The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE DECLINE OF MILITANT FEMINISM
making and crafts. They pursued interests such as anti-litter
campaigns, improvement of shopping facilities and consumer
protection. The only evidence of earlier feminist concerns was
a continuing interest in moral standards. 16
Amongst all the explanations that have been offered by
historians for the decline of feminisim in the 1920s, one has
generally been overlooked. This is the impact of sexology and
of a changing sexual ideology. The change in sexual morality
in the 1920s is seen by many historians today as wholly positive
and it is not surprising therefore that it has not been seen as
part of a reaction against feminism and women‘s independence.
The American historian William O’Neil reports with glee that
feminist campaigns around sexuality were subverted by the new
‘enlightened’ sexual ideology of the 1920s:
By closing their eyes to the sexual elements regulating the
life of women, feminists prevented themselves from
developing a satisfactory analysis of the female dilemma.
And, as we shall see, when the great changes in female sexual
behaviour became visible in the 1920s, feminists were unable
to react to it in such a way as to command the respect of
emancipated young women. It was their sexual views more
than anything else that dated the older feminists, after World
War I, and made it difficult for them to understand or speak
to a generation moved by quite different ambitions. 17
In very important ways the impact of sexology was to
undermine feminism and women’s independence. The
propaganda campaign against the spinster undermined the
possibility of spinsterhood being seen as a positive choice for
women. The promotion of the ideology of motherhood and
marriage together with the stigmatising of lesbianism helped to
reinforce women’s dependence upon men. The new sexual
ideology of the sexologists, that sexual intercourse was vital,
that celibacy was dangerous for women, that male sexuality
was uncontrollable and that heterosexual sex must take the
form of men’s aggression and women’s submission, was
antithetical to the feminist theory of sexuality which lay behind
earlier feminist campaigns. Women’s anger at men’s sexual
abuse was a potent and fundamental motivation behind militant
feminism up until the war. It is not surprising then that as the
feminist theory was denounced under the growing impact of
‘science’ and sex reform societies, women’s rage was sapped
and their challenge blunted. Most 1920s feminists showed no
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