Choose one of Grant-Davie's constituents of rhetoric: rhetor, audience, constraints, or exigence - and analyze how that constitute affects communication in Margaret Sanger's text.
Here's a link to the Sanger article for your convenience: http://www.bartleby.com/1013/13.html
Here's a brief example of a bit of analysis to help guide you (this is just a taste- and I expect that your analysis will go much further than the following example).
Remember in class I gave you an example of a rhetorical situation where a high-school aged male wants to borrow the car from his parents to go on a date with a high-school aged female. An exploration of exigence, or the motivation behind the guy's need to go on the date is interesting. Biologically, there is a lot going on, and clearly hormones are part of the motive, but there are also broader cultural motives and localized social implications. Let's say that the male is the only one who hasn't had sex among a group of friends who have already begun having sex. In this case, one motive becomes adhering to peer pressure. Furthermore, the broader culture of manhood says that men should be on the prowl looking for sex, and if adherence to the man-box is the other dominant motivator, the sense of exigence for going on the date in the first place is misplaced and misguided. We also know that there are more altruistic reasons for pairing off to date - mutual attraction, connection, shared interests etc., and these motives, I contend, are motives that might lead to a healthy, sustainable relationship, or at least a date that is not a complete disaster.
Your goal in this assignment is to demonstrate that you can do rhetorical analysis. You will have to think critically about who Sanger is writing to, why she writes, and what she hopes to accomplish. I recommend you get in the habit of looking at when and where a piece of writing was published as a jumping off point.
Send me an email or message me in Remind if you have any questions.
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ReplyDeleteAfter reading Margaret Sanger's piece I was most interested in the audience she was writing her argument or text for. Grants- Davie talked about how the audience as four different versions. This includes who actually reads the article, the writers interpretation of the audience, the audience the writer has in mind, and roles of the audience suggested by the issue itself. While reading through this very strong article I could see that she clearly wanted to make a point about the place woman will have in the future. This is clear not only by the article but by the title of the book "Woman in the New Race." She obviously has the women in mind when she wrote this but I also believe she had the men too. It's clear she wants to empower the women and educate them not to give in and have children to fuel the mens desire for strength and in turn war. But it could also be interpreted that she wants the men to see what their greediness and need for expansion brings like famine, over-crowding, and starvation. Her whole article strives to make a point to both audiences and I think this is due to the support of the article. It is clear she despises war and that she believes by using birth control the wars could potentially stop. It is almost as if she is warning the men that if they don't stop being foolish and power hungry that the women will realize that they can stop his plans easily. I think it would be foolish if she only wanted to write this for just men or just women because then she leaves out a vital half. If the point of her article is to stop war then writing for both these audiences doubles the impact and the eyes who see her article. I believe Sanger sees both of them as essential to getting her point across.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the Grant-Davie's and Margaret Sanger’s article, I found the correlation between both excellent articles. Grant-Davie described four constituents of rhetorical situation, and those rhetorical situations could be found in Sanger’s article Woman and the New Race. However, I have the most interest in the exigence of Sanger’s article.
ReplyDeleteThe overall point of Sanger’s article is how population growths can cause the war. She basically described an exigence which is the women were affected by the militarist’s patriotic Grandiloquence and they were willing to born more and more people that cause overpopulation and cause the war later on. The idea is, Sanger think that if a country is considered overpopulation, the people who lives in this country would have less food and resources to use, but in other hand they will have a stronger military because they have more population. Therefore, the politicians and militarists in this country would like to start invade other country with less power.
Sanger use the historical events and the researches which analyzed the war to explain the negative influences of overpopulation. This article was written in 1920; which is two years after the WWI. Sanger could be considered as an antiwar writer, because she criticized those militarists who encourages women to born more people. Furthermore, Sanger also offered a way which is called “Birth Control” to recommend women think about the population deeply and not born too many people. Sanger understand the feeling of a woman who lost her child or her husband during the war; Therefore, her purpose of written this article not only to explain how and why the war goes on, but also to warn women from blind patriotic in order to avoid the war.
I agree on Sanger’s opinion stated in the article: “if every country can reach a statue called autarky, there will be no war within the world.”
