The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE
medical opinion is beginning to lend credence to one of her
assertions. She spoke of excess sperm leading to cancer. A link
is now being suggested between sexual intercourse using nonbarrier
methods of contraception and cervical cancer. It is
important to see her list of ailments and more bizarre conclusions
in the light of the excitement which women like Swiney must
have experienced on discovering, from gynaecological work in
the nineteenth century, that women were not naturally weak
and subject to mysterious illnesses. There was great indignation
that many of women’s woes, including venereal disease and its
many complications, resulted from an activity, sexual
intercourse, which they saw as unnecessary.
Swiney’s solution to the problem of excess sexual intercourse
was the ‘Law of continence’ or ‘Natural Law’. She stated that
sexual intercourse should only take place for the purposes of
reproduction and on no account during the periods of lactation
and gestation. According to her plan, which included very
lengthy periods of lactation, a woman could be expected to
bear children at intervals of four to five years. To support her
argument she referred to a period of history which she called
the matriarchate, when the ‘mothers’ rule’ was obeyed, such
extended intervals in childbearing were the rule and the diseases
which ‘fill our asylums and hospitals with thousands of victims
of sexual excess’ were rare. Swiney drew her evidence of
primitive peoples from the work of contemporary
anthropologists who were describing societies in which women
had no more than three or four children and would not allow
men sexual access to them for periods of from two to three
years. Evidence of such practices has been produced by
anthropologists throughout the twentieth century. 15 These
revelations have not, since Swiney’s time, created any discussion
or interest in the subject of women’s relation to sexual
intercourse. This is probably because the coital imperative which
rules at present has rendered them incomprehensible. Swiney
did realise the implications and used the evidence as a weapon
against the idea that sexual intercourse was vital to the health
and happiness of women.
Swiney’s ‘Natural Law’ was embodied in the six rules of
observance of the theosophical society she founded and
administered, the League of Isis, which included both women
and men. The following rules 2 and 5 give an idea of the aims
of her society:
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