe the relationship between a topos and its subject matter and still another points to their origins as “narrative” techniques in oral storytelling. I am most interested in Aristotle’s metaphor topoi as “places in the mind” and the notion that special topoi emerge within particularly disciplinary settings for distinct purposes— politics, law, science, elegy, etc.

New Rhetoric, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca describe what they refer to as loci as “headings under which arguments can be classified,” and later refer to these groupings or categories of thought as part of “an indispensible arsenal” for anyone hoping to persuade another (83-84). As “places in the mind” for eugenicists, physicians, scientists and lawyers, references to and use of the “female moron” and her “hyperfecundity” gave proponents of sterilization a ready arsenal of topics from which to create and deploy arguments. In A Rhetoric of Science: Inventing Scientific Discourse, Lawrence Prelli provides a comprehensive discussion of topoi in general and as they operate in the discourse of scientists.70 Prelli argues that “‘doing science’ inevitably entails making arguments that are informal, material, contextual, and controversial” and is, as such, an activity that benefits by rhetorical analysis (5). Histories of rhetoric and rhetorical theory present a pattern of what Prelli calls “rhetorical creativity”—rhetors determine the question they want to answer or the position they wish to argue, they consider the means available to them to make that argument, and they choose among these means (appeals, figures, lines of argument), keeping in mind their audience and the rhetorical situation at hand (7). In the discourses of science, Prelli examines this creation of scientific arguments, specifically the invention strategies and the “identifiable, finite set of value- laden topics as they produce and evaluate claims and counterclaims involving community problems and concerns” (5). Prelli describes topoi as a contingent, situational, audience-driven list of plausible lines of thought in an argument. He explains the process of locating these lines of thought is not the exclusive domain of rhetorical invention; in many fields of study, “the better one knows how data are classified by those who sort out the materials, the more quickly and precisely one can discover what there is to be used” (65). However, this system is especially productive for the ever-changing realm of scientific discourse. Prelli explains that [A] set of headings, questions, or operations that makes up a heuristic topical method needs to be a list that (1) identifies the ways of thinking familiar to a prospective audience, and (2) triggers thought first in one direction and then another. […] As levels of experience and skill change, heuristic topoi contained in a topical schema must be capable of amendment and revision. Thus, topical

70 However unsavory and unscientific we now consider eugenics, it is important to remember that its status as a practical application of natural and artificial selection was not widely contested at this time. Most historians of science acknowledge that eugenicists were respected members of the scientific community and their work was, for the most part, taken as factual, or at least legitimate.

method contains flexible lists of heuristic categories; it can never be an exhaustive system of necessary and altogether sufficient rules for finding. (65) In the case of scientific communities, rhetorical invention using a topical method demands a “situational logicality,” a method that relies as much on the soundness of a claim as on its appeal to the community to which the argument is presented (67). That is, the audience plays as large a role as the data being presented. Such an emphasis on audience might seem remiss when applied to scientific discourse; after all, science is typically described as “empirical,” “experiment- based,” “exemplary,” and “objective.” However, as Prelli reminds readers, doing science is a human activity, dependent on consensus and collaboration to make progress, to referee the publication of findings, and to receive funding from both scientific and public sources (83-100). Even in the realm of science, “a rhetor’s business is to discover and establish claims having plausibility or probability…, [while] exploring the doxa, or relative body of opinion, for suitable materials and structures” (63). As such, scientific discourse must be understood as both persuasive and socially-constructed: “to secure appreciative understanding of knowledge claims…, a scientist must submit work for authorization by those who represent ‘the well- defined community of the scientist’s professional compeers” (Prelli 112). Prelli’s definition of topoi as a “heading, a collective concept…suggestive of subordinate particulars and subpatterns” echoes Aristotle’s “places” and “regions,” Cicero’s “pointed out and marked” paths of reasoning, and Perelman’s “arsenal.” In each case, we are invited to understand both general and special topoi as common sites or tools used in the construction of persuasive discourse. With the exigence, audience, and a few of the rhetorical constraints of this situation in mind, the significance of special topoi in discovering appropriate lines of argument emerges. Understanding the problem of the differential birthrate through a framework that contains a Progressive Era belief in the infallibility of science, the rediscovery and application of Mendel’s laws, the “girl problem,” and then-always present concern about the impact of the “unfit” on civilization gave proponents of eugenic sterilization a starting point from which to develop these topics. Prelli’s discussion of the special topoi used to invent scientific discourse is equally informative for understanding the work of our special topoi the “female moron” and her “hyperfecundity.” He identifies three main categories—problem-solving, evaluative, and exemplary—and notes that while these topoi may be present in a wide range of scientific discourses (and could therefore be labeled “general”), they are, in his view, field-dependent and

should be considered special topoi.71 Of particular interest to this chapter are both problem- solving and exemplary topics, both of which inform the arguments about eugenic sterilization. For example, problem-solving topoi generate lines of thought to “establish (or disestablish) firm connections between observational or theoretical claims and what is accounted for by accumulated data or theory” (186). These topics can then be used to present a specific problem and a viable solution. Prelli explains that rhetors using these topoi must know both the problem as the community perceives it and the kinds of data and theories that community finds acceptable or trustworthy (186). Thus, subclasses of this topos include “experimental competence,” “observational competence,” the value of corroboration, the importance of taxonomy or classification, and the presence of quantitative precision (186-199). As I demonstrate in the next section, this topos and its many subclasses contribute to the specific topos I have named the “female moron.” The exemplary topoi, used to locate similarities between knowledge claims, also produce lines of argument in scientific discourse. Though the subclasses of exemplary topoi—example, metaphor, analogy—can be used in any persuasive discourse, Prelli insists their application in scientific discourse is unique. This topos and its subclasses emerge in the discourses eugenicists use to talk about the perceived “hyperfecundity” of the “unfit” classes and female morons in particular. Descriptions of these women as “mongrels” or “stray dogs,” coupled with analogies to the artificial selection of animal husbandry, create connections between “female morons” and animals and render them less than human in the eyes of eugenicists, physicians, lawyers, and the public. Especially troubling are overlapping themes of racism, ableism, and elitism embedded in these discourses. I will return to both problem-solving and exemplary topoi later in this chapter. As Prelli notes, a topical method of invention should be fluid and flexible—able to change with the discovery of new data and evidence, the reassessment of earlier theses, the introduction of a new or different audience. In addition, new topoi appear adjacent to or instead of other “places” in the mind. In the sections that follow, I demonstrate not only the work of the special topoi of science as Prelli describes them but also the appearance of two new topoi: what I have heretofore named “the female moron” and her “hyperfecundity.” Though these topoi may

71 Of the three types, I will focus on the first and the third, setting aside evaluative topoi for now. Evaluative topoi point to lines of argument that assess the value of experiential, theoretical, and methodological claims. These topics are evident in the discourse of eugenic sterilization, but to a smaller degree than the problem-solving and exemplary topoi.

fall under a series of other existing topics—defintion, cause and effect, comparison—I believe they also operate as “places” in their own right, as “pointed out and marked” paths of reasoning that eugenicists could call upon when inventing arguments about eugenic sterilization. In addition, what I want to make clear about the work of these topoi is their ambiguity and subsequent ease of application to any number of women on the margins of social, economic, or racial boundaries. Just as discussions of the “unfit” and the feeble-minded took on a range of meanings in eugenic research publications and academic literature, the “female moron” and her “hyperfecundity” gave eugenicists a particularly flexible means of differentiating between the two “types” of women and discriminating accordingly. These two topics reflect the language of reproductive rights during the eugenics movement as well as our current theories, social policies, and reproductive technologies. As a result, the next section will address a series of questions that continue to affect both rhetorics of science in general and the specific rhetorics of eugenics and reproduction as they emerged during the campaign for eugenic sterilization. From what existing rhetorics did these topoi emerge? How did eugenicists use these topoi to discover lines of argument? Where does their persuasive power reside? How were these arguments redeployed during the Supreme Court case? And, more broadly, how do these topoi affect the reproductive rights of women, then and now?

The Classifications of Feeble-mindedness and the “Dangerous Moron” The use of special topoi—the “female moron” and her “hyperfecundity”—in eugenic literature begins in the early-twentieth century at a time when attention to “fitness” and the problem of the “survival of the unfit” was increasing. As Prelli notes, “new topoi emerge as people discovery fertile new relationships that transform understandings of old ideas” (78) and these two topoi are no exception. As the relationships between “fitness,” fertility, feeble- mindedness, and fecundity develop as part of the discussion of the differential birthrate, new topics for argument come to the surface as well. It is important to remember that the individuals described in these accounts represent “the Unfit” as defined by Francis Galton in Chapter Two. As part of a greater rhetoric of eugenics and reproductive rights, arguments about what constitutes both “fitness” and the right to bear children seep into a number of arenas, eugenic sterilization being but one of four addressed in this project. In many essays on eugenics, several labels are used interchangeably to identify these

individuals. For example, Henry Chapin’s essay, titled “The Survival of the Unfit” and published in The Popular Science Monthly, not only uses a reified form of “fitness” in the title, but it also contains the labels “delinquents,” “the unfortunates,” “defectives,” “defective persons,” and “defective classes” within the first three paragraphs, making the various labels seem transposable.72 The interchangeability shown here is not at all uncommon in eugenic literature. In addition, the reification of “the unfortunates,” and “defectives” resembles the reification of “the Unfit”—all make adjectives into nouns in order to highlight the purportedly fixed nature of the individual—and the connotation of each term differs slightly: “Unfortunates” brings to mind poverty or hard luck while “delinquents” seems criminal, and “defectives” implies a physical or mental “abnormality” or disability. All give the impression of a fixed, hereditary condition, as well as the idea that all are equally “unfit,” a point Chapin returns to repeatedly. Of special concern to eugenicists were mentally defective individuals they defined as “feeble-minded,” a category that began as a label for a measure of intelligence using the Binet and Simon intelligence test but eventually came to serve as an “umbrella concept” under which other categories—“non-white” ethnicity, criminality, poverty, a lack of moral character, sexual “perversions,” epilepsy—could fall (Trent 155-166, Stubblefield 163). In 1911, Henry Herbert Goddard published “The Elimination of Feeble-mindedness,” a eugenics-based proposal for sterilization that gave his colleagues a clearly-defined system of classification for mental defectives, individuals broadly defined as in “a state of mental defect from birth or from an early age due to incomplete or abnormal development” (261). Of the three categories, “idiot,” “imbecile,” and “moron,” eugenicists worried most about the moron, a group described as the highest-functioning and therefore most dangerous. 73

72 Furthermore, Lennard Davis addresses this interchangeability and its effects in Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body: “The loose association between what we would now call disability and criminal activity, mental incompetence, sexual license, and so on established a legacy that people with disabilities are still having trouble living down. […] The conflation of disability with depravity expressed itself in the formulation of the ‘defective class” (37). Chapin’s essay bears out this conflation as he moves from a discussion of “defectives” directly to the “criminal classes.” The Popular Science Monthly offered science and scientific subjects to the general reader. 73 This classification system recalls Foucault’s explanation of the nosological (concerned with the categorization of diseases) system of medicine in The Birth of the Clinic. He creates three spatializations, or configurations, of disease: the primary spatialization, wherein the disease is described and ordered as a concept; the secondary, which describes the means by which the disease is given a place within the body; and the tertiary, which describes the means by which the disease and the diseased individual are located within the societal body (Birth 2-20). As a

In keeping with the American eugenicist tendency to misappropriate Mendelian laws of inheritance, Goddard asserts that the condition is hereditary and offers a series of charts illustrating the transmission of feeble-mindedness from grandparent to parent and parent to child. Even as he admits the scarcity of anatomical studies to isolate the inherent abnormality of the feeble-minded brain, he nevertheless dismisses the possibility that environmental causes— premature birth, alcoholism, syphilis, consanguinity, and malnutrition—might be at play. Of the role of environment Goddard states authoritatively, “All these causes combined are small compared to one cause—heredity” (“Elimination” 266). In his position as the head of The Training School for Backward and Feeble-minded Children in Vineland, NJ, a renowned institution for research and study in mental deficiency and illness, Goddard was considered the authority on feeble-mindedness. After establishing feeble-mindedness as hereditary and therefore fixed, Goddard describes and orders each of the three categories. An interesting subtext of these descriptions is the set of underlying warrants about what it means to be “fit,” which recalls the values of the “normal” American as a white (and having a northern European country of origin), middle class, heterosexual male. For example, an idiot is defined as “a person so deeply defective in mind…that he is unable to guard himself against common physical dangers” (226). As the converse of the “independence” so treasured by Americans, the idiot must rely on others to survive. Goddard’s definition of imbecile also reflects a lack of independence, this time economic rather than physical. He explains that an imbecile “by reason of mental defect…is incapable of earning his own living” (226). Although Goddard explicitly gives “mental defect” as the reason for this inability, a circular argument exists nonetheless: An imbecile is “one who can’t earn a living”; ergo, those living in poverty or on welfare (not “earning” a living) must be imbeciles. In this case, as in so many eugenic labels, the environmental, social and cultural milieu, and behavior can serve as proof-by-proxy of a hereditary condition. For example, an immigrant woman living in tenement housing who is unable to work (for whatever reason—children, cultural bias, language barrier) and is dependent on public funds could be labeled “imbecile” first and diagnosed (with unfair intelligence tests) later—all under the auspices of “science” and

result, a “logic of disease” is formed, which can then be mapped onto an individual, effectively turning the individual into an object within the medical community and thereby subject to its power and its scrutiny.

heredity theory. Furthermore, this practice reveals a paradox in logic that eugenicists were more than willing to overlook. On one hand, by describing intelligence as hereditary, eugenicists like Goddard made the argument that it could not be altered by environmental or social forces, that nurture was no help to a flawed nature. On the other hand, they were quick to point to a poor environment or poor parenting (or simply being poor) as evidence of feeble-mindedness. Not surprisingly, these warrants surfaced in discussions about feeble-mindedness and what it meant to be “fit.” For example, Harvard biologist G. H. Parker’s description of “high excellence” or “fitness” in a citizen echoes Goddard’s warrants. He writes: such a member must have the physical qualifications for an ample life during which he must contribute more or less continuously to the welfare of society. He must be physically intact in that he can withstand the wear and tear of daily exertion and meet successfully the strain of momentary crises; and he must cultivate a range of activities that yields products serviceable and acceptable to the community” (345). Phrases such as “ample life” and “physically intact” imply a comfortable income as well as a “normal” body. And the idea of “cultivat[ing] a range of activities” recalls the lifestyle of leisure enjoyed by the middle and upper class citizen, something a new immigrant or a person with an addiction to drugs or alcohol could not obtain. Thus, the social and environmental markers could also serve as an indicator of hereditary “fitness” when eugenicists wanted to prove the difference between feeble-minded and “normal” citizens. Of the three labels, “moron” is the most specific, while at the same time capable of the widest application.74 Goddard’s definition of moron reads “one who is capable of earning his living under favorable circumstances, but is incapable … (a) of competing on equal terms with his normal fellows, or (b) of managing himself and his affairs with ordinary prudence” (“Elimination” 226, my emphasis). Everything being “favorable,” the moron can support him or herself, but if asked to work alongside a “normal” individual, the moron will be revealed by his or her inability to perform. For women and new immigrants entering the workforce, the undertones of this description are especially damning, for many would have trouble “keeping up

74 Trent argues Goddard’s development of the “moron” category “enlarged the projection of mental deficiency in the general population to at least 2 percent from less than 1 percent” [sic] (162).

with” the tacit knowledge and social network enjoyed by white males.75 As Anna Stubblefield notes, this application of social norms to cognitive dis/ability “makes clear that what disables people is an environment in which the definition of a successful or full life is based on limited notions of independence, mastery of certain intellectual and social skills, and competitive accomplishment” (167). Likewise, the phrase “ordinary prudence” permits interpretation with a range of misogynistic outcomes—a woman’s dress or appearance, her dating practices, her alcohol intake, her habits at work, the state of her home, the presence of any illegitimate children might all be scrutinized according white, middle-class norms of “fitness” and propriety in the form of “prudence.” This use of “normal” also recalls Disability Studies scholar Lennard Davis’ essay “Enforcing Normalcy,” which describes the mostly invisible and largely ignored history of social construction behind our current understanding of “normalcy.” He argues that “the problem [of the disabled body] is not the person with disabilities; the problem is the way that normalcy is constructed to create the problem of the disabled person” (24). In the case of the eugenics movement, what constituted “normal” was in fact a reflection of the individuals who defined it: the upper- and upper-middle class white males of sound body and greater than average “intelligence” (as described by Stephen J. Gould as a reified description of a dynamic and varied set of human capabilities). The special problem of morons, Goddard explains, resides in their “normal” appearance, an oversight that permits this “menace” to exist unchecked (“Elimination” 262). Goddard also implies that their ability to function at a higher level than other feeble-minded groups translates to greater mischief, creating “an enormous drag on society” (262). Unless placed under constant surveillance, the moron will end up “an object of charity…living more or less at public expense” or a criminal, whose “natural instincts…express themselves to the full…and easily turn him [sic] to crime” (262-3). In a short summary of “hereditary” characteristics, Goddard invokes a series of social and behavioral qualities: These are people who cannot be taught a decent living, and through their ignorance of things, which they have not the capacity to learn, they spread

75 Kline notes that waves of neurasthenia in white males created increased anxiety about a “loss of virility” when compared to African American males and the ever-expanding immigrant working class (9). In addition, many women worked and lived independently in the cities, which threatened the “existing social order” with white males at the top (10). Both concerns can be read in Goddard’s discussion of “feeble-mindedness.”

disease, through their person and their untidy surroundings. They are thus a menace to public health as well as to morals. (263) Consequently, Goddard argues that the elimination of morons would all but rid society of many of its most undesirable individuals—paupers, criminals, prostitutes, and the “large army of neer- do-wells” (263). In Inventing the Feeble Mind, James Trent suggests that Goddard’s work was responsible for much of the conflation of feeble-mindedness and degeneracy; in addition to contending that feeble-mindedness was a hereditary trait, Goddard promoted a relationship between social vice and mental deficiency (162-3). Trent explains This new causal relationship, of course, easily ushered in a new conceptualization of mental deficiency. Mentally deficient people, especially those who were morons, were no longer merely a social burden, they were now a social menace. […] Along with the change from burden to menace came the claim that mentally deficient people were breeding at an even greater rate than the degenerativists had earlier believed. According to Goddard, the rate among morons was at least twice the rate of the general population. (163) In essence, the shift from “burden” to “menace” intensifies existing rhetorics of Social Darwinism and eugenics. Not only were these feeble-minded individuals taxing the public in the forms of welfare, institutionalization, and other social services; according to Goddard, they were also responsible for the majority of crime and degeneracy. Even more alarming was the proposal that these individuals might be the source of the differential birthrate. As Daniel Kevles notes, the “excessive sexuality” of the feeble-minded had long been suspected, and while eugenicists disagreed about its presence in men, females labeled feeble-minded “were reputed to be the sources of debauchery, licentiousness, and illegitimacy” (“Name” 107). Arguments that the reproductive capabilities of “the unfit,” especially the female moron, outstripped the “fit” surfaced in greater numbers after 1911, in both scientific and public texts. Calls for the eugenic sterilization of those considered feeble-minded soon followed.

The Special Problem of the Female Moron A woman categorized as feeble-minded represented a serious problem for eugenicists, especially her ability to pass as “normal” and her presumed “excessive sexuality.” Eugenicists

worried her “weak-mindedness” might be misconstrued by men of good stock as “maidenly innocence,” thereby leading to marriage and future generations of morons (Vaughan 66). In what they believed to be the interest of the nation, then, eugenicists sought not only to locate and label these women, but to permanently eliminate their reproductive threat to civilization. In essence, the campaign to sterilize Carrie Buck and other women like her began here, in the first quarter of the twentieth century. In this next section, I reveal the process by which the commonplaces of the “female moron” and her “hyperfecundity” appear as topics for arguments about eugenic sterilization. What I want to make clear here is not only the emergence of these topoi as an event, but also the manner in which they gain acceptance within an existing set of special topoi used in scientific discourse. Using both “problem-solution” and “exemplary” topics, eugenicists and others are able to confer scientific legitimacy on these new topoi, so much so, in fact, that their use later persuaded the United States Supreme Court to decide in favor of eugenic sterilization. Furthermore, these new topoi gain power through their proximity to other already-accepted topics. Said another way, if we consider existing topics such as “evolution,” “hereditary traits,” “the Unfit,” and “mental defectives” as places in the mind where eugenicist went to invent arguments, these new topoi are adjacent rooms. As carefully constructed, evocative, and timely additions to the “arsenal,” these new topoi gave eugenicists two more tools in the campaign for eugenic sterilization. The concept of the “female moron” derives from theoretical discussions of feeble- mindedness as well as empirical evidence presented in a series of field studies published in the first 15 years of the twentieth century. This blend of theoretical claim and observational data illustrates what Prelli refers to as an example of a “problem-solution topos” (186). Together, H. H. Goddard’s definition of the moron and his description of behaviors and characteristics of humans labeled as such and theoretical claims about the categorization of the feeble-minded create a new understanding of an old idea (Prelli 78). Add to that Goddard’s concern about female morons in particular as amoral, “unfit” women and a new topic is born. This combination also satisfies members of the scientific community looking for solutions to the differential birthrate, keeping in play all of the elements of the rhetorical situation, including Mendelian laws and the “girl problem.” In order to provide the empirical evidence to support his theories of “feeble-mindedness”

and its fixed, hereditary nature, Goddard published The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness (1912), a genealogical case study conducted at his own institution, The Training School for Backward and Feeble-minded Children at Vineland, N.J.76 With simplified conclusions made clear “for the benefit of the lay reader,” Goddard constructs an embodiment of feeble-mindedness in Deborah Kallikak, an eight-year-old girl who spends 14 years at the school (x).77 In this study, Goddard employs “problem-solution” topos to create connections between his theoretical claims about feeble-mindedness and his observations of Deborah, which were later used to produce lines of arguments for eugenic sterilization. As Stubblefield notes, “the link between feeblemindedness and morality was made in the family studies, where feeblemindedness became the catchall explanation for a variety of characterisitics with moral components, such as pauperism, sexual promiscuity, criminality, and vagabondage” (175). Goddard’s study of the Kallikak family was one of many produced during this period—other family studies like Robert Dugdale’s 1887 The Jukes, Arthur H. Estabrook’s 1923 “The Tribe of Ishmael,” and The Jukes—1915 were popular texts as well.78 Even before meeting Deborah Kallikak (the primary source of Goddard’s data), the reader learns a lot about her family history, a moved calculated to foreground the “hereditary taint” of feeble-mindedness and depravity (viii). At the same time, Goddard takes pains to emphasize the credibility of his study, “a genuine story of real people,” and anticipates objections to the accuracy of data about family members long dead. He writes: in the first place, the family itself proved to be a notorious one, so the people, in the community where the present generations are living, know of them; they knew their parents and grandparents; and the older members knew them farther back, because of the reputation they had always borne. (viii) After addressing the reliability of his informants, Goddard cites the reputation of the Training School, the thorough research methods (“oftentimes a second, a third, a fifth, or a sixth visit has been necessary”) and the promise of a larger publication to include all of the data that could not