Posted by:Ziwei Huang
9/14/2016
I agree with you that her purpose was to warn the women but I see more purposes than that. I believe that she is trying to make the men realize that they are at fault for war. That if they would stop being greedy and wanting power that the wars would stop. I believe that she is making them aware that if the women stand up against war and go on birth control they won't have any men to fight the war. I believe she is trying to open the eyes of both genders so that she can help stop wars in the future.
DeleteThat's a great point !
DeleteBoth Margaret Sanger’s and Grant-Davie's piece have four things in common. They both include or talk about rhetor, audience, constraints and/or exigence. While all four can most definitely be found in Sanders piece, I believe that audience is the most powerful one in her piece.
ReplyDeleteRight off the bat Sanger is directly targeting someone/something. Within her first paragraph you can tell she is mad at something and will be writing to her audience so they can help her make a difference. The title of her piece and her opening paragraph seem to contradict each other. Sanger seems to talk to everyone at first by criticizing the war and stupidity of it all. However, as she continues and talks about birth control her audience seems to shift towards females. Sanger also takes a very feminist approach witch further emphases her need for female audience. She has a sassy way of communicating the way she feels and I think this makes her audience feel like they know her on a personal level. Throughout the entire article she calls out the government and the military and their idiotic way of thinking (more pregnant ladies equals more children and more children equals war). She criticizes the entire time how they wanted children to be born so they can be powerful and fight in a war, but then later when it backfires they don’t realize the overpopulation is what caused a war. China faced something extremely similar to this and the Chinese government had to step in and create a solution. This is what Sanger’s wanted, she wanted a solution to overpopulation to be solved and she had the solution- birth control. Since she uses numbers and historical evidence to help make her point, you can tell her audience is now towards educated people. War is used 30 times in her piece and every time it has a negative connotation near it. It is extremely evident that she is anti-war and wants to end it. She ends her piece talking not as one person but as the female gender. She does this by using she and her.
While Sanger’s audience seems to switch at different points of this piece it is clear that she wants government officials, militia men, and both men and women to read and understand what she is saying.
After reading both Grant-Davies and Margaret Sanger’s articles I found they had many things in common. I decided to examine the exigence that Sanger described as the way women were affected by the militarist’s patriotic grandiloquence and they were willing to have more children, which caused overpopulation and later war. The overall point is that the people who live in an overpopulated country would have less food and resources, however they will have a stronger military because of the large population. Sanger used historical events to analyze the war and explain the negative effects of overpopulation. This article was written just after WWI in 1920. Then she offered woman a way to control if they got pregnant, called “Birth Control”. Sanger wants women to stand up against war and the powerful militarists. If the men in power would stop being greedy and wanting even more power then the wars would never happen. Sanger’s overall message is to open the eyes of both genders to help prevent any future wars.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you! Looking at it from my point where I figured out who her audience was I got the same message from her. She wants both genders, military personal and the government to wake up and see the damage that they have caused. Also, since she wrote it right before WWI you can make the assumption that she is against the war and that she is trying to reach out to others who are against it as well. But since she does mention historical evidence is it also evident that she is reaching out to a more educated group of people.
DeleteI also agree 100%! Though her audience was definitely aimed more towards women, but she did want everyone who read this piece to open their eyes and realize if they kept the birth rate the way it was, not only would they have more wars but they would also have very scarce resources. I loved the way you brought up the birth control too because now if the men don't open their eyes then they at least have one option!
DeleteFrom reading Grant-Davies piece, I discovered the meanings of rhetor, audience, constraints, and exigence. Although these four constituents of a rhetorical situation are present in Sanger's piece, I decided to analyze the audience because it is interesting how the audience was unclear at first and then very clear. At first glance, it is difficult to figure out who her audience is, and the point she is going to be making. She begins her piece by discussing war, and overpopulation. She sounds very passionate, and provides a lot of information proving how each countries population increased rapidly. It seems to me that at this point she is just addressing anyone who is interested in this information, not a single race, gender, etc. As the piece continues, it is clear that she begins directing females. She discusses ways to end war, and one included how many think birth control can be the solution. She wants women to know that they do not have to give in to the men's way of thinking and have many kids just so that they can fight in the war. She wants women to be their own people and not change who they are for men and people that are pro-war. It is very clear that Sanger is anti-war and believes that educating women on birth control could be key to helping the future. By discussing the women and how they should stand up to men, it shows that she is also directing the men. She wants them to realize that women should not give into men and that their idea of having more children to fight war is pure stupidity. Children are worth much more than just being sent to fight war, and women should not have kids solely to help the country fight. In addition to targeting women and men, I think she is also targeting military officials and the government and wants them to open their eyes and realize the damage that war is doing. In addition, she is also targeting other individuals who are anti-war so that they can read it, share it, and help get the word out efficiently as well!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, I believe this article was not just aimed at women. Sanger explains that women can personally make a difference against the problem, but also the interests and actions of the men needs to change as well. To remedy this problem, every group involved must work together for a more powerful solution.
