When Danish Women Were Punished for Being Women

 

Sprogø is a small island in Denmark which has become closed to the public so that one may only be able to visit it on separate and very special trips. Those who go there will most likely want to see "Pigehjemmet" - i.e. "The Home For Girls" - but that will only be possible to see from the outside as it has attained a "super-private-private character". The reason for this is that it has become a sort of monument of a sad part of Danish history in the time period 1923-1961. At that time c. 500 girls and women were interred on Sprogø for being "immoral" and thus, according to society, in grave need of some kind of "treatment". They were called names which were seen as medical descriptions of what was "wrong" with them, and one of these names was "Morally Retard". The idea that many of the interred women may have been totally sane, although they wanted to live sexually and socially free lives, didn't seem to occur to the stern authorities who had them deported to Sprogø. That meant that these women lost their rights for instance to see their children, who were not allowed to stay with them. 

And why was that? Well, it was because they, being considered "Morally Retarded", were seen as contagious: Their children might become like them, and that was exactly what the authorities couldn't accept. All of this "re-education" of the women who lived by other rules than society wanted them to live by was to root out unwanted female wishes and instincts in order not to pass their ideologies on to the next generation. Society saw the women as "degenerate individuals", i.e. as people who suffered from some kind of an inherent illness, especially of a mental character. As their free breeding also was considered a danger to society because of the possibility of the children inheriting the so-called immorality, illnesses and other unwanted characteristics from their mothers. That led to the use of  involuntary hysterectomies. To have to endure such surgery to get away from Sprogø was a very grave situation for vulnerable women, who can't fight the authorities.

That means that these women were discarded as totally unwanted in a society that was run by people who didn't see anything wrong in doing what they did. To them it was their obligation to protect the Danish society against "bad genes", but I don't think they used that term which, by the way, is biological. Instead they used moral terms: These women are considered to be "immoral" and thus "retards". That's a strange mixture of terms, but somehow it made sense to society for almost 40 years.

However, after the place was closed and abandoned in 1961, the authorities apologized for what they had done, At that time much had changed, and they began to see that what they had subjected the women to was an abuse of the worst order. There have been raised a stone in the commemoration of the infamous "Pigehjem" and the women who lived there for many years. 

 

https://youtu.be/uj2EYNpdCLY?si=IL_UJ22qW34vJhxw 

 

https://www.visitnyborg.dk/nyborg/planlaeg-din-tur/pigehjemmet-paa-sprogoe-gdk935700 

 

https://www.visitnyborg.dk/nyborg/planlaeg-din-tur/ pigehjemmet-paa-sprogoe-gdk935700 

 

Wikipedia