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

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Abstract
This chapter describes 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. It also describes 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. The chapter looks 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. Feminist ideas and personnel played a vitally important part in the development of the 1880s’ social purity movement.

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