The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

CHAPTER 9
The Invention of the Frigid Woman
The 1920s have been seen both by some contemporary
commentators and by historians as a decade which witnessed
dramatic changes in sexual morality. Some historians have seen
the 1920s as the first ‘sexual revolution’ of the twentieth century
and the 1960s as the second. 1 What did the 1920s sexual
revolution consist of? The American feminist historian Linda
Gordon explains that the 1920s sexual revolution in America
was specifically heterosexual. It was ‘not a general loosening
of sexual taboos but only of those on marital heterosexual
activity.’ 2 Gordon makes it clear that this change intensified
taboos on homosexuality. At the same time it altered the rules
of heterosexual behaviour. For some ‘free love’ meaning sexual
intercourse outside marriage became a possibility. In America,
according to Gordon, such ‘free love’ was carried out in
communities of bohemians and intellectuals in the immediate
post-war period. This was not a wonderful liberation for women
since woman’s ‘survival and success largely depended upon
pleasing men’ and women had to ‘meet new male demands’. 3
Dora Russell, in her autobiography The Tamarisk Tree (1975),
describes experiments happening in Britain at the time which
reflected the Greenwich Village experience. 4 This kind of sexual
practice probably did not affect a very large proportion of the
population. Commentators on working-class sexual behaviour
during and after the First World War bemoaned a phenomenon
they described as ‘amateur prostitution’. ‘Amateur’ prostitution
seems to have meant many young women engaging in sexual
intercourse before or outside marriage or in some cases the
latter practice combined with the acceptance of minor favours
or presents from men.
Charlotte Haldane used the term in its latter sense when
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