The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

‘THE SORT OF THING THAT MIGHT HAPPEN TO ANY MAN’
National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship which
developed out of the prewar National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies. Sexual abuse was also a prominant issue in the
Woman’s Leader, the NUSEC journal, in the context of the
many equal rights issues around which feminists were fighting.
Around such aspects of the campaign against sexual abuse as
the male bias of police and courts, the attitudes of professed
feminists, women’s organisations and women representatives
of church and social purity organisations were in close harmony.
All saw the justice system as biased against women and saw
themselves as fighting for the interests of women and girl children
as a group. Such a situation does not exist today, when we are
used to non-feminist women campaigners around sexuality in
groups such as the National Viewers and Listeners Association
and church organisations being overtly anti-feminist and hostile
to the idea that there might be a contradiction between the
interests of women and the interests of men.
Votes for Women carried a regular feature throughout 1915
entitled ‘Comparison of Punishments’. This was designed to
highlight the huge disparity between sentences which were being
given by the courts for crimes against women and those given
for minor offences against property or for offences against boys.
In the feature one column would carry three examples of light
punishments and the other column would carry three examples
of heavy punishments. Under light punishments there would be
an example of wife abuse, an example of the sexual abuse of
female children and one of cruelty to animals. The ‘heavy’
column contained examples of petty theft and vagrancy or the
sexual abuse of boys. On 1 January the examples of light
punishments were: a young man of 19 charged with indecent
assault on girls of 8 and 9 received 3 months hard labour, a
man charged with cruelty to a horse received a £4 fine, a
labourer living apart from his wife who molested her in the
street and threw stones at her window received 2 months hard
labour. The examples of heavy punishments for comparison
were as follows: a 64-year-old pastor of Hackney Mission Hall
was charged with assaulting a boy in a picture palace and
received 5 years penal servitude, a coster who stole 4 coats
received 12 months hard labour, and a man found guilty of
fraud on shopkeepers for sums amounting to under £5 received
two sentences of 18 and 15 months imprisonment. Each feature
carried a comment section and on this occasion it asked why
the distinction was made between boys and girls. The writer
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