76 The use of “backward” as a direct opposite to the “forward,” “Progressive” era of advancement (scientific and otherwise) cannot be overlooked. 77 Goddard’s study of the Kallikaks traces two lines of the same family; one side stemming from brief romance between a man and a “feeble-minded” barmaid, the other side descending from a later, legitimate marriage. Deborah represents a fifth generation of “feeble-mindedness” stemming from the illegitimate relationship. 78 Dugdale’s The Jukes presents the family as victims of social and environmental stresses, arguing that the family’s problems with the law were the result of poverty and a lack of education. Estabrook revisited Dugdale’s data to recast the Jukes as innately flawed, arguing that their faults were hereditary, not social.

fit in this account (viii-x). Together, these statements in the preface reveal the use of “experimental competence,” a topic scientists employ to prove to the community that the research is capable of addressing the problem at hand (Prelli 186). Goddard then turns to Deborah and, using a series of descriptive markers, provides the reader with a sketch of her and her past. “Born into the world illegitimately,” he explains, Deborah was unwanted by both her father and her mother’s then-current husband, with whom her mother had several additional children (1). In addition we learn that Deborah was, “through the effort of well-meaning people,” pulled from school where she “did not get along well” and placed at the Vineland Training School under Goddard’s care (1-2). Goddard presents Deborah as illegitimate, unwanted by her parents, unintelligent, and, finally, dependent on social services, a set of markers that will be repeated later in the trial of Carrie Buck. When Deborah is admitted, she is described a “not very obedient” child, “careless in dress…obstinate and destructive” (2). Unable to count or to read, Deborah’s prior schooling had yielded “no results” (2) and over the next 14 years, Deborah receives the nearly constant surveillance and attention suggested for “feeble-minded” individuals, illustrated in a year by year account of Deborah’s progress at the school. During this time, from November 1897 to May 1911, Deborah learns to garden, play music, embroider, sew by hand and with machine, perform workworking, and build both a chair and a chest (2-6). Though several photos accompanying this chronology illustrate the complexity of the tasks Deborah accomplished, Goddard’s notes highlight her perceived feeble-mindedneess. He emphasizes the observation that, even in her 22nd year, she “does not very often try,” she is “careless” in her work, and she can write, “but has to have more than half the words spelled for her” (192). Goddard insists Deborah’s teachers have worked “faithfully and carefully” to educate her, but then acknowledge that in the end they must finally admit “even to themselves” that she cannot change or learn (7). Goddard reports that Deborah “learns a new occupation quickly,” but requires several repetitions to understand it, “needs close supervision,” [and] is a poor reader and poor at numbers” (7). In this narrative, we encounter a subclass of the “problem-solution” topic Prelli calls “explanatory power.” In this topos, the scientists offers data that explains why specific events are observed, why the proposition (Deborah is feeble-minded) is consistent with the observations made (her inability to perform at an “acceptable” level for her age). Furthermore, after using this observational data to describe Deborah, Goddard then “diagnoses”

and classifies her using the Binet Scale; according to Goddard, Deborah demonstrated “the mentality of a nine-year-old” consistently over two years of testing (10). 79 This evidence is then connected to a longer discussion of the theoretical markers of feeble-mindedness, which I quote here at length: This is a typical illustration of the mentality of a high-grade feeble-minded person, the moron, the delinquent, the kind of girl or woman that fills our reformatories. They are wayward, they get into all sorts of trouble and difficulties, sexually and otherwise, … . It is also the history of the same type of girl in the public school. Rather good-looking, bright in appearance, with many attractive ways, the teacher clings to the hope, indeed insists, that such a girl will come out all right. Our work with Deborah convinces us that such hopes are delusions. 11-12) In addition to clearly defining the “female moron,” Goddard reifies her excessive sexuality, her behavioral transgressions, and her “delinquency” as part of her innate “mentality.” Furthermore, Deborah becomes a stand-in for any number of girls and women who might be “rather good- looking” and “bright in appearance” but hopeless nonetheless. Prelli identifies such classification as examples of “taxonomic power” and explains that “taxonomies have persuasive power when their categories are assumed to be individually discrete and collectively exhaustive” (194). In other words, Goddard’s claims about Deborah refer to her and to the female moron as a category. In addition, this description recalls Foucault’s discussion of the taxonomy of disease; after the disease is described and classified, it is given a place in the body, after which the individual is located within society as such (“Birth” 2-20). Deborah has been diagnosed and labeled and her place in society established. Goddard makes it clear to his readers that everything has been done to help Deborah, but to no avail. He argues that, despite being “persistently trained” for 14 years, “nothing has been accomplished in the direction of higher intelligence or general education” (12). Furthermore, if Deborah were to be released into society, she would “lead a live that would be vicious, immoral,

79 Though Alfred Binet developed the test to help French social workers identify “mental age” and then educate children in an appropriate setting, few eugenicists used the test in a positive way. Instead, Goddard and others “employed it while ignoring Binet’s insistence on the pliancy of intelligence” (Trent 158), often applying it unevenly and in the service of identifying individuals they believed to be feeble-minded. For an excellent discussion of the development and subsequent misapplication of Binet’s test and its continued use as our IQ test, see Stephen J. Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man.

and criminal”; though she is not to blame for her condition, Goddard explains, “her instincts and appetites are in the direction that would lead to vice,” solely the result of her heredity (12). In his final assessment of Deborah, Goddard emphasizes the relationship between his definition of “moron” and the human embodiment of that definition. He focuses his reader on the amount of time and energy dedicated to Deborah without results, on her “natural instincts” that will “turn [her] to crime, on her inability to learn, and on her inability to “earn a decent living.” As such, Goddard implies, Deborah is one of many “feeble-minded” women contributing the “enormous drag on society” (262).80 While Goddard’s work focuses on the innate and “fixed” qualities of the female moron and the resources and time necessary to keep her out of trouble, others emphasized the threat these women posed to civilization. Unlike Goddard, who implies that Deborah and others like her should be protected through institutionalization or sterilized as a precaution, Victor Vaughan (Dean of the Department of Surgery and Medicine at the University of Michigan and President of the Michigan State Board of Health) sees women like Deborah as someone from which the nation needed to be protected. Thus, once established, the existence and threat of the “female moron” could be used as a topic for arguments about elimination of “the unfit” through the sterilization of women. An address to University of Michigan students in 1912 provides a clear example. In his lecture to students, Vaughan introduces the topic by stressing the importance of eugenic marriage, “one way … in which man often fails to show himself a eugenist” (66). He then warns students about the “female moron,” a being whose “doll-like loveliness” serves as the undoing of many a “brilliant young man” (66, 67). He explains: In form and character she is to her admirer a goddess. He interprets her weak- mindedness as maidenly innocence, and he says to himself, sometimes to others, “She is the daintiest, sweetest, most innocent creature in the world. She never suspects anything is wrong and she loves me so dearly that she would do anything I might ask. She is my darling little girl.” (66) Like other descriptions of “feeble-mindedness,” the easy conflation of biological and social

80 Though I do not address them here, I do wish to point out that there are many examples of studies like Goddard’s and most contain an example of the female moron. In fact, in The Kallikaks, Goddard supports his claims about Deborah using other female members of her family. As the epigraph indicates, the Jukes were another family studied for its rich history of presumed feeble-mindedness.

characteristics is contained in this topic; while Vaughan uses Goddard’s classification system and therefore implies a hereditary, biological condition, his descriptors are strictly social and environmental in nature. In the absence of a Binet intelligence test, men can identify the “female moron” by her weak-mindedness, her delicate nature, and her assiduousness.81 Unlike early descriptions of “the Unfit” or “defectives” in eugenic literature, often rife with references to prostitution, venereal disease, crime, and pauperism, this characterization of the female moron emphasizes her deceptive beauty and demeanor. The threat lies in her very adherence to traditional ideals of feminine beauty and comportment; her innocence belies an arrested development (“Mentally she never grows beyond ‘sweet sixteen’”) and her beauty disguises a sickness within (Vaughan 66). Indeed, unless men can learn to discern the differences between a “normal” woman and the dangerous female moron, they risk a lifetime as “victim to the bewitching moron girl” (67). In voicing concern about his audience’s ability to distinguish between the “fit” and “unfit” members of society, Vaughan establishes a precedent for greater scrutiny of women. His advice is clear: “To the young men of my audience I wish to say, ‘Shun the attractive, frivolous girl.’ She is found in nearly every community. The object of the eugenicist is not to multiply her kind, but to exterminate her” (69). As a topic, a path of reasoning, for eugenicists to use when discovering arguments for eugenic sterilization, the problem of the “female moron,” her excessive sexuality, and immoral behavior proves decidedly productive.

Mongrels, Litters, and Stray Dogs: Examples of Hyperfecundity of the Unfit The development of a second new topos—the “hyperfecundity” of the female moron— also emerges as part of an existing set of special topics used by scientists and eugenicists. Described by Prelli as “exemplary topoi,” these topics “function to conceptualize phenomena in ways that guide investigations [and] can be thought of as a heuristically powerful kind of example” (206). Using a metaphor, an analogy, or an example that conveys meaning through a particular version of reality—describing a compound as a marriage of elements, for example— can give rhetors another way to invent arguments about what a compound is, or what it does, or how it might be used (206). In the case of the presumed hyperfecundity of the “unfit,”

81 This set of characteristics then admired in women—innocence, daintiness, servitude—can also be turned against them if the situation demands it. I am reminded of a more current but equally flexible example: a strong women is desirable in the workforce, unless she’s too strong… then she’s a bitch.

eugenicists employ a range of exemplary topoi, most of which incorporate metaphors of breeding animals. In some cases, the use of analogy compares the benefits of breeding from “good stock,” to the benefits of positive eugenics and “fit” children; in others, the use of metaphor creates a connection wherein the concept of rabbits and stray cats and dogs stand in for the presumed hyperfecundity of the female moron. And again, because this new topos emerges as an extension of other exemplary topics used in scientific discourse, it obtains all of the power and legitimacy of those existing topics. As his lecture to the students at the University of Michigan draws to a close, Vaughan identifies what he believe to be a second, more serious consequence of a “dysgenic” marriage: the ensuing burden of what eugenicists would call defective children. Fears about what eugenicists referred to as “the differential birthrate” circulated throughout the movement and into popular science magazines, newspapers, and the academy. In a lecture to students at Cornell, one geneticist summarized the accepted wisdom on the subject: “the lowest and most degraded hereditary strains reproduce rapidly, the best reproduce but slowly” (Webber 168). Because of her presumed promiscuity, lack of morals, and inability to bring “ordinary prudence” to her affairs, the female moron is often implicated in this presumed spread of “feeble-mindedness.” Likening a “feeble-minded” woman to an animal was, as we will see, a common occurrence; in fact, one eugenicist opined that they were capable of “multiplying like rabbits” (Terman qtd. in Kline 3). In response to these fears, many eugenicists called for a program of “artificial selection,” including tactics such as selective marriage, segregation of “the unfit,” and, increasingly, sterilization. In much the same manner that the definition of “fitness” spread throughout the eugenics movement, the use of the analogy connecting the process of natural selection to the work of breeders and gardeners stretches back as early as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Darwin employed the analogy to help his readers understand his theory of “natural selection,” asking them to consider the “artificial selection” of particular qualities by breeders and gardeners as a way to understand the mechanism of natural selection.82 He points out that, when it comes to breeding animals or developing new strains of plants, random variations are not the only factor in

82 That Charles Darwin employed narrative devices and rhetorical language such as analogy, figurative language, and personification in his writing has been effectively argued by many historians of science and rhetoricians alike. Work by John Campbell, Phillip Sipiora, and, most recently, Nathan Crick, illustrates Darwin’s attention to the construction of his own ethos, as well as his desire to tailor his scientific theories to both scientist and lay audiences.

their development: Let us now briefly consider the steps by which domestic races [of animals] have been produced…. […] We cannot suppose that all the breeds were suddenly produced as perfect and as useful as we now see them; …. The key is man’s power of accumulative selection: nature gives successive variations; man adds them up in certain directions useful to him. In this sense he may be said to make for himself useful breeds. (22) In this way, nature might produce variations on the herding characteristics of sheepdogs, but it is breeders who identify, select, and breed for the best, most useful characteristics. By reminding his audience of man’s power to control the creation of “perfect” and “useful” breeds, Darwin illustrates the power of natural selection, a process by which variations in nature (and in the organism) create conditions that make some species more suitable for survival. Throughout Origin, Darwin refers back to breeders and their ability to artificially select for particular traits and characteristics; though he may not have intended to do so, his analogy inspired eugenicists to consider the place of “artificial selection” in the lives of human beings. Furthermore, this use of analogy was acceptable to the scientific community because it helped to “conceptualize [the] phenomen[on]” of natural selection (Prelli 206). The analogy reemerges in the early eugenical essays and studies by Francis Galton, and is re-circulated in the work of eugenicists in England and America alike. As addressed in Chapter Two, Francis Galton borrowed heavily from Darwin as he developed his own theories of eugenics. And because Galton’s theories were equally novel, he, too, found it necessary to employ analogies and metaphors for his audience. Like his cousin, Galton explains the basic goals of eugenics in a reference to farming and breeding, two subjects with which his audience would have been familiar. In his 1908 speech before the Eugenics Education Society, he notes that “intelligent” farmers understand the importance of “good stock,” and make obtaining good breeds their first priority. However, Galton also explicitly connects breeding with eugenics and his belief in unchanging, hereditary characteristics, arguing that “It is a waste of labour to try so to improve a poor stock by careful feeding…as to place it on a level of good stock” (“Address”). Not only does Galton imply that these characteristics are fixed, but his construction of the difference between “good stock” and “poor stock” aligns with his use, in the same piece, of “the Fit” and “the Unfit.” As a result, the language of fitness and the analogy of “breeding” become

intertwined for this audience as well as the greater scientific and social reformist communities, and both serve as commonplaces from which to construct arguments. Four years later in 1912, Charles Davenport, a prominent American eugenicist, employs this same combination in an address at the University of Minnesota entitled “The Eugenics Programme and Progress in its Achievement.” He uses the lecture to “clearly and forcefully” explain to undergraduates the science of eugenics and to declare its current goals, one of which is a program in eugenic sterilization. 83 Davenport echoes Darwin’s reference to man’s “power” of artificial selection in the conclusion of his speech, urging his audience to recognize the need for the segregation and/or sterilization of what he calls defectives. He states If we have greater power to prevent [the reproduction of the “unfit”] than ever before, so much the greater is our responsibility to use that power selectively, for the survival of those of best stock; more than those who are feebleminded and without moral control. (12) In Davenport’s address, we hear the discourses of “fitness” and “breeding” yoked together and used, in part, as the basis of an argument for eugenic sterilization. Like the “intelligent” farmer who makes “good stock” his priority, and the breeder whose power of selection produces a “useful” animal, Davenport’s vision emphasizes the “survival” of the “best stock.” He also reconfigures the power of a breeder from a hobby or a means of income into a responsibility to humankind, a statement in keeping with his beliefs about the fate of the community over the fate of the individual as presented in the third epigraph of this chapter. And by implying that those who are “feeble-minded” are “without moral control,” Davenport touches on deeply-held fears about the promiscuity, “hyperfecundity,” and the spread of “feeble-mindedness,” allusions that would most certainly have resonated with his educated, mostly male, mostly white audience (12). In his lecture one year later in 1913 at Johns Hopkins University, Professor of Psychology W. H. Howells makes an explicit call for sterilization. He first refers to Galton’s two intertwined goals for eugenics—“To check the birth-rate of the unfit and to further the multiplication of the fit”—and then turns to a breeding analogy to support his argument for

83Of all American eugenicists, Charles Davenport is perhaps most responsible for the rise of eugenics to the status of “science.” As the Director of the Department of Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, Davenport planned the facilities and obtained funding at support for the Eugenics Record Office, a program for gathering data of “eugenical import,” publishing research on eugenics, and providing advice for eugenics-based public policy documents and decisions. In this lecture, Davenport also emphasizes a need for “selective immigration,” demonstrating the way that the “artificial selection/breeding” analogy can be used across subjects.

selective sterilization (83). He argues that the success of breeders and gardeners should admit the possibility of applying similar methods to the betterment of mankind. As an abstract proposition there can be no doubt that results of the same character might be obtained in the human race, were it possible to try the experiment, and without doubt many sincere spirits have hoped that some procedure might be devised to realize the benefits promised by such methods. (83) However “abstract” his proposition, his audience could have no doubt that Howells supported the selective reproduction of “the fit” and that the “procedure” of which he speaks is eugenic sterilization. Another lecture, this one by Professor Albert Galloway Keller to undergraduates at Yale that same year, also incorporates both “fitness” and “breeding”: “Selection,” Keller explains, “whether done by nature—when it is called natural selection—or by the breeder— when it is called artificial selection—aims to prevent the mating of the unfit and to favour that of the fit” (244). The use of this analogy (an A:B::C:D connection that puts natural selection in nature ensuring only the “fittest” to survive in comparison with artificial selection in society ensuring the continuation of the “fittest” individuals) enables eugenicists to invent lines of argument about the benefits of sterilization. Furthermore, as Prelli notes, exemplary topoi such as analogies and metaphor can be chosen by the rhetor based on his or her audience. In many of these lectures, the audience consisted of undergraduate and graduate students, individuals who would have some knowledge about genetics and eugenics, but would still be relatively new to Mendelian theory and the intricacies of evolutionary theory (207). As a result, this analogy does the work of simplifying a difficult concept while at the same time serving as support for the argument itself. As the next section demonstrates, another equally audience-friendly exemplary topos operates alongside this analogy, one that would also have satisfied this audience and its understanding of the exigence and constraints of the rhetorical situation. Using a series of metaphors, eugenicists express the need for sterilization to curb what they believed to be the excessive number of children born to the “unfit” as it affected the differential birthrate. Lectures, essays, and publications concerning what many eugenicists referred to as “hyperfecundity” are far more aggressive in their calls for a program in eugenic sterilization. Gone are the abstract references to better breeding and “good stock”; historians of eugenics note that by the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century, even the more sanguine eugenicists supported some form of reproductive constraint for the “unfit” classes. Calls for marriage

restriction, segregation by sex, institutionalization, and sterilization appear in most of the eugenic literature (academic, scientific, and public) of the period. Moreover, the language is decidedly more vivid. In a 1913 lecture to undergraduates, Henry Jordan, a professor of Anatomy at the University of Virginia, calls for a “workable law authorizing …sterilization of the grossly defective, alarmingly fertile, anti-social class,” thus cementing the construction of the feeble- minded as both excessively fertile and unable to operate in society without assistance while playing to his audience’s concerns about the differential birthrate (137). In another lecture to students at Cornell University, the speaker discourages misguided “human kindness and Christian spirit” toward the “unfit” and “defective” classes, for “in permitting such classes to reproduce further litters of unfortunates we are inhuman and unchristian” (Webber 169). The author continues We will not allow a cruel father to beat his child but we will allow the weak- minded, sexually degenerate, drunken sot to freely bring into the world a brood of possibly eight or ten poor innocent defective children, a burden to themselves throughout life, living in squalor and misery, and finally burdening humanity with their care. (169) In this single paragraph, the eugenicist touches on a number of existing topoi—the connection between feeble-mindedness and crime, excessive sexuality, perversion, poverty, and abuse—to describe the “unfit” as a class. However, he also introduces the metaphor of “unfit” as animals. Referring to children as “litters” and “broods,” implies the birth of a large number of offspring in a short time as well as the ability to produce another litter directly after the first is weaned. Furthermore, this comparison brings to mind the offspring of animals often noted for her or his overpopulation in both urban and rural environments, animals that, when unattended and free to roam, are perceived as a menace to homeowners and taxpayers—rabbits wreaking havoc on gardens, feral cats spreading disease, raccoons invading home and neighborhood, dogs becoming wild and mean. Much like Goddard’s fears about allowing Deborah into society unsupervised, the “weak-minded” individual will do as he or she pleases, producing children “freely” and without regard to their enormous debt to “humanity.” As such, the implications are clear: if sterilization laws, already in place at this time in some states, are not expanded, enforced, and universalized, this “alarmingly fertile” class of defectives will double and triple the numbers of “poor stock,” finally “burdening humanity with their care.”

