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The Australian woman movement (1880–1914) played a central role in shaping contemporary sexual discourse and contributing to the eventual recognition of female sexual pleasure in Australia. While most historiography has focused on the more well-known suffrage campaigns, this essay explores feminist attempts to enhance women’s sexual autonomy through reforming existing sexual relations, particularly in marriage, and contesting contemporary medical discourse which defined male sexuality as ‘hydraulic’, namely automatically aroused, and female sexuality as ‘hysterical’. The early Australian feminists publicly challenged Victorian constructions of sexuality and sought to redefine male–female sexual relations by abolishing the double standard of sexual morality. Studying the woman movement through the lens of sexuality is important, as issues of sexuality were inextricably linked to more wellknown political and economic campaigns for suffrage, citizenship and equal pay. Feminist campaigns to reform sexuality in both the public and private spheres were also central to broader political debates concerning the health and future of Australia’s population, and the declining birth and marriage rate. A study of feminist campaigns to reform domestic sexual relations, primarily through enhancing women’s autonomy in the marital bedroom, and campaigns to improve public sexual relations through regulating prostitution, raising the age of consent and reducing the occurrence of venereal disease through education, reveals the complex interactions between various sectors of colonial society, including feminist organisations, the medical profession, the Australian government, the military and religious groups. As such, this study provides a more nuanced understanding of late nineteenthand early twentieth-century Australian political and social life. The ANU Undergraduate Research Journal 16 Concerns about male and female sexuality were fundamental to the central ideas and campaigns of the woman movement in Australia between 1880 and 1914.1 The woman movement encompassed the ideas of prominent women activists and the activities of women’s clubs, literary associations, temperance societies and suffrage leagues. The movement primarily aimed to achieve suffrage for women as a means to ameliorating their legal, economic and sexual inequality. Although leading activists were politically diverse, they shared a collective consciousness derived from a sense of passion for women’s enfranchisement and freedom from sexual degradation and exploitation. Due to the high marriage and birth rates in Australia, the woman movement subscribed to the ‘separate spheres doctrine’, primarily focusing on protecting married women in the private, domestic sphere.2 This essay will demonstrate the paramount significance of sexuality to the woman movement by assessing two central campaigns – reform of the condition of marriage and raising the age of consent. Both campaigns centred on changing the sexual double standards applied to men and women, which feminists believed were the causes of female sexual degradation and male sexual excess and immorality. This essay seeks to highlight the ways in which early feminists challenged contemporary articulations of male and female sexuality. The importance of the woman movement to Australian feminist history has frequently been overlooked by twentieth-century historians. Feminist historian Anne Summers popularised the view that early feminists were ‘God’s Police’. These women, according to Summers, ‘discourage[d] women from enjoying their sexuality’ and advocated for the ‘Victorian characterisation of women as pure and noble ... and as needing special protection’.3 Summers concluded that early feminists failed to ‘provide a radical alternative vision for women’ as they extolled women’s maternal role and did not ‘delve more deeply into the causes of women’s oppression’ or ‘examine the differing aspirations of women themselves’.4 Despite the sometimes dismissive approach towards the achievements of suffrage women, feminist historians have made important historiographical contributions through exploring issues of sexuality in relation to the woman movement. Historians such as Judith Allen, Marilyn Lake and Susan Magarey analyse the ways in which early feminists challenged the ‘masculinist national culture’ of Australia by redefining contemporary understandings of male and female sexuality.5 1 This thesis uses the expression ‘woman movement’ because this was the phrase adopted by leading feminists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See e.g. Women’s Political Association, The Life and Work of Miss Vida Goldstein (Melbourne: Australasian Authors’ Agency, 1913). 2 Katie Spearritt, ‘New Dawns: First Wave Feminism 1880–1914’, in Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and Negotiation ed. Kay Saunders and Raymond Evans, (Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), 339. 