The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE
depended for its existence on a system in which all men were
able to exploit and abuse all women sexually, in or out of
marriage. Wolstenholme Elmy summed up the effects of
prostitution on the women who were used as ‘Profanation of
the dignity and individuality of women’. These are very much
the same words she used to describe the effects of unwelcome
sex within marriage. She does not distinguish between the
experience of bodily slavery for women whether it is in marriage
or prostitution. She attacked the regulation of prostitution on
account of its class bias as well as its sex bias. Here she accuses
the supporters of the Contagious Diseases Acts:
The building up of a false social system on the basis of class
(for be it remembered, it is practically only poor women
whom this wicked system assails) and sex injustice is the
endeavour, here openly avowed, of the men who deny to
women the right to help govern themselves. 9
It is interesting that today political theorists of the left whom
one might expect to recognise the class, if not the sex injustice
of prostitution generally acknowledge neither. The only problem
they recognise in respect of prostitution is that of unjust
legislation. Their desire to see prostitution as just a job like any
other causes them to be quite blind to the arguments of either
the first or the present wave of feminism. The views of the
contemporary socialist historians are discussed in the Afterword.
Wolstenholme Elmy is most remembered and quoted not for
her outspoken attacks on coercion in marriage, nor her brave
accounts of human reproduction for children, but for saying
that menstruation was pathological and caused by men’s sexual
abuse of women.
Revolting was the shock to the writer, coming, some years
ago, with unprejudiced and ingenuous mind, to the study of
the so-called ‘Diseases of Woman’, on finding that nearly
the whole of these special ‘diseases’, including menstruation,
were due, directly or collaterally, to one form or other of
masculine excess or abuse. 10
The fact that she entertained this idea about menstruation does
not indicate an eccentric and individual horror at the effects of
male sexuality upon women. She quotes medical evidence such
as Dr Caroline B.Winslow of Boston, in support of her statement.
This medical opinion had influenced both the American and
English women’s movements to some extent. Like many other
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