In 1914, Harry Laughlin presented a lecture at the first National Conference on Race Betterment in Battle Creek, Michigan, outlining a program for eugenic sterilization on a large scale. Like other lectures cited here, Laughlin’s calls for sterilization contained references to “fitness” coupled with discussions of breeding. However, based on Laughlin’s later role in the trial of Carrie Buck, this lecture demands more attention and more scrutiny. In many ways, the lecture and its claims summarize the arguments against Buck and their entry into the eugenic discourse a full 21 years before the trial, demonstrating what I believe to be the use of the two new special topoi together in service to arguments for eugenic sterilization. In order to address the many nuances of this lecture, I quote Laughlin here at length: In the breeding of the higher and more valuable types of domestic animals, such as horses and cattle, sterilization of surplus males is one custom universally practiced. The females of these animals are well cared for and protected from free union with the males; here selected matings are the rule. However, in the case of domestic animals of less value, having mongrel and homeless strains, such as the dog and the cat, the cutting off of their supply is largely effected through the destruction or the unsexing of the females. […] The females of such homeless strains are not protected, and consequently they increase very rapidly. Consorting freely with equally worthless mates, their progeny are often excessive in numbers, and of a worthless, mongrel sort. The castration of one-half of the mongrel male dogs would not effect a substantial reduction in the number of mongrel pups born. (484) Parsing this excerpt reveals many of the claims I’ve presented in this chapter: Laughlin not only employs references to difference based in classism, racism, and sexism, but he also employs several of the special topoi used by eugenicists and scientists alike. From his allusions to an economy of worth, “valuable” and “invaluable” types of animals, one might infer a difference in “fitness” based on class, ability, or race; from his mention of “domestic” vs. “homeless” a reference to “native” non-foreign Americans vs. immigrants” could be supposed; the term “mongrel,” then often used to describe an individual of “mixed” race, clearly refers to differences in what eugenicists would consider inherently racial qualities; the use of the phrase “free union” brings to mind both the “girl problem” as described by Wendy Kline as well as the ever-increasing rights of women to marry as they wished, when they wished, without regard to

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family, tradition, or custom. On another level, however, Laughlin uses both of the new special topoi I have outlined above. First, his allusions to promiscuity in the form of “free unions” and class status recall established definitions of the female moron, especially Goddard’s Deborah. Without family, she was not “well-cared for and protected,” both the result of her poverty and her illegitimacy, both of which recall established definitions of “feeble-mindedness,” especially in females. In the very next paragraph, Laughlin drops the innuendo and applies the metaphor outright, stating that “the unprotected females of the socially unfit classes bear, in human society, a place comparable to that of the females of mongrel strains of domestic animals” (484). In this single sentence, Laughlin transfers all of the entailed meaning and underlying warrants about stray animals, breeding, mongrels, and “fitness” onto “females of the socially unfit classes.” Like “domestic animals of less value,” these women are of little worth in society, contributing nothing but requiring varying degrees of surveillance, protection, and assistance in maintaining their affairs. Using the phrase “mongrel strains,” Laughlin invokes racial stereotypes aimed at new immigrants as well as the African-American population. And, unlike females of “worth,” Laughlin implies that these women engage in “free union” with the males, emphasizing existing clichés about prostitution, illegitimacy, and amoral behavior. All of these warrants support Laughlin’s main argument. In order to eliminate “the Unfit,” the women must be sterilized. Their inability to care for and protect themselves, coupled with their willingness for “free unions” and the resulting “excessive” numbers of children, prove to be effective arguments in Laughlin’s cause, in part because of the work of the two new topoi. Powerful in and of themselves, these examples and metaphors also satisfy the demands on such topoi in scientific discourse because they “intersect with situationally relevant research orientations (and corollary interests) that target audiences are using to comprehend the socio- logic of technically ‘legitimate’ problem solving” (Prelli 207). As part of a lecture on sterilization—delivered at a “race betterment” conference—comparing women considered “unfit” or feeble-minded to stray dogs and mongrels would have certainly resonated with the audience’s research orientation and the “corollary interests” of “race betterment,” such as enacting immigration “reform,” preventing interracial marriage, and isolating and segregating other individuals and groups as “unfit.” Harry Laughlin was one of many eugenicists calling for a program in eugenic

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sterilization; however, he stands out in histories of sterilization as perhaps the most ardent proponent of the surgery. In the years after his lecture at the National Conference on Race Betterment in 1914, Laughlin published a series of reports on eugenic sterilization for the Eugenic Record Office. In the first version of the report, Eugenic Sterilization in the United States, published in 1922, Laughlin criticizes existing sterilization laws, pointing out loopholes and flaws in individual state laws that rendered them ineffective or subject to overturning.84 In this document, and in a revision published 1926, Laughlin also includes two drafts (one long and detailed, one short) of “Model Eugenical Sterilization Laws.” The popularity of these reports, and their use by states hoping to avoid constitutional interference, brought Laughlin a measure of fame; as Philip Reilly notes, “after twelve years in Davenport’s shadow, Laughlin was himself a leading eugenicist” (66). While these laws were never adopted in full, they were incorporated into future sterilization laws; more significantly, the status they conferred on Laughlin made him the natural choice to testify in the case against Carrie Buck in the United States Supreme Court. Though he had never met Carrie Buck, Laughlin did not hesitate to examine Buck’s pedigree and offer an “expert opinion” on her hereditary feeble-mindedness (Stubblefield, Kevles, Largent). As Daniel Kevles points out, there had been no evidence that Vivian, Buck’s “illegitimate” daughter was herself feeble-minded, but Laughlin’s assessment stood, leading Holmes and seven other members of the United States Supreme Court to rule in favor of eugenic sterilization (110).

Rhetorical Appeals, Bodily Consequences As mentioned earlier, Nancy Ordover cites the ruling in the case of Buck v. Bell as part of a calculated effort to designate women as the primary candidates for sterilization (135). That the Holmes ruling had material, bodily effects on women cannot be denied; while eugenic sterilization was already in practice across the country at the time of the Supreme Court decision, Holmes’ ruling legitimized the practice and authorized states to update their laws accordingly. In addition, the ruling further circulated the distinctions between the labels “the fit” and “the unfit” and expanded their use as determinants in women’s reproductive options. According to Wendy Kline, the binary created between women as “fit” or “unfit” served two purposes: “it

84 In the 1926 version, Laughlin offers a definition of “unfit” as “a socially inadequate person,” a person who “fails…to maintain himself or herself as a useful member of the organized social life of the state” (Laughlin 65). Unlike most documents of the period, Laughlin includes the feminine pronoun “herself,” rather than rely on the universal masculine, providing, I believe, additional emphasis on women as the target of sterilization.

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portrayed women as responsible not only for racial progress but also for racial destruction” (3). Thus, even as women were being sterilized for being “unfit,” other, mostly white women were being encouraged to procreate as often as possible to counter the ever increasing “litters” of the unfit. What I have attempted to show here is the ways that rhetorics of eugenics, specifically the creation and development of two special topoi, were used to locate, classify, and then demonize a particular group of women. By labeling them “morons” through a series of research and family studies, eugenicists were able to impose upon them a set of social and “hereditary” traits—child-like, dependent, incapable of learning, hyper-sexual, deceptive, criminal. By constructing their “hyperfecundity” through metaphors of and analogies of breeding and of stray animals, eugenicists dehumanized these women in such a way that arguments for sterilization seemed as sensible and appropriate as spaying a cat. In addition, the topoi served as springboards for other arguments about solving the differential birthrate and the “girl problem.” The “female moron” and her “hyperfecundity” reveal a deep-rooted anxiety about the future of “good American stock” that pervaded of the first quarter of the twentieth century. Certainly these arguments present only two nodes in the network of rhetorics informing the debate on eugenic sterilization, but they signal a new channel in the way eugenicists dictated women’s reproductive rights and possibilities, a channel that, even now, remains open. In this case, the coupling of discourses of “fitness” with two topoi allowed eugenicists to present a complicated argument using simplistic headings or catch- phrases specially chosen to evoke disgust and fear in the scientific community, the public policy makers, the public, the legislators, the Justices of the United States Supreme Court. To close, I echo Celeste Condit’s concerns about the way discourse functions in the world: Once one begins to talk about the social circulation of signs rather than about the disembodied contemplation of ideas, one needs to account for how those signs have impact on the world. It is not enough to say that signs enter the human mind and then humans make impact on the world, because we are trying to account for the impact on humans in the first place. (“Materiality” 330) We cannot speak of language without speaking of its material consequences—language does not merely reflect, it does not “stand in” for our ideas and thought. It names, it moves, it acts, it

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shapes. Furthermore, as topics or places in the mind, these particular signs also serve as the basis for new lines of thought, ways of thinking, persuasive strategies As part of a broader rhetoric of reproduction and reproductive rights, the discourse of the eugenics movement continues to affect the female body. As Alexandra Stern argues, “when the reproductive and erotic body is highlighted, an uninterrupted line can be drawn from the sterilization laws passed by state legislatures in the 1910s that targeted ‘morons’ to the sexual surgeries performed by federal agencies on poor female welfare recipients in the 1960s” (7). In the next two chapters, on birth control and on assisted reproductive technologies and egg donation, respectively, I hope to show that this line continues on, still uninterrupted, in our current scientific narratives and rhetorics of reproductive “fitness.”

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Chapter Four

Birth Control, Eugenics, and Rhetorics of Risk: A Study of Kairos

The most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the overfertility of the mentally and physically defective. —Margaret Sanger, “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda.”

The trouble with birth control is that it is practiced least where it should be practiced most. —Samuel J. Holmes.

This is a time in which it is of the utmost importance that women should learn to realize their responsibility in view of the fact that the peopling of the world belongs to them. —Alice Drysdale Vickery. “Place of Birth Control in the Women’s Movement.”

Despite numerous books, articles, and lectures on the subject, trying to evaluate the character and actions of Margaret Sanger proves nearly impossible. She has been alternately valorized and castigated from the very beginning of her career as an advocate for access to birth control, and even today the debate over her ideological leanings, her motives, and her judgment continues unabated. During her lifetime, one author described her as “one of the great women of our age” (Lader 8) and since then numerous biographers have taken pains to redeem (Chesler, Gray, McCann) or condemn (Franks, Gordon, Ordover) her work and her life.85 Most recently, Alexander Sanger, Margaret’s grandson, has come to Sanger’s defense. In a recent special issue of Hypatia focused on whiteness, white supremacy, and patriarchal control, Alexander Sanger argues that “misattributions, misunderstandings, and outright falsehoods about eugenics, race, and Margaret Sanger have too often been the norm in the twentieth and now the twenty-first centuries” (A. Sanger 210). She has been, and continues to be, a difficult subject to pin down.

85 Many feminists, including Ellen Chesler, Madeline Gray, and Carole McCann, insist on reading Sanger’s legacy as an example of progressive liberal politics, citing Sanger’s own experiences in a household with an oppressive patriarch and a constantly pregnant and submissive mother. To these critics, Sanger emerges as a feminist pioneer, a woman who almost single-handedly brought about a solution for unwanted pregnancy in family planning and birth control and offered women reproductive freedom for the first time. For others, however, Sanger’s work served to tighten restrictions on female fertility and created more ways to control or discipline women’s bodies. Critics such as Angela Franks, Linda Gordon, and Nancy Ordover cite Sanger’s close association with the Eugenics movement as proof of her desire to control the reproductive possibilities of those she deemed “unfit”; the “freedom” Sanger promotes, they argue, is not freedom for women, but rather freedom from the social ills of “feeble-mindedness,” “overpopulation” and crime. See Ordover 137-159 for an especially scathing criticism of Sanger’s eugenic ties.

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However, letting Sanger “speak for herself,” does not improve the situation as one might expect. Excerpts of her own writing only complicate an already muddled history. In her 1931 autobiography My Fight for Birth Control, Sanger reveals a life of hardship and its effects: “Very early in my childhood,” she explains, “I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jails with large families” (5). This connection emerges again and again as she recounts her interactions with the poor women for whom she cares; descriptions of the despair and pain of mothers burdened with too many children fill the pages of Sanger’s book and help to contextualize her actions and beliefs. When “the menace of another pregnancy hung like a sword over the head of every poor woman,” and the means of prevention was denied by alternately prudish or fearful doctors worried about the Comstock Laws, Sanger’s efforts seem noble indeed (49, 57). Clearly, in this version, Sanger’s first priority is the health and well- being of women and mothers. However, when contrasted with a 1919 essay she wrote for The Birth Control Review, Sanger’s motives appear decidedly less pristine, especially to twenty-first century readers. In “Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” concern for women’s health does not factor largely into her argument for birth control. Instead, Sanger begins her piece with a clear statement about the role of birth control for “racial betterment”: “Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit” (11). According to Sanger, the widespread dissemination of information about contraception marks “the first, greatest step toward racial betterment” (11). In this version of her “fight,” the benefit to the (presumably white, middle-class, and therefore “fit”) “race” is the primary reason for making contraception available.86 Sanger does eventually speak to women’s health and the trials of motherhood, but here her arguments are shaped by eugenic topoi, definitions of “fitness,” and fears about the differential birthrate. She argues that bearing children in rapid succession “means not only the wrecking of the mother’s health… [but also] in that generation or the next, the contributing of morons, feeble-minded, insane and various criminal types to the already tremendous social burden of the unfit” (12). The reference to “morons” and the “feeble-minded” recalls then current interpretations of Mendelian inheritance; like other eugenicists of her time, Sanger’s

86 See Chapters Two and Three for more in-depth analyses of the construction of “fitness” and the labels “the Fit” and “the Unfit.”

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understanding of heredity includes the notion that “like produces like,” and, in the case of the “unfit,” in large numbers. Furthermore, as noted in the previous chapter, concerns about the “female moron,” her “hyperfecundity,” and the differential birthrate were circulating in the scientific, eugenic, and public discourses at this time, giving extra weight to Sanger’s argument. Her essay closes with a metaphor common to discussions of the differential birthrate and “overbreeding”: the “unfit” as a disastrous threat to “fit” society. She writes that “Eugenics without Birth Control seems to us a house builded upon the sands. It is at the mercy of the rising stream of the unfit” (12). This imagery of a “stream” or a “flood” of human “waste” brings to mind not only the obvious connotations of sewage and pollution, but the idea of bodies wasted by disease and poverty and the “waste” of resources used to support individuals eugenicists considered “unfit.” All would have resonated with Sanger’s readers. With this example of Sanger’s writing before us, it comes as no surprise that her motives and alliances have been called into question in recent years. Sanger’s apologists often suggest that she was a “product of the time,” a phrase meant to account for her association with eugenics. In this regard, Sanger was in good company; many otherwise intelligent and thoughtful individuals saw eugenics as a solution to the perceived social problems of the early-twentieth century. Sanger’s grandson also invokes this line of reasoning in his defense, arguing that Eugenics at that time was not only “scientific” but also much more respectable than birth control, which under my grandmother’s leadership was seen as the cause of radical, feminist lawbreakers. Eugenics was there to be co-opted and used. At the time, it must have seemed like a winning strategy, since not only would eugenics give birth control a scientific patina but my grandmother also hoped to convert eugenicists who opposed birth control into supporters. (213, my emphasis) The notion that Sanger and her arguments are a “product of the time” proves more than a little significant in the rise of the birth control movement. Rather than regard Sanger as a passive recipient of these eugenic arguments, I believe, as her grandson does, that Sanger herself recognized the benefits of inserting herself and her cause into the eugenics movement. Alexander Sanger points to “time” twice in the above quote: eugenics was a respectable science “at that time” in American history, and in its popularity “at that time,” in particular, Sanger saw a

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“winning strategy” for her cause. Both these uses of time recall the rhetorical figure of kairos, defined loosely as “the right moment to act,” or “an opportunity.” What I hope to demonstrate in this chapter, using several aspects of kairos, is that Sanger’s effort to capture the power of existing eugenic discourses on behalf of birth control was, in fact, a product of the “right” time, a kairotic move. Before I continue, I should note that rather than focusing solely on Sanger herself, I expand my analysis to include the Birth Control Review (BCR) as the mouthpiece of the birth control movement. As editor-in-chief of BCR from 1917-1938, Sanger contributed frequently to the Review, so we might consider the BCR suggestive not only of Sanger’s own views, but also the reigning principles of the movement.87 The BCR incorporates many diverse perspectives in the fight for birth control—on the whole, Sanger and her staff made an effort to include as many sources as possible—so scientific, pseudo-scientific, religious, ethical, moral, economic, nationalist, and eugenic writings found their way to the pages of the publication. Like Sanger herself, the journal cannot represent a single “voice” of the movement; however, when several years worth of issues are taken together, roughly, the years between 1917 and 1929, the BCR can be read as an amalgamation of opinions on the subject of birth control and women’s rights.88 This chapter will examine the birth control movement’s rhetorical response to then current eugenic discourses concerning “feeble-mindedness,” to the perceived differential birthrate between the “fit” and the “unfit,” and, as it pertains, to immigration. In essence, this chapter “responds” to the previous chapter as the birth control movement “responds” to the eugenics movement; each employs the work of its predecessor to explain and support its claim. Though the campaign for access to birth control began under the guise of protecting women from the health risks associated with bearing and rearing too many children, it later co-opted arguments used in the campaign for eugenic sterilization as the popularity of those arguments increased. I believe Sanger’s decision to incorporate the language and claims of eugenics and eugenic sterilization, when she did, led finally to the acceptance of birth control by those who initially rejected it as part of a radical, left-wing agenda for organized labor and women’s rights. What I hope to make clear is the way that proponents of the birth control movement redeployed

87 Sanger was only occasionally relieved of the duty when traveling for long periods of time. 88 I chose these years because they correspond to the years I considered in the campaign for eugenic sterilization. My goal is to establish both the original intent of the birth control movement and its later adoption of eugenic discourses of “fitness” as a rhetorically savvy (and well-timed) move by Sanger, so I employed that filter as I vetted both the Review and her writing.

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several existing arguments in order to further their own cause. To do so, I explore the rhetorical notion of kairos, a somewhat complicated figure that rests on spatial and temporal metaphors, both of which come into play in my discussion of the birth control movement and The Birth Control Review, in particular. Further, I want to demonstrate how a kairos-based claim about opportunity itself serves as a commonplace argument, or topos, in the greater effort to legitimate the birth control movement. In their work on rhetorics of technology and technological forecasting, Carolyn Miller and J. Blake Scott argue that the rhetorical strategy or element of kairos can be understood a way to locate “both an urgent threat and an opportunity” in discussions of forecasting and threat assessment (Scott “Kairos” 116). As a tool used to promote new technologies as solutions, technological forecasting operates by locating and assessing a perceived threat (to health, to the economy, to the safety of buildings, etc) that it can then use rhetorically to stimulate action.89 As I will show, much of the rhetoric of the birth control movement, especially in its early years, incorporates the idea of risk and threat—to women, to the country, to the “race,” to the world—as a means of persuading readers to take action.90 Finally, as the objects of this risk assessment and its resulting opportunities for action, the health of the “race” and the reproductive health of women become commingled. That is, the future of civilization becomes an issue solved only by monitoring ever more closely the reproductive practices of its female citizens. As a result, the rhetorics of eugenics and

89 Miller locates the first example of “technological forecasting” in the Cold War discourse of the 1950s, when discussions of a future war with the Soviet Union led forecasters to use then-current assessments to predict risks and possible solutions in the future. However, I believe the eugenics movement of the early-twentieth century also exemplifies the kind of projection that Miller describes. In their vision of a future America, eugenicists extrapolated the uncertainty of the present onto the future. The threat of the differential birthrate as caused by the presumed hyper-fecundity of the “feeble-minded,” created an atmosphere of anxiety, which eugenicist and proponents of the birth control movement were able to construct as both a threat or a risk and an opportunity for action. 90 “Threat” implies an impeding doom, but one that might be avoided if the individual being threatened takes action to avoid it. It can also be considered a coercive tactic to produce a particular behavior—that is, a means by which one might force a desired response. “Risk” implies a future danger or damage to property or person and the possibility of loss. For example, not wearing a helmet while riding a motorcycle increase’s one’s risk of head injury in the case of an accident, a behavior that might also represent a risk to an insurance company in the form of resources and claim payout. It seems to me that “threat” requires agency—one person or thing threatening another—in a way that risk does not. As a result, I will use the term “threat” when I want to call attention to the work of eugenicists to give the “unfit” agency in the problem of the differential birthrate; I will use “risk” to indicate the possibility of loss or damage without noting a source. Because technological forecasting depends on the characterization and construction of the present in order to project and predict a particular version of the future, all of the “risks” associated with eugenic arguments about preventing the reproduction of the “unfit” possess a sense of impending doom and could therefore be considered a threat; however, I’ll use “threat” to show the implication of the “unfit” in this problem.

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nationalism take place at the level of the womb, creating another, deeper level of scrutiny upon women. In the previous chapter, I argue that eugenicists encouraged an increased scrutiny on women’s behaviors and moral mannerisms and on markers of class, race, and mental health; in this chapter, I show how this scrutiny is supplemented by additional attention to women’s bodies and their roles as mothers. In one of its more insidious iterations, the rhetorics of birth control as intervention places the onus of prevention on the woman, resulting in a Foucauldian self- policing. Thus, even when viewed under the most positive circumstances possible, the best intentions of the birth control movement—to give women the tools, knowledge, and ability to control their own reproductivity—can be read as an example of what Foucault describes as “biopower.”

“Shall We Break This Law?”: Kairos and the Beginnings of the Birth Control Movement91 As noted in earlier chapters, analyses of scientific discourse and practice by historians of science and, later, sociologists of science, have cleared the way for more in-depth considerations of rhetoric’s role in the construction of scientific knowledge. Works like Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar’s Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (1979), and Charles Bazerman’s Shaping Written Knowledge (1988) call into question the discoveries, discourses, and practices of science and remind readers that science is a human activity. These postpositivist treatments of science acknowledge not only that science changes over time, but also that the rhetorical situations in which science “happens” can greatly influence its outcome. Like the relationships between rhetoric, science, and language proposed and illustrated in previous chapters, this chapter, too, underscores the connections between rhetoric and the discourse of eugenics and reproduction using a specific rhetorical formation: kairos. In “Kairos in the Rhetoric of Science,” Carolyn Miller establishes the similarities between traditional concepts of kairos and science. Like kairos, which signifies action for change in the seizing of an opportunity to persuade and the timing of that action, science can be understood as a “program for change, the supreme engine of progress” (311). This pairing of kairos and science becomes clear in Miller’s discussion of James Watson and Francis Crick’s famous paper describing the structure of DNA, “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,”

91 Sanger, Margaret. “Shall We Break this Law?” BCR 1 (Dec. 1917): 4.

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published in Nature in 1953. As Miller notes, when Watson and Crick published their work, the paper was met with almost immediate approval, netting the pair a Nobel Prize and changing the nature of genetics and biology forever. However, a similar paper published nine years earlier in 1944 by Oswald Avery was all but ignored.92 Miller accounts for this paradox by noting differences in the rhetorical situation (audience, purpose for writing, place of publication, style of paper, constraints upon writer) and the role of timing. She argues changes during those nine years made the timing “right” for Watson and Crick, whereas the earlier environment did not afford the same opportunity for Avery.93 As a result of the publication on DNA, the entire field of genetics changed, practically overnight. The success of the birth control movement did not come about as quickly, nor is it possible to pinpoint, as in Miller’s example, just one publication responsible for a change in its reception. However, as I hope to demonstrate, the success of the birth control movement occurs because of the particular moment in time in which it took place. Changes in the rhetorical situation surrounding the eugenics movement (addressed in more detail in Chapter Two) create an opportunity for Sanger and her peers that they did not have in earlier years. Discussions of the classical figure of kairos rest on two metaphors—one temporal (the “right time” to act) and one spatial (an opening for action, an opportunity). Both inform this reading of Sanger’s arguments for birth control. In the first, kairos is placed in opposition to chronos, defined by Miller as “duration, [or] measurable time, the background that kairos presupposes” (312). Unlike chronos, then, kairos is a unique occasion for action, a moment apart from “measurable time.” In “Stasis and Kairos: Principles of Social Construction in Classical Rhetoric,” Michael Carter describes as kairos the power of the “right moment,” the discovery of which can be accomplished by considering audience proclivities at that particular time (103). Carter cites Protogoras to elaborate this concept: “the object of rhetoric…is to determine which argument most closely achieves orthon, that is, which has the greater probability of truth within a community of listeners” (103). In addition, Carter describes the ability of kairos to move an argument forward or to stimulate action, to move past conflict and

92 The paper, titled “Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types” and published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, was authored by Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty. It was 20 pages long. Watson and Crick’s article was a single page. 93 For example, Miller cites a change in the canonical thinking of genes as proteins, a greater understanding of the way that DNA might work, and the realization that the structure as Avery had described it was not merely a single molecule in one particular bacteria.

