The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE
2 To hold in reverence and sanctity the creative organs and
functions, only exercising them for their natural, ordained
and legitimate use.
5 To keep, as far as possible by individual effort, the Temple
of the Body pure and undefiled; raising sex relations from
the physical to the spiritual plane, and dedicating the
creative life in the body to the highest uses, Man regarding
Woman as the creatrix of the Race, Woman regarding Man
as the appointed coadjutor in the supreme task of
racebuilding, both labouring in Love to produce a perfect
work. 16
Continence seems to have been the main if not the only route to
spiritual experience in Swiney’s system. The transmutation of
physical into psychic energy was a principle of theosophy in
general. Swiney left the precise spiritual aim of League members
rather vague. She described it as being to ‘touch the stars’. Like
J.Ellice Hopkins, Swiney instituted a religious organisation in
which men could be trained in self-control to women’s benefit.
The advantage to women who wished to avoid sexual intercourse
of having a religious system which codified the necessity of
avoiding it, must have been great. When women could point
out that the unwanted activity would be damaging to the ‘Higher
Self’ of both partners it gave them extra authority and influence.
A spiritual belief must have strengthened many women in the
pursuit of bodily integrity.
Swiney is unusual amongst feminist writers in her forthright
declaration of female superiority. She enlisted the names of
leading biologists to support the idea that man was a genetic
mutation. She stated that life began as female, and in many
species when the environmental conditions were in harmony
with the maternal organism, she reproduced parthenogenetically
and only brought forth males when the conditions of nutrition
and temperature were less favourable.
The first male cell, and the first male organism, as an entity
separated from the mother, was an initial failure on the part
of the maternal organism to reproduce its like, and was due
to a chemical deficiency in the metabolism or physique of
the mother. 17
Women’s superiority, in Swiney’s eyes, extended to having a
brain larger and better than men’s which made her better at
everything including deduction and reasoning. Swiney’s ideas
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