The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE DECLINE OF MILITANT FEMINISM
clinics, letters and articles similarly stemmed from her sympathy
with women’s needs. Stopes is generally remembered as the
woman who, more than any other, helped to ‘liberate’ woman’s
sexuality. This is only so if we understand as the full extent of
woman’s sexuality a passive response to being pursued and
wooed by men with the objective of sexual intercourse. She
recognised clearly the horrifying realities of unregulated
heterosexual life for women and sought to alleviate them rather
than breaking the mould. It was sexual first aid.
Dora Russell is often quoted as an example of the kind of
1920s feminist who proclaimed woman’s right to sexual pleasure
and helped to stamp out the ‘puritanism’ of the older generation
of feminists. David Mitchell describes her book Hypatia (1925)
as ‘the most mettlesome feminist manifesto of the time’. 24 Dale
Spender writes in Women of Ideas ‘Hypatia is today still a
good read; Dora Russell’s analysis shares much with
contemporary feminism.’ 25 The last part of Spender’s comment
may well, I fear, be true. Feminist Theorists, edited by Dale
Spender (1983) is dedicated to ‘Dora Russell, one of the best
feminist theorists’. 26 Russell continues the tradition of the male
sexologists of attacking the ‘early’ feminists for their prudery
and for their spinsterhood. She saw herself as a new feminist.
Whilst stressing the importance of motherhood she went further
than new feminists like Rathbone, by stressing the preeminence
of sexual intercourse. Russell decided that good sexual
intercourse was the aim of feminism. It would reconcile the
sexes to each other and provide the key to solving all women’s
problems:
To me the important task of modern feminism is to accept
and proclaim sex; to bury the lie that has too long corrupted
our society—the lie that the body is a hindrance to the mind,
and sex a necessary evil to be endured for the perpetuation
of our race. To understand sex—to bring it to dignity and
beauty and knowledge born of science, in place of brute
instinct and squalor—that is the bridge that will span the
breach between Jason and Medea. 27
She was not concerned with women’s right not to engage in sex
with men. She seemed to have believed that the sexes had distinct
and different roles to perform as did the different economic
classes:
The second aim [of the women’s movement] was to prove
158