The Sexuality Papers

Male Sexuality and the Social Control of Women

Lal Coveney, Margaret Jackson, Sheila Jeffreys, Leslie Kay, Pat Mahony

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429615153
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1984. The history of sex in the last 100 years has usually been written as a story of progress from repression to sexual liberation. This book argues that the reverse is true, demonstrating that the 'sexual revolution' came as a backlash to a women's movement which challenged men's sexual abuse and tried to reconstruct male sexuality in women's interest. At first it looks at those groups at the turn of the twentieth century who campaigned to challenge prevailing ideas about sexual behaviour. It moves on to review the work of the most influential sexologists Ellis, Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, and then presents a critical analysis of the sex magazine Forum.

1 ‘Free from all uninvited touch of man’: women’s campaigns around sexuality, 1880–1914^*

Sheila Jeffreys

The period 1880–1914 witnessed a massive campaign by women to transform male sexual behaviour and to protect women from the effects of damaging forms of male sexuality. There is, however, little or no reference to this campaign in the histories of the women’s movement in Britain. Other aspects of the feminist struggle – such as the suffrage campaign, the movement to improve women’s education and work opportunities, and to gain changes in the marriage law – have all received attention, yet when historians have mentioned the work of the same feminist campaigners in the area of sexuality they have represented them as prudes and puritans, have criticized them for not embracing the goal of sexual freedom or women’s sexual pleasure and have found in their writings a source of useful humorous material (Rover, 1970, p. 2). While their activities and demands have been seen as challenging and progressive in other areas, the activities of the very same women in the area of sexuality have been seen as backward and retrogressive.

As it is not possible in this chapter to cover the complete range of activities and ideas of these women campaigners; examples have been selected to give an idea of the size and scope of the campaign and the motivations of the women involved. The women’s work will be divided into three sections. First, I will describe the efforts of some women to protect other women and female children from the damaging effects of male sexual behaviour, in the form of the use of prostitutes and the sexual abuse of children, in the social purity movement of the 1880s and the 1890s. These women sought directly to challenge and set limits to male sexual behaviour as well as to support the victims. Second, I will describe the ideas and activities of some 1890s feminists who tackled the problem of sexual behaviour within marriage as well as outside and sought to explain the origins and workings of what they saw to be the foundation of women’s oppression, the sex slavery of women. Last, I will look at the work of some pre-First World War feminists who went so far as to promote the complete withdrawal of women from sexual relations with men in order to eliminate sex slavery.

There are certain basic assumptions underlying the work of historians on the history of sexuality which must be overturned if the significance of the women’s campaigns is to be understood. The most pervasive is the assumption that the last hundred years represents a story of progress from the darkness of Victorian prudery towards the light of sexual freedom (Stone, 1977, p. 658). Implicit in this view is the idea that there is an essence of sexuality which, though ‘repressed’ at time in the past, is gradually fighting its way free of the restrictions placed upon it. On examination, this ‘essence’ turns out to be heterosexual, and the primary unquestioned heterosexual practice would seem to be that of sexual intercourse. Despite the wealth of work by sociologists and feminists on the social construction of sexuality the idea remains that a natural essence of sexuality exists (Gagnon and Simon, 1973; Jackson, 1978). Another assumption is that there is a unity of interests between men and women in the area of sexuality despite the fact that sexuality represents, above all, a primary area of interaction between two groups of people, men and women, who have very different access to social, economic and political power. Thus, historians who concern themselves with writing the history of the ‘regulation of sexuality’, without paying serious attention to the way in which the power relationship between the sexes is played out on the field of sexuality, can be seen to be subsuming the interests of women within those of men (Weeks, 1981). A most fundamental assumption is that sexuality is private and personal. It may be understood that social and political pressures influence what happens in the bedroom but sexual behaviour is not recognized as having a dynamic effect in its own right on the structuring of the power relationships in the world which surrounds the bedroom. While sexuality is understood to be the most personal area of private life, it is not surprising that woman’s campaigns to set limits to the exercise of male sexuality should be regarded with incomprehension or be totally misunderstood. Ideas and campaigns which are developing within the current wave of feminism give us a very different basis for looking at the work of our foresisters.