DeleteShe also targets anti-war individuals to aid in spreading her message. She wants many people to see and understand her side of the argument. Your analysis is excellent!
This was posted by OlaToyin Olasimbo.
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ReplyDeleteAfter reading the passage, it became apparent that her intended audience are women, and important people that make decisions for countries. While it was also aimed at other people, this article was mostly to show that over population is a huge problem, especially in poor or under privileged countries. Sanger brings support from WWII and explains that large populations help countries obtain larger militaries. Many approaches are cruel, but allowing the population to become excessively high will limit the amount of resources we have in the future. This would cause unnecessary famine and hardship. All species are meant to have a carrying capacity and we are already going above ours. Audience in Grant-Davies' article can be seen in Sanger's article as well. During the end of the argument, Sanger directs a portion of it specifically to women. Women have the power to birth children, but they also have the power to control how many they have. She wants people to know that everyone can make a difference in preventing this calamity. She mentioned contraception and other methods as a solution to over population. Sanger wants to prevent overpopulation and gave this information to inform others how serious the problem is.
ReplyDeleteThis was posted by OlaToyin Olasimbo.
I agree that this articles' target audience is women and the point was to show that over population is indeed a problem. I think that you could elaborate even more and say this is for mothers or women thinking about becoming a mother because they are the ones who love their children the most, and if it means that they are going to starve off because there isn't enough food to feed them, mothers or women thinking about parenthood would think twice about the problem and that would lower the birth rate. There are other bigger reasons, but I think that mothers are a prime target for this piece.
DeleteFrom reading this piece by Margaret Sanger, I can easily identify the four elements of audience, rhetor, constraints and exigence. I noticed that from the beginning Sanger had made her exigence as a writer/speaker known to her audience, that she believes there are many flaws in every nation of “militaristic tendencies”, placing the blame on the choices of the male diplomats, politicians, and other high-ranking officials of those countries. It almost seems as if her soul purpose is to expose these same people for the flaws in the populations of their countries, as if she is personally mad about the way they choose to govern their nations. I think her most powerful element with this piece is her targeting of an audience. She does a great job at grabbing the attention of the female reader by almost sympathizing with them in a way, making them feel as if they are all on the same boat together. By doing this, she both satisfies and entices a particular audience to look further into her insight and develops a closer relationship to them. She takes on numerous roles while she is informing the audience. At first she takes on the role of an angry victim, as is she is very mad about the way the system of birthrate is in most nations, then she transitions more into an expert role as she starts to draw data and shine more light as to how many of these nations have come to be the way that they are now. But overall, her main purpose for writing this article and the message she wants to get across is the unawareness and severity of many of our nations' problem.
ReplyDeletePosted by Zach Hsu
After reading the piece by Margaret Sanger, I have decided to discuss exigence. She feels obligated to explore the topic of overpopulation and its underlying effects. In her mind this problem is of utmost importance and needs to be addressed urgently. She takes a step back to analyze its effects in our recent past. Germany is her case study, and in this country there is an astronomical increase in birthrates. Now at first that seems great, however when you dive deeper in to the numbers it is quite frightening. It is for this reason that she decides to commit a significant amount of time and effort, a very exigent situation. It is such a demanding issue in fact that she believes the core concept deserves an ultimatum. This ultimatum comes in the form of three options. In my opinion the fact that a situation is depicted in this light, it really supports the idea of exigence. From a broader view she wraps rhetor, the audience, and the constraints in to a understandable piece. The solutions are simple. First is a plan to leave the weak in the world to die, accept the fact of war as a result of overpopulation, or start to treat birth control as a necessity. I think that this obstacle in our world is extremely important. I mean to say that war is a result of overpopulation is a completely logical and supportable statement. And because of this it deserves to be treated as exigent.
