STOPES- CHAPTER I PART II: A Woman's Right to Orgasm!

In the sample of letters studied, there were numerous letters from men, who wrote to Stopes asking how they could make their wives enjoy sexual intercourse: “I love my wife very dearly Dr and have longed so to see her be as happy as I can make her”. This shows that there was a dramatic change in the relationship between husband and wife. The wife often wanted a “complete union” and the husband wished to satisfy his wife. Thirty-one respondents wrote to Stopes asking for advice on their sexual problems, and notably they are nearly all men. Eighteen respondents asked for advice on marriage issues and it shows an active concern to create the ‘ideal’ marriage that Stopes illustrates in her manuals. Holtzman noticed in her sample of correspondence that there was a significant amount of women, who were disappointed about their inability to experience sexual pleasure: “We have tried every way to have a complete union which will bring me the desired result.” Holtzman’s female respondents’ dissatisfaction in the lack of sexual pleasure indicates that they shared a common expectation about the universality of achieving sexual pleasure. Stopes’ ideal of the perfect marriage, it seems, was unobtainable by many.

Nonetheless, the influence of Married Love cannot be denied. Those who did manage this “mutual adjustment” received the full benefit of a happier and equal marriage. Those who were unable but were seeking to achieve “mutual adjustment” shows that there was an active willingness to change the relationship, which indicates progress. As a result of an absence of contact with other sources, Married Love had a more far reaching impact on women than just forming their expectations of marriage and sexual intercourse; it gave women the vocabulary to discuss their sexuality. Holtzman discovered that the language used by the women in their letters was very similar to that of Stopes’ books. I also found in my sample of correspondence that many used terms like “complete orgasm”, “union” and some even quote her book back to her, perhaps embarrassed or uncertain to describe their own sexuality and problems. Stopes even recognised that Married Love was influential on the language of sexuality: “its phraseology become part of the national vocabulary”.

Stopes’ main influence, Holtzman argues, was on women in interwar society with her creation of a sexual role for them within marriage, especially considering the social changes that were occurring in the aftermath of the First World War. Women were encouraged to give up their jobs and return to the domestic sphere. High rates of unemployment, the rise of contraceptive technology coupled with uncertain times meant that there was a declining birth-rate in the middle-classes, which caused the female role as mother that had dominated the domestic sphere to become increasingly less important. With reducing significance of motherhood as women had fewer children combined with the decline in economic independence outside of marriage, Stopes provided middle-class women with a sexual role. This attracted middle-class women who felt that their traditional roles within the home were becoming less significant. Holtzman argues that Stopes was just enhancing an existing sense of power, because there had been a steady decline in the birth-rate within the middle-class due to women asserting sexual authority in the absence of widespread contraceptives. Holtzman’s argument is interesting, but she neglects the sexual role of women had a wider connotation than merely replacing diminishing roles within the home. Holtzman undermines the importance of the sexual role making women equal partners in marriage and ignores Stopes wish to further female equality in marriage, so women could “possess as much intellectual freedom and freedom of opportunity within it as do their partners.” In her study of Stopes, Holtzman neglects working-class women.

Marie Stopes never wrote or directed any part of her two marriage manuals, Married Love and Enduring Passion, to help and reform working class marriages. Many of feminist arguments were derived from the feminist movement, which was primarily a middle-class movement. Feminism only had a diffuse impact on the working-class women when Stopes used it to support the limitation of working-class children. The emergence of marriage manuals like Stopes’ Married Love and Enduring Passion (1928), which explicitly referred to sexual intercourse as something to be enjoyed not just for reproduction were intentionally addressed to respectable middle-classes. This did not mean that the working-classes, particularly women from the artisan and ‘skilled’ section of the working-classes, were not exposed to her marital ideology. Since the late-nineteenth century, ‘skilled’ labourers of the working-classes benefited from increasing wages allowing them to afford, in theory, Stopes’ books.

Although Married Love had a limited readership, its popularity ensured that many knew about her ideology. Stopes’ ideology was revolutionary as it promoted female liberty and sexual pleasure in marriage, but at the same time it was in some ways still very conservative. Stopes only advocated heterosexuality and marital sex. In the interwar period there were advocates of free love and homosexuality, which did not base their ideology of sexuality within marriage, but Stopes’ was not revolutionary enough to support such a controversial issue. Hera Cook argues that Stopes did not extend sexual equality as far as she could have as she did not advocate in any of her works that women should dominate the sexual relationship. Instead Stopes advocated equality of the sexes in marriage. Women were no longer sidelined as the domestic, passive and weaker sex:

“This ancient weakness of her sex must be conquered, and is being conquered by the modern woman.” Women became an active partner in the marriage relationship and Stopes notes how hard it is for “two people of different opinions to retain their own opinions without each other endeavouring to convert or coerce the other”, but essentially it is what marriage should be like:

"While modern marriage is tending to give ever more and more
freedom to each of the partners, there is at the same time a
unity of work and interest growing up which brings them together
on a higher plane than the purely domestic one which was so
confining to the woman..."

