The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE INVENTION OF THE FRIGID WOMAN
and having stated that ‘unquestionably a considerable number
of so-called “frigid” women are homosexual’, demonstrated
the gravity of the problem by stating his conviction that ‘sexual
inversion is more prevalent among women than among men’. 16
Some writers saw ‘intersexuality’ as the result of frigidity rather
than as the cause. Haldane used this argument to encourage
participation in sexual intercourse. She explained that the
development of the ‘secondary sex characters of the opposite
sex’ might appear through ‘non-fulfilment of the normal sex
functions’. 17 The bogeys of lesbianism or growing beards were
part of the armoury of threats used to drive women into
compulsory sexual intercourse. Often in the same book and
according to the whims of the authors, inter-sexuality could be
seen as cause or result of frigidity. Similarly feminism and
manhating were cited as both cause and result of the same
phenomenon.
Another favoured explanation for frigidity was ‘arrested
development’. The arrested development was said to be either
psychological or physical. The former led to ‘psychosexual
infantilism’ and the latter, according to Van de Velde led to
‘genital infantilism’ which took the form of a misplaced clitoris.
Weith Knudsen attributed only 10 per cent of the amount of
frigidity to feminism, and the rest to cerebral defects, defective
secretion of the sexual glands and nervous disorders. Gallichan
also mentions various biological causes such as ovarian
inefficiency, amenorrhoea, prolapse of the womb, vaginitis and
constipation. Gallichan cited masturbation as one of the causes
of frigidity in woman. He stated that ‘The habit, now generally
referred to as an auto-erotic act, tends to blunt the finer sensibility
for coitus in wedlock, and the practice is often preferred to the
normal gratification.’ 18 Often, he stated, mental masturbation
or erotic day-dreaming was as harmful as the physical variety.
He cited another expert who claimed that many married women
‘develop the habit of masturbation as their relief from coitus
which they dislike.’ 19 Masturbation is thus seen as both a result
of women’s dislike of sexual intercourse and as a reason for
that dislike. It was not to be tolerated in either case, since women
were to engage in sexual intercourse whether that was the
activity which gave them most satisfaction or not.
It should be clear at this point that frigidity was not
understood to mean lack of sexual response. Lesbianism and
masturbation were likely to include some sexual response and
were cited as cause and result of frigidity. Frigidity was quite
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