“Nothing wears me out so, body and soul, as anger, fruitless anger...” - Josephine Butler, September 1869
Nothing gets people crankier than sex. They’re either not getting enough, or not
getting it good enough, or telling others who they can and can’t have sex
with. People pretend sex is a personal matter;
however those most coy about it seem to be the most interested in the sex lives
of others. Our holy men and our
politicians have a long, well-deserved reputation for being nosey bastards when
it comes to sex – entire legislative acts have been devoted to governing the
sex lives of others out of the bizarre belief that people women will
drag entire nations into moral disrepute and economic failure should they have sex
without permission and/or with someone other than a socially sanctioned partner. Honest discourse about sex has historically
been curtailed by the protestations of upper middle class white men whose
entire understanding of the female sex organs fell into two categories: our
clitorises either made us whores or made us hysterical. Both were moral and medical failures we could
neither challenge nor confront without being told our very indignation was supporting
evidence of us either being whores or
hysterical. What’s a girl to do?
There was a Sister in the 19th century who
refused to look at women’s bodies as crime scenes on legs, brazenly walking the
streets waiting to lure innocent men into disease ridden traps. Men had long been thought to be the innocent
victims of prostitution, the wounded prey of their own uncontrollable desire
coupled with a surplus of tarts on the loose.
My Sister shined there, getting behind the Moral Reform Union in 1884
which petitioned Parliament to criminalize the Johns as mercilessly as they did
the tarts. But it was her work against
the Contagious Diseases Acts (passed in 1864, 1866 and 1869) that leads me to
champion her as the Queen of Crank. I
speak of Josephine Butler, and she had sex on her mind.
The Contagious Diseases Acts were virulently anti-female and
although there were many mumbles, even some of the most courageous feminists of
the time were shy of attaching their names to this cause. Doing so would not only destroy their own
reputations, but that of their husbands also.
But Josephine got cranky and began demanding that her highfalutin feminine
sisters wake the fuck up and begin to recognize that all women were victimized
and abused by what only a few had to suffer.
(No vapours please).
So what were the Contagious Diseases Acts? Here’s the rub: they began as a way of
stamping out the rampant spread of STI’s in Army and Navy bases in Great
Britain. (That’s our fault, right?) The law stated that any woman even suspected
of being a prostitute in areas where the CDA was in force (mostly ports and
towns near army bases) could be forcibly removed from the street (“But I was
just going to buy apples!”) and taken to the nearest police station for a
non-consensual and invasive intimate medical examination. If she had an STI she was immediately committed
to a “Lock Hospital” (name says it all) until such a time as she was deemed “clean”. If she was not suffering an STI, she was
given a shilling and sent on her way (“You keep being a good girl now!”). Of course her hymen had been broken by the
examination, she was bleeding and no longer thinking about apples, but at least
the armed forces were safe.
It was working class women who bore the brunt of this, and my Cranky Sister Josephine exposed herself to unimaginable abuse as an upper class woman championing the rights of her lower class Sisters. Josephine Butler argued, quite rightly, that if there were any unclean women on the streets they didn't get that way all on their lonesome. There was a dick involved. So either arrest and punish both guilty parties or...neither. In 1886 and CDA was finally repealed. But it had been a 20 year battle for Josephine Butler. She formed the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act in 1869 and her anger kept her going until she saw success. Not pity. Not moral indignation. Josephine was the ultimate Cranky Sister.
Josephine Butler died on December 30th 1906. She was 78. She outlived a husband she adored and predeceased sons who respected her. Josephine formed many of the strategies still now used in feminist discourse and called a spade a spade at a time when euphemism threatened to cleverly cloak some of the darkest crimes against women in history. Her triumph over the CDA has been overlooked, as has her anger.
And so I celebrate my Cranky Sister - Josephine Elizabeth Butler (nee Grey) - born 13th April 1828, died 30th December 1906.
If I were half the woman...
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