Stopes acknowledges that the restricting shackles from the “shadow of the coercive and dwarfing influences of the past” were being eschewed for female freedom: “one sees a widening of the independence and the range of pursuits of women.”

Marie Stopes’ Married Love transformed the marital relationships of those who read it. While Stopes agreed with feminists, who argued that marriage should not give the husband the right to demand sexual intercourse, Stopes broke away from the feminist acceptance of the common belief that women were passionless, which only served to reinforce conjugal rights. Stopes depicted the female body as actively sexual at a physiological level, and combined with her theory of periodicity, she gave women the chance to refuse or accept her husband’s sexual advances without been named “frigid” or “depraved”. Stopes’ separation of sex and reproduction was a novel creation and gave women a sexual identity of their own. This manual opened up discussions between husbands and wives on sex, birth-control and marriage. Perhaps Stopes was not as revolutionary as many were in her era but her policies were controversial and made an impact.

F.Y.I: This is copyrighted ©

STOPES/CHAPTER I PART I: A Woman's Right to Orgasm: Equality and Mutuality in Marriage

Marie Stopes wrote Married Love to “electrify England” and it succeeded in its task. By 1937 820,000 copies were sold worldwide. Her book was not the first or last manual on marriage and sex, but, as Hera Cook states, it transformed the discourse on heterosexual female sexuality and sexual practice. Stopes had no tradition to draw from to construct the ideology of an independent and emotionally active female sexual identity, which was formed separately from their reproductive capacity and from male’s sexuality. Creating a female sexual identity and role separate from reproduction was a major innovation. Before the development of effective contraceptives, nineteenth-century sex and marriage manual authors placed sexual activity alongside reproductive physiology reflecting a connection between sexual and reproductive roles for women. Birth-control was the crux of ‘married love’ which allowed pleasurable sex without hindrance of conception. Married Love was sparse in conveying details about birth-control because Stopes wanted to keep women’s sexual and reproductive roles separate. It was Wise Parenthood published later in the same year that provided the necessary details.

Married Love was unique in that the response Stopes received from women was phenomenal. Thirty-three respondents from the sample of letters studied wrote to Stopes to express their gratitude that finally someone seemed to understand not only the sex relations but the marriage relationship too: “it seems so wonderful to think that someone really knew love and understand as we do.” Married Love was written to promote equal and mutual enjoyment of sex which would provide a basis for a happy, successful marriage. Stopes noted that she knew that “in the middle classes in this country, marriage is far less happy than its surface appears” and it is no easy task to produce a successful marriage, especially when ignorance reigns causing despondency and ruptures in marriages all over England. Stopes established women’s sexuality and formed a sexual role for women within marriage, which was a departure from Victorian ideals that proposed women had no sexual feeling at all. Women in the past have been modelled to represent their husbands’ and society’s ideal wifely qualities:

"Woman’s side of the joint life has found little or no expression. Woman has been content to mould herself to the shape desired by man wherever possible."

The foundation of Stopes’ ideology in Married Love is that men and women are equal in marriage: “we are incomplete in ourselves; neither man nor woman can singularly know the joy of the performance of all the human functions”. Stopes argues that women should be treated as equal, intelligent and sexual beings. The notion that “sex-life is a low, physical, and degrading necessity which a pure woman is above enjoying” is completely rejected by Stopes as a “deeply rooted” social construction based on the idea that female ‘ignorance’ was really an indication of ‘innocence’ and ‘purity’, as one respondent highlights: “Parents, confusing “ignorance” with “innocence” are eternally threatening their daughters in the belief that ignorance combined with fear will safeguard their chastity.” Stopes argued that women were sexual creatures who had a right to satisfaction as well as men:

"Welling up in her are the wonderful tides, scented and enriched by
the myriad experiences of the human race from its ancient days of
leisure and flower-wreathed love-making, urging her to transports
and to self-expressions..."

Stopes showed that women could be sexual beings and it was above all natural. It was not depraved for women to want and enjoy sex.

