The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

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WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS AND LESBIANISM provided a much clearer target for attack and by the early 1930s the climate for women’s love was becoming increasingly hostile. Loveliest of Friends (1931) by G. Sheila Donisthorpe, an American novel, seems to have been popular in Britain, and went through three editions here in as many months. In the novel the innocent Audrey becomes involved in a passionate and exciting relationship with Kim. Very soon it turns sour and Audrey twice attempts suicide. At the end of the book, when the affair is over, Donisthorpe turns to pure propaganda and concludes, about the forsaken Audrey: This, then, is the product of lesbianism. This the result of dipping the fingers of vice into a sex-welter whose deadly force crucifies in a slow, eternal bleeding. And yet there are those who hug as a martyrdom these sadistic habits, who clamour for the recognition of the sinister group who practise them, those crooked, twisted freaks of Nature who stagnate in dark and muddy waters, and are so choked with the weeds of viciousness and selfish lust that, drained of all pity, they regard their victims as mere stepping stones to their further pleasure. With flower-sweet finger-tips they crush the grape of evil till it is exquisite, smooth and luscious to the taste, stirring up a subconscious responsiveness, intensifying all that has been, all that follows, leaving their prey gibbering, writhing, sex-sodden shadows of their former selves, conscious of only one ambition, one desire in mind and body, which, ever festering, ever destroying, slowly saps them of health and sanity. 57 To make the message absolutely clear, the dedication of the book reads To all the contemplating Audreys of this world the message in this book is offered’. Through looking at novels by and about women, we can see the effect which the sexological injunctions were having on women’s relationships with each other. Once women’s relationships might have spanned a continuum from casual friendship through intense emotional and physical involvement, to, in those cases where it seemed appropriate to the women concerned, relationships involving both lifelong commitment and genital sex. By the late 1920s a distinction had been clearly drawn between an acceptable level of friendship and lesbianism. The middle ground had been cut out. Women were no longer in a position to engage in passionate involvements with each other without being aware that they were on the edge of a precipice 126
WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS AND LESBIANISM which might plunge them into the stigmatised world of the lesbian. Women’s novels later than the 1920s do not provide us with portraits of love between women which is devoid of suspicion until the advent of lesbian feminist writing in the 1970s. 127
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Sheila Jeffreys is a lesbian and a
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THE SPINSTER AND HER ENEMIES FEMINI
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CONTENTS Acknowledgments Preface to
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the Patriarchy S
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PREFACE TO 1997 EDITION of male sex
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PREFACE TO 1997 EDITION was now a t
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PREFACE TO 1997 EDITION accused of
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INTRODUCTION This book looks at a w
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INTRODUCTION sexuality is understoo
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INTRODUCTION frigidity was invented
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FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY The expl
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FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY standard
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FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY pamphlet
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FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY committe
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FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY saw that
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FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY suspecte
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FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY from 188
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FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY without
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FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY Union in
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FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY systems,
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CHAPTER 2 Continence and Psychic Lo
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE as para
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE from a
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE of moth
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE feminis
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE medical
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE on the
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE Sex is
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE birth c
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE thought
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE Evil. H
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE To heal
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE princip
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CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE waged b
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‘THE SORT OF THING THAT MIGHT HAP
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‘HENPECKING’ The servants were
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Page 115 and 116: SPINSTERHOOD AND CELIBACY ried girl
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Page 121 and 122: WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS AND LESBIANIS
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Page 149 and 150: ANTIFEMINISM AND SEX REFORM My lady
Page 151 and 152: ANTIFEMINISM AND SEX REFORM men of
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Page 161 and 162: ANTIFEMINISM AND SEX REFORM The vir
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Page 165 and 166: CHAPTER 8 The Decline of Militant F
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Page 183 and 184: CHAPTER 9 The Invention of the Frig
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THE INVENTION OF THE FRIGID WOMAN d
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THE INVENTION OF THE FRIGID WOMAN w
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THE INVENTION OF THE FRIGID WOMAN o
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THE INVENTION OF THE FRIGID WOMAN v
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THE INVENTION OF THE FRIGID WOMAN a
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THE ‘PRUDES’ AND THE ‘PROGRES
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AFTERWORD and girls, chal lenges th
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NOTES Introduction 1 Judith Walkowi
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NOTES TO PAGES 16-31 25 Ibid. 26 Na
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NOTES TO PAGES 46-57 33 Ibid. 34 Ch
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NOTES TO PAGES 68-78 42 The Vigilan
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NOTES TO PAGES 91-104 13 Cicely Ham
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NOTES TO PAGES 116-28 38 Stella Bro
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NOTES TO PAGES 137-49 29 Havelock E
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NOTES TO PAGES 159-68 30 Ibid., p.1
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NOTES TO PAGES 178-89 47 Ibid., p.2
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbott, Elizabeth. (19
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Davies, Margaret Llewe
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Gregg, W.R. (1862, Apr
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Lehmann, Rosamund. (19
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Reform? Woman’s Lead
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Vance, Carole. (ed.) (
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INDEX Abbot, Elizabeth, 153-4 Aboli
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INDEX Cree, Rev. Thomas, 65 crimina
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INDEX ‘homosocial worlds’, 103,
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INDEX National Council for Women, 6
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INDEX 180, 181-5; and ‘respectabi
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INDEX 86-7, 88-9, 112, 145-6, 173-4
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