Girl Trouble

by Dyhouse, Carol

  Feminism has played an important part in this process of social change. As a political movement, feminism has never been monolithic: it has always encompassed diverse viewpoints. Some would argue that feminism has privileged the voices of white, middle-class women, and that the movement has paid insufficient attention to difference and diversity. The struggle for the vote in the 1900s brought some degree of unity between women from different backgrounds and around strategic goals – though not always around the strategies for pursuing them.13 There was similarly a degree of consensus around rights to education and equal pay, and to some extent around reproductive rights, in the 1970s. At other times over the last century and more, it is arguably easier to point to tensions and dissensions within feminism rather than to consensus. There were conflicts in the nineteenth century, for instance, between feminists who insisted on women’s education matching up to existing male standards and patterns, and those prepared to contemplate a different, more ‘feminine’ course.14 In the 1970s and 1980s, feminists were divided over whether women should receive wages for housework: what was then described as the ‘domestic labour debate’.15 Another source of contention – echoing similar divisions in the 1900s – involved how to relate to men. Radical and separatist feminists wanted as little as possible to do with them. Socialist feminists, on the other hand, wanted women and men to work together for a brighter social future. Ten years later there was a great deal of often acrimonious disagreement about pornography: should all pornography be dismissed as degrading to women or was it a whole lot more complicated than that? Disagreements over pornography continue to divide feminists.

  But an awareness of the diversity of affiliations and viewpoints within feminism today has to be balanced by an appreciation of some of the ways in which feminists are working together internationally, to improve girls’ lives. Plan International’s ‘Because I Am a Girl’ campaign aims to fight gender inequalities worldwide, seeking to promote girls’ rights and education and to lift millions of girls out of poverty.16 The organisation brings together many other foundations with similar aims and equally dedicated to improving the welfare of adolescent girls.

  There has been a recurrent tension between a feminist tendency to portray women and girls as victims and a counterbalancing insistence on women’s agency and capacity for self-determination. Looking back through history we can see that too much emphasis on victimisation can produce odd political results. It is difficult to forge a political identity out of victimhood. Victims call for protection, and too much protection can easily begin to look like control. This was very evident in the 1900s when some feminists campaigned alongside evangelical religious groups for ‘social purity’ and against what was depicted as the mass menace of a white slave trade. Much of this was chimerical and a result of moral panic. It conduced to some strange political alliances between social purity feminists and men who were wholly opposed to women’s suffrage, but keen to protect a sex the image of whose frailty reassured them.

  There have been times over the last century and a half when feminism has gathered strength and power, and other times when it has appeared less a political movement with clear-cut goals and more a state of mind – something akin to recognising women as fully human beings with agency and autonomy. Rebecca West famously confessed that she wasn’t sure what a feminist was, but that everyone labelled her as such when she expressed sentiments which differentiated her from a doormat.17 One of the main achievements of Caitlin Moran’s exuberant best-seller How to Be a Woman, is that it makes feminism sound like common sense.18 Equally important, though, has been the need for women to share stories, since the sharing of experience makes for understanding and the strength which is necessary for political action. This is what consciousness raising set out to achieve in the 1970s. The digital revolution has opened up opportunities for the sharing of stories and experiences on an unprecedented scale.

  To highlight the ways in which girls’ and young women’s lives have changed for the better is not to suggest that there aren’t still problems deriving from double standards and inequality. Of course there are. Sexual double standards still distort and damage young women’s lives. Material inequalities – and the ways in which these appear to be widening – give profound cause for concern. These inequalities constrain and distort the life chances of girls, particularly those from less privileged social backgrounds. The historian bent on taking the long view may discern clear signs of progress, but this is not in any way to surrender to complacency. For history also demonstrates the ever-present possibilities of backlash, reaction and new oppressive forces. Young women need feminism as much as ever, if they are to see their lives in context and to live them fully.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1 See for instance, McRobbie, A., The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change, London: Sage, 2009, especially the Introduction; Harris, Anita, Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-first Century, London: Routledge, 2004; Ringrose, J., ‘Successful Girls? Complicating Post-Feminist, Neoliberal Discourses of Educational Achievement and Gender Equality’, Gender and Education, 19:4, 2007, pp. 471–89; Gonick, M., ‘Between “Girl Power” and “Reviving Ophelia”: Constituting the Neoliberal Girl Subject’, National Women’s Studies Association Journal, 18:2, 2006, pp. 1–23. There is a wide range of viewpoints in Harris, A., (ed.), All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity, Abingdon: Routledge, 2004; see also Aapola, S., Gonick, M., and Harris, A. (eds), Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power and Social Change, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2005.