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on toward resolution after the point of stasis has been established (102). In order to understand the “right timing” at work in Sanger’s birth control movement, we must first understand the then- current rhetorical situation, the chronos against which this kairotic moment occurs, the beliefs and values of the audience, and the point of stasis. Prior to the eugenics movement and the campaign for “racial betterment” of the early- twentieth century, the subject of birth control and contraception was fairly taboo. Not only did it interfere with Victorian ideals of women’s sexuality (that is, appropriate sexual activity served reproductive purposes only), but it also constituted a crime. The “Comstock Law” of 1873 succeeded in classifying information on birth control and contraception as “obscene” and made its distribution a federal offense (Gordon). Even after some of the taboos about women and sexuality eased, the suppression of birth control information remained in place, in part because of President Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign to prevent “race suicide.” As addressed Chapter Three, changes in the social and economic makeup of the country, brought about by the growing working class population, immigration, and war, threatened the status quo. Studies showing falling birthrates among the middle- and upper-class and well-educated prompted Roosevelt to speak out against women who did not have any (or enough) children.94 In fact, Roosevelt reserved “the depth of [his] contempt for the woman who shirks her primal and most essential duty” and felt an “abhorrence for the wife who refuses to be a mother” (Roosevelt in Tone 161). Roosevelt’s fears of “race suicide” echoed the fears of many Americans and, as a result, many, including Roosevelt, implicated women in both the causes and the solutions to the problem. However, as noted in the previous chapter, on the other side of “race suicide” was the problem of the “differential birthrate,” which also unnerved many Americans. The same studies that showed falling fertility rates among the middle- and upper-classes “native born” Americans also emphasized the increasing fertility rates of the working classes, individuals labeled “feeble- minded,” the criminally insane, and the poor. The continuing concern that the population of the “unfit,” driven by the “female moron” and her “litters of mongrels,” might soon surpass the number of “native born” and/or middle-class Americans began to overshadow “race suicide.” As

94 The “problem” of education recalls concerns outlined in Chapter Three about the increasing demands for equal rights by women. In many ways, these complaints about “race suicide” were intricately tied up with basic misogynist beliefs about women’s “place” in society. The university was not one of those places. In Parenthood and Race Culture, C. W. Saleeby wrote that women who attended college were particularly prone to infertility, the result of “mental labor carried to excess” (101). He quotes Herbert Spencer to drive his point home: “most of the flat-chested girls who survive their high-pressure education are incompetent to bear a well-developed infant and to supply it with the natural food for the natural period” (Spencer in Saleeby 101).

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evidenced by the previous chapter, the first fifteen years of the twentieth century saw the development of special topoi in the invention of arguments about the differential birth rate. As a result, by 1917, the rhetorical situation had changed so much that Paul Popenoe, a powerful, outspoken eugenicist, spoke out from the pages of the third issue of BCR. Addressing the tension between birth control and “race suicide,” Popenoe argues that the trouble with birth control lies not in its existence, but in its application. He explains: “For race betterment, the present differential birthrate must be changed. A spread of birth control to the less capable part of the population will be an important advance for eugenics in cutting down the racial contribution of inferior stocks” (6). Until this time, many eugenicists vilified birth control, worried, of course, that middle- and upper-class women might use it to avoid having children or to put off children in order to finish their education. A smaller but still significant number of eugenicists were also primarily focused on “positive eugenics,” the idea that racial betterment rested on encouraging the most “fit” to have more children. Birth control was seen as antithetical to this goal. However, as fears about the hyperfecundity of the “unfit” increased and “negative” eugenicists, like Popenoe, began to argue more vigorously for the prevention of reproduction by the “unfit,” criticisms of birth control eased accordingly. Before this point, the birth control movement operated as what Gordon refers to as a “grassroots movement” with on again, off again organizational groups, leagues, clinics, and national speakers. Because proponents of birth control could be arrested and jailed, many lectures ended in arrests, and many clinics opened and operated until they were forcibly shut down—only to begin again from scratch. However, as the presence of eugenic discourse in the BCR attests, even men (and women) who would earlier have frowned on birth control began to recognize its potential role in reversing the differential birthrate. Thus, the rhetorical situation surrounding the acceptance of birth control—its exigency, the beliefs and values of the audience(s), and the context for and constraints on the issue itself—proved similar to the situation in place as arguments for eugenic sterilization were created and deployed. The strongest mobilizing force was fear, and like any rhetorical situation, this era of anxiety about the threat of the “feeble-minded” presents an exigency, a reason for action, an opportune moment for intervention. The time had arrived for Sanger to make her case, not only for birth control as a key component of the eugenics movement, but also for the decriminalization of information about contraception.

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Against this backdrop of shifting concerns about the birthrate, a kairotic moment emerges and Sanger acts. As I demonstrate below in greater detail, her contributions to the BCR take on a decidedly eugenics-based perspective on the benefits of birth control. In one piece, published two years after Popenoe’s in April, 1919, Sanger makes an unmistakable call to her audience: “Before eugenists and others who are laboring for racial betterment can succeed, they must first clear the way for Birth Control” (“Betterment” 11). Whereas her earlier addresses tend to focus on the plight of women without knowledge of birth control, her later essays and lectures highlight the similarities between birth control and the greater goals of the eugenics movement, allowing her to “co-opt” the then-more powerful discourse of eugenics for her own cause. Sanger herself acknowledges the “peculiar timeliness” of her 1921 essay “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda” as its publication coincided with the Second International Congress of Eugenics held in New York City that fall (5). She begins the piece with a broad statement about the challenge of presenting new ideas and reminds eugenicists that they, too, had difficulty convincing other scientists and the public of the benefits of their work. She writes Seemingly every new approach to the great problem of the human race must manifest its vitality by running the gauntlet of prejudice, ridicule and misinterpretation. Eugenists may remember that not many years ago, this program for race regeneration was subject to the cruel ridicule of stupidity and ignorance. (5) A very savvy opening remark, this reminder gave eugenicists a reason to be proud of their own accomplishments as it simultaneously suggests that, in their own rejection of birth control, they might, at that point, be as stupid and ignorant as their early detractors. Sanger goes on to acknowledge the past condemnations (by eugenicists and others) of the birth control movement as “immoral, destructive, obscene” only to reassure her audience that “gradually…the eugenic and civilizational value of Birth Control is becoming apparent to the enlightened and intelligent” (5). In offering a chronological trajectory of the birth control movement superimposed on the trajectory of the eugenics movement, Sanger brings the two causes together while insinuating that it will only be a matter of time before birth control is as popular as eugenics. Sanger closes with an argument that emphasizes a timely solution: the reproduction of the “unfit,” she states, is “the most urgent problem today” (5). The time has arrived, Sanger insists, for civilization to embrace birth control if it is to win the fight against “racial degradation.”

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Sanger’s call to eugenicists to “clear the way for Birth Control” also contains the second metaphor for understanding kairos as described by Carolyn Miller. Kairos’ other configuration is spatial and refers to its original use as an archery and weaving term (Miller 313). Miller cites Richard Onians’ translation of kairos as a “‘penetrable opening, an aperture’ through which an arrow or shuttle must pass for success” (Onians in Miller, Miller 313). This notion, plus the Latin root for “opportunity,” porta gives a sense of place and space to kairos (Onians in Miller 313). In this construction of kairos, there is the sense of a need to be filled, a space or an opportunity for a contribution to the existing discourse.95 Miller applies this aspect of kairos to a discussion of science research articles, citing four distinct segments of this genre and the work they do. The first and second portions, “establishing the field” and “summarizing previous research” serve only to bring the reader up to speed. However, in between the third portion, “preparing for present research,” and the fourth, “introducing the present research, the author must make a place for her own work by pointing to a “gap” in the previous research (313). Miller explains that “the opening must be one into which the writer can successfully place his or her own conception of what’s been done and, at the same time (and place), one that readers will agree exists” (313). In this sense, kairos becomes an opportunity for the writer not only to create a space but to then determine how she will use that space and/or what kind of text she will insert therein. While this notion of kairos as opportunity appears in general appeals to “make space” for the birth control movement, it is especially visible in the overlapping discourses of birth control and sterilization. In “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda,” Sanger argues that birth control propaganda can serve as “the entering wedge for the Eugenic educator,” a figurative tool for inserting the work of voluntary limitation on reproduction into eugenic literature on “race regeneration” (5). As the previous chapter demonstrates, the program for eugenic sterilization did not meet with immediate approval from all corners. In fact, even at the height of its popularity as a solution to the problem of the “unfit,” when anxiety about the differential birthrate was at its most intense, many scientists and eugenicists alike found the idea of an involuntary and permanent measure repugnant. While the perceived need for checks on the population growth of the presumed “unfit” was there, backing for eugenic sterilization was not.

95 See Thomas Rickert’s “Invention in the Wild: Locating Kairos in Space-Time” in The Locations of Composition for a thorough treatment of the spatial element of kairos. Eds. Chris Keller and Christian Weisser. SUNY Press, 2007. 71-89.

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It was into this gap, then, that proponents of birth control were able to insert their case for the eugenic benefits of family limitation. Sanger and her peers were able to exploit the debate about eugenic sterilization by incorporating birth control as a more humane and self-imposed solution. Sometimes birth control appeared alongside a discussion of sterilization, sometimes in place of it altogether. For example, Sanger introduces the challenges of arguments for eugenic sterilization with regard to the working poor, a group that eugenicists could not always mark as hereditarily “unfit.” Like the scientists in Miller’s example, Sanger creates a space for a discussion of birth control by calling into question the effectiveness of eugenic sterilization as a useful practice. She explains that, despite her approval of sterilization for “the feebleminded, the insane, and the syphiletic” [sic], she does not recognize the surgeries as more than “superficial deterrents when applied to the constantly growing stream of the unfit” (12). Furthermore, she emphasizes the ever-increasing need for public assistance for the poor, a group that Sanger and many others believed would, in a generation or two, bear the marks of feeble-mindedness, criminality, and insanity, further straining social welfare and charity. With regard to the efforts of eugenic sterilization, she writes They are excellent means of meeting a certain phase of the situation, but I believe, in regard to these, and in regard to other eugenic means, that they do not go to the bottom of the matter. Neither the mating of healthy couples nor the sterilization of certain recognized types of the unfit touches the great problem of unlimited reproduction of those whose housing, clothing, and food are all inadequate to physical and mental health. (12) Here Sanger identifies both a literal gap, “the bottom of the matter,” and a figurative one, the obstacle of sterilizing the poor, both of which can be filled with more attention to birth control. Her audience might also infer a gap in resources, or in what they might feel to be an inappropriate use of their tax dollars in the “tremendous social burden” of caring for the poor (5). By pointing to this gap in the effectiveness of eugenic sterilization—not enough surgeries can be performed to keep up with the need; “working class” does not always immediately translate to “feeble-minded” or “insane” thereby limiting that group to voluntary sterilization—she inserts birth control as an easy and universal solution. In addition, she emphasizes the overall “racial uplift” that comes with birth control; fewer children for the working class mean healthier families and less poverty. Unlike eugenic sterilization, which merely prevents the reproduction

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of the “unfit,” the implication here is that birth control serves both negative and positive eugenics, a happy resolution for both sides of the differential birthrate debate.96

Kairos as Topoi of Risk and Threat Assessment To this point, I’ve focused on kairos as a rhetorical figure and attempted to demonstrate its role in the success of the birth control movement. I argued that the increasing popularity of the eugenics movement, especially its emphasis on the existence of a differential birthrate, created an “opportune moment” for Margaret Sanger and her allies to introduce their arguments for birth control into the greater eugenic discourse of the period. In this next section, I expand my discussion of kairos as it operates as a topos or commonplace from which to invent arguments in favor of the legalization of birth control. I again to turn to Carolyn Miller to define the idea of a kairos-based topos, but I also incorporate the work of J. Blake Scott, whose attention to rhetorics of technoscience provides some clear examples of the powerful role kairos can play when used in concert with the concept of threat and risk assessment. Insofar as the reproduction of the “unfit” was viewed as real threat to the existing race-, class-, and gender- based hierarchy of the early-twentieth century, I find Scott’s analysis of both HIV/AIDS testing and bioterrorism to be useful models. Like any topos, this kairos-based path of reasoning emerges in response to an exigency and a specific audience. As noted in Chapter Three, topoi are contingent, situational, and audience-driven lines of thought used to invent arguments, and in the case of scientific communities, discovering arguments using a topical method requires what Prelli describes as “situational logicality.” According to Prelli, the effectiveness of topoi relies on the logic of the claim as much as its audience-appeal (67). Thus, as advocates for birth control considered the rhetorical situation, they, too, discovered topics on which to base their arguments in the scientific and eugenic community’s fears about the “female moron,” her “hyperfecundity,” and the

96 Elsewhere, Sanger and others implicate immigrants as part of the need for more attention to birth control. Like the poor, many immigrants represented another group that could not be directly targeted for eugenic sterilization, but whom eugenicists nonetheless sought to sterilize. As noted above, the subject of eugenics, eugenic sterilization, and birth control is broad and multi-faceted, making a comprehensive survey of issues impossible. Within the constraints of this project, I have chosen to emphasize language and the construction of arguments through particular rhetorical formations resulting in a more generalized approach to Sanger’s eugenic statements. For an excellent discussion of immigration and sterilization, see Alexandra Minna Stern’s Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. Berkeley, CA: U California P, 2005. I also want to address the role of birth control as an alternative to sterilization for those who were opposed to the practice but who still wanted a check on the “unfit.

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differential birthrate. However, the urgent need for birth control could be read by different audiences in different ways, which led Sanger and others to construct a range of arguments based on this single topos. For example, arguments designed to appeal to advocates for working class women might emphasize the risk to women’s health, positing birth control as a choice women could make to protect themselves. Arguably, Sanger gave more attention to convincing eugenicists than she did to other groups, but the flexibility of this topos enabled her to agitate for women’s reproductive freedoms while courting the power and influence of eugenicists. In addition, the overlapping arguments based on this topos contribute to the movement of personal “choice” to self-policing and result in a “solution” that conflates social responsibility with individual choice and free will, some consequences of which I will address below. In my analysis below, I’ll examine this kairos-based topos as it appears in two connected threads of discourse, both of which touch on the risks to and threats on good health as well as the opportunities for maintaining and improving it. The first use of topos illuminates the risks of ignorance and lack of education to make claims about the health of women; the second depends on the threat on the nation of “overbreeding” by the unfit and the associated risks to the health of the race (as eugenicists defined it—white, middle-class, able-bodied, intelligent) and the country. Together, these topics serve as the basis for arguments for the usefulness of birth control. As noted in the previous chapter, in this era of Progressive thinking, science and scientific innovation were believed capable of addressing and solving any problem. Within this context, birth control can be understood as a scientific solution to address the problem of “race degeneration.” In her discussion of kairos in technology, Miller explores the concept of “technological forecasting,” which she defines as “discourse in which the characterization and construction of moments in the present are crucial to the projection of the future” (“Opportunity” 82). Scott expands this connection explaining that, in technological forecasting, “kairos can denote an opportune moment for action based partly on forecasting or projecting into an uncertain future” (“Rhetoric” 250). Thinking back to the early treatment of kairos as both a temporal and spatial concept, we see that in the practice of technological forecasting, one might “create a space” for action and, subsequently, act at the right time based on that construction.97

97 There is some debate as to whether or not these “openings” are “discovered” or “constructed.” Miller clearly points to construction, but tries to find a place for discovery as well. This debate is relevant to any discussion of

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Both Miller and Scott emphasize the power of technological forecasting to project opportunities for and threats to the future, which, they argue, can then be used to initiate action. For example, in Scott’s analysis of the rhetorics of Confide, an at-home HIV testing system, the arguments for its approval by the FDA contained references to the urgent threat of HIV to an unaware, untested, unknowing population. Slogans such as “It’s time to know” and “The need for Confide is now” used to convey this sense of urgency also offer a timely solution: the FDA approval of the system (251).98 In the discourse of the birth control movement, similar kairos-based topics appear in service to arguments for birth control as a solution to the problem of the “unfit.” And like the topos of home testing, these arguments operate within a constellation of concerns about the “differential birthrate,” the health of women, and the health of the race. Some or all of the following emerge in the examples I use from the BCR: the differential birthrate is an urgent national crisis that demands immediate intervention; the fertility/fecundity of the “unfit” (then) is increasing and is higher than that of the “fit”; birth control is a scientific innovation that can quickly and effectively reduce the population of “unfit”; birth control need not be used by all members of society to prevent reproduction, only to time pregnancies appropriately; an “appropriate” timing for having children exists; this timing of pregnancies in connection with the health of the woman affects the fitness of her offspring; (then) current eugenic solutions for preventing the reproduction of the “unfit” are not working fast enough; conveying knowledge about birth control will inspire women to use it right away. As I show in the next two sections, the use of kairos-based topos addressing risk, threat, and opportunity and used by scientists, eugenicists, physicians, birth control proponents, and others operate both spatially and temporally to create an environment wherein birth control becomes a timely intervention not only for the health needs of women but, more importantly, for preservation of civilization.

Margaret Sanger’s timely adoption of eugenic discourses—did she purposefully create this space or did she merely note it and act accordingly? However, this argument cannot be resolved one way or another as we have only second-hand accounts of Sanger’s motives. Furthermore, because I am more invested in looking at how this kairos- based topos operates as a rhetorical formation, a perspective that allows me to observe without explicit judgment about motives. Said another way, I do not feel a need to assign blame but rather to address the power of language and its consequences as a way to challenge the power of current eugenics-based arguments about reproductive rights and practices. 98 In a 2006 article, Scott performs a similar analysis on the pharmaceutical industries negotiations to make Ciprofloxacin (Cipro) the standard treatment for bioterrorism. In this analysis, he demonstrates how the big pharma used kairos-based arguments to emphasize the threat of bioterrorism and then satisfied the need for a solution with their own drug. See Scott, “Kairos as Indeterminate Risk Management: The Pharmaceutical Industry’s Response to Bioterrorism.”

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“Another womanhood blighted in the bud, battered by ignorance”: Risk and Women’s Health99 The first use of the kairos topos emerges in discussions of the women themselves. In arguing for access to information about birth control, including access to clinics, the circulation of pamphlets, and the availability and unfettered access to lectures and counseling, proponents of birth control often highlight the risk to women’s health that comes with not receiving this information. Especially in the first six or seven years of its circulation, the vision of a young, overworked woman in a perpetual state of pregnancy without adequate funds, support, or time for herself, crowds the pages of the BCR. Her residence a tenement, her husband alternately drunk, abusive, or “feeble-minded,” this woman embodies the consequences of restrictions on birth control. Nearly every issue contains a “Letters” section wherein women wrote to lament their poor health, their lack of adequate funds and support, their need for money, the fears about having another child. The overarching message of the journal expresses the dire need for action; the risks associated with ignorance are too great to ignore and, in Sanger’s assessment, the benefits of birth control must be immediately permitted to intervene on behalf of these women. In a 1918 essay entitled “Birth Control and Women’s Health,” Sanger uses first-hand accounts from women to convey the state of their health without access to birth control. She begins with two letters from women who are beyond help to underscore the consequences of ignorance. The first, from a woman married at 17, recounts a life of poverty and almost constant pregnancy—in eight and a half years she bears eight children, the most time between pregnancies is 23 months (“Women’s Health” 7). The second, from the wife of a “drinking man,” details the birth of five children, the death of her husband, and the subsequent death and illness of her children (8). Sanger claims the letters represent “only two of thousands of good women” and highlights an opportunity for change: “we cannot undo the harm... but we can prevent the younger generation from committing the same crimes [on women and children]” (8). She then forecasts the threat to the next generation without intervention, telling her readers “you will see a young life starting out which, if left in ignorance, will have the same disastrous experience” (8). Sanger then incorporates a third letter, different from the first two because the woman is young and can still benefit from intervention. However, the need for immediate action is clear.

99 From Margaret Sanger, “Morality and Birth Control.” BCR 2 (Mar. 1918): 11, 14.

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At 21, the woman is “worn out, faded sickly,” and despite constant treatment by doctors, her health never sees improvement due to constant pregnancy (8). The implication is clear enough— until this woman has access to birth control, she will remain ill until she finally dies. In addition, this writer notes the high cost of medical care as a burden on her family’s financial health: “as you know, doctors and nurses can eat up money—and as matters stand we will never be free from debt again” (8). Sanger follows with a pointed indictment, asking “Could there be a more worthwhile case of the right to an individual to demand, yes, demand, of science, of the medical profession, and of the State, the benefit of the knowledge society has accumulated on this subject?” (8, original emphasis). Here, Sanger identifies the gap, women’s knowledge, and the means to fill it. By invoking science and medicine as two opportunities for intervention while also forecasting a future similar to the present without this intervention, Sanger responds to the urgent need with her own solution: the dissemination of knowledge of contraception. By contrasting the continuing risks to the health of these women to the benefits of birth control, Sanger also trades on the related arguments of the birth control movement as listed above. Others echo this threat/opportunity pairing in their contributions to the subject of women’s health. For example, in a 1919 article entitled “Birth Control in Relation to Morality and Eugenics,” Havelock Ellis writes: The burden of the excessive children on the over-worked, under-fed mothers of the working classes becomes at last so intolerable that anything seems better than another child. “I’d rather swallow the druggist shop and the man in it than have another kid,” as a woman in Yorkshire said. (9) And, as Ellis then explains, women who don’t choose suicide often end up dead as the result of complications from abortions; a common solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancies in the United States, the surgery often terminated the mother along with the pregnancy (9). Likewise, Ellen Kennan’s 1919 essay, “The Tragedy of the Defective Child,” incorporates a series of vignettes of families whose large numbers tax the health of the mother, leading to an increase in “defective” and sickly children (10-11). And Anna Martin illustrates the threat to the woman’s role as wife in her 1921 “Birth Control or Racial Degeneration— Which?”: “The present system of haphazard child-bearing degrades the wife. During the best

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years of her life she is constantly unsightly, suffering, peevish, and inert…” (Martin 13)100. Thus, in each of these examples, the authors writing in the BCR emphasize the risks of ignorance on the mother’s health and imply a need for timely intervention. Even those women not in immediate danger of death are at risk nonetheless—without the benefit of birth control, their lives, and the lives of their families, seem doomed o failure. As examples of risk assessment and technological forecasting, these authors use then-current conditions to predict a future problem, only to offer their own solution, birth control, as a preemptive fix if acted upon immediately. Although these discussions of women’s health contain genuine concern for their subjects, another issue often emerges alongside these characterizations of women at risk, one that offers considerably less support for the women themselves. Even in her earliest calls for more attention to women’s health, Sanger associates the health of women to the health of the race and in doing so establishes the groundwork for a series of arguments that position women as both the source of racial degeneration and its solution through self-policing. In her essay “Birth Control and Women’s Health,” purportedly treating only that issue, Sanger calls into question the “stupid and puritanical laws” against birth control. She insists [They] have been the cause of more than fifty thousand annual deaths resulting from abortions. These laws have caused hundreds of thousands of women to drag out a futile existence due to nervous exhaustion from too frequent child-bearing. These laws are responsible for the birth of children tainted by syphilis, who become not only a charge upon the public but also a detriment to the human race. (“Women’s Health” 7) Though she begins her plea for birth control with specific references to women’s health— complications and death from abortion and nervous exhaustion—she closes by addressing the health of the “human race” when faced by the threat of “unfit” and sickly children. This pattern also emerges in the letters Sanger published on women’s health issues. Embedded into many of the descriptions of the poor health of women are opinions about the corresponding threat these same women place on the health of the “race.” Included, too, are calls for the urgent need for the prevention of more children from the “unfit” classes. Because the women in these letters and vignettes also possess characteristics associated with then current

100 To our modern sensibilities, perhaps, this concern for the woman as wife seems a bit off. However, at this time, one of the few roles available to women was “wife,” which carried with it a certain amount of power and prestige.

