The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

ANTIFEMINISM AND SEX REFORM
single is often overstated. None the less there is an immense
army of compulsorily celibate women. Certain city areas
are inhabited chiefly by unmarried women. 49
Antifeminism before the First World War took the form of an
attack upon spinsters and militant feminism combined with the
creation of an ideal of motherhood which masqueraded as a
‘new’ feminism and was beginning to have its converts among
women. Sexological ideas gave ammunition to antifeminists,
and sexologists like Havelock Ellis were in the forefront of the
onslaught on that form of feminism which threatened them.
This was a feminism in which women saw themselves as having
interests separate from men and in which they proclaimed their
right not to marry or engage in sex with men. This was a
feminism based upon social and economic changes which rescued
some women from total dependence upon men and thus offered
a real challenge to men’s dominance. The sexological response
was to replace economic dependence with a new ‘scientifically
discovered’ biological dependence. Since this ‘new’ dependence
existed purely in the realms of ideology it required a massive
propaganda campaign to ensure its acceptance. The ideal of
sexually fulfilling motherhood which rendered the spinster
‘superfluous’ and dangerous by her example had by the 1920s
been absorbed into the ‘new feminism’ of Eleanor Rathbone
and other women in the National Union for Equal Citizenship.
The development of this ‘new feminism’ and the simultaneous
decline of the feminist campaign to transform male sexuality
are described in the following chapter.
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