  2 Purvis, J., ‘The Prison Experiences of the Suffragettes in Edwardian Britain’, Women’s History Review, 4:1, 1995, pp. 103–33.

  3 In 1963, the Conservative politician John Profumo was at the centre of a widely publicised scandal involving sex and fears about national security.

  4 For example, Gillis, S., and Munford, R., ‘Genealogies and Generations: The Politics and Praxis of Third Wave Feminism’, Women’s History Review, 13:2, pp. 165–82; Baumgardner, J., and Richards, A., Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

  1 White slavery

  1 Robins, E., Where Are You Going To? London: Heinemann, 1913; John, Angela V., Elizabeth Robins: Staging a Life, 1862–1952, London: Routledge, 1995, p. 185.

  2 Thomas, S., ‘Crying “the Horror” of Prostitution: Elizabeth Robin’s “Where Are You Going To…?” and the Moral Crusade of the Women’s Social and Political Union’, in Women, A Cultural Review, 16:2, 2005, pp. 203–21.

  3 Martindale, L., Under The Surface, Brighton: Southern Publishing Company, 1909. There were at least six editions of the book. Pankhurst, C., The Great Scourge and How To End It, London: E. Pankhurst, 1913.

  4 John, Elizabeth Robins, p. 185.

  5 Pankhurst, The Great Scourge, p. 152.

  6 Kent, S. Kingsley, Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860–1914, London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 5–7 for a summary of the different ways in which The Great Scourge has been received. See also Savage, G., ‘“The Wilful Communication of a Loathsome Disease”: Marital Conflict and Venereal Disease in Victorian England’, Victorian Studies, 1990, 34:1, pp. 35–54.

  7 Pankhurst, The Great Scourge, Appendix, p. 134, ‘The Truth about the Piccadilly Flat Case’.

  8 Information on the Piccadilly Flat case comes mainly from Home Office Papers in the National Archives (HO 45/24649). This file includes press cuttings and contemporary pamphlets. See also James Keir Hardie’s The Queenie Gerald Case: A Public Scandal, Manchester and London: National Labour Press, 1913. There is further material on Queenie Gerald’s activities in the Metropolitan Police Files in the National Archives (MEPO 3/1352). Hansard records details of the questions Keir Hardie asked about the case in the House of Commons, on 6 August 1913, together with the Home Secretary’s answers.

  9 ‘The Midwife’, Report of Central Midwives’ Board, in British Journal of Nursing Supplement, 15 November 1913, p. 415.

  10 Hardie, Hans
ard, 6 August 1913, p. 16.

  11 National Archives, HO 45/24649.

  12 http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1913/aug/05/queenie-gerald-prosecution.

  13 National Archives, MEPO 3/228. See also MEPO 2/1763, 2/1610.

  14 Willis, W. N., White Slaves in a Piccadilly Flat, London: Anglo-Eastern Publishing Company, 1915.

  15 Ibid., esp. pp. 10, 22, 38 and 49.

  16 HO 45/24649.

  17 See Chief Inspector’s report of visit to Queenie Gerald’s flat at 85 Newman Street in December 1927. This contains a mass of fascinating detail. Mrs G. was reported as having greeted her visitor ‘dressed in a loose kind of white silk sleeveless dress or covering, apparently of the best quality, which was scalloped round the bottom and which showed at the sides at least 5 inches of her naked thigh above the knees. She also wore white silk stockings worked with sequins on the front, with large garters with ornaments above her knees, white high heeled shoes, also worked with sequins.’

