Defining Deviance: Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960

Abstract

Defining Deviance: Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960. By Michael A. Rembis (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011). Pp. X, 227 pp. $50.00. Cases of forced sterilization are prominent in histories of early twentieth century eugenics, often leading to assumption that eugenic policy in U.S. was synonymous with sterilization laws. Michael A. Rembis's Defining Deviance: Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960 shifts focus away from sterilization and onto involuntary commitment, a component of eugenic policy that reveals how assumptions about gender, class, and delinquent sexuality generated definitions of disability that were central to social reform. The 1915 niinois Eugenic Commitment law attempted to fill troubling space between insanity and normality by targeting feebleminded for supervision within a controlled environment. By labeling young women who were bold with (38) or sexually over-developed (61) as feebleminded, proponents of eugenic commitment invoked greater good of community even as they clarified norms of behavior for women. The tendency of experts to see deviant men as capable of self-support while young women were in need of constant supervision reveals ways that fears about women's sexuality were at work both in defining delinquent acts and what counted as disability. The first half of book situates Illinois institutions - his focus is primarily on State Training School for Girls at Geneva - within national attempts to address social delinquency. Reformers drifted from belief in environmental causes of social problems as new scientific studies supported claim that social ills were rooted in the minds and bodies of delinquents. Eugenics was thus bound up with development of psy professions, even as some professionals contested evidence that correlated immorality with feeblemindedness. Eugenic motives survived through mid-century in creation of new categories of mental defect that continued to support institutionalization of socially promiscuous young women, who were perceived as both victims in need of protection and as agents best removed from society. The second half follows up on this paradox of victimization and agency by homing in on ritual of examination. Using extensive archive at Geneva, Rembis reconstructs negotiations between female subjects and their examiners. Examiners used comments of female sexual misfits to classify as mentally defective a range of young women who varied widely in their experiences. …