The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE ‘PRUDES’ AND THE ‘PROGRESSIVES’
to contribute to changing the terms of the debate on sex with
the effect that the pre-war feminist critique of male sexual
behaviour was muzzled. A new dominant ideology emerged
within which the feminist campaigns against the crippling effects
of male sexual behaviour on women’s lives in the form of sexual
abuse of children, the use of women in prostitution and sexual
coercion in marriage were discredited and undermined. The
pre-war feminist message drew strength from a prevailing
ideology which priortised self-control and placed a low value
on the sexual side of married life. A new generation of feminists
whose ideas on a whole range of feminist questions differed
from their predecessors, began to promote the importance of
motherhood, of relationships with men and the joy and necessity
of sexual intercourse. The new feminists, in their eagerness to
promote the joy of sex, avoided or ignored the unpleasant
realities which earlier feminists had been fighting. Their ideas
and activities were far less radical than those of the earlier
campaigners in the challenge they offered to male dominance.
The feminists who had launched the critique of male sexual
behaviour had not only refused co-operation with the sexual
demands of men but promoted the value of women’s
independence of men and marriage and the importance of
women’s clubs, societies and companionship. The dimensions
of the threat posed by such a feminist development is revealed
by the scale of the defensive reaction it caused. Later feminists
urged enthusiastic co-operation in heterosexual relationships in
return for the promise of some sexual gratification during sexual
intercourse. The earlier feminist critique of male sexual
behaviour was supported by anger at men and a distancing
from them. Later feminists, lulled into participation, were unable
to stand back and launch such a critique. In order to be a part
of a movement, sex reform, which was seen in the intellectual
community as wholly progressive and backed up by the ‘truths’
of science, women had to adapt themselves to a new kind of
feminism, acceptable to their socialist brothers. Alec Craig
described this change in feminism with approval: ‘The sex
antagonism which was often at least tacitly assumed by the old
pre-war feminism was laid aside. In post-war feminism womaninterests
and man-interests merge into human interests.’ 6 To
achieve this new feminism, Craig ‘hoped that the women’s
societies which still survive from the pre-war world will soon
disappear as segregated congregations of females.’ After the
First World War, despite an increased ‘surplus’ of women over
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