Contemporary feminists have detailed the effects upon women of both the fear and the reality of rape, showing that the exercise of male sexuality in the form of rape functions as a form of social control over women’s lives (Brownmiller, 1978). Rape as a means of social control has the effect of restricting where women may go, what women may do, serves to ‘keep us in our place’ which is subordinate to men, and thereby helps to maintain male domination over women. Work is now being done by feminists on the damaging effects upon women caused by the exercise of other aspects of male sexuality. The sexual abuse of children, prostitution, pornography and sexual harassment at work are all now being documented and examined (Barry, 1979; Dworkin, 1981; Lederer, 1981; Mackinnon, 1979; Rush, 1980). Feminists are showing that although these sexual practices by men have consistently been represented as victimless forms of male behaviour, they are in fact crimes against women. Considering that contemporary feminists are having to wage a difficult struggle to get forms of male behaviour which are essentially crimes against women taken seriously, it is not at all surprising that women’s campaigns around precisely the same issues in the last wave of feminism are all but invisible to contemporary historians. Much of the feminist theoretical work on male sexual behaviour and its effects on women has been designed to show the ways in which sexual harassment in childhood and in adulthood, at work, on the street and in the home, restricts the lives and opportunities of woman and generally undermines our confidence and self-respect. There has not yet been sufficient work on the collective effect of all the various forms of male sexual behaviour on women’s lives so that an estimate can be made of the total importance of male sexual control in the maintenance of women’s subordination. However, enough work has been done to indicate that we must look at the area of sexuality, not merely as a sphere of personal fulfilment, but as a battleground; an arena of struggle and power relationships between the sexes.

Current feminist debate on sexuality has gone further than an examination of the effects of male sexuality on women outside the home to a critique of the institution of heterosexuality and its role in the control and exploitation of women. Questions are now being raised about the effects upon women of the experience of sexual activity within all heterosexual relationships in terms of the maintenance of male dominance and female submission (Onlywomen Press, 1981; Rich, 1981). Such questioning allows us to see the feminists engaged in struggles around sexuality in previous generations not simply as the victims of a reactionary ideology, but as women manoeuvring, both to gain more power and control within their own lives, and to remove the restrictions placed upon them by the exercise of male sexuality inside and outside the home.

Social purity

Feminist ideas and personnel played a vitally important part in the development of the 1880s’ social purity movement. The most common explanation for the social purity phenomenon given by those historians who have given it any serious attention, is that it was an evangelical, repressive, anti-sex movement (Bristow, 1977). Another approach has been to speak of the anxieties caused by social disruption being displaced on to a concern about sexuality, and to represent the social purity movement as a form of moral panic (Weeks, 1981). Such explanations may help us to understand the involvement of men in social purity. They do not explain the involvement of feminists. Moreover, they do not explain the involvement of women who were not self-consciously feminist or even appear anti-feminist in some of their attitudes. Women share a common experience in relation to the exercise of male sexuality and it is likely that the anxieties which drove them into social purity stemmed from the same source.

Behind the movement of the 1880s lay the agitation around the Contagious Diseases Acts as well as religious ‘revivalism’. These Acts in the 1860s allowed compulsory examination of women suspected of working as prostitutes in garrison towns and ports, and the campaign for their repeal gave women the experience of thinking and speaking about previously tabooed topics. Women in the Ladies’ National Association inspired by Josephine Butler, were united in indignation against the double standard of sexual morality, men’s use of prostitutes and the sexual abuse of children. The feminist opposition to the Acts pointed out that the examinations were an infringement of women’s civil rights, and feminists inveighed against the double standard of sexual morality which enforced such abuse of women in order to protect the health of men who, as they pointed out, had infected the prostitutes in the first place. The progenitors of the 1880s’ social purity movement were men and women who had been involved in the repeal campaign. The Social Purity Alliance was set up in 1873 by men involved in the campaign to unite those of their sex who wished to transform their conduct and that of other men, so that self-control could be promoted and prostitution rendered unnecessary. From the 1880s onwards and particularly from 1886 when the Contagious Diseases Acts were finally repealed, women who had been involved in the abolition campaign and others who espoused the same principles joined the proliferating social purity organizations in large numbers and brought with them a strong and determined feminist viewpoint. Feminists within the social purity movement fought the assumption that prostitution, which they saw as the sacrifice of women for men, was necessary because of the particular biological nature of male sexuality, and stated that the male sexual urge was a social and not a biological phenomenon. They were particularly outraged at the way in which the exercise of male sexuality created a division of women into the ‘pure’ and the ‘fallen’ and prevented the unity of the ‘sisterhood of women’. They insisted that men were responsible for prostitution and that the way to end such abuse of women was to curb the demand by enjoining chastity upon men, rather than to punish those who provided the supply. They employed the same arguments in their fight against other aspects of male sexual behaviour which they regarded as damaging to women such as sexual abuse of children, incest, rape and other forms of sexual harassment.

