"If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out" : sterilization and the policing of female sexuality in twentieth century western Canada
Date
1999
Authors
Roberts, Jennifer K.
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Abstract
This thesis examines western Canadian Eugenics Boards' use of sexual sterilization for the purpose of policing young women's sexuality. It focuses on the figure of the feebleminded female and details how she was perceived and "treated" by eugenicists in western Canada. Its initial analysis of the origins of the eugenics movement in early twentieth-century Canada demonstrates that contemporary preoccupations with "the sex problem" of the feebleminded female played a critical role in garnering acceptance and support for eugenic legislation. Employing case files from the British Columbia and Alberta Eugenics Boards, this study determines which types of women were targeted by the Boards' administration of eugenic legislation between 1928 and 1972. The Eugenics Boards routinely targeted marginalized young women whom they adjudged as either "unfit" mothers or sexual delinquents. This thesis also presents new evidence which suggests that eugenicists were similarly preoccupied with the potential eugenic problem caused by young women and girls who were suspected of being vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation.
By examining the administration of the Acts from their inception to repeal, this study is able to investigate the Boards' rationale for applying sterilization to solve "the sex problem." Comparison of the explanatory frameworks the Eugenics Boards used to justify their decisions to sterilize young women in the inter-war and post-war periods reveals that a marked shift occurred. Popular acceptance of eugenics in the inter-war period was based on the scapegoating and pathologizing of socially marginal, "unfit'' individuals for the socio-economic problems endangering the entire nation. Eugenicists' concern for the society at large overrode humanitarian awareness of the rights of the individual. Consequently, the case files from the inter-war period suggest that the Eugenics Boards' reasons to sterilize many young women were framed in terms of greater concern-for the community than for the sterilization candidate. Conversely, the post-war period witnessed a heightened awareness of the democratic rights of the individual. Working under the cover of discretionary silence, the Alberta Board promoted and applied sterilization as a means by which to protect individual young women whom it perceived as incapable mothers, troubled sexual delinquents, or girls who were vulnerable to sexual exploitation. The Eugenics Board rationalized sterilizations in the post-war period as in the best interests of these categories of women. Although eugenicists' arguments in support of female sterilization shifted from the inter-war motive of protecting society from the menace of the feebleminded female to the post-war explanation of protecting vulnerable women from the threat of the larger society, one crucial focus of eugenic efforts remained the same--young women whom the Boards perceived as constituting a "sex problem."