The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

‘THE SORT OF THING THAT MIGHT HAPPEN TO ANY MAN’
Crimes are not Crimes’ in the Woman’s Leader in 1926, Miss
F.K. Powell describes the storming of brothels in Strasbourg by
several thousand boys who were at a youth conference, on three
successive nights. She suggests that it is social attitudes which
create phenomena like this mass rape, not mental illness:
There is no need to imagine that people who criminally
assault young persons and children are mentally abnormal,
as what is right to buy is also right to have without buying,
whether it is human beings or any other merchandise. 55
When men’s attitudes to women were so degraded that they
could simply buy women in prostitution, she considered, then
rape was explained. A chattel can be either stolen or bought.
The development of the ‘medical model’ as an explanation
for men’s sexual abuse of girls contributed significantly to the
decline of the feminist campaigns as we shall see in the next
chapter which describes the battle for legislation on incest and
the age of consent.
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