The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY
sexuality, and stated that the male sexual urge was a social and
not a biological phenomenon. They were particularly outraged
at the way in which the exercise of male sexuality created a
division of women into the ‘pure’ and the ‘fallen’ and prevented
the unity of the ‘sisterhood of women’. They insisted that men
were responsible for prostitution and that the way to end such
abuse of women was to curb the demand for prostitutes by
enjoining chastity upon men, rather than by punishing those
who provided the supply. They employed the same arguments
in their fight against other aspects of male sexual behaviour
which they regarded as damaging to women, such as sexual
abuse of children, incest, rape and sexual harassment in the
street. This chapter will look at some of those social purity
organisations in which women’s influence was dominant,
whether these women saw themselves as self-conscious feminists
or not, in order to assess their motives and ideas.
Josephine Butler
Josephine Butler was involved in many other feminist campaigns
besides that against the Contagious Diseases Acts, notably the
movement for higher education for women. Her feminism was
informed by her interest in the defence of individual liberty as
pursued by the National Vigilance Association for the Defence
of Personal Rights. This was a liberal, radical organisation,
concerned with defending the individual against state interference
with rights and liberties. On the issue of sexuality Butler’s
feminism was strong and clear. She did not merely fight state
interference, in the form of the Contagious Diseases Acts, with
women’s civil rights, she also conducted a propaganda campaign
against men’s abuse of women in the institution of prostitution.
In a pamphlet entitled Social Purity and published on behalf of
the Social Purity Alliance, 4 Josephine Butler outlined the gist of
the feminist message behind the social purity movement. The
pamphlet reproduces an address given by Butler at Cambridge
in May 1879 to undergraduates. The question she was asked
by the young men was, ‘What can we do practically to promote
Social Purity and to combat the evil around us?’ 5 Josephine
Butler proclaimed that the root of the evils of prostitution and
impurity was: ‘the unequal standard in morality; the false idea
that there is one code of morality for men and another for
women…which has within the last century been publicly
proclaimed as an axiom by almost all the governments of the
civilised and Christian world.’ 6 She explained that the double
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