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discussions of racial degeneration, readers could also interpret these essays as responses to the problem of the differential birthrate. For example, an account of “Mrs. E.” in Kennan’s “The Tragedy of the Defective Child” describes a woman pregnant eight times in 12 years; of the four children born alive, one has already died, one suffers from “St. Vitus Dance” (a condition considered both hereditary and “defective”), another is mentally “defective,” and the last is “normal” at seven months (Kennan 11). Even without learning that Mrs. E has “always been sick,” the inference is obvious—with one out of eight children alive and “normal,” Mrs. E’s problem is the “race’s” problem (Kennan 11). In these pieces, another example of kairos-based topos and technological forecasting emerges—the risks to the health of the race, like those to women’s health, can also be preemptively solved with birth control.

“Sooner or later (let us hope not too late) Birth Control will be recognized as a means and a method of social salvation”: Risks to the Health of the Race and the Nation 101 Another use of a kairos-based topos addresses the topic of health, but in this case, the future health of the country and of the white “race” that is at risk. In this appeal, authors refer to birth control as the means of controlling the population and usually tie their calls for birth control to immigration reform and eugenic sterilization. Fueled by anxieties about increases in immigration, the threat of “the feeble-minded,” and the “differential birthrate” of “fit” and “unfit” citizens, many contributing authors envisioned birth control as the counterpart to eugenic sterilization. George Kirkpatrick’s 1929 essay “Salvation from the Moron” announces the threat created by those he considered feeble-minded in no uncertain terms: “Unless the moron’s rapid increase is checked by Birth Control, he will destroy our civilization” (290).102 Kirkpatrick was not alone; many worried that without these necessary checks on the reproduction of “the unfit,” America would soon be overrun by morons, immigrants, criminals, and paupers. In earlier years of the BCR, references to threat of the “unfit” and the corresponding risk of harm to the race are relatively scarce. For the most part, arguments using forecasting and topoi of risk operate in service of women’s health. However, as the birth control movement

101 Kirkpatrick, George. “Salvation from the Moron. The Birth Control Review 22 (Oct 1929): 290 102 In this example, the difference between a threat as produced by someone or something and risk as the potential for harm or loss becomes clear. For Kirkpatrick and others like him, the “unfit” were complicit in the problem of the differential birthrate in their failure to check their own reproduction. Arguments like Kirkpatrick’s surface even today in discussions about welfare recipients who continue to have children despite their financial instability—often, these individuals are accused of “taking a free ride” or “living off the work of others.”

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becomes more closely aligned with eugenic discourses of the period, a corresponding shift in risk assessment takes place. And once the connection between women and the health of the country is made, these references appear everywhere and in a variety of contexts. In “Birth Control or Racial Degeneration—Which?” physician Anna Martin laments the failure of statistics on the differential birthrate to move the public to action and exclaims: “we can only be convinced of the urgency of the subject, and of the futility of the measures commonly suggested to stem the tide of degeneracy, by forcing [the ordinary citizen] to consider actual concrete examples” (4). She then provides several descriptions of four “real” families whose “unfit” children would be prevented with birth control. The threat posed by these children on the race is forecast as the consequence of inaction: if birth control is not made assessable to poor and degenerate, “an enormous number of children, destined in later years to swell the ranks of the Unfit, come from just such families” (16). The “natural disaster” metaphor is also invoked here in a prediction about the flood of the “Unfit” threatening to swell and overcome the “Fit.” The opportunity to “stem the tide” is here, Martin implies, but the time to act is now. Sanger herself later invokes this threat (and a rhetoric of national disaster) at the First American Birth Control Conference in 1921, arguing that birth control is deeply significant to social, national, and international aspects of human life and national health (“Aims” 3). On the urgent need for birth control she exclaims, “disaster and defeat are inevitable if as a national unit the United States of America is not brought to an immediate realization…that uncontrolled childbearing—is the most certain route to racial decay and national degeneration” (“Aims” 3). Here again we see the forecasting of future disaster coupled with an opportunity for intervention. But, as with other kairos-based arguments, timing is everything—the response must be immediate. By this time, references to women’s health have all but disappeared, replaced, as it were, by the health of the race and the nation. As the publication and distribution of the BCR gained popularity with proponents of the eugenics movement, the emphasis on the threat of the “unfit” on the nation’s future increases as well. In addition, the number of eugenicists contributing to the Review grows. Raymond Pearl’s essay “The Menace of Population Growth,” not only evokes earlier references to the “menace” of those considered “feeble-minded” as described by Goddard, but he also predicts a future of “serious and painful consequences for us and our children and grandchildren” if this menace is not addressed (“Menace 65). Another eugenicist and physician, William Pusey, insists that “the

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time is rapidly approaching when the problems of population will engage some consideration from even the less thoughtful of men” (134). For Pusey, “no particular gift of prophecy” is necessary to foresee the consequences: without a check by birth control, “the submerging of the better stock by the greater fecundity of the inferior” is inevitable (134). Again, the use of “forecasting” enables these writers to predict a future problem while simultaneously offering its solution. Upon reading example after example of these statements about “racial degeneration” and the threat of the “unfit,” it becomes easy to forget where these essays were published. While many of them are decidedly eugenic in subject matter and perspective, they were not published in The Journal of Heredity or The Eugenics Review, the two most prominent and productive sources for eugenic philosophies, rhetorics, and ideals. They were published in The Birth Control Review. I emphasize this detail not to insult my audience, but instead to reiterate the shift in focus from risks to women’s health to concerns about the threat of the “unfit” on the health of the race. While the BCR may have started as a journal to lobby for the rights of women to bear children at their own pace (and on their own terms), by 1923, the aims of the journal have clearly changed.103 In 1917, Sanger writes passionately, “What a waste of human life our ignorance and stupidity is costing us! What an amount of useless suffering will be avoided when women have birth control knowledge!” (Sanger “Birth” 8). However, not ten years later, in 1926, Sanger and her movement have found another cause to champion. On the subject of race betterment and sterilization, Sanger writes through our archaic and inhuman laws against Birth Control information the breeding of defectives and insane becomes a necessity. These types are being multiplied with breakneck rapidity and increasing far out of proportion to the normal and intelligent classes. […] The American public is taxed, heavily taxed, to maintain an increasing race of morons, which threatens the very foundations of our civilization. (“Function” 299) No longer are women the concern—the role of birth control as a response to health risks now resides in “race betterment” and the prevention of the reproduction of the “unfit.” However, as

103 In 1928, Sanger asks her readers to respond to the idea of merging the BCR with a eugenics journal, a debate that occurs in the pages of the BCR over several months. Finally, the magazine does not merge, but the notion that the birth control movement veered so far into the realm of eugenics as to merge its identity offers another perspective on Sanger’s connections to eugenics and existing rhetorics of reproduction.

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we will see in the final portion of this chapter, women do have a role to play in this prevention: it is up to them to discipline themselves for the good of the country and the “race.”104 Before moving on, let me offer a quick recap of my argument thus far. I began this chapter by outlining the rhetorical situation at the advent of the birth control movement, arguing that its eventual success occurred in part because of existing eugenic claims about “female morons” and the “differential birthrate” made at the time (and covered in Chapter Three). I then explored the rhetorical figure of kairos as a way to understand this “opportune moment” and its role in Sanger’s adoption of eugenic discourse as a way to gain support for birth control. Next, I looked at the use of “technological forecasting,” as described by Carolyn Miller and J. Blake Scott, and a related topos of risk assessment and threat that depends on kairos for its power. I argue that this kairos-based topos works to link the health of women with the health of the race, which, as I hope to show in the next section, has some particularly long-lasting consequences for women.

“Trust the Mothers, and give them the power of Birth Control”: Responsibilities, Discipline, and Biopower105 In this last section, I address some of the consequences of the shift in rhetorics of birth control, which I see manifested in two related issues. First, I reveal the ways that discussions within the birth control movement rest upon a simple syllogism that leaves women responsible for the future of “civilization.” Despite the fact that pregnancy occurs in the female body, birth control can be practiced by both men and women. However, in the pages of the BCR, the duty falls to women, setting a precedent under which couples who wish to avoid pregnancies (for the most part) still operate. As I observed in Chapter Three, efforts to make women the subject of sterilization were in progress at this same time, roughly the first quarter of the twentieth century. Second, I suggest that this discourse serves as an example of what Michel Foucault labels “biopower.” As the sheer numbers of women taking a once-daily birth control pill, subjecting themselves to invasive technologies such as injected hormone and inter-uterine devices (IUDs),

104 In her 1981 essay “The Evolution of Margaret Sanger’s ‘Family Limitation’ Pamphlet, 1914-1921,” Joan Jensen highlights a similar shift in Sanger’s writing. Jensen’s close reading reveals a turn from an emphasis on socialist and working class arguments for birth control to the ideals of the Right, which emphasized “responsible motherhood” and middle-class values. See her analysis in Signs 6 (1981): 548-567. 105 Margaret Sanger, “Birth Control the True Eugenics.” BCR 10 (Aug. 1926): 248-249.

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managing the daily regime for natural family planning (NFP), or using abortion as way to prevent childbirth demonstrate, this self-policing occurs largely by women, not men. Early on, the choice to use birth control was just that: a choice. Sanger and her peers originally proposed birth control to working class women as a solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancies. Advice about contraception mingled with disavowals of child labor and overworked mothers; in these pieces, fewer children meant an end to gross abuses of labor laws, healthier, happier women, and better marriages, all without the need to forgo sex (Jensen). In her essay “When Should a Woman Avoid Having Children” (1918), Sanger speaks on behalf of these working women, stating clearly, “if she is a working woman she should have no more children while society remains indifferent to the needs of her offspring” (7). Although she singles out women as the primary consumer of information about birth control, the benefits go entirely to the women and her children. The only expressed reason to use birth control is to better one’s own circumstances. In this same issue, a reader writes in to ask “Birth Control A Parent’s Problem or Woman’s” (7). This writer announces her belief that birth control should be taken up by both parents and questions Sanger’s failure to address this issue in the BCR. Responses are published in two subsequent issues, and readers by and large agree. Of six letters published, three insist that birth control is the responsibility of both men and women (Dennett 16, “E.R.C.” 11, “A Mere Man” 11). One of the “women only” letters cites the privilege of controlling one’s own body (Winner 5-6); another implies that men are too ignorant and lazy to be trusted to help out (Clarke 12). However, as time goes on, the responsibility for birth control increasingly falls to women, a change caused in part, I believe, by the commingling of discourses on women’s health and the health of the race and the nation. When birth control advocates, eugenicists, scientists, and others begin to conflate these two issues, the result is the impression that women are responsible for the future of civilization and must do their part with birth control. Without being too reductive, I hope, a syllogism makes this clear: Pregnancies occur in women bodies. The population problem (especially concerning the numbers of the “unfit”) is the result of too many pregnancies. The population problem can be resolved by women. And underlying this claim, is, of course, birth control as a self-imposed solution. As such, women’s bodies become the site of control, and thus birth control becomes a women’s issue. The epigraph at the beginning of the

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chapter suggests as much, and incorporates the same urgent demand for timely intervention as so many other statements of this period: “This is a time in which it is of the utmost importance that women should learn to realize their responsibility in view of the fact that the peopling of the world belongs to them” (Vickery 133). This quote also reveals the second consequence of the blending of discourses of eugenics and birth control. In addition to implying that birth control (and the health of the race) is solely women’s responsibility, this discourse also offers an example of “bio-power,” a power that regulates the bodies of individuals and groups alike—in this case, women of child bearing years. In her book Volatile Bodies, Elizabeth Grosz examines the ways that bodies serve as “inscriptive surfaces” upon which discourses operate and through which they function (146). She uses Foucauldian theory to argue for the power of these discourses to inscribe “cultural and personal values, norms, and commitments” upon our bodies, in both involuntary (through our social and cultural groupings) and voluntary (through our “lifestyles, habits, behaviors”) procedures (141- 142). The notion of bodies as inscriptive is especially illuminating for me as I consider Foucault’s concept of “bio-power,” or “the power to regulate minute details of daily life and behavior” (Grosz 152). In Foucault’s own words, bio-power is “a power whose task it is to take charge of life… [through] continuous regulatory and corrective mechanisms. […] [It] has to qualify, measure, appraise, and hierarchize, rather than display itself in its murderous splendor” (144). Part of what I wish to suggest here is that, as an example of “bio-power,” discourses about birth control inscribe a set of values and norms on women’s bodies, in both the involuntary and voluntary ways. For example, this power is exercised not only in the ways women are represented in literature about contraception and birth control, but also in the habits and behaviors associated with birth control. The concept of “Natural Family Planning,” for example, requires a set of daily practices wherein the woman must scrutinize and monitor her body for changes that predict ovulation; using the birth control pill requires a daily dose, most effective when taken at precisely the same time; devices like the IUD modify and “correct” the function of the uterine wall. All of these examples of birth control demand a disciplining of the female body, an exercise in self-policing disguised as a set of liberatory innovations, to help women deal with the responsibility of birth control. I believe the introduction of these practices can be located in the pages of The Birth

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Control Review. As one of the first publications dedicated to birth control (what it was, how to use it, who should use it, where to find information), the BCR serves as part of the foundation of discourse on preventing pregnancies. As a result, when Sanger and her peers treat birth control as if it is the woman’s responsibility, it begins to appear as “fact.”106 In addition, when discourse about birth control also entails an assumption about women’s eugenic “responsibility” to the “race,” we can see how specific ideas about “fitness” are then grafted onto women’s bodies, in particular, to their reproductive practices. Two examples from the Birth Control Review highlight this assumption. In one case, Sanger collects and publishes a series of letters from “Mothers Who Refuse to Bear Unfit Children,” presenting them as examples of “wise” mothers who have taken their own health, the health of their children and, most importantly, the health of the race into consideration (“True Eugenics” 248-9). In another series of letters she argues that the “unfit” “are often quite intelligent enough to use contraceptive methods, and quite responsible enough to want to use them” (“Family Trees” 16). In both of these examples, the emphasis is on self-correction, making it appear that the “power” rests in the hands of the woman. Shelley Tremain highlights the self-policing element of bio-power, “the idea that power functions best when it is exercised through productive constraints, that is, when it enables subjects to act in order to constrain them” (4). In other words, these correctives and regulations work best when the subject disciplines herself. When we think about the manner in which birth control is represented, even to this day, as a practice to be undertaken by women, we begin to see the consequences of Sanger’s use of eugenic discourse. At the end of his defense of his grandmother, Alexander Sanger writes: “Margaret Sanger tried to co-opt eugenics in a bid for respectability. It failed miserably and the damage continues to this day” (217). I’m not certain that my interpretation of “the damage” is exactly what Mr. Sanger had in mind, but it’s there just the same.

106 See Chapter One for a more thorough treatment of definition and fact construction.

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Chapter Five

“Healthy, Accomplished, and Attractive”: Visual Representations of “Fitness” in Egg Donors107

Because analogy is one of the primary ways in which scientists may ‘form some picture’ of an elusive mechanism they will never directly observe, this figure of language occupies a focal position in modern scientific thought. —Joseph Little, “Analogy in Science: Where Do We Go from Here?”

[B]ecause a metaphor or analogy does not directly present a preexisting nature but instead helps “construct” that nature, the metaphor generates data that conform to it, and accommodates data that are in apparent contradiction to it, so that nature is seen via the metaphor and the metaphor becomes a part of the logic of science itself. —Nancy Stepan, “Race and Gender: The Role of Analogy in Science.

As we near the century mark of Galton’s speech to the Eugenics Education Society in June of 1908, we might question the need to revisit the eugenics movement and its effects on the reproductive rights and possibilities. Certainly the most flagrant cruelties inflicted by the medical, scientific, judicial, and educational communities have been brought to a halt. Labeling an individual “feeble-minded” or “unfit” as a means of withholding basic human rights is no longer automatic.108 In most of the United States, eugenic and/or involuntary sterilization ended in the late 1970s.109 And most women who use birth control and family planning view it not as part of a eugenics-based effort toward “regulated fertility” but instead as an enabling technology, one that allows them to conceive when they wish. However, eager though we might be to put the eugenics movement behind us—to extract it from issues of reproductive rights, to permit ourselves to forget the atrocities that transpired in the name of science, to congratulate ourselves on vanquishing its excesses and relegating its constructions of “fit” and “unfit” to the distant past—we cannot do so. Eugenic discourses and rhetorics have not disappeared at all but have instead found purchase in new sites for discussion:

107 A description of “Qualifications” for donors at Egg Donation, Inc. View the flash version of the site at: http://www.eggdonation.com/Flash/EggDonation.swf 108 Though attempts at the state and local level continue; for example, the Terri Schiavo case, the right to end one’s life through assisted suicide, the care of the elderly by the state. 109 It should be mentioned here, however, that not only did a new coerced sterilization movement emerge in the 1980s, targeting women on welfare with two or more children, but that people with disabilities continue to this day to be coerced into sterilization. See Nancy Ordover’s American Eugenics (especially 159-194) and Philip Reilly’s The Surgical Solution (148-165). In addition, Mark Largent’s 2008 Breeding Contempt outlines the increasingly popular practice of paying mothers with drug addictions small sums of money to be sterilized or to submit to regular injections of Depo Provera or Norplant to prevent pregnancy. See Largent 138-147.

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debates about current and emerging reproductive technologies, forums on bioethics, debates about disability and reproduction, social and medical models of healthy and/or “viable” fetuses. For example, in The Meanings of the Gene Celeste Condit notes that the widespread use of amniocentesis and genetic screening in developed countries has allowed greater scrutiny of fetuses, which enables parents to “selectively abort” those with markers for genetic diseases or other perceived disabilities (124-139). In addition, discourses about advances in reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization and surrogacy using donor eggs, donor sperm, or both, and pre-natal/genetic screening often contain language that recalls the American eugenics movement and its concerns about “fitness.” In an era when a stated goal of the Human Genome Project is to impose preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) on all embryos to locate “abnormalities” and “flaws” before use in in vitro fertilization (as part of an effort to “dramatically improve lives”), it seems essential to ask yet again who or what is being constructed as “abnormal” or “flawed” as well as to determine who, exactly, decides what constitutes “improvement” (“Gene Testing”). To that end, this final chapter identifies and examines a current construction of hereditary “fitness” in rhetorics of reproduction, focusing on both images and text found on Web sites and advertisements dedicated to egg donation for assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Information about obtaining donor eggs, or serving as a donor, is available through a basic Web search, and advertisements appear in a variety of locations: magazines dedicated to women’s health, fashion, and careers; Web sites and Web-logs (blogs) dedicated to the same; public forums such as The New York Times Sunday Magazine and MSNBC.com; even the doors of bathroom stalls in bars and coffee shops.110 The growing popularity of and/or need for assisted reproductive technologies translates to greater amounts of and more visible representations of egg donation.111 Moreover, the definition of “infertility” serves as another example of a diagnosis in the

110 Using a basic Google search for “egg donation,” I received 655,000 hits. A search for Weblogs (blogs) related to the search terms “egg donation” through Google’s blog search tool provided over 69,000 blogs addressing the subject. A search at MSNBC.com for “fertility” then “fertility egg donation” brought up over 10,000 then 50 articles, respectively, many of which provided egg donation resources as part of the advertising in the side bar. Two of the print pieces I will address in this chapter come from the New York Times’ “Sunday Magazine.” And a coffee shop in my neighborhood that I frequent had, as of this draft, an advertisement soliciting egg donations on the front of the women’s bathroom door. I have seen other advertisements in women’s bathrooms in the Cincinnati area. I do not personally read or subscribe to any “women’s magazines” but I have seen advertisements for egg donors in issues I’ve read at friends’ houses. 111 See for more details.

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Foucauldian sense (Birth). The Center for Disease Control Web page on “Assisted Reproductive Technologies” states: “Infertility is often defined as not being able to get pregnant after trying for one year.” Furthermore, according to the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, “of the approximately 62 million women of reproductive age in 2002, about 1.2 million, or 2%, had an infertility-related medical appointment within the previous year, and 8% had an infertility-related medical visit at some point in the past (2002 National Survey of Family Growth).112 As Foucault notes, a consistent definition and vocabulary in medical discourse “authorizes comparison, generalization, and establishment” (Birth 114), enabling physicians predict, diagnose, and then classify the individual. In the case of a diagnosis of infertility, the man or woman is not only then defined by that diagnosis, but he or she is also positioned within the society—made subject by that diagnosis—in a way that promises additional scrutiny and discipline under the medical gaze (Birth). Insofar as these texts present the practice of egg donation and representations of egg donors, they also perform the work of constructing an “ideal” donor. As commodities in a marketplace, these donors (and their eggs) are subject to the same kinds of consumer scrutiny that would accompany any product or service; the consumer wants the best product at the best price, and since America operates as a capitalist economy, this level of scrutiny seems reasonable and right. However, as I hope to show, one consequence of representing particular qualities as “ideal” or “fitting” in an egg donor is that it at the same time constructs women seeking donor eggs as “unfit” or not ideal for parenting or reproduction—with regard to fertility and more. These representations are inscribed onto the female body as yet another example of “hereditary fitness” as presented in the previous three chapters. To show these consequences, I address the work of analogy, metaphor, and analogical reasoning in these discourses and images. I argue that analogy and metaphor construct and reify the concept of the “fit mother” through an analogical system, within the discourse of egg donation, that creates a relationship between egg donors as “fit” and women in need of a donor as “unfit,” using both text and image. This analysis of eugenics-based discourse in rhetorics of reproduction, as is the analysis in previous chapters, will underscore what Celeste Condit refers to as a “rhetorical formation,” a

112 The site explains that “Infertility services include medical tests to diagnose infertility, medical advice and treatments to help a woman become pregnant, and services other than routine prenatal care to prevent miscarriage. Additionally, 7% of married couples in which the woman was of reproductive age (2.1 million couples) reported that they had not used contraception for 12 months and the woman had not become pregnant” (Center for Disease Control).