ReplyDeleteSam, great argument/analysis, however, I interpreted this article much differently. I felt that Sanger wasn't necessarily trying to discuss the issues of population increase, but rather the toll it had on women. I believe that she was attempting to bring awareness to the struggles women face in result of excessive procreation for means of war. Sanger wanted to bring to light that women have the power to help prevent war by not providing soldiers from their wombs.
DeleteAfter reading this article it is safe to say that this whole passage is aimed at the women as hole, many people don’t want women being in control. The main reason they don’t want women in control is simply because they don’t think that women have enough power. The gist of this article is Sagner is stating that women were affected by the militarist’s patriotic grandiloquence and they were willing to have more children, which caused overpopulation and later war. For this happening over time therefore the resources for food, clothing, and land had to expand and decisions had to be made for everyone to have equal opportunity.
ReplyDeleteI respectfully disagree with your statement. Although the article was mainly focused on women, she did want men, military officials, government officials and more to become educated about the issue. She wanted readers to open their eyes and realize that the birth rate needed to be adjusted or else there would be more wars and scarce resources.
DeleteAfter reading Grant Davis' piece i got a quick sneak peak into what exigence, audience, constraints, and rhetor were. I would like to focus on exigence and audience in regards to the Margaret Sanger piece. Clearly right off the bat she started discussing overpopulation. She stated that there were many benefits like a larger military and more people to protect the country, but then mentioned many cons as well. For instance with more people there are less resources, and there is more "need for expansion" which is another way of saying overpopulation. The beginning of this piece was facts and statistics. Then she gets into the more emotional aspect of this writing. She brings females into the mix since after all they are the ones bringing these children into the world. Sanger starts promoting females and telling them that they are not just property to men and that they have a mind of their own too. They don't just have to have children for them to be taken away to war and bring them into the world where there is not enough resources to support them. Sanger starts advocating for birth control. I believe her target audience is women in that time period and maybe women who have a say in government in particular so they can really promote this idea that women are not just baby makers. She is trying to slow the birth rate, leading to less overpopulation and more available resources. Hopefully resulting in less wars.
ReplyDeleteYou provided a clear exigence that Sanger wrote about, and layer out how she organize her articles. But I would like to add more informatiokn about the audience. I believe that the target audience is not only women in that time. She can also want to sent out a message to let other people in the world know that women is not just a tool to produce more manpower for the wars. She wanted to inform them that women have the power to stop wars.
DeleteEach of Grant Davies constituents of rhetoric are apparent in the Sangers piece called Woman and the New Race. However, I believe to truly analyze this piece of rhetoric the most important constituent to realize is the rhetor herself. It is evident through the reading that Margaret Sanger seems to be a feminist, with her whole point being woman can stop wars by limiting the amount of people being born, but to have a deeper understanding of where she’s coming from a background is in order. Margaret Sanger was born in 1879 into an Irish Catholic family, her mother of whom went through eighteen pregnancies leading to an early death. Through her work as a nurse she met women who had frequent births and self-induced abortions which was very dangerous to the health. Due to some federal law of 1873 called the Comstock law information of contraceptives was hard to find. She believed that by giving women the knowledge of birth control that their place in society would elevate as a result. All of this allows for a greater understanding and analysis of what the piece is saying which is that women need knowledge on contraceptives to make the world a better place.
ReplyDeleteThe piece was written in 1920, a time when women were beginning to gain certain rights and liberations. With a vast majority of country’s men at war, women were able to fill in their jobs and work. In America all women were given the right to vote and flapper girls were all the rave, exploring their freedom. With this historical background I was able to identify that Sanger was partially motivated to write this due to the changing position of women. Also in regards to the title of her article, “Woman and the New Race,” I interpret this as women and their offspring used for the purpose of war. She is giving us insight as to what the article will be about.
ReplyDeleteAfter analyzing this article I identified Sanger’s audience as both women and men during her time period and years later. For women her message, or exigence, is that they can have control of their future and are not required to procreate for means of war. As for her male audience I think that she is informing them of the pain a woman endures as result of baring children for soldiers and work.
