Sterilization

Not only parents and social workers, but “Eugenics Board members, too, valued the sterilization of sexually aggressive men. . . Such arguments rested on the assumption that the danger to society did not lie either in the attack itself or in the physical or psychological harm it caused its victims, but rather in the possibility that it might cause pregnancy. Sterilization of course offered no protection against rape, incest, or any other sexual act. By preventing pregnancy, however, it made illicit and unwanted sexuality invisible. . . . Justifying the sterilization of female victims of incest, authorities blamed girls for their sexual experiences, marked them as sexual deviants, and undermined their future sexual credibility. Sterilizing boys accused of incest, by contrast, permitted them to continue their behavior. . . . social workers and board members indeed expected sterilization to cause changes in patients’ potency and their level of pleasure” (Schoen, 102, 103).