The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

‘HENPECKING’
relating to the care and protection of girls, find themselves in
opposite camps.’ 19 The AMSH was in the opposite camp. The
Vigilance Record summed up their arguments by saying that
the opposition was based upon the idea that:
the liberty of the subject is at stake; that no citizen, especially
girls between the ages of 15 and 18, ought to be at the mercy
of the arbitrary and tyrannical power that could be exercised
by one police constable, or should be consigned to detention
in a Home for 2 or 3 years at the discretion of one magistrate. 20
The NVA rejected these quite reasonable arguments based upon
feminist and civil libertarian premises and argued: ‘Surely the
law only steps in when liberty is dethroned and license reigns!’ 21
The NVA was still formally dedicated to the establishment of
an equal moral standard but clearly this had been abandoned
in all but name. The NVA seems at this time to have lost all
feminist influence. The supporters of clause 3 wanted to eliminate
prostitution and venereal disease through the sacrifice of women’s
civil rights. This was a far cry from the ideal with which the
NVA had started out, of implementing an equal law on soliciting.
The executive committee of the National Union of Women
Workers (later the National Council for Women) was completely
divided over the issue of detention. The rescue and preventive
sub-committee wanted it whilst the others saw it as a threat to
a girl’s liberty. The NUWW had passed unamimous resolutions
in favour of equal moral standards for men and women in society
and before the law, but on this occasion some members were
quite unable to see the contradiction. The Joint Select Committee
eventually decided against clause 3. The differences of opinion
here show how uneasy the alliance was at this time between
feminists and those who favoured compulsion despite their
common aims around the age of consent and other amendments
to the 1885 Act.
The Joint Select Committee was considering a new Bill of
1918, the ‘Sexual Offences Bill’, as well as the Criminal Law
Amendment Bill. The new Bill embodied the principle of
compulsion in another guise. One clause allowed for the
compulsory medical examination of those suspected of having
engaged in sexual intercourse whilst suffering from venereal
disease. The report of the committee in 1920 recommended the
abolition of the reasonable cause to believe clause but not the
raising of the age of consent above 16. The AMSH was
concerned that elements of compulsion, particularly any version
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