The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE
monogamic laws, truly appalling to contemplate’. She made it
clear that she did not see ‘free love’ as being about unrestrained
sexual intercourse. She said that ‘free love’ did not mean ‘excess’
and that the women who chose it did so in revolt against the
injustice of marriage law for women. ‘Real free love’, she said,
was not the ‘indulgence of depraved passion.’
Annie Besant provides a fascinating example of a woman who
took up theosophy and celibacy and fell into line with majority
feminist opinion on sexuality after having been a ‘free love’
practitioner and a uniquely strong female propagandist for the
vital necessity of sexual intercourse. Besant promoted ‘artificial’
birth control techniques, mainly the vaginal sponge, in the 1870s
whilst the majority of the women’s movement were in strong
opposition to such techniques. She believed, at that time, that
men were incapable of self-control and that prostitution was
inevitable; sentiments very different from those of women in the
repeal campaign. The fanatical strength of her belief in the necessity
of sexual intercourse to health and happiness can only be equalled
by the strength of her espousal of celibacy a little over ten years
later. In 1877 she was saying that ‘until nature evolves a neuter
sex celibacy will ever be a mark of imperfection’. 28 According to
Besant celibate people died earlier, were less strong than married
ones, grew peevish and aged very quickly. She quoted male medical
experts to charge celibacy with causing as many ills as Swiney
was able to lay at the door of its opposite. Besant quoted figures
to show the alarming percentage of lunatics in France who were
celibates. Celibacy created a ‘long train of formidable diseases’
including ‘spermatorrhoea in the male, chlorosis and hysteria in
the female’ and many more.
In 1899 Annie Besant embraced theosophy. It was the third
of the major beliefs and campaigns which she took up in her
life. The first two were secularism and socialism, and it was at
this stage that she adopted ‘free love’; in theory, it is suggested,
as far as Charles Bradlaugh was concerned, and in practice
with Edward Aveling and George Bernard Shaw. Her conversion
to theosophy was a source of consternation to her previous
associates. One possible explanation for her change of heart is
a disillusionment with the realities of the free love lifestyle.
Purportedly, after her affair with Shaw, her hair turned grey
and many years later Shaw told an interviewer that she had
‘absolutely no sex appeal’. 29
The inner core of the theosophical movement which Besant
joined was celibate. She wrote an article for the American free
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