American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

In order to conclude that “Nietzsche undoubtedly foresaw and welcomed the Super woman,” appreciative female readers were inspired by the vision of the perfected woman as “the mother of the transfigured man of the future.”18 However, fighting such an image of glorified motherhood is precisely what drew Margaret Sanger to the Übermensch. Sanger discovered in Nietzsche’s thought both a critical philosophy and an aspirational idea for achieving a woman’s right to bodily self-sovereignty. In her speeches and writings, she employed the Übermensch to critique the bankrupt Western morality that undergirded the repression of women by church and state as well as an image of a self worthy of idolatry once all idols were smashed. Feminine chastity, she argued, was an artifact of a desiccated “Christian … ascetic ideal,” which taught women to hide in shame from their earthly desires.

Sanger used Ubermensch for pro-choice feminism