Vasectomy in Interwar Europe: From Medical to Political Practices

Abstract

Summary The history of vasectomy, which began at the end of the nineteenth century, was made more complex during the inter-war period. While vasectomy was used as a method of rejuvenation in many European countries and was advocated as a means of enforcing eugenicist policies, it was used also clandestinely for contraception since the late 1920s. Male sterilisation has been the subject of a transfer of knowledge from the medical to the political sphere. While doctors were discreetly going beyond the therapeutic framework, clandestine militant action was gradually organised. The networks developed beyond borders and the biography of a clandestine steriliser highlights the forms of popularisation of an expertise specific to the anarchist circles. While the practice of the operation itself questions men’s involvement in contraception, its legal treatment demonstrated the limits of personal disposal of oneself, whereas its political use underlined the stakes of reappropriation of sexual knowledge.