Category: Eugenics

Did writing this make me and anti-feminist?  Oh well – as long as I’m not considered one, I’ll be happy. This was for my first history of science course class last year. I was trying to add what I knew about both Eugenics and Feminism together. It’s a really rushed work – you can tell by the grammar, but I still got a really good mark on it. (yay)

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Helen MacMurchy

Eugenics and Feminist Reinforcement

         In the early twentieth century, the health of a nation was judged by its infant mortality rate, so it was no surprise that mothers wanted to raise healthy children, and that governments were prepared to help them. However, many of the mothers in early nineteenth century North America were more than ordinary cooking, cleaning, mothering housewives – they were maternal feminists in the first wave of feminism.  As Ontario’s Inspector of the Feebleminded, and one of Canada’s few women in power, in 1915, Doctor Helen MacMurchy had the popularity over woman to tell mothers how to raise their children.She may have had good intentions toward Canadian mothers and their children, but as her career involved reinforcing public health, Canada’s concern in Eugenics of abolishing hereditary weakness was Helen MacMurchy’s main goal. In this essay, the connection between feminism and Eugenics will be explored, discussing how the two reinforced each other in the early twentieth century and their connection in today’s modernized scientific world.

For Helen MacMurchy’s government position to exist, there had to be a background in Eugenics from years before. It is however debatable how scientific the knowledge behind eugenics was at the time. Scientific knowledge of Eugenics up to the twentieth century was based on statistical evidence of family histories, highly biased intelligence tests, and statistics of how many people were disabled physically, and/or “feeble minded” within a country.The definition of “feeblemindedness” was also racist, as immigrants entering countries, such as Canada, had to immediately write intelligence tests when they got off the boat that brought them there. Not only were these immigrants fatigued from their travels, but also many of them could not understand English. Helen MacMurchy’s goal of abolishing heredity weakness can therefore be seen as corrupted by the inaccurate tests, especially because while she was held her position, 22% of Canada was non-British, non-French immigrants.The feminists of Canada were oblivious to this fact, so it can be noted that there was an extra percent of people seen as feebleminded bolstering the government’s imposition of positive Eugenics to the hegemonic races of Canada, and to hegemonic woman’s newly founded right to reproduce with whoever she wanted to.

As women had just begun to fight for the rights of their own bodies and reproductive capabilities, Helen MacMurchy, through her series of “Little Blue Books,” started informing woman on how to raise a mentally and physically fit child. The two ideas went hand in hand because before a woman could possibly have a “fit” child, she would have to pick a suitable man with the qualities appropriate for procreating such a child. Before that time, the idea that a woman could pick a man to be her mate was seen as preposterous, and so the early twentieth century version of a feebleminded child was more likely to be born. From the “Little Blue Books” the idea of a rise in “fit children” of the hegemonic white race of Canada, not only reinforced positive Eugenics, but also gave the possibility of improving Canada’s infant-mortality rate, as well as the future maternal-mortality rate. The maternal mortality rate would idealistically get better because mothers who died while their child was still an infant were seen to have individual inadequacy, a trait which Eugenicists thought was related to weakness in heredity.

Helen MacMurchy employed more than Positive Eugenics in her task of stamping out hereditary weakness in Canada.  She employed Negative Eugenics when lobbying with those in the National Council of Women, labeling unwed women as feeble-minded, condemning many of those women to be institutionalized. If they had children, they were either institutionalized as well, or left in the care of a “more suitable” family, depending if they were also deemed to be feeble minded.  First wave feminism supports what Helen MacMurchy did because being “a good mother” was still defined by having a husband during that wave of feminism, and “the woman as being more than a wife and mother” had not been explored much yet in that particular wave.

Today, long after “Eugenics” became a faux-pas word, and after three waves of feminism, feminism and “Eugenics” still go hand-in-hand. North American women have gained complete rights to their bodies, who can they reproduce with, and the institutions that used to hold the feeble minded were closed decades ago. They can now choose not to marry, and have children without being married. It is the practice of having children in which Eugenics is still involved. Eugenics has found a new name in the science of genetics. Nowadays, women have their unborn fetuses tested for genetic anomalies before they are born, and can even choose the exact sperm that fertilizes their egg. If an anomaly is found, the woman is usually advised to go through an abortion – as to not have the burden of caring for a mentally insufficient or physically ill child. Women may have reproductive freedom, but society and medical professionals in that society still find the less fit unfit to be born – an idea crucial to negative Eugenics.  The infant-mortality rate has improved drastically, and yet the practice of making strong fit children goes on.

Feminists may now take the opposite side of the argument from first wave feminism and fight for the right of society to accept women who choose to birth a child less smart, or strong, or even less healthy than the majority of children. Like Doctor Michael J. Sandel in his article, “The Case Against Perfection,” they would want to embrace the gift of life, rather than try to make it better with genetics.

