The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE
Sex is not a state to be worshipped; it is not even a state to
linger in, or to dwell upon with that delight of the flesh
which is most deadly to spirit life. Sex is a condition which
when dwelt upon and lingered over and searched into after
this mode is liable to produce a derangement of the moral
tone, and a MADNESS on the subject, most disagreeable in
its results. Sex is a phase through which the spirit passes in
order to gain experience and discipline. It calls forth if lived
through aright, the very highest purity, the noblest strength
and impulses; tending ever to the higher and higher life. 19
Sibthorp does not seem to have thought that women could entirely
avoid sexual intercourse. They could, however, transcend it.
Wolstenholme Elmy regarded Sibthorp with some suspicion and
remarked upon her in a letter to a friend that she was unsuitable
for a panel of suffrage speakers because she would speak about
the superiority of women. 20
Lucy Re-Bartlett wrote copiously about sex relations between
women and men in the decade before the First World War. Like
the feminists who took to theosophy, she was interested in
spiritual development. Her concern started at the same point,
with the effects of male sexual demands on the relationship
between the sexes. Much of her writing is composed of a glowing
eulogy to the suffragettes. To her the women’s movement, but
particularly the Women’s Social and Political Union, represented
the spiritual force which would transfrom the way women and
men related and impel humankind forward into the ‘Coming
Order’. She also wrote about Italy and was a member of the
Societa Italiana di Sociologica. She was a member of a Swiss
and two British prison reform organisations. Her books about
sex and feminism were The Coming Order (1911), Sex and
Sanctity (1912) and Towards Liberty (1913).
Re-Bartlett wrote that the significance of the suffrage struggle
was that it represented the transition of mankind from ‘spiritual
childhood’ to ‘spiritual adulthood’. She saw human evolution
as divided into three stages of development, the instinctual, the
mental and the spiritual. Most human beings were at that time
in the second stage which was a difficult period when the
‘uncritical simplicity of the instinct’ was left behind and the
‘peace and wisdom of the spirit not yet gained.’ The militant
suffragist was the woman of the future and would help mankind
to reach the next stage. She agreed with other feminists that
‘Sex union in the human being should be limited strictly to the
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