the U.S. and U.S. feminism in the larger colonial context

One of the most compelling claims in Reproducing Empire is the argument that the U.S. anti-imperial project was itself imperialism disguised and, later, how the feminist movements in the U.S. have also adapted imperialist/colonialist attitudes. I had, to some extent, internalized the narrative of U.S. colonialism/imperialism somehow being exceptional, that the U.S. project was somehow distinguished from the imperial ambitions of the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, etc. I found Brigg's argument that "prostitution policy provides a good window into the ways that imperialism may be viewed... as an international system developed by imperial powers in communication with one another and constituted in part by ideologies and policies associated with domesticity" (29) to be accurate and, especially with the international evidence, powerful. Briggs dispels the popular narrative of imperialism as bumbling, well-intentioned, and disorganized, and shows it to be a calculated system of oppression supported by specific, often "scientific," mechanisms. Stoler's article illustrated the links between research and eugenics, and writes that "Eugenic arguments used to explain the social malaise of industrialization  immigration, and urbanization in the early 20th century derived from the notion that acquired characteristics were inheritable and thus that poverty, vagrancy and promiscuity were class-linked biological traits, tied to genetic material as directly as night-blindness and blonde hair." (643) Combined, the understanding of the U.S. as an imperial/colonial power, and the idea that reproduction was the principal stage on which to push the civilizing project, while interesting as historical facts, also help illuminate the contemporary positions and myths of the United States and the feminist movement therein. As Briggs writes, during the Cold War "development became an anti-Communist policy, and one of the first places it was tried was in the 'laboratory' of Puerto Rico. It relied on four key components: population control and a centralized state, and export-substitution industrialization and a rising standard of living, the latter two predicated on U.S. aid and loans." (18) The idea of Puerto Rico as the laboratory in which the U.S. could experiment with economic and social policies has all the historical precedent in the world, and Briggs convincingly ties the history of the U.S. imperial project in Puerto Rico with the more contemporary project of sterilization. As Briggs writes of the mainstream feminist movement in the mainland U.S., "by championing the politics of illegitimate sterilization, mainland feminism reiterated the colonialist move rather than providing an alternative." (159) There is a parallel to be drawn between the relationships between the U.S.'s imperial/colonial project and the British/European models it idolized and between U.S. feminism and the U.S. imperial/colonial project itself. Both ideologies purport to be a rejection of the other while actually utilizing pre-existing policies, structures, and narratives to support their "new" struggles.