J. Ellice Hopkins’s name, unlike that of Josephine Butler, is not generally mentioned in connection with the history of feminism. Her general attitude to the relationship between the sexes owes more to the principles of chivalry than to those of feminism as she reveals in comments such as ‘the man is the head of the woman, and is therefore the servant of the woman’ (Hopkins, 1882, p. 56). Yet her very considerable contribution to the development of social purity represents in many respects a more militant stance than that of women whose feminist credentials are less ambiguous. An examination of her work throws light on the motivations of all women involved in the social purity campaign; those who had developed feminist consciousness and those who did not. Hopkins described prostitution as the ‘degradation of women’ and attacked the male use of prostitutes which led to the creation of ‘an immense outcast class of helpless women’ (Hopkins, 1879, p. 5). In 1879 Hopkins submitted to a committee of convocation ‘A plea for the wider action of the Church of England in the prevention of the degradation of women’. The ‘plea’ was a courageous assault on the hypocrisy of the Church and its indifference to the elimination of prostitution. It was an impassioned demand for action.

Her interest lay, not in punishing women who ‘fell’, but in protecting women from the damage caused to them by the operation of the double standard and men’s sexual practices. She attacked the acceptance by the Church of men’s use of women in prostitution in ringing tones:

the majority of men, many of them good Christian men, hold the necessity of the existence of this outcast class in a civilised country, where marriage is delayed; the necessity of this wholesale sacrifice of women in body and soul (Hopkins, 1879, p. 8).

She demanded that the Church should go further than simply setting up penitentiaries for prostitutes, which merely dealt with the symptoms of the disease, but should aim to cure the disease itself by setting up men’s chastity leagues. She carried the battle to protect women from sexual exploitation beyond the defensive activities of preventive and rescue work with women. She directed her energies to the transformation of male sexual behaviour through groups in which men might support each other in exercising self-control.

From Hopkins’s efforts emerged the White Cross Army and the Church of England Purity Society, the latter to oversee preventive and rescue work. The purpose of the White Cross Army, formed after a meeting of working men at Edinburgh at which Hopkins spoke, was to circulate literature and enlist the support of men. In 1891 the organizations combined to form the White Cross League which spread to India, Canada, South Africa, the United States, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland and many more nations. The pledge cards of the White Cross Army show how Hopkins’s aim of eliminating the degradation of women was to be fulfilled. The obligations were as follows:

1 To treat all women with respect, and to endeavour to defend them from wrong.

2 To endeavour to put down all indecent language and coarse jests.

3 To maintain the law of purity as equally binding on men and women.

4 To endeavour to spread these principles among my companions and to try to help my younger brothers.

5 To use every possible means to fulfil the command, ‘Keep thyself pure’ (White Cross League, n.d.).

Hopkins’s uncompromising stand on the responsibility of men for the degradation of women was as strong, if not stronger, than that of other feminist campaigners on the issue. In a pamphlet entitled The Ride of Death Hopkins describes prostitutes who have ‘lost their way’ and are close to ‘disease, degradation, curses, drink, despair!’ She asks:

For who has driven them into that position? Men; men who ought to have protected them, instead of degrading them; men, who have taken advantage of a woman’s weakness to gratify their own selfish pleasure, not seeing that a woman’s weakness was given to call out a man’s strength. Ay, I know that it is often the woman who tempts; these poor creatures must tempt or starve. But that does not touch the broad issue, that it is men who endow the degradation of women; it is men who, making the demand, create the supply. Stop the money of men and the whole thing would be starved out in three months time (Hopkins, n.d., p. 5).

It was common for women involved in the social purity movement to see themselves as being of one accord with what they saw as the women’s movement, particularly with respect to work around the area of sexual morality. Hopkins clearly saw herself as part of the women’s movement, as she makes clear in this rousing clarion call to other women to join her:

I appeal to you … not to stand by supinely any longer, and see your own womanhood sunk into degradation, into unnatural uses – crimes against nature, that have no analogue in the animal creation; but, whatever it costs you, to join the vast, silent women’s movement which is setting in all over England in defence of your own womanhood …. I appeal to you … to save the children (Hopkins, 1882, p. 7).

Hopkins did not rely simply on the success of men’s chastity leagues in eliminating prostitution and the double standard. Her grand plan for the protection of women and the transformation of male sexual behaviour was to cover the country in a safety net which would include three types of specialized organizations in every town, each with its own tasks to perform. One of these organisations was the Ladies’ National Association for the Care and Protection of Friendless Girls, These associations were set up, after inaugural talks by Hopkins, in towns all over Britain, to establish homes for girls who were homeless, who had come to town looking for work or were between jobs and might otherwise drift into prostitution. The girls were trained in domestic work, fitted with clothing through clothing clubs, and given employment through a free registry office which would not be, as apparently many registry ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Biographical notes
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Free from all uninvited touch of man’: women’s campaigns around sexuality, 1880–1914
• 2 Sexology and the social construction of male sexuality (Havelock Ellis)
• 3 Sexology and the universalization of male sexuality (from Ellis to Kinsey, and Masters and Johnson)
• 4 Theory into practice: sexual liberation or social control? (Forum magazine 1968–81)
• Bibliography