The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS AND LESBIANISM
adult life. Hall suggests that her vigorous repudiation of
homosexuality in all its forms in her writings resulted from a
flight from her own inclinations:
Her attraction towards other women remained for at least
part of her adult life, making still more difficult the
establishment of normal relationships with men, and resulting
in a total rejection of homosexuality either male or female,
all the more violent for her own unacknowledged penchant. 44
Married Love was written after Stopes engaged in a detailed
study of sexological literature through which she hoped to find
the answer to the frustrations she felt in her unconsummated
marriage. From that literature she would have received an
alarming picture of the dangers of intense female friendship
from the sexologists’ classifications and vilifying of lesbianism.
Stopes exposed the intensity of her anxiety about lesbianism
in Enduring Passion in 1928. She was worried because she
believed women would prefer lesbian sex if they tried it, and
might abondon their marriages:
If a married woman does this unnatural thing she may find a
growing disappointment in her husband and he may lose all
natural power to play his proper part…. No woman who
values the peace of her home and the love of her husband
should yield to the wiles of the lesbian whatever her
temptation to do so. 45
She considered that lesbianism was spreading, especially among
‘independent’ women, and was moved to exclaim, This
corruption spreads as an underground fire spreads in the peaty
soil of a dry moorland.’ 46 Having already admitted the strong
and possibly superior attractions of lesbian sex, she was forced
to find a reason for the importance of sexual intercourse which
had nothing to do with enjoyment. Stopes believed, though no
scientific proof was forthcoming for her hypothesis, that
secretions from the man’s penis were necessary to women’s
bodily health, and that these passed through the walls of the
vagina during sexual intercourse. She explained, The bedrock
objection to it [lesbianism] is surely that women can only play
with each other and cannot in the very nature of things have
natural union or supply each other with the seminal or prostatic
secretions they ought to have.’ 47 This was bad news for celibate
women and women whose male lovers wore condoms as well
as for lesbians. Stopes was forced to invent a mythical
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