In my opinion Sanger hopes to leave both men and women thinking about the future and to bring a stop to the “breeding” of women. Her final sentences, “She will kill war by the simple process of starving it to death. For she will refuse longer to produce the human food upon which the monster feeds,” are incredibly powerful in which I believe strengthen her message. These words leave the audience pondering the idea of how to prevent war. Also the way she humanizes war and describes new births, as “human food” is harrowing. I personally felt chilled after reading her article. It was beyond powerful and she did a fantastic job playing on the reader’s emotions.
I definitely agree. Sanger acknowledged how horrible is to "breed" this women and use war for the wrong intentions. Like you said, she wrote this article to encourage women and men against these acts. The things she says are very powerful, and her job as a leader and writer in this belief plays a huge role in the powerful examples she tells them by. I was also chilled after reading this because with her writing I can connect with this so much, knowing the oppression and issues that has been caused by this.
DeleteI completely agree with your statements regarding the time period and it having a lot to do with how woman were treated. At this time woman were starting to become more educated and creating more power for themselves. I feel that Sanger wrote this thinking it could have more of an impact on woman of the time than in previous years. Although Sangers piece was also directed towards men and figures in the government, I believe it was highly focused on woman. But more specifically sexually active woman and mothers, which seems to be her interest when speaking of birth control and how it can have a positive affect on the world and reduce the outstanding population. I also agree with you on how the final sentences of her piece were so powerful and really fortified the message as whole. Truly brilliant closing.
DeletePosted by Angeleke Kelaris
After reading Margaret Sanger’s piece, I found all four constituents of rhetorical situation that Grant-Davie talked about in her article. Indeed, I would like to analyze the rhetor of this situation, which is Sanger herself, and the purpose of why she wrote this article. Through reading I can easily know that Sanger is a pacifist, and she wants all people to live in a peaceful environment. One of her goals of writing this article is to call for people to reduce or hopefully stop the wars between nations. She addressed that overpopulation is the main cause of war, it gives those militarists and imperialists a reason for their ambition of expanding the country. In fact, a large population will not bring more opportunity, economy growth, or other material benefits; rather, it will cause many problems such as famine, land shortage, and even wars. As an educated women, Sanger wants to dissuade women from being the tools of producing more military force. In her writing, she informed her audience that women have the right and responsibility to decided how many babies they want to have. Women do not have to give birth to more babies in order to be considered as patriots. Therefore, Sanger suggests the birth control as a solution to this rhetorical situation. Through birth control, women will have the power to prevent wars.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement as to the purpose of this article being to eventually create peace amongst all, but as to her being a pacifist, I must politely disagree. It may be one of the roles she holds, but in the beginning of the article she seems completely infuriated at what has happened with the problem of overpopulation that she doesn't seem like a pacifist to me. More than anything, I'd say she was more angry and scared of this problem than anything else. Overall, I agree strongly that Sanger's main intention is to prevent overpopulation.
DeleteMargaret Sanger's book "Woman and the New Race" affected a variety of people around the time of publication and still rings somewhat accurately in today's society. In the text, Sanger preaches about the need for birth control in order to help women have sex safely without the worry of an "accidental" child. Sanger also emphasizes the legislation of women's rights regarding freedom, birth control access, and the progression of society when it comes to women as a whole. The exigence proposed in this piece is crystal clear; Sanger wants to fully address the issues and stigma surrounding birth control to help women in desperate need. However, the audience in this excerpt is in question. Not only is Sanger speaking to women when talking about their need to safely avoid "unwanted" children and their freedom to do whatever they want with their bodies without a man's consent, Sanger is also directing her argument towards the government and society altogether. When speaking about laws restricting women of their basic right to take ownership of their own bodies, Sanger indirectly questions the government as to why these laws are so restrained and why it’s so difficult for authority to grant women the right to the freedom they wholeheartedly deserve. Birth control clinics in the U.S. compared to those overseas are also scrutinized by Sanger, which, too, indirectly targets the government’s will to make birth control services more accessible to the public without the worry of people being thrown into jail for unjust reasons. Chapter 17 titled “Progress We Have Made” challenges the idea of a woman’s freedom and why it’s so hard for a woman to be given the simple right to do what they want with themselves. Sanger tells society that women need to further fight for their right to freedom, but it can’t be done alone in one sweep.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement in terms of how the way birth control is perceived by the majority in this time period. The way Sanger makes it seem okay to not be ready for a child creates a sense of comfortability with women, and how they feel towards not being ready for a child. It is a good piece for women who are insecure over such a topic.
