Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America [Paperback]
Author: Andrea Tone | Language: English | ISBN: 0809038161 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America
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From thriving black market to big business, the commercialization of birth control in the United States
In Devices and Desires, Andrea Tone breaks new ground by showing what it was really like to buy, produce, and use contraceptives during a century of profound social and technological change. A down-and-out sausage-casing worker by day who turned surplus animal intestines into a million-dollar condom enterprise at night; inventors who fashioned cervical caps out of watch springs; and a mother of six who kissed photographs of the inventor of the Pill -- these are just a few of the individuals who make up this riveting story.
In Devices and Desires, Andrea Tone breaks new ground by showing what it was really like to buy, produce, and use contraceptives during a century of profound social and technological change. A down-and-out sausage-casing worker by day who turned surplus animal intestines into a million-dollar condom enterprise at night; inventors who fashioned cervical caps out of watch springs; and a mother of six who kissed photographs of the inventor of the Pill -- these are just a few of the individuals who make up this riveting story.
- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Hill and Wang; 1st edition (May 1, 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0809038161
- ISBN-13: 978-0809038169
- Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 15 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #585,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
For nearly a century, from the advent of repressive Comstockery in the 1870s to the development of The Pill in the 1950s and 1960s, the history of contraception in our national history suggests several irrefutable truths. National and state governments, ignoring the realities of consumer demand for safe and effective contraception, have unsuccessfully attempted to repress not only the creation of birth control devices but have actively engaged in suppression of information about them.
Despite official opposition, a semi-covert, but vibrant underground market economy developed to satisfy the insatiable demand for methods to control sexual reproduction. Professor Andrea Tone's meticulously researched and felicitously written "Devices and Desires" is at once a survey of the technology of contraception, a political analysis of the struggle for women to obtain control over the reproductive lives and an engaging social history of the advocates, producers and consumers of contraceptive devices over the past century and a half.
Recounted through a series of analytical and chronological narratives, Professor Tone provides an interesting perspective on Anthony Comstock, whose name now symbolizes sexual prudery and repression. Tone comments that Comstock's fierce advocacy of governmental intervention and suppression of birth control contains its own class and ethnic bias. Comstock purposely ignored the fact that his most loyal supporters not only abetted, but profited from, the production of birth control devices. (Tone's exposure of Samuel Colgate's hypocrisy exemplifies this blatant double standard.
When I reviewed this extraordinary book for THE NATION Magazine (issue of June 11, 2001) my piece was entitled "The Secret History of Sex." It's fun to scoop the N.Y. TIMES.! The lead review in the NY Times Book Review for July 22, 2001 is also of DEVICES AND DESIRES, and is entitled "The Secret History of Birth Control."
DEVICES AND DESIRES is so original, so persuasive, so meticulously researched and documented that it overrides some of our most taken-for-granted assumptions and beliefs., It opens in 1873 when the Comstock law was passed in the U. S. Congress, banning both pornography and birth control devices. The new law must have made contraception known to some folks who had never heard of it before (or maybe the fact that it was banned made people think it might be fun) because birth control quickly grew into a huge bootleg industry, as popular as liquor was during prohibition, and offering many more products and options for both women and men than we have today. Some were dangerous, some were ineffective, but others were quite good and many couples doubled up on protection, with husband and wife each using one or more methods. The birth rate in the U.S. fell by more than half from 1880-1940, even though we were later led to believe by Margaret Sanger and others that until birth control was largely taken over by doctors,( in the 1930s) it was quite scarce. You will be astonished at the documented information in this book and mesmerized by the case histories of the colorful and inventive bootleg birthcontrol entrepreneurs.
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