The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

ANTIFEMINISM AND SEX REFORM
show that it is being steadily recruited. On its banner is
emblazoned, ‘Woe to Man’; and its call to arms is shrill and
loud. These are the women who are ‘independent of men’, a
motley host, pathetic in their defiance of the first principle of
Nature, but of no serious account in the biological or social
sense. 46
The man-hating was associated with a dislike of sex. He
explained that the ‘cold woman frequently becomes a militant
man-hater, and especially so when she is beautiful.’ 47
He was worried that marriage seemed to be out of fashion
and looked forward to a time in the future when marriage would
be more attractive to celibates. The solution to ‘man-hating’
was to overcome women’s dislike of sex and ensure that they
married. Several of his later works are devoted to sex education
and particularly solving the problem, as he saw it, of female
frigidity. In his works Gallichan constantly acknowledged his
debt to Havelock Ellis. The solution he offered to the ‘surplus
women’ problem is suggested by the title of his 1914 book
Woman Under Polygamy. He suggested that women were
actually freer and happier under the various systems of polygamy
he reviewed in the book, than anyone had supposed in the west.
It is clear that he saw the introduction of polygamy, or
concubinage, as being a way to defuse the threat posed by
spinsters to British society. He explained:
Spinsterhood, and the ‘right to live one’s own life’,—the
supreme consummation of a large number of revolutionary
British women—make no appeal to an Indian woman. Her
strongest impulses are to fulfil her womanhood, to experience
love, and to bear children. That is her vocation, her ambition,
and joy. 48
The Freewoman magazine which represented the tiny sex
reforming tendency within feminism before the war, carried
articles on systems where polygamy was practised by male
apologists in 1911 and 1912. Heape recommended polygamy
in Sex Antagonism. It was gaining popularity as an answer to
the problem of uppity women. The spectre of unmarried women
caused Gallichan great discomfort:
Another cause of (reason for ?) polygyny especially in Great
Britain is to be sought in the preponderance of women in the
population. The surplus of marriageable women who remain
145