Stopes argued that man has “used woman as his instrument so often regardless of her wishes” and he should alter his sexual technique to accommodate his wife’s needs. Even many feminists remained disinterested in questions related to female sexuality, which makes Stopes rather progressive in comparison to her contemporaries. Feminists’ main sexual issue was to emphasise a high moral code for women based on a belief in sexual control and chastity upon men. Stopes did adopt the idea that men should restrain themselves, as “it is his duty to do so, not only when his wife is ill, but also during menstruation and pregnancy”, but rejected other feminists’ endorsement of abstinence as women were sexual beings too and it would deprive women of the healthy benefits of sex. This revolutionises the perception of women in society from asexual acquiescent wife to an individual with sexual feelings parallel to a man. Stopes hoped the propagation of her ideology would diverge from the tradition of woman being used by her husband in the name of ‘marital rights’, which Stopes acknowledged that law and custom had strengthened. The husband had “the right to approach his wife whenever he wishes, and that she has no wishes and no fundamental needs in the matter at all.” Stopes combated this long-standing social construction with her Law of Periodicity of Recurrence of Desire in women. This law stated that women had ‘sex-tides’ and felt naturally more aroused at certain times of the month than others and the man was to use this tide to gauge his sexual approaches. The Law of Periodicity gave a biological mandate both to women’s rejection of a husband’s demands for sexual intercourse and to Stopes’ claim that women could desire sex for pleasure. It meant that women could desire sex at times determined by themselves and could ‘submit’ to their husband’s demands without being “lowered” but still maintaining the right to refuse on other occasions. This ultimately gave women the right to control the frequency and timing of sexual relations. Stopes argued that for the husband to enjoy the sex act and make his marriage a happy, contented relationship of harmony, companionship and love, he should always seduce his wife: “The supreme law for husbands is: Remember that each act of union must be tenderly wooed for and won, and that no union should ever take place unless the woman also desires it and is made physically ready for it.” Stopes explained that if a man disregards his wife’s wishes then “it is rape for the husband to insist on his marital rights” and subsequently he will make the act repugnant to her thereafter. This radical idea was increasingly adopted in the interwar period by feminists, but Stopes made it respectable by explaining that ‘married love’ and successful marriages depended on this equal negotiation between partners.

Stopes propagated the woman’s right to orgasm within the sexual relations of marriage. The removal of sexual intercourse from the notion that it was for procreation to the idea that it could and should be pleasurable for women was revolutionary. Women’s sexuality was now firmly established in its own right separately from that of the woman’s reproductive capacity. Stopes advocated “mutual adjustment”, which is “where the two are perfectly adjusted” and can reach a mutual orgasm. This equal share of enjoyment in sex is truly significant as women become equal to men in sexual relations. Stopes breached boundaries that had never been crossed by other sex and marriage manual authors before. She discussed the husband’s inability to abstain the moment of orgasm until his wife was ready: “the man’s climax comes so swiftly that the woman’s reactions are not nearly ready. And she is left without it.” Stopes severely criticised coitus interruptus because it meant that women were left “in ‘mid-air’” and therefore unsatisfied. Although men get the complete sex-act through coitus interruptus, it deprives women of the man’s secretions, which Stopes claimed were beneficial to a woman’s health. To stop this Stopes stressed the idea that men should alter their sexual technique to increase female sexual pleasure focusing on foreplay and prolonged intercourse enabling women to have the benefit of an orgasm without the concern of becoming pregnant because the married couple would be practicing birth-control.

F.Y.I: This is copyrighted ©

Introduction to Marie Stopes- My dissertation 'marvel'!!!

As a famous paleobotanist, notorious author, birth-control pioneer, eugenicist and feminist, Marie Stopes was certainly a controversial character. Sex education and birth-control is something many of us take for granted today. Where would society be today if women could not restrict the number of children they had? Many would pinpoint the 1960s as the watershed in contraceptive technology and promotion, but it was from the late nineteenth-century that birth-control began to be considered as a serious social movement in the British Isles. Marie Stopes personalised the movement and promoted birth-control by constantly publicising herself, her works and her clinics. She not only achieved more than any other birth controller, but revolutionised marital relations and motherhood, which changed women’s lives.

Marie Stopes lived in a time of great social change for women in England. The feminists’ pre-war political efforts and women’s war effort resulted in women being emancipated in 1918. The following year a Sex Disqualification Removal Act was introduced, opening higher levels of civil service, legal professions and jury duty to women.

N.B. However, the political emancipation was restricted to women who were above the age of thirty, owned property or were the wives of householders or occupied property with the annual rate of £5 and had a graduate degree. It was by no means universal suffrage, as it is clearly restricting voting rights to middle class women, unlike men who, no matter their class, could vote.