  ‘I have never, during my career, ever seen a person dressed in this condition when calling to make an enquiry respecting any matter,’ commented the inspector somewhat breathlessly. A note is appended to the description suggesting that ‘no officer should call alone to see this woman’; further, ‘no junior officer should call to see her on any enquiry whatever’. All this is in MEPO 3/1352.

  18 See press cuttings from John Bull and correspondence 1917–1920 in HO 45/24649.

  19 The W. T. Stead Resource site www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/ is a good introduction, and has the complete text of Stead’s ‘Maiden Tribute’ articles as originally published in the Pall Mall Gazette. See also Walkowitz, J., City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London, Chicago, IL and London: Virago, 1992. There is an older, less academic account by Charles Terrot, The Maiden Tribute: A Study of the White Slave Traffic of the Nineteenth Century, London: Muller, 1959. This was published in the USA in 1960 as Traffic in Innocents: The Shocking Story of White Slavery in England. See also Plowden, A., The Case of Eliza Armstrong, ‘A Child of 13 Bought for £5’, London: BBC Publications, 1974.

  20 Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Law Relating to the Protection of Young Girls from Artifices to Induce Them to lead a Corrupt Life, PP. 1881, vol. XIII and 1882, vol. IX.

  21 ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon: The Report of Our Secret Commission’, serialised in the Pall Mall Gazette, from 6 July 1885, reproduced at www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/.

  22 For an interesting discussion of this, see Deborah Gorham’s ‘The “Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” Re-Examined: Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in Late Victorian England’, Victorian Studies, 21:3, Spring 1978, pp. 353–79.

  23 See, for instance, Bristow, Edward J., Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain since 1700, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1977; Bland, L., Banishing the Beast: English Feminism and Sexual Morality 1885–1914, London: Penguin, 1995.

  24 See particularly Doezema, J., ‘Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Historical Construction of “Trafficking in Women”’, D. Phil. thesis, University of Sussex, Institute of Development Studies, 2005. A version of this thesis was published as Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking, London: Zed Books, 2010. See also Irwin, Mary Ann, ‘“White Slavery” as Metaphor: Anatomy of a Moral Panic’, Ex Post Facto: The History Journal, 1996, vol. V, San Francisco State University, www.walnet.org/csis/papers/irwin-wslavery.html.

  25 See collections in the Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University, which holds the records of the National Vigilance Association, 1885–1969, including a large collection of pamphlets on the white slave trade, e.g. ‘White Slave Trade Official Documents 1905–7’, ‘White Slave Traffic 1912 and After’. Pamphlets in papers of the Ladies’ National Association for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice and the Promotion of Social Purity, 1869–1915, also held in the Woman’s Library. See also: Report of International Conference on ‘The White Slave Traffic’ held in Paris 1902, presented to Parliament August 1905 (Cd 2667, HMSO). There is relevant material in the National Archives, especially MEPO 2/558 and MEPO 2/1312. Jens Jäger has brought some of this material together in ‘International Police Co-Operation and the Associations for the Fight Against White Slavery’, Paedagogica Historica, 38:2, pp. 565–79.

  26 Report of International Conference on ‘The White Slave Traffic’ held in Paris 1902.

  27 National Archives, MEPO 3/228, MEPO 2/1610. MEPO 2/1763.

  28 See reports in the Manchester Guardian, ‘White Slave Traffic, The King’s Message’, 2 July 1913, p. 10, and ‘The White Slave Traffic Conference’, 5 July 1913, p. 10.

  29 See, for instance, Lindsey, Shelley Stamp, ‘Is Any Girl Safe? Female Spectators at the White Slave Films’, Screen, 37:1, Spring 1996, pp. 1–15. See also Bristow, Vice and Vigilance, pp. 189–90.

  30 Lindsey, ‘Is Any Girl Safe?’ p. 10. On concern over white slavery in the US see, inter alia, Donovan, B., White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender and Anti-Vice Activism 1887–1917, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006.