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blend of discourse theory and rhetoric that addresses “particular discursive structures— metaphors, ideographs, culture types, narratives, and so on—that get offered in discussions about specific issues within a specific era” (252). By considering metaphor and analogy in representations of egg donation and egg donors, I hope to bring to the surface some of the entailments embedded in current debates about fertility and reproduction. As Condit shows, these rhetorical formations emphasize “particular incarnations of epistemes with respect to particular social practices [that] are important for understanding the specificity and materiality of different practices” (252). Thus, by examining specific, current versions of reproductive “fitness” available in print advertising and on the World Wide Web, including the imagery, the values and beliefs, and the process of choosing a donor, we can begin to assess both the power and the consequences produced by these practices and others. In addition to recalling the continuing work of definition and topoi, this chapter will address the role of metaphor and analogy, two rhetorical tropes that operate by encouraging readers to connect or understand at times seemingly unrelated ideas or images as they interact with one another to create meaning and, I argue, to construct a reality about women and what it means to be “fit” or “unfit” in twentieth- and twenty first-century rhetorics of reproduction. I open my analysis by countering the notion that reproduction is an essential characteristic in the “survival of the fittest.” Like misinterpretations of “fittest” as something other than “suitable” or “well-adapted,” the idea that an individual organism must reproduce to be considered “fit” can and should be challenged. Then, I offer an overview of analogy and metaphor in science, beginning with its specialized biological version, homology, a discipline- specific use of analogy and relationship in hereditary theory that accounts for similarities in function between relatively distinct species. For example, the similarities in forelimb structure across mammals illustrates a popular argument for evolution: the existence of similar “hand” bones in dogs, birds, horses, whales, and humans offers visual proof of shared ancestry, a key component of evolutionary theory. I argue that this scientific theory is diluted and co-opted in pseudoscientific discourse and public discourses pertaining to ancestry and reproduction, including the discourses of egg donation. I follow with a discussion of analogy, metaphor, and figurative language in rhetorics of science as well as the somewhat uneasy relationship between philosophers, rhetoricians, and scientists on this subject. Long considered “mere decoration” or stylistic flourish, analogy,

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metaphor, and other figures of thought and speech have been recently shown to perform an epistemic rather than a solely heuristic or stylistic function in scientific practices and discourses. I outline the debate and locate my discussion of figures of thought in egg donation within the epistemic tradition. Next, I illustrate the manner in which analogy and metaphor construct knowledge within rhetorics of assisted reproduction and egg donation. More specifically, I argue that these tropes create a reality in which the women who seek the services of an egg donor become one iteration of the “unfit” in this era. The verbal and visual representations offered in rhetorics of egg donation present a set of characteristics that construct a version of “fitness” against which women desiring a donor must define themselves. Analogically speaking, representations of the “fit” (with regard to fertility and viable ova) are embodied in images and textual descriptions of donors as representations of the “unfit” are embodied in the women seeking the donor eggs. Furthermore, because the final position of this analogical series (based on the typical pattern: “A is to B as C is to D”) is the potential recipient herself, the particular representations of “unfitness” can play out in any number of personal ways. For example, as I will later demonstrate, socioculturally-charged depictions of race or ethnicity, class, sexuality, and ability emerge in these images and texts, providing a long string of possible entailments to accompany the primary sign of “unfitness”—an inability to conceive children, to reproduce in a social Darwinian version of “survival of the fittest.” In much the same way that the definition of “the unfit,” and the notion of the “female moron” emerged as “other” in opposition to the constructed norm of the white (Anglo) heterosexual male, women who desire these fertility technologies are constructed as “unfit” when placed in an analogous relationship with the donors. Finally, I suggest that these images and texts of egg donation inform an analogous relationship with eugenic discourses of the early-twentieth century. In the same way that sociocultural representations of reproductive health and worth constructed a view of reality wherein some women were labeled “fit” and others labeled “unfit” during the American eugenics movement, so, too, do current sociocultural representations of egg donors offer women a reality in which not conceiving with their own ova is the equivalent of not being “fit” to mother or parent. As Dedre Gentner and Michael Jeziorski note, analogy can be understood as “a kind of highly selective similarity,” a thought process wherein “people implicitly focus on certain kinds of commonalities and ignore others” (448). This practice of selecting or ignoring similarities

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recalls Kenneth Burke’s discussion of “terministic screens,” or frame produced by language and the reader’s and writer’s motives that either select or deflect reality. In the sections to follow, I demonstrate the selection and deflection encouraged by analogies and metaphors in representations of egg donors and the discourses of “fitness.” For example, the notion that women are “biologically-designed” to have babies serves as one of the primary filters through which both men and women can read these analogies. Furthermore, because analogy operates through relationality—by “aligning and focusing on relational commonalities independent of the objects in which those relationships are embedded”—the dissimilarities between the elements of the analogy do not affect its power or effectiveness in making meaning (448). Gentner and Jeziorski’s example of the analogy between the solar system and the hydrogen atom (as originally presented by physicist Ernest Rutherford) reveals as much. The relationships at work in our understanding of the solar system and between the sun and the planets (sun attracts planets, is more massive, planets revolve around sun) serves to inform the analogy while obvious dissimilarities (sun is yellow, very hot, very large) do not impede its meaning: the sun is to the nucleus as the planets are to electrons (449). The emphasis on relationality and the “implicit focus” on some commonalities plays a role in my examples of analogy as well, in ways that, I argue, affect the way women living with the possibility of infertility understand their place in society and “nature.”

The Evolutionary “Need” to Reproduce and Biological Analogies and Homologies Before embarking on a discussion of analogy and metaphor in rhetorics of reproduction, I want to address two ancillary topics that nevertheless play a role in any discussion of “survival of the fittest,” evolutionary theory, ancestry, and reproduction. First, I want to challenge the idea that the ability of an organism to reproduce is an essential marker of that organism’s “fitness” for survival in a given environment or climate. Although popular interpretations of Darwin’s theory seem to infer that individual (especially male) organisms should “spread their seed” or produce as many offspring as possible by whatever means available, this characteristic has no bearing on the “fitness” or suitability of that organism. Said another way, reproduction is a mechanism by which a species as a whole creates both new organisms and new variations, the latter of which is especially important in evolutionary theory. New variations in genotype (genes an organism possesses) and/or phenotype (observable properties or expression of genes) enable the species to

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compete in the “struggle to survive,” not necessarily the number of offspring.113 Assessing “fitness” on an individual basis goes against the tenets of evolutionary theory: the suitability of an entire species or sub-species, with regard to environment and the species’ traits and characteristics as a whole, emerges over long periods of time and often as a product of chance, not, as facile interpretations of natural selection would purport, based on an individual organism’s ability to reproduce. For example, if the environment becomes increasingly inhospitable for birds with blue eyes, a pair of birds that produce large numbers of blue-eyed offspring are no more “fit” than a pair that produce no offspring. The sheer number (or even existence) of these offspring is not an accurate measure of their suitability for survival in an environment that does not support blue eyes. In addition, the resources and energy required to raise these offspring might make the original pair even less suitable for existence in an increasingly hostile environment. Likewise, a scenario wherein not reproducing means “more suitable” can occur—however temporarily. If a species (or a majority of organisms in that species) reproduces in an environment heavily populated by predators, the burden of caring for offspring might make that species’ ability to survive more unlikely. Conversely, maintaining a low population or number of offspring might force predators to move, or they might die off completely, making the environment hospitable again for the species, which can then reproduce in higher numbers. A second topic related to evolutionary theory, ancestry, and reproduction is the somewhat confusing role of analogy (sometimes referred to as “homoplasy”) and homology. Apart from its use as a tool for analysis in rhetorics of science, analogy has long been a part of the vocabulary of evolutionary biology and shared ancestry. Biologically speaking, analogy is used to describe relationships between species that do not share a common ancestor. Two organisms are considered analogous if a relationship between their traits or characteristics is present, despite the fact that they evolved separately. Though they may be similar in structure as a result of evolving in the same environment, they are nevertheless not related (“Convergent”). A common example of analogy is the comparison of the wings of an insect, a bat, and a bird: they

113 Of course, it is tempting to point to the benefits of a large number of offspring in the face of predators or as a means of obtaining more of a scarce resource, but this logic is shaky. More offspring means a greater number available to predators along with a lower parent-to-offspring ratio of protection, and though more offspring could theoretically cover more ground in the hunt for resources, that does not translate to more of that resource because the number of organisms requiring that resource is still high. Finally, even a “large family” will not have a better chance of surviving if the environment or climate proves inhospitable.

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appear similar in structure but evolved independently of one another. Another example illustrates the relationality of function; the “wings” of a maple seed are analogous to the wings of a bird because they both enable the use of wind for travel (“Homology”). Homology, on the other hand, refers specifically to similarities between organisms as the result of shared evolutionary ancestry. For example, structural similarities in the limbs of birds, whales, humans, dogs, horses, and cattle occur as the result of divergent evolution, or evolution that produces different species from a common ancestor. Unlike analogy, homologous species must share a common ancestor, a connection that has been increasingly made visible by gene sequencing and mapping (“Homology”). I address the topic here to make visible one of the many terministic screens at work in readings of ancestry, one that corresponds to the problem of biological determinism, the false notion that all characteristics, traits, and behaviors are genetic. Although the concept of homology can be stretched to incorporate similarities between family members and relatives, it cannot account for all shared characteristics between family members. For example, tracing the presence of red hair in a family reveals the work of homology—a woman, her brother, and one of his children possess the genes for red hair as the result of a common ancestor. But a love of science within a family is not the work of shared ancestry. As I will show, many of the egg donation Web sites include “donor profiles” wherein various traits are presented as “genetic” and therefore transferable to the potential child. It is important to recognize that, despite their placement next to information about a donor’s eyes, hair color, and height, an affinity for basketball, a high IQ, an “athletic build,” and/or a love of Jesus are not “genetic” and will not be passed down through the donor’s genotype.

Analogy and Metaphor as Epistemic Like definition, the study of figures of thought such as analogy and metaphor has waned in popularity followed by a modest renaissance, powered in part by social studies of science and rhetorics of science. Inquiries into the work of analogy and metaphor in the “doing” of science and in the writing and reporting of scientific practices often take up the question of their legitimacy in the sciences. Many philosophers of science and scientists themselves view figurative language as stylistic or decorative, relegating its use in scientific texts to embellishment or, worse, pandering to an audience. Others allow that figures, especially

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analogy, play a heuristic role in scientific discourse; writers may use analogy, metaphor, or modeling to help readers grasp a connection between the familiar and the novel, but the figures do not themselves create knowledge. According to these critics, figures of speech cannot perform an epistemological function in the sciences.114 In his 1990 text The Rhetoric of Science, Alan Gross challenges this perspective by arguing for the primary role of rhetoric and rhetorical analysis in science: he views knowledge construction as “a task beginning with self persuasion and ending with the persuasion of others,” and he places science squarely within the purview of rhetorical analysis (Rhetoric 4).115 Though others have offered a version of this premise—for example, Charles Bazerman, Carolyn Miller, Lawrence Prelli, Jeanne Fahnestock, Joseph Campbell, Nathan Crick—Gross takes as settled some of the more fundamental arguments about the role of rhetoric in science and, after a brief introduction to stasis theory and scientific invention, moves into a chapter on analogy in political oratory, scholarship, and science. What makes Gross’s assessment of analogy so novel is his insistence that rhetorics of science (and analogy in particular) are rhetorical and epistemological. For Gross, the persuasive power of analogy resides in its requirement of agreement; the speaker and the audience must agree on or “commit” to a particular version of reality in order to permit a transfer of meaning to another (22-24). For example, Gross cites Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s use of an analogy to propose greater authority for the Presidency. According to Gross, in his 1933 First Inaugural, Roosevelt suggested a relationship stipulating that the President should respond to the Depression as a general would respond to a foreign invasion.

114 In my research, I found very few texts that focused solely on analogy, though the more recent work of Heather Brodie Graves, Alan Gross, Gentner and Jeziorski, and Stepan may encourage others to give more attention to analogical reasoning. Instead, most texts treated the subjects of “figures of speech and thought,” or “tropes” as a whole, often dedicating most of the analysis to metaphor. I discovered two trends in research on analogy: one method described metaphor and analogy together as a particular type of thought process—a transference of meaning from one object (or set of objects) to another; the other method used metaphor to explain or support statements about analogy in lieu of defining a difference. Because I am most interested in showing the epistemological properties of analogy (and of figures of thought in general), I follow both Graves and Nancy Stepan’s approach of using both methods. In my estimation, metaphor offers an interaction between two objects (or sets of objects) whereas analogy emphasizes the relationship between two sets of pairs. To that end, I use the terms together “analogy and metaphor” when describing the work of figures of thought in general and distinguish between the two when assessing one or the other. 115 Heather Brodie Graves cites the exchange between Marcello Pera and Alan Gross in Rhetoric Society Quarterly as emblematic of this debate. While Pera maintains that rhetoric, especially style and arrangement, “‘is inessential to science,’ […that] words may change but the concept or scientific law does not” (Pera 255 qtd. in Graves 25). Gross, however, rebukes Pera’s claim, arguing that work by philosophers like Pera not only “attempts to make rhetoric safe for philosophers of science” but also “delegitmates” work done by both rhetoricians of science and sociologists who practice rhetoric of science (252).

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Because Americans were emotionally committed to dealing with the problems associated with the Depression and the overwhelming challenges it presented, his efforts to gain authority in leadership and power were successful (24). This commitment also exists in scholarship and science, although Gross argues that in these cases it appears in the form of shared reason and logical argument rather than emotion. Gross cites the use of a “translation” analogy, first in the scholarship of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper, where it illuminates a characteristic of sharing scientific theory across conflicting perspectives, and then as part of researching and reporting of the work of RNA in “reading” genetic code. In the latter example, Gross describes how the initial “translation” analogy of the work of RNA failed Watson and Crick, forcing them to reassess their proposed theory of translating code. For Gross’s readers, this example highlights a unique property of analogy in the sciences: its role in the process of verification. In Gross’s estimation, it is science’s ability to do something more than connect two ideas or to persuade; he suggests that “commitment in science reaches beyond argument and rests ultimately on agreed-upon procedures,” or particular ways of doing science (32). Here, analogical reasoning not only affects the way science is presented, but it also affects the way science creates knowledge in the world. Gross argues that “the impressive closure achieved by science is as much a rhetorical triumph as an epistemological triumph” (22). In essence, Gross oversteps much of the philosophical criticism of figurative language as decoration to state emphatically that analogy in the sciences is not merely persuasive, but also capable of constructing reality. Whereas Gross makes broad statements on the epistemological properties of analogy as part of a greater argument about the place of rhetoric in science, Heather Brodie Graves offers a more focused assessment, including both a detailed analysis of the debate over figures of thought (and analogy in particular) as epistemic and a research-based “from the laboratory” account of analogy at work.116 In “Marbles, Dimples, Rubber Sheets, and Quantum Wells: The Role of Analogy in the Rhetoric of Science,” (1998) Graves presents analogy as it actually performs the

116 Graves locates the controversy regarding stylistics and figures in science as one between philosophers and a few scholars in rhetoric who believe that “style is connected in central ways with thought and argument” (25). Graves cites Lester Faigley’s Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernism and the Subject of Composition, John Gage’s College English article “Philosophies of Style and Their Implications for Composition,” and Elizabeth Rankin’s article in Freshman English “Revitalizing Style: Toward a New Theory and Pedagogy.” I would add to her list Jeanne Fahnestock’s Rhetorical Figures in Science, Condit’s The Meanings of the Gene: Public Debates about Human Heredity, and Joseph Campbell’s excellent analyses of Charles Darwin’s writings, many of which address specific rhetorical tropes and strategies.

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work of knowledge construction (“Marbles” 26). In this way, Graves extends Gross’s argument beyond what she feels is a “clearly hierarchical” relationship between scientific practice and rhetoric and the work of analogy. Summarizing Gross’s description of the mechanism by which analogy makes meaning, Graves points out that the “procedure beyond argument” pattern essentially reduces analogy and metaphor to the lesser role in a two-step process of knowledge construction—the analogy emerges, followed by a quantitative or experimental verification (31). As such, Graves argues while this version “acknowledges that analogy can direct and make possible scientific insight, [it] also stipulates that methodology will ultimately verify or justify analogy, a relationship that is clearly hierarchical.” (31-32). To challenge this hierarchy, Graves performs a series of interviews and in situ observations of two physicists as they work to account for and explain a set of unexpected data for a publication about their research on semi-conductors (33). She discovers that, rather than moving linearly from analogy to verification, the physicists instead use analogy in three ways, and recursively, in their research: heuristically, to assist their process of grasping and visualizing the data; epistemologically, when they arrive at new insight about the data through the analogy (which produces a new analogy as well); and rhetorically, as they attempt to persuade others in their published article (34). By identifying the “back and forth” between analogy and methodology or “agreed-upon procedures,” Graves is able to demonstrate that analogical reasoning and scientific practice work together interactively rather than as proposed by Gross’s two-step process. I find Graves’ work instructive here, because it both proposes a mechanism for analogical reasoning as epistemic, and it also provides a clear example of the power of analogy to impose a particular reality on those who commit to its framework. In rethinking the data using one analogy, the physicists realized its limitations and were forced to create a new analogy; according to Graves, the analogy encouraged one of the physicists to “move beyond ‘agreed- upon procedures’ to a new analogy that changed the way he saw much of his quantitative data” (“Marbles” 44). The interaction between the analogy, the data, the two physicists, and the established (but finally revisable) procedures produced new insight, new knowledge, that the physicists could then share with their peers. In her excellent essay “Race and Gender: The Role of Analogy and Science,” Nancy Stepan assesses the work of analogy and metaphor in descriptions of human difference in the

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nineteenth century, focusing specifically on constructions of the “lower races” as “feminine” and the female as the “lower race” of gender (264). Like Graves, Stepan cites the interaction between these constructions of gender and race as the source of the analogy’s persuasive and epistemological power. During the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, this system of analogy and metaphor “provided the ‘lenses’ through which people experienced and ‘saw’ the differences between classes, races, and sexes, between civilized man and the savage, between rich and poor, between the child and the adult” (265), which in turn produced “new knowledge” about both women and the “lower races” and justified their continued oppression. She suggests that, in the case of human difference in the nineteenth century, these metaphors and analogies “functioned as the science itself—that without them the science did not exist” (267). Furthermore, these figures supported (and continue to support) a binary of “other” or “inferior” in contrast to the privileged, wealthy, white male. Stepan notes that these metaphors and analogies not only drove an understanding of race- and gender-based difference during the nineteenth century but that their position as “root metaphors” reveals a set of deeply embedded values in Western culture, values that continue to circulate in our perceptions of “other” (265). Thus, in much the same way metaphors connecting the “female moron” (and her presumed “hyperfecundity”) to “stray dogs” and “mongrels” that produced “litters” were used to during the American eugenics movement to invent arguments for sterilization, similar arguments today employ the label “welfare queens” to argue for tubal ligation surgery for any woman on welfare with more than two children (Largent 141). The perception that these women bear responsibility for a “differential birthrate” or create a burden on taxpayers provide another example of a deeply rooted value system based on classist and especially racist views of mothers on welfare. Like Graves and Stepan, I highlight the work of “interaction” in both metaphor and analogy in order to explain the manner in which these tropes construct a reality about “fitness.” To that end, I depend on the work of rhetoricians and philosophers who emphasize the interactive properties of metaphor and analogy. In addition to Graves and Stepan, I cite philosopher of science Max Black and literary scholar and rhetorician I. A. Richards.117 As noted in earlier chapters, my attention to “rhetorical formations” follows Celeste Condit’s desire

117 Theoretically, my analysis need not extend past the heuristic. The notion that analogies might serve as a means of connection or “grasping” and therefore as support for an argument is powerful enough in these discourses of egg donation and rhetorics of “fitness.” However, I argue that analogy is in fact epistemic—as are all rhetorical formations (as described by Condit)—in order to show the power of these rhetorics of eugenics and reproduction as they construct a reality for and about women.

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to move beyond Foucauldian-based genealogical analyses in order to reveal the actual work of rhetoric in knowledge construction. Analyzing both text and image from three egg donation Web sites, the next section confirms the continued use of now ossified representations of “fitness” as they appear in treatments of class, race, sexuality, body type and physical health, intelligence, mental health, and family heritage. I consider an analogy that presents fertile egg donors as “fit” and the (presumably) infertile recipient as “unfit.” I also argue the metaphors and analogies create a “terministic screen,” highlighting particular similarities and ignoring others, resulting in what Stepan refers to as the “normative consequences” of both analogy and metaphor in science and scientific discourse.

A Rhetorical Situation without Audience? In his 1962 book Models and Metaphors, Max Black suggests that metaphors require us to see one subject, the “principal” subject, through another, the “subsidiary” subject” which operates much like a screen. Black describes the screen as a series of clear lines on an otherwise cloudy surface (41); while the cloudy portions obscure much of the principal subject, the lines permit us to “see” the work of the comparison. Like Burke’s “terministic screen,” Black’s screen also selects or emphasizes particular realities and deflects others: he explains, “the metaphor selects, emphasizes, suppresses, and organizes features of the principal subject by implying statements about it that normally apply to the subsidiary subject” (“Models” 44-45). In the case of egg donation Web sites, viewers perceive what it means to be “fit” for reproduction (and in a more general sense with regard to “survival of the fittest”) through the “screen” of the ideal donor. With that in mind, it seems worthwhile to pause here in order to consider who, exactly, might be viewing these sites. Burke’s description of the “terministic screen” reminds us that as “a reflection of reality,” the screen is also necessarily a selection of reality and a deflection of reality—and that the viewer brings these realities to bear on the subject at hand (“Language” 45). In theory, women searching for information about egg donation share at least one reality—they may be experiencing difficulty conceiving for any number of reasons—but beyond that, the characteristics of each woman certainly differ widely from one another. Actually identifying specific groups of women interested in egg donation proves difficult, despite its increasing popularity. As noted above, in 2002, roughly 1.2 million women (2 percent

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of 62 million women of reproductive age) had an appointment with a physician for an infertility- related issue (“Assisted”). Furthermore, as The New York Times writer (and author of a memoir on her own experiences with ART) Peggy Orenstein points out in a 2007 article on the ethics of egg donation, donor eggs are used in “12 percent of all in vitro fertilizations (I.V.F.) attempts, making it among the fastest growing infertility treatments” (36). However, neither Orenstein’s article nor the egg donation Web sites provide much in the way of recipient “profiles.” By way of introduction to the women she interviews, Orenstein describes a “secrecy” surrounding the subject of egg donation, citing both shame and confusion as two sources. Because many recipients interpret the prognosis of infertility as a personal failure, few engage in discussions of the topic willingly (38); in addition, concerns about the impact of “resemblance talk,” or comments and questions about which parent the child looks like, acts like, etc., on children, and the possible stigma associated with the use of donor eggs, mean that many recipients keep this secret to themselves (41). Even Orenstein’s article—wherein she follows the experiences of three women who are undergoing or have undergone in vitro fertilization with egg donation— provides little insight. None of the women Orenstein interviewed used their real names, nor did Orenstein share any distinguishing details. Though readers learn the recipients’ ages—38, 40, 43—and that each of the women is married to a man, little else is revealed.118 Even without knowing for certain the audience for egg donation Web sites, it is nevertheless possible to identify some elements of the rhetorical situation as it might affect the “reflected reality” of the terministic screen. Moreover, Black suggests that metaphorical meaning emerges within a context as determined by endoxa, or the “current opinions shared by members of a certain speech community” (“More” 28). With regard to the exigence motivating a woman to embark on a search for an egg donor, it seems reasonable to assume that she is experiencing infertility (as defined above by the Center for Disease Control) and that she has, for one reason or another, decided against adoption or surrogacy for the time. We might also surmise that a large portion of the women are over 35 years of age, an age many in the medical community identify as one when risks associated with difficult pregnancies and infertility begin to increase. With regard to the values and constraints upon this situation, we might infer that the woman values children, the experiences, practices, and feelings associated with pregnancy, and

118 Even two minor exceptions reveal nothing conclusive: one recipient is identified as not Jewish or Asian because she does not have to pay an additional $500.00 fee for a matching donor and is described as having “dark blond ringlets pulled into a ponytail,” a generic hairstyle that could be worn by most any woman.