These gains combined to raise the question of a possible increase in female opportunities and Married Love (1918) was published amongst this expansion of political and economic opportunities for women. With Stopes promoting sexual pleasure, it seemed a revolutionary time for middle-class women.

The first half of the twentieth-century was also a time for heightened eugenics fear. The emancipation of some women paralleled the increased anxiety on the ‘Condition of England’ question. Reconciling women’s demands for greater political and economic equality with the needs of the race was one of the most troublesome eugenicist issues. Independent women were eschewing the typical domestic role as wife and mother. The Great War was a eugenics nightmare. It supposedly destroyed the finest physical and mental stock of the nation and disrupted family life and selective reproduction. In Britain there was a particular emphasis on the idea that certain areas of the working-class were degenerating the nation. There were variants of eugenic principles. The worst was ‘negative’ eugenics, which was more authoritarian and used coercive measures to decrease the propagation of ‘bad stock’ and was based on racism, and classism to produce a strong ‘race’. Stopes combined the ‘negative’ principles with ‘positive’ principles, which promoted those who she considered ‘good stock’ to have more children. She had strong eugenic principles and was a member of the Eugenics Society, but she participated in the middle-class feminist movement. Stopes combined these two strains of influence to form an agenda that she thought would benefit all women. This dissertation will argue whether her eugenics or latent feminist principles steered the course of her work and whether she revolutionised society through her ideology on marital relations, publicity of sexual knowledge and promotion of birth control.

Marie Stopes has not suffered from historical neglect. There have been four biographies on her, two of which were from very close friends and their objectivity has been questioned. The first biography was written by her ‘would-be lover’, Aylmer Maude in 1924 and he clearly admires her, which no doubt contributing to Stopes’ publicity campaign. The second biography was written by Keith Briant in 1962. He was another of her ‘would-be’ lovers and writes from a sentimental point of view four years after Stopes’ death. Neither of these biographies historically analyses Stopes and talk of her objectively. The third was written by Ruth Hall (Passionate Crusader, 1977). She is a journalist and she focuses on Stopes’ sexual and emotional experience that provoked her varied career. She just assumes that Stopes helped women with their sexual, marital and contraceptive needs and focused very little on Stopes’ role in the birth-control movement. June Rose, a professional biographer, wrote Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution (first ed. 1992), which focuses on Stopes interweaving public and private life.

My dissertation is an analysis of how revolutionary Stopes’ work was on changing marital relations, sexual knowledge, and promoting birth-control. I will not discuss why there was a fertility decline or why limiting births happened uniformly in Great Britain. I intend to explore women as one gender and discuss to what extent Stopes revolutionised social ideals of marriage, sex and birth-control. Women have never been looked at as a whole by previous historical analysis. Contrasting the class variations of Stopes’ influence will give a more balanced overview of her work revolutionising women’s role within marriage and society. I have contrasted Stopes’ works and her correspondence to see how influential her ideology was on women and if it changed society, which has not been explored before. I will also study the conflict between Stopes’ eugenicist principles and her concern for women’s health and happiness. Eugenics hugely influenced Stopes’ aims and affected the way Stopes’ helped women. Many historians have argued her to be either a feminist or a eugenicist. I believe that for Stopes they were indistinguishable, I will argue that Stopes combined her feminist and eugenicist principles. She may have had different aims, race regeneration and happy domestic life with sexual pleasure and voluntary motherhood, but there was one means: birth-control.

I study whether marriage became an equal partnership as Stopes’ promoted and whether women actually achieved sexual fulfilment. I use Stopes’ marriage manuals and correspondence to see how far her ideas of sexual fulfilment and equality in marriage were adopted across the classes. I discuss how Stopes combated sexual ignorance, which was causing unhappy marriages, high birth rates and weak, exhausted mothers. I examined what Stopes wrote in a wide variety of books and then contrasted them to my sample of correspondence to see how many were grateful for the knowledge and asked for more information. Whether the plea for more information was an indication that the information in the books was not sufficient is discussed and how publicity, her clinics and newspaper articles contributed to the dissemination of sex and birth-control information. There is also an in-depth discussion on what steered Stopes’ promotion of birth-control; was it for the race or women’s health and happiness? I look at Cohen’s argument that the clinic was the instrument through which Stopes helped women regain control of their fertility. I have also looked at what Stopes wrote, particularly her eugenicist tract Radiant Motherhood, and how this affected her influence on reforming society for women.

