The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

‘THE SORT OF THING THAT MIGHT HAPPEN TO ANY MAN’
innumerable cases involving Indian princes, school teachers,
workhouse superintendants, and various clergy. Clergymen seem
to have been a particular target for the campaigners. Whilst
trying to prove that drink was not a main factor in sexual abuse
the NSPCC gave details of what it considered to be ‘temperate’
offenders: a Baptist minister who assaulted five girls, a
Presbyterian minister who assaulted three members of his
Sunday school, a clerk in holy orders, numerous other clergymen
and a Sunday school teacher who interfered with three girls in
his Band of Hope. Josephine Butler in her earlier onslaught on
the double standard had been particularly keen to expose the
behaviour of men of her own class. It seems that this tradition
continued.
Other causes which got an occasional mention were: lack of
self-control, association with semi-nude dancing, the fact that
boys would become violent, promiscuous and without selfrestraint
because they had been initiated by middle-aged women
in their youth, evil men, and ‘debased passion and brutal lust.’ 49
The ‘medical model’ came into use as a form of explanation
in the 1920s. There is a suggestion at the 1914 Child Assault
conference by Miss Evelyn Fox of the Central Association for
Care of the Mentally Defective that offenders in sexual abuse
cases might come into the category ‘moral imbecile’ under the
recent Mental Deficiency Act and require permanent treatment
rather than prison. The suggestion did not go down very well.
Parr of the NSPCC thought medical checks for offenders might
be a good idea because it would serve as a deterrent, not because
he saw the offenders as ‘moral imbeciles’. ‘It would be a serious
check on a good many people if they knew they had to be
examined, with the possibility of being put into a home for
Mental Defectives.’ 50 When the medical approach began to get
off the ground, as it did in the Shield from 1923 onwards, it
was a very signifcant departure in the debate on sexual abuse.
The argument that sex offenders against women are ‘sick’ is
rejected by contemporary feminists, and by many contemporary
academic researchers, particularly when applied to incest
offenders. 51 It is a simple, reassuring kind of explanation which
eliminates the need to look for any social or political dimensions
to sexual abuse. Feminist explanations around the double
standard, and male power, were irrelevant to it.
The Shield published the findings of a report in 1923 which
supported its growing determination that offenders were sick.
This report found that all but 17 out of 76 offenders in cases of
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