The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE DECLINE OF MILITANT FEMINISM
more overt enthusiasm for heterosexual sex than their
predecessors, but their confidence in their own judgment was
now undermined and it was harder to express their criticisms.
Some ‘new feminists’ became fervent missionaries for the
wonders of and the necessity for sexual intercourse.
Stella Browne was promoting the joys of sexual intercourse,
at the same time as she attacked older feminists, in her article
for the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology in 1915:
This [variability] is the cause of much cant and bitterness
between women, for there is a considerable and pretty steady
percentage of cold natures, who may yet be very efficient
and able and very attractive to men. These cold women
generally have a perfect mania for prohibition as a solution
for all ills. But surely, we do not want the new world to be
built up only by women who have long ago forgotten what
sex means, or who have never experienced strong sexual
emotions, and regard them as a sign of grossness or decadence.
I think no one who knows the ‘personnel’ of many social
reform movements, can doubt that this is very real danger. 18
The BSSSP was formed in 1914 to campaign for better public
education on the scientific facts of sex. Jeffrey Weeks points out
in his history of the homosexual reform movement Coming
Out that the initiative behind the Society and much of its
membership derived from a secret male homosexual reform
organisation called the Order of Chaeronea. 19 Edward Carpenter
was the chairman of the BSSSP, Havelock Ellis was closely
involved, and Stella Browne is the only woman to appear in
the published papers. It was the concerns of male homosexuals
rather than the interests of any group of women that dominated
this society, ‘Its membership and support was wide among
progressive intellectuals.’ 20 Members and supporters included
George Bernard Shaw, Radclyffe Hall, Una Troubridge, Dora
and Bertrand Russell, and Alexandra Kollontai, the Russian
feminist. These intellectuals spread sex reforming ideas through
their published works. Wilma Meikle in 1916 described the
impact of Bernard Shaw and H.G.Wells on the ideals of the
new feminists concerning sex:
Mr Shaw and Mr Wells remained, however involuntarily,
the apostles of the new feminism. Young women at the
universities pored over their works and at last came out into
the world earnestly convinced that there was something
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