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the work of carrying and delivering a baby (Orenstein 39). She may also feel that she has more control over the fetus’s gestation and future health because she will carry it herself rather than having to trust a surrogate. However, we might also note as Orenstein does that these women feel inferior or vulnerable as a consequence of their presumed infertility. She might approach these Web pages with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, fear and hope, sadness, emptiness, and longing. As one of the women interviewed by Orenstein explains when asked about not conceiving with her own eggs: “that genetic loss takes a lot to overcome” (38). Thus, while not all women researching egg donation possess the same feelings, the same concerns, the same desires, these similarities in the rhetorical situation present, arguably, a way to determine a form of endoxa, one that would “reflect the reality” of their situation, in turn affecting the selection and deflection of particular elements of the rhetorics of reproduction available for perusal.

The Role of Metaphor and Analogy in Egg Donation So what might a woman searching for information on egg donation discover when she performs a search via Google.com or another popular internet search engine?119 Typing in the search terms “egg donation” using Google.com brings forth over 680,000 hits, a number that does not include advertisements for specific companies or “sponsored” links, of which there are over 2000 available.120 Clicking on the link for the Web site “Egg Donation, Inc” at www.eggdonor.com opens up a series of images and text presented in a deep blue space, itself atop a background image of blue skies with wispy white clouds. The corporate logo, three

119 Throughout this section, I identify women as the primary seekers of information on egg donation as a possible solution to infertility. While I do not wish to argue that men do not have an interest or a stake in locating an egg donor, my own interests lie in the way that women in particular are encouraged to read themselves as “fit” or “unfit” as a result of viewing the sociocultural representations of “fertility” and fitness on these sites. 120 A note on methodology: In an effort to undergo a process similar to one a woman searching for initial information about egg donation might, I began my research with a Web search at Google.com, arguably the most popular and far-reaching search engine. As noted, I received nearly 700,000 hits. I clicked through a few pages before returning to the first page of results to begin my search—in doing so, I made mental notes about the Web addresses and “titles” of the pages available in an effort to determine the most pertinent and reliable links. Once back at the first page, I opened four pages total: the first page, entitled “Becoming an Egg Donor,” offered advice to future donors. The second and third pages listed, “www.eggdonor.com” and “www.eggdonation.com” respectively, I have used in my analysis, as well as the fifth page listed, “www.fertilityneeds.com.” The fourth link, from USAToday.com, lists the headline “Egg-donor business booms on campuses,” published in March, 2006. I did not click on any of the three “sponsored links” at the very top of the search page, two of which targeted potential donors and one of which offered $10,000” but insisted “college degree required” and “must be under 29 years of age.” Nor did I click on any of the sponsored links to the right of the main list, the first of which read, “Hot and Smart Donors.”

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wooden “alphabet blocks” reminiscent of a child’s nursery reveal the letters “E” and “D,” and the abbreviation “Inc.” To the right of these blocks is an image of sunlight piercing through clouds. The words “Where Dreams Come True…” in an ornate, italicized script are superimposed on this sun-through-clouds image. Directly beneath the clouds is an invitation— “Welcome”—in the same script. At the top of the page is a series of virtual file tabs that reveal an additional series of tabs below the first when the cursor is “hovered” above the tab. From left to right, the tabs read “About Us,” “Recipient Information,” “Donor Information,” and “Resources”; to the far right are two additional tabs labeled “Donor Database” and “Contact Us.” Highlighting the tab for recipient information, as a woman seeking a donor might, yields a list: “The Process: Step by Step,” “Medical,” “Legal,” “Financial,” “Sample Donor Profile,” and “F. A. Q.” Clicking on any one of these links navigates the user away from the front page and into other pages within the site. More striking, however, and certainly more visually informative to a woman searching for a donor, is the bottom three-quarters of the first page, where a series of five “bubbles” on a blue background contain snapshots of a donor “profile.” These bubbles resemble the view a magnifying glass might offer; using shading to give the appearance of a convex lens, the bubbles seem to push out from the page at the center, and the image and text at the edges of each bubble are slightly more difficult to read, just like the perspective from a magnifying glass. In addition, each bubble gives the impression of looking more closely or seeing more clearly the information under the glass. Viewers are invited to scrutinize these bubbles as they would biological specimen or words on a page. In the left-most bubble, the largest of the five, is a photograph of a young blonde woman with long straight hair and hazel eyes. Like most visual representations of egg donors and babies born via in vitro fertilization, this donor is white. Accompanying this photograph is the following information as part of her profile: from the top of the bubble to the bottom reads: Status, Available; Age, 25; Height, 5’3”; Weight, 110; Eye color, Hazel; Hair color, Blonde; Body type, Petite; and Complexion, Medium (“Egg”). A series of five additional photos occupies the bottom right quarter of the bubble, though they are difficult to see clearly on this page (“Egg”). The next two bubbles reveal more of this donor’s “profile,” here offering more personal information. Asked to indicate whether or not she smokes, the donor has entered “no”;

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asked her sexual orientation, she has entered “heterosexual”; asked about a history of “psychiatric counseling,” the donor has again entered “no” (“Egg”). And in a section about “pregnancy complications,” the donor has indicated “N/A.” The next bubble indicates her GPA in school (listed as a 3.0) and her employment record is also partially visible, showing three jobs, two of which she holds at the time her profile was posted (“Egg”). The final two bubbles are both small and quite crowded with text. However, the “magnifying glass” makes it possible to view parts of the bubble. The fourth bubble from the left provides a series of one word questions about the donor’s favorite things and her response. Many are innocuous: favorite color, favorite food, favorite season. However, others seem more invasive and revealing. This donor’s favorite holiday is Christmas; her favorite sports are “dance” and “tennis.” The fifth and right-most bubble shows a snapshot of the sample profile questionnaire, revealing a series of “drop down” boxes donors can use to locate and describe their traits. As an introduction to the Web site and to egg donation as an option for assisted reproduction, a woman viewing this first page can glean a lot of information about this donor in particular. However, she can also take away a host of impressions about what, exactly, makes this donor “fit” or “worthy” of reproduction and donating eggs. Only the first bubble contains medically-pertinent information identifying this woman as “fit” for egg donation: she is under 30 years of age, a typical cut-off point for egg donation. In addition, this first bubble contains the only information that qualifies as genetically-pertinent: eye color can be inherited, as can hair color and height. However, the presentation of these genetic traits in close proximity to social and behavioral traits conflates the two and supports a biological deterministic view of character. Insofar as these snippets of information “show” the viewer who this donor is as a person, they also mark her with regard to class, physical fitness (in the sense that she appears slim), religious beliefs—being a Christian and having the time and money for “dance” and “tennis” provide sociocultural clues about this donor. Even her favorite food, “salad,” offers embedded “truths” about what a reproductively “fit” woman should be: a light eater, healthy and/or concerned about calories, self-disciplined.121

121 Of course, the donors construct themselves as much as if not more than the Web site or the egg donation service. In most cases, the donor will be compensated only if she and her eggs are chosen for in vitro fertilization. As a result, savvy donors realize the benefits of portraying themselves in a manner keeping with feminine and/or maternal ideals. However, whether intentional or unintentional, these representations reiterate and construct the “ideal donor”

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The sample donor profiles available on the other two Web sites I visited match this representation. Again, both sample donors are white, as were the majority of donor images available to viewers who “click through” the sites. One, The Egg Donor Program at www.eggdonation.com, refers to donors as “our donor angels” (one image actually shows a white woman with white, feathered wings behind her bare shoulders) and offers the image of a stereotypically-beautiful woman on the Web page for “Recipient parents.” Like other depictions of the “ideal donor,” this woman has a clear, flawless complexion, straight, white teeth, and shiny hair worn down around her shoulders. She appears slim and physically-fit and though she appears to use a small amount of makeup, she is what many would describe as “naturally” beautiful. The text that accompanies the photo indicates that she is one of the 5% of applicants the company claims to accept as a donor: the qualifications for becoming a donor demand that she be between 20 and 29 years of age, weigh a maximum of 160 pounds (without mention of height-to-weight ratio), have a “good family/personal health history” and “live a healthy, drug- free lifestyle” (“Egg Donation”). The other Web site, The National Exchange for Egg Donation and Surrogacy at www.fertilityneeds.com, offers photographs and provides six pages of personal information, including one about the donor’s health and reproductive history, an overview of her family and their genetic background, and an assessment of her family’s general and psychological health (“National”). This donor profile also provides a much more comprehensive assessment of the donor’s ancestry in the form of detailed medical history. Some of the questions are quite specific and require information about the donor’s parents and grandparents on both sides. For example, inquiries about respiratory health focus on emphysema, asthma, and lung cancer; those about reproductive health ask about fibroids, uterine cancers, and cysts; questions about blood request information about a history of hemophilia, sickle cell anemia, immune deficiencies, and leukemia (“National”). All have spaces to input data about each family member. Other questions are decidedly more vague: “Have you ever had an abnormal baby? If yes (abnormal baby), please explain” (“National”). Finally, this profile offers not only a close up photograph of the donor’s head and neck and a full-length photograph of her body, but it also provides images of the donor as a child and the donor’s children, if she has started a family of her own

which can then be placed in an analogous relationship with the recipient. Performing a rhetorical analysis of the various descriptions, tropes, and topoi employed by donors in an effort to make themselves appear more “fit” would be an interesting and fruitful study.

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(“National”). Metaphorically speaking, the visual and textual descriptions of these sample donor profiles stand in for the idea of fertility and reproductive “fitness” in a social Darwinian context. That is, these women represent the epitome of “survival of the fittest” when an ability to reproduce is held up as a measure of evolutionary fitness. Visitors to these Web sites can infer that these women are “super fertile”; in a broad sense, they may be understood as so capable of reproduction that they have eggs to spare to women in need.122 Thus, in the same way that describing falling in love with the statement “She put a spell on me” brings the concepts of love and magic together to make meaning for the hearer, viewing these Web pages produces a relationship wherein “fitness” interacts with the ideal donor, including all of the entailments that accompany the connection. Though I will say more below, it is important to note here the practice of using almost exclusively images of white donors on these Web pages, both for its historical roots in the eugenics movement and earlier (with regard to sentiment about who should be having children) and for its current implications (with regard to beliefs about rising minority populations and “welfare queens”). Arguably, the preponderance of both white donor profiles as well as images of white babies not only evokes a particular audience for egg donation but also suggests that white babies alone are the desired “end product” of in vitro fertilization. This practice emerges in print advertisements for egg donation that use babies as well: I have yet to encounter a solicitation for egg donation that features a baby of color. If, as Black suggests, metaphors require us to see the principal (love, “fitness”) through the subsidiary (magic, donor photograph or profile), when the viewer holds the “screen” of the donor profile over the concept of “fitness” for reproduction, characteristics like traditional beauty (long, shiny hair; clear skin), sociocultural constructions of health (slim build; straight, white teeth), class markers, whiteness, and ableist constructions of physique show through clearly while others qualities are deflected. Furthermore, Black argues that seeing the principal subject through the metaphoric expression not only affects our perception of the principal subject itself, but that it also has implications for the subsidiary subject. For example, “love is magic” not only provides a way of understanding love (for instance, as something out of the realm of the everyday; supernatural) but it can also create new insight about magic (giving it a more benign,

122 This notion of “super fertile” seems distinct from “hyperfecund.” In my research, I found that “hyperfecundity” was used primarily by eugenicists and with negative connotations. Being fertile, when attached to “fit” donors, on the other hand, seemed to have much more positive implications.

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positive connotation apart from witches and warlocks). By this account, our perception of the donor may also change; no longer mercenary or machine-like in her desire for compensation or her ability to produce eggs, the donor becomes an “angel,” a heroine in the life of the infertile couple (“Egg Donation”). As such, this relationship between donor and reproductive “fitness” illustrates Black’s “interaction view” of metaphor, a theory he develops using I. A. Richard’s 1936 Philosophy of Rhetoric in which Richard’s outlines the rhetorical properties of figures of thought which had, to that point, been largely relegated to discussions of style in literary theory. According to Richards, metaphor is not merely a “verbal matter”; instead, it is “fundamentally… a borrowing between and intercourse of thoughts, a transaction between contexts” (94). In a sense, Richard’s argument moved metaphor from the decorative to the cognitive. As a transaction or exchange of thought, this “interaction view” has the pair working together in a way that both produces new meaning and changes each subject of the pair (Black “Models” 38). Black distinguishes the “interaction view” from two theories of metaphor popular during the period after Richard’s publication in 1936: the “substitution view” and the “comparison view,” both of which discount or ignore its epistemological possibilities. The “substitution view” holds that a metaphorical expression is merely decorative, an equivalent literal expression used in place of another for aesthetic purposes (“Models” 31). The “comparison view,” recalls the relationship presented in a simile (“Models” 35); for example, “her mind is sharp like a sword.” In “More on Metaphor,” Black explains this more “literal comparison lacks the ambience and suggestiveness, and the imposed ‘view’ of the primary subject,” all of which weakens the effectiveness of the metaphor as represented by the “interaction view” (“More” 31). Black’s criticisms of these two views clearly inform aforementioned debates about the work of figures of thought in science; both fail to confer on to the subjects of metaphorical expression the ability to make meaning—one is merely decorative, the other suggests a facile, one-way conduit for meaning. Black also suggests that the subjects of a metaphor—both the “principal” and “subsidiary”—should be thought of as “systems of things” rather than “things” alone” (“Models” 44). When we consider, then, the subjects of love and magic, we do well to view both as made up of “associated commonplaces,” including both standard or traditional beliefs (love occurs between human beings) and potentially mistaken meanings and half-truths (it is possible to love a pet or a possession). As Black insists, “the important thing for the metaphor’s effectiveness is

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not that the commonplaces shall be true, but that they should be readily and freely evoked” (“Models” 40). Thus, even if our cultural or social interpretations of love or magic differ—for example, if we do recognize the version of love wherein a human loves his or her pet as a child—the effectiveness of the metaphor “love is magic” is not lost. We understand both of the subjects as they interact with the other. Looking back to the sample donor profile, this system of associated commonplaces emerges. The viewer understands reproductive “fitness” not only in terms of the donor’s fertility or ability to produce viable ova, but also through the related commonplaces available as part of this representation: her healthy hair and skin, her straight, clean teeth, her choice of salad as a favorite food, her identity as a Christian. Furthermore, this system of commonplaces is multiplied exponentially in the “Donor Database” available at www.eggdonor.com. Clicking on the tab at the top right corner of the page labeled “Donor Database” opens a new page with the same logo and “Welcome” and “Where Dreams Come True…” script atop the sunshine-through- clouds image. Under the words “Newly Added Donors” is a series of 26 boxes, arranged in three columns down the page, each containing a small one- by one-inch headshot of the donor, her first name, her age, height, hair color, and eye color, presumably to allow the viewer to locate quickly a donor with an appearance similar to her own (or one that she desires for her child). When the cursor is placed over one of the headshots, an enlarged version of the photograph “pops up,” many of which are approximately six- by six-inches. This function resembles the work of the “magnifying glass” bubbles on the first page—these images are large enough to reveal the presence of make-up and, in a few cases, the use of hair dye. The larger photos also reveal a number of similarities between the donors—all of the donors can be classified as attractive or beautiful by stereotypical Western/American standards. Taken together, these profiles strengthen the existing connection between the metaphoric pair by supporting the relationship created by the sample donor profiles and by creating new “lines” through which to view the principal subject. As Black reminds us, metaphors operate “by applying to the principal subject a system of ‘associated implications’ characteristic of the subsidiary subject” (44). As clear lines on the screen, the “associated implications” available for application on the concept of “fitness” are many indeed. And, as Stepan suggests in the case of race and gender, the interaction between analogies is not the result of a one-to-one relationship but instead “an intertwined and

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overlapping series…involving often quite complex comparisons, identifications, cross- references, and evoked associations” (264). Thus, by analogy, not only were all of the negative entailments of femininity attributed to the so-called “lower races” and vice versa, but the overlapping entailments produced a sense of “likeness” or similitude that constructed both as “races apart” from the white male (264). This same mechanism operates in constructions of “fitness” in the donor database at Egg Donation, Inc. at www.eggdonor.com. These versions of the “ideal donor” imply a series of socially-constructed truths about what it means to be “fit” for reproduction, many of which are entailed in purely physical and sociocultural representations of femininity, race, class, and sexuality. Consider first, for example, the physical representations of beauty and health. Regardless of ethnicity and age, all but one of the women has long, straight, shiny hair and in the vast majority of the headshots the hair is worn down to reveal its full length. There is no sign of corn rows, naturally curly hair or an afro, no very short hair, thinning hair, or hair that has been dyed in a non-traditional color. All of the women have straight, clean, white teeth. All of the women have clear, scar- and acne-free skin on their faces, necks, and shoulders. There is no sign, either, of any unfeminine facial hair: eyebrows are thin, tamed, and symmetrical, eyelashes enhanced. Though all of the donors wear makeup, none seem to use it to “cover up” flaws and none uses an amount that would typically be considered “too much” or “too loud”—there is nary a trace of red lipstick and even though many of the women have submitted photos of themselves in formal wear, none have the look of a woman “out on the town.” Within these associations is the unifying theme of “natural beauty” as “feminine beauty,” and the corresponding notion that this particular type of beauty is worthy of reproduction. Arguably, this “natural” beauty can be read as raced, classed, and in some cases heteronormative. Other associations prove equally insidious and damaging. Because all of the donors appear to be slim and/or petite—all have slender necks and in most of the headshots the collar bone is pronounced—the sense that these women represent an ideal body type emerges.123 Finally, three categories of “backdrops” emerge in these photos. The first, a “formal pose,” wherein the donor’s headshot includes her shoulders and upper torso—often in a strapless dress

123 Of course, the Western emphasis on slender, at times emaciated women translates across many systems of meaning. Black acknowledges the role of “subordinate metaphors,” which he suggests “belong to the same field of discourse [and therefore] mutually reinforce one and the same system of implications” (43). As such, the reproductive “fitness” implied by the physique of the donors works together with existing notions of “fitness,” be they related to desirability, self-control, heteronormativity, social status, ableism, etc.

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with a suited arm peeking out from around her waist—presents the overlapping associations with traditional femininity and “appropriate” heterosexual dating. The second, an “outdoor pose,” wherein the donor appears by a beach or by water, suggests a level of wealth and comfort and simultaneously gives the impression of vacation while eliminating the possibility of an urban or inner-city lifestyle. The third, a “casual family pose,” wherein the headshot places the donor in her home, often with other family members, reifies the nuclear family and gives the appearance of an “idyllic” home life. As a group, the headshots present a wholesome, “all-American” representation of femininity, beauty, class, sexuality, and family life, one that gives the perception of health and physical fitness combined with the “good genes” that bring wealth, happiness, and strong “family values.” Finally, with regard to the donor database Web page itself, the woman searching for a donor might construe the row of headshots and mini-biographies as similar to an online dating/escort-service. Not only do these donors seem “immediately available” (suggesting a state of perpetual fertility, or at the very least a reliable ovulation cycle every month); they also represent a particular version of consumption (of the female body) wherein the emphasis is on the superficial—beauty, height, weight, complexion, physique, intelligence in a reified sense, class/status, and so on. Peggy Orenstein describes looking through an online donor database with one her interviewees as “weird,” writing, “I inevitably objectified the young women in [the photos], evaluating their component parts; it made me feel strangely like a guy” (38). The interviewee agrees, noting that she had never imagined herself “trolling for ova” on the internet (38). As a result, this availability, with regard to both fertility and sexual pleasure, also creates a series of “cross-references” wherein a woman’s “fitness” is measured not only by her ability to conceive, but her sexual desirability as well. As a result of these entailed meanings and associated implications, the potential recipient can be positioned as one portion of an analogical relationship: her status as “unfit” is not only informed by her inability to produce or conceive a child with her own ova, but it is also conferred onto her through any number of ways she might exist outside the norms presented by the images and descriptions of these donors. Furthermore, the initial analogical relationship can continue beyond the first paired relationship ad infinitum. For example, if reproductive “fitness” is to the donor’s fertility as “unfitness” is to the recipient’s infertility, the additional pairings can create the appearance of a “have/lack” series: youth/old age; traditional beauty/homeliness;

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“whiteness”/“other”; wealth/poverty; straight/ “homosexual.” For example, a woman who identifies as lesbian who visits the site can be constructed as “unfit” not only because of her presumed infertility, but also because the donor database norms heterosexual relationships and heteronormative versions of physical beauty and sexuality. The woman of color sees whiteness as the rule, creating a cascade of perceptions about infertility: that other women of her ethnicity do not experience infertility, that the science of ART does not value children of color, that “fitness” for reproduction does not include women of color. In addition, the working class woman might interpret these arguments as class-related, that in vitro fertilization is an expensive business, that only middle-class women possess the financial resources necessary to pursue this option. For the woman with concerns about the age of her own eggs, with a condition such as poly-cystic ovarian syndrome (often produced by an excess of androgens, symptoms of which include missed periods, hirsuitism, and weight gain), with, for example, a family history of genetic disease, breast cancer, or mental illness—any and all of these conditions and identities can be constructed as “unfit” for reproduction and, by proxy, parenting, when placed in an analogical relationship with the “fit” donors.