3 Anne Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books, 1994), 419. 4 Ibid. 5 Frank Bongiorno, ‘“Every Woman A Mother”: Radical Intellectuals, Sex Reform and the “Woman Question” in Australia, 1890–1918’, Hecate 27:1 (2001): 44; see Judith Allen, ‘“Our Deeply Degraded Sex” and “The Animal in Man”: Rose Scott, Feminism and Sexuality 1890–1925’, Australian Feminist Studies 7 & 8. (Summer 1988), 65–91; Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999); Susan Magarey, Passions of the First Wave Feminists (Sydney: University of New South Wales, 2001). The Australian woman movement, 1880–1914 17 In the late nineteenth century, Australia was an ‘intellectual ferment’ of radical political ideologies, including nationalism and socialism.6 The growth in employment and educational opportunities for women led to the emergence of intellectual middle-class women and an urban bourgeoisie.7 It was in this context that the woman movement emerged, challenging Victorian gender roles and ideals of male and female sexuality. The woman movement developed independently in each state and territory, particularly flourishing in the urban centres of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Feminist ideas circulated through public discourse, parliamentary petitions, various societies and organisations and feminist newspapers and journals, such as The Dawn and Woman’s Voice. These feminist journals will be examined to shed light on the opinions and ideas of leading activists and their motivations for particular campaigns. The campaign for women’s suffrage and citizenship was inextricably linked to reforms to alter women’s position as degraded sex slaves. Women activists focused their campaign for sexual reform on married women, as wives epitomised the sexual exploitation and degradation of women. Marriage reflected the double standards of morality and sexuality between the sexes. Women who were trapped in loveless marriages were viewed as victims of the coercive exercise of husbandly conjugal rights, which resulted in further oppression from bearing and rearing large families.8 Feminists such as Rose Scott, Louisa Lawson and Ada Cambridge believed that married women sacrificed their bodies and independence to satisfy their husband’s sexual desires and conform to ideals of respectability and social status.9 In The Dawn, Lawson argued that the ‘marriage career’ resulted in the ‘abandonment of individuality’ and the wife was ‘expected to endure nightly’ her fate in the ‘chamber of horrors’.10 This theme of sexual exploitation in the marital bedroom is similarly expressed in Ada Cambridge’s poetry. In her poem, A Wife’s Protest, Cambridge emotively depicts the ‘creeping terrors’ of ‘each black night’ – ‘I lay me down upon my bed / A prisoner on the rack / And suffer dumbly, as I must’.11 Cambridge described the feminist concern of enforced maternity, later termed marital rape.12 Women activists sought to improve women’s ability to negotiate marital sex by reforming male sexuality and advocating women’s sexual autonomy – manifested in their right to voluntary motherhood. Sexual coercion in marriage was viewed as a result of uncontrollable male sexuality, combined with women’s 6 Spearritt, ‘New Dawns’, 325. 7 Ibid. 8 Judith A. Allen, Rose Scott: Vision and Revisionism in Feminism (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 90. 9 Ibid. 10 Dora Falconer (Louisa Lawson), ‘The Divorce Extension Bill or, The Drunkard’s Wife’, The Dawn 2:11 (1890). 11 Ada Cambridge, Unspoken Thoughts (London: Kegan Paul, 1887), 97–98. 12 Magarey, Passions of the First Wave Feminists, 68–69. The ANU Undergraduate Research Journal 18 endurance of men’s ‘selfish animalism’ without resistance.13 Echoing Victorian ideals, male sexuality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was depicted as helplessly ‘hydraulic’ – men were at the mercy of their natural urges.14 The woman movement challenged the idea that male sexuality was hydraulic by urging mothers to educate their sons in a manner which would abolish sexual double standards. Mothers were to educate their sons to control ‘the most dangerous instinct of his animal nature’ and ‘show him ... the dire physical effects of excessive indulgence in this passion’.15 In conjunction with reforming male sexuality, early feminists believed women could use self-help to improve their marital position by being ‘selfish for the cause of progress’.16 Lawson encouraged women to enhance their ‘individualism’ and ‘have more dignity’, ‘worth’, ‘liberty’ and ‘respect’, so that ‘there will be no need to change the method of marriage relationships’ as women will be ‘a better treated class’.17 Through educating the moral consciousness of society and changing attitudes towards male and female sexuality, early feminists hoped that women would gain sexual autonomy and be placed in a privileged position in marriage.18 In order to change the condition of marriage, women activists advocated various reforms, incl

The Australian woman movement, 1880–1914: Sexuality, marriage and consent