  31 Malvery, Olive Christian (Mrs Archibald MacKirdy), and Willis, W. N., The White Slave Market, London: Stanley Paul, 1912.

  32 Ibid., p. 13.

  33 Bell, Ernest A., Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls; or, War on the White Slave Trade, G. S. Ball, 1910.

  34 White Slave Traffic, 1912, and After, pamphlet published by the Ladies’ National Association for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice, London: Halsey Brothers, 1913.

  35 Bristow, Vice and Vigilance, p. 193.

  36 Hansard, House of Commons 11 December 1912, vol. 45, cc. 699–734.

  37 See Fletcher, Ian C., ‘Opposition by Journalism? The Socialist and Suffragist Press and the Passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1912’, Parliamentary History, 25:1, 2006, pp. 88–114.

  38 ‘White Slave Traffic, Lord Lytton’s Branding Proposal’, Manchester Guardian, 29 November 1912, p. 13; ‘The White Slave Traffic, The New Act in Operation’, The Times, 14 December 1912, p. 6.

  39 ‘Flogging Under the White Slave Act: A Woman’s Protest’, Manchester Guardian, 6 March 1914, p. 10.

  40 West, Rebecca, essay on the White Slave Traffic Bill originally published in the Clarion, 22 November 1912, reprinted in Marcus, J., (ed.), The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911–17, London: Macmillan and Virago, 1982, p. 122.

  41 Billington-Greig, T., ‘The Truth about White Slavery’, English Review, June 1913, pp. 428–46.

  42 Ibid., p. 441.

  43 Ibid., p. 439.

  44 Ibid., p. 445.

  45 Correspondence Respecting International Conferences on Obscene Publications and the White Slave Traffic, Paris 1910, London: HMSO, 1912, Cd 6547, with notes added 1913 by F. S. Bullock, the Women’s Library.

  46 Ibid., Notes, p. 6.

  47 Letter from D. J. Bigham, New Scotland Yard, to A. Maxwell, dated 14 February 1919, in the National Archives, MEPO 2/1763.

  48 Hale, K., A Slender Reputation: An Autobiography, London: Warne, 1998, p. 52.

  49 Gorham, D., Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996, p. 51.

  50 Vera Brittain, diary entry for March 1913, cited in Gorham, Vera Brittain, p. 51.

  51 Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth, London: Gollancz, 1933, pp. 46–7.

  52 Marshall, D. (edited by David Edge Marshall), The Making of a Twentieth Century Woman: A Memoir, London: Blazon Books, 2003, p. 24.

  53 Ibid.

  54 Papers of Travellers’ Aid Society in the Women’s Library. The British Library has some reports of the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants (MABYS), founded by Jane Nassau Senior. There are more reports in with Joan Bonham Carter’s papers in Hampshire Record Office (94M72/F519). For rescue work at railway stations, see among others, Anon., (‘London, Offices of “M.A.P”’), In the Grip of the White Slave Trader, London: c. 1910.

  55 (Anon.), Th
e Dangers of False Prudery, by the Author of ‘The White Slave Trade’: A Book for Parents, London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1912.

  56 See Bristow, Vice and Vigilance, and Bland, Banishing the Beast; also Hunt, A., Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation, Cambridge University Press, 1999.

  57 For William Alexander Coote see entry in Dictionary of National Biography. See also Coote, W. A., A Romance of Philosophy, London: National Vigilance Association, 1916; A Vision and Its Fulfilment, London: National Vigilance Association, 1910; The White Slave Traffic, London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1916.

  58 For the Contagious Diseases Acts see Walkowitz, J. R., Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State, Cambridge University Press, 1980.

  59 Morgan, S., A Passion for Purity: Ellice Hopkins and the Politics of Gender in the Late Victorian Church, University of Bristol Press, 1999, and the same author’s ‘“Wild Oats or Acorns?” Social Purity, Sexual Politics and the Response of the Late-Victorian Church’, Journal of Religious History, 31:2, June 2007.