DeleteAfter reading Margaret Sangers piece, I could see Grant-Davies 4 constituents of rhetoric; audience, rhetor, exigence and constraints used in the text. Although I could talk about all of the constituents, the audience in which she was talking to stood out to me the most. This unique piece started out talking about European countries birth rates and directed that towards birth control. Although it may seem like an obvious connection, I believe she her audience is more broad than some might think. At first glance, I would say that this piece was directed towards females and using contraceptives to lower the birth rate. She starts talking about how the weak should die off if the countries are overpopulated with only enough food to feed the stronger side of the population. She says "Mothers hearts cling to children, no matter how diseased, misshapen or miserable." I think this piece was definitely directed towards females, but more so mothers and women considering having a child. This would hit hard for them because a child is a mothers best accomplishment and taking care of their children used to be one of their main responsibilities before women started joining the workforce. By using an example of birth rates from WWI and her three "ways" of fixing the problem, I think she was trying to speak to the women to tell them that they have control of the birth rate and they need to use birth control to their advantage because they don't want their children dying off because of food shortages, or they don't want them to go to war because of over population. Near the end of the piece, she starts talking more directly to women saying "This remedy can be applied only by woman and she will apply it." After this she was hoping to instill some ideas in the female readers head that they have control over all this and they can control it.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree on your opinions. Sanger understand how sad the feeling is to lost her own children as a mother; Therefore, she wrote this article not only encourages women to enforce birth control, but also wants to prevent women from the sad feeling of losing their children because of war. Sanger’s word "Mothers hearts cling to children, no matter how diseased, misshapen or miserable." touched my heart so much.
Delete-replied by ziwei huang
After reading the article written by Margaret Sanger she, like Grant-Davie, had many rhetorical situations. After delving into the article some more she obviously had an audience, constraints, etc that impacted the way she wrote the article. The constituent that intrigued me the most was the exigence of the article. The article really was hitting on militaristic countries, how the relationship between overpopulation and war impacted each other. She basically believe that what caused war was the overpopulation of a country. When was the last time that you heard of a non developed country being in a war? So when a country, like the United States or China, becomes so populated that resources are scarce or the need for space is imminent war has seemed to be the answer to his problem. Due to the over population of this country they will more than likely have a strong military. With this notion in mind Sanger suggested that women need to start thinking about birth control and not letting the population get too high. With this sort of feminist approach she is also appealing to that audience in the sense that they can control what happens, and that they have the power. This article is not to tell women to not have children but the purpose was to inform them, in her own words, how the war occurs/happens, and to give women the sense of power in being able to control what happens to the country. Sanger's ideals have carried on to todays society with birth control being prominent and if you take a look at China they have taken steps to start controlling the birth rate in their country.
ReplyDeleteSanger article was in 1920s. the messages of Sanger’s movement led to the approval of birth control and the changing views of religious groups. She argued that birth control would help women and children to alleviate some of their most troublesome concerns of health, wellness, and quality of life, and particularly those in the lower and lower-middle class. Sanger emphasized women’s risks during and after continual pregnancies, maternal death in childbirth. She also focused on the high rates of health risks to women and affected children, arguing that birth control would reduce it. However, Sanger positioned birth control as a moral solution to many of the concerns that plagued women and children in families. The emphasis to improve conditions for the poor, since large families could not adequately support themselves.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Sanger's feminist movement did lead to increased approval over birth control. At the time many women had little to no information on contraception, leading many to use horrible abortion methods such as coat hanger or "falling" off a stair case. Through spreading information on contraceptives she believed that as a result the position of women in society would elevate.
DeleteI also agree. A hundred years ago the science behind contraceptives was very limited and there wasn't widespread knowledge of it like there is today. In her piece she is aiming to educate every person that reads it, mostly women. Her goal is to try to aid women through her feminist movement that strives to made birth control more widely used, researched, and the widespread knowledge of its purpose.
