“Shrill squawk”; or strategic innovation: A rhetorical reassessment of Margaret Sanger's woman rebel

This paper examines previous scholarship on Sanger's publication The Woman Rebel, arguing that Sanger biographers and scholars of the birth control movement have had an oversimplified understanding of its rhetorical form and function. The paper undertakes a systematic critique of prior scholarship which argues that the journal was a failure, and argues for its strategic and rhetorical success in spite of its sometimes strident, offensive tone. Although intemperate, Sanger's rhetorical message was a coherent description of what is now socialist feminism, and it addressed its primary audience of working class women primarily through simplistic moral reasoning and identification.

Key concepts:

• Rhetoric
• criticism
• history
• feminism
• women's studies
• alternative press
• journalism
• Margaret Sanger