The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE
thought magazine Lucifer in 1891 which was a recantation of
her earlier position. She had come to the conclusion that the
cause of the problem of unwanted childbearing was not in the
material plane and could not be solved with a material cure.
Self-restraint was the answer:
Now the sexual instinct that he [man] has in common with
the brute is one of the most fruitful sources of human misery….
To hold this instinct in complete control…is the task to which
humanity should set itself…. It follows that Theosophists
should sound the note of self-restraint within marriage, and
the restriction of the marital relation to the perpetuation of
the race. 30
Sexuality and the suffrage struggle 1906–14
A determination to transform male sexual behaviour was a
predominant theme of the constitutional and militant suffrage
campaigners in the intense phase of feminist activity leading
up to the First World War. When the vote became a major
public issue after 1906 all the concerns which we have seen
raised by earlier feminists in the area of sexuality came to the
fore. These were the iniquity of the double standard, and the
effects of male sexual behaviour on women through prostitution,
the white slave traffic and the sexual abuse of children. An
issue which came into prominence particularly in this period
was that of venereal disease. Whilst the vote was the focus of
attention, issues of sexual behaviour were continually raised in
the context of reasons why women needed the vote. Suffragists
of all shades of opinion made it quite clear that they intended,
when the vote was gained, to be able to effect a total change in
men’s sexual behaviour from a new position of strength.
Organisations as different as the Conservatives and Unionist
Women’s Suffrage Societies, the Church League for Women’s
Suffrage, and the Women’s Social and Political Union, were
issuing statements on the double standard and prostitution which
were practically identical in tone. The NUWSS, for instance,
which was the respectable non-militant wing of the suffrage
struggle, stated in a pamphlet that suffrage stood for The Cause
of Purity—we want to put down the White Slave Traffic, to
protect little children from assaults, and to save our boys from
hideous temptations.’ 31
In the years before the First World War venereal disease
became a public issue. Medical knowledge was advancing by
45