The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE DECLINE OF MILITANT FEMINISM
sexual ideology in the 1920s which depended on affirming sexual
intercourse as the main, if not only sexual practice for both
sexes, required the development of a birth control campaign.
Dr Hannah Stone explained, in her paper on birth control to
the 1929 Sex Reform Congress: ‘There can be little doubt that
the so-called “sexual revolution” which is apparently now taking
place in all civilised countries is dependent to a large degree
upon the spread of contraceptive knowledge.’ 29 The papers of
the congress offer us a glimpse into the ideas and practice of the
women birth control campaigners. Stone called her paper ‘Birth
Control as a Factor in the Sex Life of Woman’. She, and Elise
Ottesen-Jensen in her paper entitled ‘Birth Control Work among
the Poor in Sweden’, represent birth control as being crucial to
women’s sexual pleasure. Women could not relax and enjoy
sex, meaning sexual intercourse, they contended, if they were
worried about becoming pregnant. The case studies they describe
indicate, on the contrary, that birth control was mainly crucial
to the man’s pleasure and a factor in the sex life of men.
In her first case study, Stone described how a wife was forced
by her husband and his psychiatrist to resume sexual intercourse,
which she had abandoned for fear of pregnancy:
The husband became nervous, irritable, and quarrelsome,
and at the end of a year he frankly stated that he could stand
the strain no longer. The wife, anxious to avoid a marital
disruption, urged that they resume a more normal sex life,
and acquired from a friend some information which she
thought would safeguard her from conception. (She became
pregnant again and there was another two years of
continence.) The husband had gradually become incompetent
in his work, lost his position, and later suffered a complete
breakdown and had to be sent to a sanatorium. The
psychiatrist who was treating the husband was of the opinion
that the difficulties were due primarily to the abnormal sex
life. 30
It was clearly the husband who suffered strain from lack of
sexual intercourse. The wife merely suffered his annoyance.
The psychiatrist did not seek to treat the husband for the very
alarming degree of dependence for his very safety and wellbeing
upon one kind of sexual practice. Instead the wife was treated.
The second case study shows even more clearly that it was the
husband’s sexual interests that were to be served through the
woman’s use of birth control. The wife declined to take part in
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