Feminism may have reinforced Eugenics during its first wave almost a century ago, but decades later after the Holocaust in Germany, mass sterilization especially in Western North America, and the wrongful institutionalization of thousands of individuals the connection has broken. Helen MacMurchy’s name currently cannot be found in searching the website for the National Council of Women, even in its history archives. Perhaps feminists have figured out that education is the key to making weaker woman stronger. Sterilization, discrimination, and euthanasia did not work in the past – and those are some of the issues that feminists theories about and fight against every day. After all, why should people discriminate against those who are different, when different points of view are what educates and expands learning in the world?

The world has learned the terrors of the radical side of Negative Eugenics, but Negative Eugenics still exist in every MRI when a doctor tells eager parents the gender of their unborn child, or when prospective parents get tested to see if they are carriers of debilitating genetic diseases or viruses. Medical professionals and scientists with the same good intentions that Doctor Helen MacMurchy had still exist, and in educational institutions such as the University of British Columbia there is no requirement of the history of Eugenics for those pursuing degrees in genetics. Degrees in feminism do cover past discrimination in multiple courses, even in regards to Eugenics. The question is, why do the feminists know more about the past of Eugenics than the geneticists implementing it?

I’m put this piece in the Eugenics section because of the genetic modification idea, even if it doesn’t fit completely. It’s another rushed bit of writing, but the films for it were really interesting! Twas one of those end of semester times when I was trying to write three papers at once. It’s technically a sociology paper – but like I said in the “epiphany” part of this blog, most fields of study can fall under the study of the history of science.

A Film Review Assignment

When Canada began to genetically modify its food, the general population was never told beforehand, like in the 1960’s when Canada began to use chemical insecticides. Both were suddenly used with no warning from the government or on packaging, and both the chemical insecticides and the genetically modified foods were never tested to see if they were harmful to humans before they were utilized throughout Canada. That lack of testing before making changes to what people eat is the topic of “Seeds of Change”  Likewise, restaurants did not know of the genetic modifications, as the foods could still be made into the same dishes and tasted to same as the non-genetically modified foods. This control over people’s foods through chemical pesticides and genetically modified foods makes Vancouver Chef, John Bishop, worry about what he was feeding his customers. He goes to find out about genetically modified foods in the film, “Deconstructing Supper.” But it’s not chefs who truly have to worry. Genetically modified plants are overtaking organic farms and the genetically modified plants are immune to herbicides. This lack of control is also researched in “Deconstructing supper.”

When Peter Schmeiser, a Canadian canola farmer has no choice but to have “Round Up Ready” brand canola on his originally organic canola farm, it is proof that whoever controls the seed supply controls the food supply. As he cannot get the pesticide resistant plants off of his land, he is obligated to pay for the Round Up Ready. As this happens to more and more farmers without them even knowing it, farmers have no control over their crops, or their future crops, as once they have Round Up Ready canola plants on their land, it is near impossible to stop growing them without destroying the soil of the land that the farmers have worked so hard to tend. The seed companies only being responsible to shareholders is prevalent in “Seeds of Change,” by the fact that the number of farmers are dwindling and the seed companies like Monsanto are not taking responsibility for this dwindling of farmers, even if it is their fault for genetically modifying plants enough that the weeds became resistant to what was supposed to kill off weeds in the original products – like Round Up Ready.

In “Deconstructing Supper” is it easy to interpret that by creating its own standards for safety, Monsanto has ruined the lives of many farmers for a large profit. By the letting the genetically modified food companies create their own standards for safety, the government of Canada is letting the companies potentially tamper with the health of Canadian citizens. New super-weeds worse than those resistant to the pesticides in Round Up Ready could be created very easily if scientists are not careful. Plus, organic crops will inevitably go extinct. What will need to be focused of in these safely regulations is keeping biodiversity, because without biodiversity seeds cannot become resistant to natural forces without being genetically modified to be that way. Based on what Happened with Round Up Ready, there could be cycle of genetically modified plants and super weeds beating each other out, not allowing enough food to be produced for Canadians.

“Deconstructing Supper,” shares a few kinds of agricultural knowledge, including that about Bio-technology in which genes from animals and other plants are implanted into the genes of plant seeds to produce a better crop with the healthy attributes from those genes. According to the film, this can even make a plant healthier as extra supplements can be added to it to make it more vitamin rich. On the less technological side of farming is that which is in India which depends on biodiversity, so seeds are traded so that crops are healthy. There is also organic fertilizer yielding good crops. If land is depleted there is a follow year – a method used since medieval times. In India some plants also considered weeds are eaten, so it doesn’t matter if a few of them happen to grow in a crop.  In “seeds of change “, the main agricultural knowledge that farmers have is passed down from generation to generation. That can be said with the Indian people of the other film as well, but the Indian people don’t have to worry as much about that knowledge going to waste – yet.