DeleteWhen reading Grant-Davies piece I finally learned so much about exigence and constraints; words that I never knew until now. Each of Davies constitutes bleed right through the piece of Woman and the New Race. With that being said, I think that Grant-Davies analyzed the rhetoric the best. The passion is so evident. When she talks about war and overpopulation she shows vast amount of information on how each place changed so fast. At first, it seems almost like she is addressing everyone about her beliefs on race and gender. As it keeps going, it is evident that she is reaching out to females. She gives insight on birth control and war, and how these things can be the solution to certain issues. The main point is that people who live in these type of countries that are overpopulated have less resources and food. Sanger used many events and rhetoric to analyze all of the issues of military. Mind you, this article is about 100 years old, right after WW1. Sanger wants females of every race and religion to stand up to war and the wrongful government thats ridden through it. She hates the greedy and corrupt men of power, and gives that message steadily throughout her piece. She believes that with women fighting for what they believe in they can make a true difference.
ReplyDeleteI think it is important to note how old this piece is and where it essentially took place. The world was war-ridden and it seemed as if birth control definitely needed to be in place.
DeleteSanger’s piece is in effect a utilitarian proposal to practically poised people. Instead of offering an argument based on the general unfairness that women see during wartime in their forced position as soldier supplies, Sanger reaches to a much more pragmatic solution to the predicament of war. Birth Control, she touts, is a much more elegant solution than imperialistic expansion. Sanger in turn speaks to multiple audiences and is thus paralleling concepts brought up in the Grant-Davies article. By appealing to both the aggressors in the plight of 20’s women and the women themselves, though later in the article, she is able to maximize her reach. This is important for her because it not only proposes an idea to an opposing side, but also garners the attention, and support of her feminist peers. She does well to start off with the opposing side, as it’s much harder to win someone over as opposed to strengthening ones support.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement simply because of the fact that sanger had a lot that she wanted to do throughout her journey and she made that pretty evident. I personally think that wagner just wanted what was best for her own intrest.
DeleteAfter reading the article, I found that the exigence that Sanger was talking about was the fact that rising populations/high birth rates are what lead to countries attempting to expand by starting wars with smaller, weaker populations. She gave several examples in Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, that all had high birth rates and booming populations. These countries used that as justification to rally the citizens behind their military and governments and start wars to gain more land, which would idealistically pay out in land, wealth, and even more people to join their forces. Sanger also proposes a solution that the Malthusian League also thought of: birth control. Since women are the ones who give birth to the people, Sanger feels that they should be the ones who take it upon themselves to cut down on the births by practicing forms of birth control and to not fall for the rallying tactics of the military and government. By spending most of the article talking about this, its obvious that Sanger sees this as the biggest and most likely cause of wars throughout human history.
ReplyDelete- Boris Allen
After reading the piece by Margaret Sanger, it was easy to tell that the target audience was women. Some of the clues that showed it were when she said "Upon woman the burden and the horrors of war are heaviest. Her heart is the hardest wrung when the husband or the son comes home to be buried or to live a shattered wreck" and then also "And it is out of her womb that those things proceed ... For she will refuse longer to produce the human food upon which the monster feeds." With these quotes, she evokes a deeper sense of empathy for her fellow woman and conveys that to her audience. To me, that signifies that she was targeting other women as her main audience. She details different views and policies about population control, and by doing this, even if it is in a subliminal fashion, she is communicating with women on a deeper level because they are the people most affected by such policies.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point of view. However, take in consideration that the article was written in 1920s. Birth control was not available. The argument was to create awareness of the issue that overpopulation was causing to the country and the effect on women at that time.
DeleteSanger’s piece is in effect a utilitarian proposal to practically poised people. Instead of offering an argument based on the general unfairness that women see during wartime in their forced position as soldier supplies, Sanger reaches to a much more pragmatic solution to the predicament of war. Birth Control, she touts, is a much more elegant solution than imperialistic expansion. Sanger in turn speaks to multiple audiences and is thus paralleling concepts brought up in the Grant-Davies article. By appealing to both the aggressors in the plight of 20’s women and the women themselves, though later in the article, she is able to maximize her reach. This is important for her because it not only proposes an idea to an opposing side, but also garners the attention, and support of her feminist peers. She does well to start off with the opposing side, as it’s much harder to win someone over as opposed to strengthening ones support.
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