Creating Knowledge, Suppressing Knowledge, and the Prestige of Science124 Both Graves and Stepan identify the consequences of analogical reasoning as the result of meanings selected and deflected by the “screens” of metaphor and analogy, consequences that involved not merely the discovery of an alternative view or “reality,” but that instead establish or create new knowledge about both subjects in the interacting pair. For Graves and the physicists, the presence of one (terministic) screen enabled them to “see” particular qualities and conclusions in their data at the same time it obscured other qualities and “truths.” Though the physicists could not account for all of the data using the first analogy, the screen proved so effective that they presumed an error in their data or their methods before calling the analogy into question. Essentially, the first analogy deflected their attention away from alternative readings of their data and research (“Marbles” 39). Finally, as Graves notes, the two established another analogy, producing new knowledge about the data and enabling the scientists to move

124 Though the given definition of “prestige,” reads “the level of respect at which one is regarded by others; standing,” its etymological roots reveal an entirely different meaning, one based in illusion, trickery, and blindfolding. This term seemed appropriate here as our respect for science often blinds us to its not-so-savory side.

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forward with their research and publication. Stepan, on the other hand, identifies the consequences of knowledge created as a result of the analogy connecting gender and race in the nineteenth century. With regard to evolutionary science, human variation and race difference, and especially the then-current practice of measuring skulls, brain weight, and body type, Stepan argues that the analogy led scientists to “‘see’ points of similarity [between women and the so-called lower races] that before had gone unnoticed” (271). As noted earlier, Stepan’s claim that “without [these analogies and metaphors] the science did not exist” becomes clear here (267). Said another way, these figures of thought themselves produce the version of reality that in turn makes their connections visible. As Black and Stepan remind us: “it is the metaphor that permits us to see similarities that the metaphor itself helps constitute” (Black “More” in Stepan 271). One of Stepan’s reasons for investigating the connection between gender and race is to identify some of the more serious consequences of analogies as they construct knowledge in the sciences. She argues these figures of thought are especially effective because they appear to be neither arbitrary nor personal (265); as products of scientific research, theory, observation, and data collection, these analogies and metaphors seem objective and “natural.” Thus, like the “proof” derived from measurements of skull size and brain weight (a connection itself established by the race and gender analogy), the “proofs” of reproductive “fitness” seem both objective and impersonal. Said another way, when one view of reality is selected, another is deflected, and when it comes to the prestige of science, the selected reality can not only construct knowledge about humans, but, as I’ve demonstrated throughout this project, it can have material consequences on individuals and groups of women labeled as “unfit.” What knowledge, then, is illuminated and ignored, selected and deflected, as the result of an analogy connecting “fitness” and fertility to a host of other sociocultural representations of “fitness?” And how do discourses of egg donation, in vitro fertilization, and assisted reproductive technologies function within existing scientific discourses of genetics, evolutionary theory, and genetics, to confer onto the former the power, prestige, and presumed objectivity of science onto the decidedly unscientific representations of “fitness”? In the analogical reasoning that creates an interaction between “fit” and “unfit” as “fertile donors” and “infertile recipients,” complete with all of the associated implications and entailments as described above, several “truths” about reproductive “fitness” are highlighted or

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selected. First, the connection constitutes a view of “fitness” that identifies a woman who uses an egg donor as not “fit” for motherhood, parenting, and even for “survival” in an evolutionary sense. The faulty interpretation of “survival of the fittest” that infers the essential role of reproduction leaves women who cannot conceive on their own as “unfit.” In addition, the analogy suggests a version of reality wherein a “fit” donor will produce a “fit” child. For example, in one advertisement for “The Genetics & IVF Institute” in Washington, D.C., a white baby with bright blue eyes and wispy blond hair represents the “end product” of a successful egg donation.125 Connected to these realities is the idea that a “perfect woman” exists and, by proxy, that perfect humans exist. The expression of “ideal” qualities in donor profiles implies a set of desirable qualities in a woman and in her eggs—qualities that reify a norm based on race, class, sexuality, and ability. Finally, this view of reality reestablishes a faith in Progressive era science and its positivist ideals; in short, it supports the belief that science is all-powerful and that as humans we can control reproduction to create the perfect human while at once eliminating the “imperfect.” The analogy also deflects certain realities, among them the financial cost of egg donation, making it seem more accessible and more possible than perhaps it is. It also deflects the dangers to the donor—as the New York State Department of Health notes, the egg donor may experience “ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome,” a condition that may cause symptoms ranging from mild abdominal pain or swelling to more “serious medical complications, including blood clots, kidney failure, fluid build-up in the lungs, and shock” (“Becoming”). In a few rare cases, the process of harvesting eggs can be life-threatening; in other serious cases, one or both of the donor’s ovaries may have to be removed (“Becoming”). Finally, the belief that not bearing children and/or not being able to bear children is an acceptable choice is deflected in this version of reality. For women who do not choose to have children, or who are at peace with their presumed infertility, the construction of an egg donor as “fit” because she is fertile sets up a comparison wherein others are automatically labeled “unfit.” In her conclusion, Stepan reiterates the consequences of such selection and deflection in the realm of science; however, her words resonate in other contexts as well. She explains:

125 This reality also conflates biological analogy with biological homology: particular traits that may emerge in the child (such as eye color, hair color, right-handedness, etc) are presented together with characteristics that are not transferred genetically, such as intelligence, behaviors, and moral beliefs.

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Since … interactive metaphors and analogies direct the investigator’s attention to some aspects of reality and not others, the metaphors and analogies can generate a considerable amount of new information about the world that reconfirms metaphoric expectations and direct[s] attention away from those aspects of reality that challenge those expectations. Substituting “investigators” for “women searching for information about egg donation,” offers a damning view of both these Web sites as well as descriptions of “fitness” implied in rhetorics of reproduction. As the epigraph above reminds us, this view of “nature” and what is “natural,” even in the “objective” world of science and scientific discourse, is both constructed and constructive.

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Afterword

Unfit is Unfit is Unfit: Eugenics by Any Other Name?

Eugenics was and is too complex to define, or to excise from our collective psyche. Diane Paul, Controlling Human Heredity.

A consequence of embracing the social character of knowledge is the abandonment of the ideals of certainty and of the permanence of knowledge. Since no epistemological theory has been able to guarantee the attainment of those ideals, this seems a minor loss. Helen E. Longino, Science as Social Knowledge.

In the previous chapter, I presented examples of analogy and metaphor as they made meaning in Web sites dedicated to assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and egg donation. Arguing that these figures of thought create a relationship comparing egg donors as fertile and “fit” and women contemplating egg donation as “unfit,” I demonstrated not only the continued use of hereditary and reproductive “fitness” as a presumably innate and measurable quality of evolutionary worth, but I also illustrated the inscriptive power of language. As Elizabeth Grosz reminds us, bodies can serve as “inscriptive surfaces” upon which discourses operate and through which they function (146); moreover, this work occurs both voluntarily, as a result of our chosen “lifestyles, habits, behaviors,” and involuntarily, as the result of sociocultural groupings, expectations, values, and norms (141-142). The practice of identifying and naming particular types of women as “fit” and others as “unfit” (or voluntarily identifying as one or the other) has material, bodily consequences—in this case, consequences that may obstruct her reproductive rights and options. In addition, I addressed the entailed meanings that come along with such comparisons; the representations of egg donors as “fit” for reproduction also present them visually in ways that evoke stereotyped ideals and norms of race, sexuality, ability, class, body type, and intelligence. Thus, when a presumed “fit” donor is presented as petite, white, straight, middle-class, and able- bodied, alternatives to this representation can be read as “unfit” by analogy. However, the analogical reasoning that emerges from these egg donation Web sites is only one iteration of a much broader analogy, one that creates a relationship between eugenic beliefs about reproduction and our current “modern” discussions of who is “fit” to be a parent or

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to reproduce. Throughout the eugenics movement, both men and women could be labeled as “unfit” based on appearance; physical and or sociocultural markers of difference of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, the presence of physical deformity, language use and dialect, or even particular gestures, behaviors, and medical conditions could serve as “proof” of an individual’s hereditary fitness. As earlier chapters have shown, women’s bodies in particular have offered a visible, material surface on which everything from moral virtue to feeblemindedness to racial difference to social worth has been read, inferred, assumed, inscribed. For example, as noted in an earlier chapter on sterilization, H. H. Goddard’s descriptions of Deborah Kallikak as “Rather good-looking, bright in appearance, with many attractive ways,” operates as a kind of eugenics-based code, as a warning sign or marker of the deception of the “female moron” (Kallikaks 11-12). Victor Vaughan later recalls the deception of the “doll-like loveliness” of the moron, which “bewitches” men into marriage and leads to greater number of “unfit” children (Vaughan 67). These “attractive, frivolous girls” are to be, in Vaughan’s own words, “exterminated” (67). Though American physicians (like Vaughan) no longer directly advise against marriage to attractive women, nor argue for the “extermination” of entire groups of women, current efforts to impose dietary restrictions (no raw fish, no alcohol, no caffeine), workplace restrictions, and universal pre-natal screening on pregnant women suggest that women’s bodies (and now even their genomes) remain the target of scrutiny by the medical community as it seeks to reduce the numbers of “unfit” children born. In the same way that these sociocultural representations of reproductive health and worth constructed a reality wherein some women were labeled “fit” and others were labeled “unfit” during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, they continue to make meaning in our current public rhetorics of reproduction. In essence, the previous three chapters illuminate this analogy; just as women (and men) could be described as “fit” or “unfit” and either encouraged to reproduce or discouraged from reproducing (sometimes forcibly) during the American eugenics movement, current scientific and public rhetorics of reproductions identify women (and men) as either “fit” or “unfit” with similar outcomes. As noted above, eugenic arguments for sterilization and the distribution and use of birth control bear a striking resemblance to current arguments for tubal ligation and birth control for women on welfare or women suffering from serious drug addiction (Largent, Ordover, Reilly). In this comparison and others, Nancy Stepan’s description of systems of analogy as “an intertwined and overlapping series” with their “quite complex

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comparisons, identifications, cross-references, and evoked associations” reminds us that all of the entailments of “fitness”—from the earliest descriptions and definitions used by Francis Galton in the late nineteen century to commonplaces used to describe women in arguments for eugenic sterilization in the early-twentieth century to current descriptions of “welfare queens” and visual representations of egg donors—can be and are inscribed on the behaviors and bodies of women. And, as Stepan, Black, and Graves remind us, both sides of the analogy are changed in these relationships: current rhetorics of reproduction absorb the meaning entailed in eugenic discourses and our perceptions of the eugenics movement itself become perhaps more acceptable and justifiable when read in context with current anti-welfare rhetorics and arguments about burdens to the “middle-class tax-payer.” Perhaps we must take Diane Paul’s assessment of the permanence of the eugenics movement in the epigraph as true. Perhaps we will never purge eugenics from our collective psyche.126 In the introduction to this project, I announced a desire to assess the role of particular “rhetorical formations” as they operate in discourses of eugenics, especially those in connection with reproductive rights and possibilities. I explained that I chose to focus on the natural sciences in order to “highlight the way these fields (willfully and in ignorance) use their considerable power to uphold the authority of patriarchal ideals and beliefs” (18). I also expressed a concern about antiquated ideals and beliefs, including those espoused during the American eugenics movement, that continue to circulate in our current discussions of reproduction and reproductive rights. In addition, insofar as the natural sciences have long offered “proof” of difference based on race, gender, ability, intelligence, and sexuality (among other classifications), I expressed a desire to make visible the construction of those differences in an effort to challenge and, hopefully, discredit some of the “proof.” By stating these goals, I join a long line of scholars, many of whom I have reference in this project, whose work challenges the presumed objective and “fact-based” knowledge created by “doing” science and through scientific discourse. Though many historians and philosophers of science, and scientists themselves, would disapprove of or discount my assertion that scientific knowledge, like all knowledge, is socially constructed, I believe that my work,

126 In The Meanings of the Gene, Celeste Condit echoes Paul’s sentiment in the epigraph above, contending that we will never be able to separate “genetics” from “eugenics” (5). She claims that our desire for “well-born” babies (healthy, happy) means we will always adopt and/or attempt to enforce upon women measures to improve our chances; those measures may be benign (avoid red wine and sushi) or not (mandatory genetic screening) (5).

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supported as it has been by the work of others, argues successfully for this point. Likewise, many would question the use of rhetorical analysis to examine scientific discourse. As R. Allen Harris writes of “rhetorics of science,” “rhetoric is, after all, a shabby little weasel word in most circles, and science is a god-term; putting the two words together, only a slim little preposition between them, was not an act for the faint of pen or keyboard” (282). I hope that this project demonstrates both the appropriateness and usefulness of bringing these two words together. However, the legitimacy of rhetorical analyses of scientific discourse aside, there are two issues I would like to address before I close: first, the question of “intention,” and second, the question of “so what?”—perhaps better stated as “Why does this work matter?” or “What are the benefits of recognizing science and scientific discourse as socially-constructed? The historical nature of my project makes the question of intention an important one, especially in the ever-changing, ever-advancing world of science. That is, from our current “enlightened” position, it is easy to look back on the clumsy language choices and dubious methodologies of the past with disdain. In the case of the eugenics movement, might we not question the possibility that these arguments were produced in ignorance? That the science was simply primitive? Similarly, might we not assert that the men and women who employed these terms and ideals genuinely believed they were working to make the world more humane, more livable? Is there an argument to be made that these eugenic rhetorics were unintentional and should, therefore, be regarded as product, however unfortunate, of the time? My response to all of these questions is “yes, but… .” Though I do not make the argument here, I recognize an injustice in isolating particular eugenicists and their arguments for scrutiny when a great many well-respected, intelligent, and thoughtful individuals believed, as they did, that eugenics as a “practical science” could improve lives. However, as I noted in the introduction to this project, my purpose has been to address the circulation of these rhetorical formations and their consequence, not to make a judgment about culpability. On the question of intention I turn to Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries, where authors William Covino and David Jolliffe define rhetoric as “a primarily verbal, situationally contingent, epistemic art that is both philosophical and practical and gives rise to potentially active texts” (5). Of special interest to a discussion of a rhetor’s agency and intention is Covino and Jolliffe’s insistence that “a text is potentially active when a rhetor intends it to do something, to affect or change the auditor’s minds or actions or environment” (6, original emphases). Furthermore, they explain

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that all texts, including simple utterances such as “hello” or “thank you” or even “yes” have a purpose, a desire to persuade and as such are “potentially active” (6). I share Covino and Jolliffe’s belief that all texts have a purpose and that, despite the intentions of the author one way or another, all texts have the power and potential to persuade. In addition, when it comes to rhetorical analysis, Covino and Jolliffe disregard the distinction between intended and unintended potential activity; despite the fact that a rhetor may not intend for a text to do one thing or another, for Covino and Jolliffe, and for me, “all texts have the potential to change auditors,” including members of a discourse community and/or audiences addressed, imagined, and invoked (6).127 As a result, we can consider the rhetorical strategies and rhetorical formations contained in any text as a means to identify the knowledge it constructs as well as the consequences of that knowledge, regardless of the rhetor’s intentions for the text. In rhetorics of American eugenics, it is the consequences of the rhetorics, not necessarily the intentions of the authors, which demand our attention and action. Finally, I want to use this last section to make visible my own purpose and intentions for this project and to answer some questions about any value it may hold. It seems reasonable to inquire into the merit of going back in time to rehash or reopen this decidedly ugly chapter in the history of American science. Should we not simply allow sleeping dogs to lie, so to speak, in favor of moving forward or taking up current (and therefore more pressing) wrongs? Moreover, so many of the individuals responsible for these wrongs are dead or have, at the very least, been discredited long ago. Is there anything at all productive in assigning blame at this late date, over 100 years since Galton first used the label “the Unfit”? I turn here to Helen Longino’s book Science as Social Knowledge wherein she suggests that, in order to improve “doing” science and scientific discourse, social values and human beliefs need to be taken into account when evaluating scientific knowledge claims. Not only does she insist that this knowledge itself is socially constructed and should be read as such, but she also challenges the practice of conferring the status of “objectivity” to such knowledge when she proposes multiple readings of scientific data, by individuals with diverse values and belief systems, as a way to strip away the veneer of neutrality. As the epigraph above makes clear, Longino implicates the “social character” of all knowledge, but her book especially challenges

127 See Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford, “Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy.”

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the supremacy of science and denies its hallmark certainty. Though Longino writes as a philosopher, not as a rhetorician, one of her stated goals is to “explore some of the ways in which ideas articulated or assumed in a scientific context are taken up in the culture or prepared for absorption by the culture” (164). In one example, she cites the circulation of popular interpretations of evolutionary theory beginning with the Social Darwinists in the mid-nineteenth century as indicative of how scientific theories can move through public discourse to disastrous effect (163-164).128 Of more contemporary issues and their circulation in public sites like newspapers and magazines Longino writes the sciences, buttressed by their contemporary spectacular practical success, have come to fill the void left by religion. Contemporary journalists cite controversial scientific research as fact, reinforcing cultural stereotypes and prejudices. They treat Nobel Prize winning scientists as experts on topics far beyond their special competence, thereby creating a new priesthood. (164) Longino’s concerns about scientists operating as “a new priesthood” seem especially relevant in the realm of reproductive rhetorics at a time when the amount of published research, advice and general information targeted to women of reproductive age is simply astounding. Furthermore, because so much of the medically- or scientifically-sanctioned research published appears to be in conflict with other medically- or scientifically-sanctioned research, it is nearly impossible to assess its reliability, merit, or motives.129 As dictates from “on high” this knowledge tends to be accepted out of fear, deference, ignorance, or a combination of the three. For example, women learn that taking a birth control pill will increase the risks of ovarian, cervical, and breast cancers and that taking a birth control pill will decrease the risks of ovarian, cervical, and breast cancers. Pregnant women hear simultaneously “no alcohol is okay,” “some alcohol is okay,” and “alcohol is okay…but only during the third trimester.” Doctors have confirmed that babies should sleep on their backs, after having confirmed years earlier that babies should sleep on their stomachs. Women having difficulty becoming pregnant should take

128 Though Longino herself uses the word “public,” this idea also recalls Condit’s use of the word “public” as different from “popular.” As noted in Chapter One, Condit describes as “public” discussions that “appeared in widely accessible venues such as newspapers, magazines, and television” (Meanings 10). 129 Though nearly 20 years old now, Katha Pollitt’s essay “Fetal Rights: A New Assault on Feminism” published in The Nation describes the role of the government and the medical community in the shift from “women’s rights” to “fetal rights” while at the same time revealing the behind-the-scenes work of anti-choice lobbyists, outright sexism, and bias against working and lower classes. In addition, it is not difficult to imagine interference in the form of research funding or lobbying from pharmaceutical companies.

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prenatal vitamins, should take a powerful drug like Clomid to increase ovulation, should make changes in their diets, should look into surrogacy and egg donation, should just “relax” and let nature take its course. Even the most attentive, informed, and engaged woman of reproductive age may feel “unfit” to manage her own reproductive health and options. Throughout this project, I have tried to make visible the influence science and scientific discourse has on public policies and on sociocultural values related to reproduction. In a chapter entitled “Science and Society,” Longino offers both definitions and examples of this influence as she sees it emerge in her own studies of human behavior and cognition. In particular, Longino’s attention to the impact of science on informal policies and cultural ideals—both of which are also informed by social values—offer two places where we can begin to challenge the supremacy of science by rereading scientific discourse and insisting on its social character (164). Longino defines “informal policies” as “institutional practices or policies of action that are generally accepted but not legally or administratively articulated or prescribed” (164). Often a part of medical, educational, and social welfare practices, these policies may not be official, but their violation often brings official sanction. For example, as Largent and others have noted, while it is not illegal for women on welfare to become pregnant and bear children, debates in court continue to emerge over the right of the state to sterilize these women (Largent 141). Likewise, Katha Pollitt’s description of the possibility of “wrongful life” suits against women who refuse genetic screening as part of her “duty” reveals a series of deeply-held sociocultural beliefs about ability and disability that are often cloaked in scientific “truth” (284). When we recognize these policies not as “objective” but instead as the product of overlapping scientific and social ideas, we can begin to bring to the surface the social elements to the benefit of individuals and science. In addition to being aware of the influence of science on informal policy, we can also consider its intersections with our cultural ideals, which Longino defines as “norms of behavior or types of individual behavior accepted as desirable within a culture” (164). In particular, we can be cognizant of our current ideals of “fitness” for parenting and to challenge any stereotypes we may encounter. Although, as Longino notes, these norms may not seem “official,” individuals who do not meet prescribed criteria “[run] the danger of encountering derision and discrimination” (164). Again, as noted by Largent, Ordover, Pollitt, and Condit, the dangers can be far more serious than “derision” or “discrimination”; bodily harm is possible as well.

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In her book Who’s Fit to Be a Parent? (1995), Mukti Jain Campion addresses examples of deeper scrutiny upon and surveillance of parents and would-be parents, as well as the changing societal expectations for parenting. She explains that increasingly “the notion of ‘fitness’ (as opposed to ‘goodness’) suggests selection criteria” which is then used to eliminate particular groups from the pool of appropriate parental types (vii). The table of contents provides a list of what Campion describes as “parents on the edge,” individuals often identified as or constructed as “unfit” to parent. The list reads: “disabled parents, mentally handicapped parents, drug addicted parents, gay parents, teenage mothers, older mothers, single mothers, lone fathers, working mothers, and black parents” (v). Campion argues the list “lays bare the cultural values of current western society,” writing what quickly becomes apparent when these groups are put side by side is that they are labelled on the basis of a single trait which is not the most significant one in relation to their parenting behaviours but which often becomes the main axis around which all assessment revolves. (261) In the same way that individuals were labeled “unfit” during the eugenics movement based on a social and moral definition of worth disguised as scientific “proof,” would-be parents identified as “gay” or “single mother” or “disabled” are considered not “fit” to parent based not on their ability or suitability but on a socially-constructed definition of “fitness.” Finally, in recognizing the social construction of science, we can begin to embrace the notion that scientific or biological versions of “fitness” are socially constructed as well. Said another way, there is nothing inherently “fit” about one individual and nothing inherently “unfit” about another—the criteria presented comes as a result of our biases, our prejudices, our desires, but not from our genes. The quote by Helen Longino presented as the final epigraph of this project appeals to me for several reasons. Her wry estimation of the “loss” that comes with accepting knowledge as socially constructed strikes me as both tongue-in-cheek but also as very earnest. Accepting the idea that we cannot know anything for certain, that there is no permanent knowledge, can be a traumatic, life-altering experience. Many of us want desperately to hold onto something tangible and “true,” and science has long been that tangible. In addition, her conclusion that we might as well accept the idea that knowledge as socially constructed as no other systems of belief can offer anything better satisfies the cynic in me. Her willingness to offer her opinion boldly and

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without frills brings a bit of a smirk to my face. However, Longino’s quote also appeals to me as a liberatory statement, one that encourages reform and progress and change. Said another way, if we cannot hold on to any idea as certain or permanent, it encourages me to believe that even our most deeply embedded cultural memes, our most fossilized systems of classification, our most tested diagnoses, our most concrete beliefs about humans and fitness and evolution, that all of these ideas can be challenged and finally dismissed.

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