Eugenics, Feminism, and Birth Control: The Case of Marion Piddington

Abstract

IntroductionThe 1920s saw an upsurge of interest in the relationship between sexuality, marriage, and human reproduction. In the aftermath of the First World War, there was increased public discussion of sexuality, especially female sexuality. This is evident both in the increased interest in works of sexual advice, such as Marie Stopes' bestselling work, Married Love (1918), and in the immensely popular literature and film of sexual fantasy, directed at women, such as the Valentino movies of the early and mid 1920s. This increased public interest in female sexuality posed challenges and problems for the lively feminist movement of the period. What were the rights, benefits, risks, and duties of women in the sexual -- the heterosexual -- domain?There was also an increased interest in the politics of human reproduction from another quarter -- the `science' of eugenics. Eugenics was the view that human societies could be improved by increased social control over human reproduction, while the `unfit' should be actively discouraged. In this way a healthier and happier human population would be brought into being, and social life consequently improved.There were strong links between eugenics and feminism, exemplified in the ideas, writings, and campaigns of the Australian woman, Marion Piddington, whom I will be discussing here. Yet the links are not self-evident to modern eyes. Eugenics, especially after its attraction for Nazi Germany in the 1930s, is associated today very often with fascist ideologies of the subordination of women to the needs of the state, with political uses of human sterilisation, and with racist beliefs in the superiority of the white or Aryan or European races. How, then, could such a view of the world have been held by feminists? Why did feminists in the 1920s embrace so often a theory which valued women largely for their role as breeders of the future race -- a theory, one would think, better suited to the forces of anti-feminism, the purveyors of ideologies of biological destiny?This article attempts to make the connections between feminism and eugenics clearer, especially through looking at Marion Piddington's ideas and work. Marion Piddington is an enigmatic figure, at once a sexual puritan (so opposed to little boys' masturbating and having erections that she recommended their pants not have pockets) and a sexual radical arguing for the importance of female sexual satisfaction -- though this was only envisaged as occurring within monogamous marriage. One commentator, Michael Roe, has described her as confused. This paper aims to show that the more we understand the intellectual climate of the interwar period, the less do her ideas seem contradictory and confused, and the less puzzling does her particular combination of ideas and interests become. I don't wish to argue that she was an innovator or creative thinker, just that an understanding of her ideas provides an insight into earlier feminist controversies and debates. In looking at Piddington we can see yet another example of how feminist ideas and movements have been intertwined with other strands of thought.(1)Biographical backgroundMarion was born in 1867, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman. She taught in a boys' school, run by her mother, for fourteen years, before marrying Albert Piddington in 1896. Albert was a significant and well known public figure in Australia from the 1890s to the 1930s -- a university teacher of English then a lawyer, a member of parliament, and a judge heading many significant royal commissions, notably on labour issues, working conditions, and wages. He was an early supporter of women's suffrage and later an advocate of child endowment. Marion gave birth to a stillborn child in 1903 and to her only living child, Ralph (later to become a prominent anthropologist) in 1906. The decade before the war was spent largely in caring for Ralph, and she appears to have been a loving and extremely conscientious mother. …

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