Using Stopes’ own published works, there are many pitfalls. What Stopes may have publicly advocated in her books did not necessarily correlate to her actions in the clinics or in her correspondence. Stopes was a self-aggrandising publicist but her sympathetic tone in correspondence and her policies in the clinics did not show her ardent eugenicist drive as many of her books did. It is hard to know whether the sample of correspondence used in this dissertation is representative of society at the time. The respondents were predisposed to be in favour of birth-control and voluntary motherhood. The majority of respondents were middle-class therefore the other classes are disproportionately represented making it difficult to achieve a balanced overview. Despite this, it is possible to achieve an overall sense of how far Stopes revolutionised society for women. Stopes may not have helped every single woman in society, but those she did help have an experience worth studying.

The overall conclusions to be drawn from this dissertation are that Stopes was a social reformer, not a revolutionary. She tried to break social barriers that maintained sexual ignorance and publicised such topics allowing the free dissemination of information as well as changing marital relations. Stopes did help both middle and working-class women by her publicising information through different media. Those who came into direct contact with Stopes, through her work, letters and clinics were helped to gain control of their fertility. Stopes helped women but not uniformly. In hindsight it seems she stayed rather conservative, as she did not promote issues too deviant from the social norms, but in the 1920s and 1930s she was seen as controversial. Stopes was a social reformer, who through birth-control achieved her feminist and eugenicist objectives of happy marriage, voluntary motherhood, universal sexual knowledge and race regeneration. For Stopes, there was no distinguishing between her eugenicist and feminist principles, which were so intertwined.

More to follow.... mwhahahahahaha....

WHAT I A COMING TO REALISE

As previously mentioned in other blogs, it is a weird time of life for me. However, in that time, a few things have occured to me in the arrangements made for my somewhat forced-upon-me birthday party. (A Forced Birthday Party makes me seem harsh or those bestowing it upon me seem harsh, but either way I think I am grateful for it in brushing my path clear of clutter I was unsure of, namely in the way of friends.) Now I do not mean this in the meanest way, nor do I think those that will turn up are my keenest friends, but rather those who like to have a good time, hopefully in fact like my company and indeed want to catch up with fellow folk from uni and school alike, will come.
In some respects I am disappointed in those who will not come, namely my Nan and Grandad but nothing new there and my dad more than makes up for their absence in a calming, demonstrative manner that seems to sooth and relax me. He is a diamond in the rough if ever there was one! My mother in other ways makes up for twenty other people in temrs of vibrancy and volume, but never would I be without her supportive and exuburant nature; always one for the party in life no matter what the cards may deal in life! In others, friends who simply can't make it, and because I am one never to hold a grudge purely because I generally can't due to a lack of a good short term memory- I am sorry, you will miss out on what I hope will be a good night, but I truly hope it won't be the end of the path for us!

So to conclude on what will probably be an empty blog, that none for those who it was directed at shall read, I adjourn with hope that life holds suprises, and in that which it doesn't, the best of my love for those around me. It is a far out cry from the bullying days of school and God! How I have grown! Only that it had been five years ago! But for now to the future and the nearing celebrations on my 21st birthday: CHEERS!

To Be or Not to Be: The Argument for Fat and Thin...

Ok this is getting really silly now. I am truly annoyed. Ok, fine, whatever, I am a slightly overweight girl, but I have an axe to grind for all women and indeed all men as far as the size debate rages.

I heard on BBC news yesterday morning that the hourglass figure is disappearing due to overweight women and obesity ravanging the country. Last week, it was pre-teenage girls acting as sexual beauty queens that were parading on our tv screens. Now tell me folks, what is our actual argument on the matter?

We rage that our youth of today are lost to rolls of fat, calorie filled diets and minimal exercise routines combined and gun-and-knife wielding yobs at that; females have apparently lost the sex appeal because we no longer have the hourglass appeal that Marilyn Monroe had. (I would like to add that in fact Marilyn Monroe was called 'fat' in her hay-day).

Now please tell me, what is the problem? Are we too fat? Or are we obsessed with the size zero fad? Either way, our media does not know and neither does it seem to side either way, but the average people of Britain are left to decide and are swayed every day on what this 'media publicity' says on the matter. So indeed the question left to answer is....

To Be or Not To Be... Fat that is.... well, I guess, it is up to us to decide and sod the nutritionists, dieticians, etc. Eat sensibly, exercise and sod the rest. We are who we are. The more we discuss it the more the argument is open to debate and questioning. I say To Be Or rather Not To Be a Media Babe Size Zero is my choice, what is yours?