The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE
suggested was the only conclusion from men’s arguments, ‘that
woman’s nature is something very much clearer, stronger, and
higher than the human nature of men.’
‘Suffragettes, at any rate,’ she wrote, ‘hope that this is not
really true.’ 41 She quashed the argument that sexual intercourse
was necessary to men’s health by quoting a great many doctors
who maintained that continence did not cause men’s genital
organs to atrophy. She was unable to resist, however, suggesting
that they might, on the contrary, atrophy from too much use.
Emmeline Pankhurst joined in the debate as fiercely as her
daughter. Commenting on a speech by a man who said that
there would always be prostitution she wrote:
If it is true—I do not believe it for one moment—that men
have less power of self-control than women have, or might
have if properly educated, if there is a terrible distinction
between the physical and moral standards of both sexes,
then I say as a woman, representing thousands of women all
over the world, men must find some way of supplying the
needs of their sex which does not include the degradation of
ours. 42
A woman writing to the Freewoman magazine echoed Mrs
Pankhurst’s sarcastic sentiments:
I deny that self-control in sex matters is incompatible with
human nature; the man or woman who is incapable of sexual
self-control should be walking about on four legs, and not
on two, because lack of self-control is incompatible with
human nature. 43
Christian suffragists took the same line. Ursula Roberts, of the
Church League for Women’s Suffrage, waxed very indignant
on the ‘utterly false and pernicious’ doctrine that ‘prostitution
is necessary’. She argued that ‘all the authority of modern science
goes to controvert the old heresy that chastity is physically
harmful to men.’ 44
Feminists found it necessary to explain how the male sexual
urge came to take the form it did if there was no inevitable
biological difference in this respect between men and women.
Christabel Pankhurst’s explanation for ‘uncontrollable passion’
was that erotic thoughts, conversation and literature could
provoke over-stimulation. She believed that a natural remedy
had been provided for this in nocturnal emissions. Swiney
developed a pseudo-biological explanation on the evolutionary
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