Source: Stopes, Marie Carmichael. A Journal From Japan, a Daily Record of Life As Seen By a Scientist (London, 1910)
http://etrc.lib.umn.edu/travimag.htm

Her life and challenges

The social context of sex education

Marie Stopes' own life

Details of the book, Married Love

ThinkBomb

Marie Stopes: 20th Century pioneer of sexual pleasure

Once one of the most famous women in the world, Marie Stopes is now largely forgotten. Yet she is one of the key historical figure in the development of sexual custom and rights in the modern era, perhaps rivalling in practical importance a figure such as Freud.
This web page revisits the achievements of Marie Stopes and analyses her significance to the advancement of birth control and sexual liberty in western societies. The scrutiny of her life, work and era provides an opportunity to consider the forces that have shaped our modern attitudes to sex and shows that many contemporary sexual issues are at least 100 years old.

Her life and challenges

Marie Stopes (1880-1958) was the leading advocate of birth control in the early 20th century and this is primarily what made her famous. However her fame was complex, as the message she preached was more than just about reducing childbirth. Her primary aim was to ensure that couples could enjoy sexual interaction without the risk of pregnancy. She also saw that sex education could help reduce the birthrate among women, considered by some to be a scourge that was keeping families poor.

Marie's fame was also very much centred around one book, Married Love, which gave expression to her ideas on sex education. Married Love was published immediately after WWI and became a best-seller, despite the fact that it was vilified by the Roman Catholic church in England and was even banned in the US (Yes THAT Land of Freedom). But the influence of Marie Stopes went far beyond one best-selling book. She was a significant pioneer in women's achievements, being an early recipient of a PhD award from a German University and having obtained world recognition for her work in Paleo-Botany.

Stopes' work as an advocate of birth control and marriage guidance were to occupy a key phase of her middle age. She arguably became the most important and recognisable advocate of birth control in the 1920s and 1930s in Britain. This was marked by her establishment, with the key assistance of her husband, one of the first British 'family planning' clinics in 1921. Throughout the following decade she published many booklets and pamphlets on the subject of birth control and parenting.

Although such achievements may not seem dramatic in western societies today we should consider the vehement opposition to her ideas at the time. Members of Church and state attacked her ideas as leading to a degeneration of society and increased promiscuity. According to dominant conservative values of the era, sex was only for reproduction and should not be considered a leasure activity. The argument that sex could be an expression of love in a relationship was therefore still a revolutionary concept.

It should be remembered that sex education in the early 20th century was virtually non-existent. Women, including those of the middle class, barely understood the functioning of their own organs and were ignorant of how pregnancy exactly occurred. For many people sex was a limited source of pleasure. They or their partners were clumsy, inexperienced and inhibited. Any belief in sexual pleasure as a facet of married life therefore had to be backed up with actual guidance. Marie Stopes was a major force initiating this change by declaring an expertise in the field.

"Her views challenged the centuries of prejudice and superstition and the accretions of religious teaching which saw women's bodies and women's attractions as desireable but also dirty and corrupting and the lust for women as shameful and sinful." June Rose, Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution: 111.

The social context of sex education

The beliefs of Marie Stopes and the publication of her most significant book, Married Love, should be seen in context of the era. Advanced societies, of which Britain was a leading example, had managed to vastly improve the conditions of life for the masses. Alongside such advances were the improved chance of life for babies and the extending lifespan of adult individuals. The consequence was an explosive population growth.

The growth in population had traditionally been tamed by two key factors. These were a high death rate and sexual repression. The first source of population control, the high death rate, had for centuries balanced population growth by high levels of mortality of babies, the death of women in childbirth, and by the attrition of war. These factors had been significantly wound back in advanced societies.

The second major source of a reduced childbirth was a promotion of repressive sentiment about sexual intercourse. Puritanism about sex and the repression of sexual impulses were strongly supported by the church, as social instrument for promoting moral and spiritual denial of urges for sexual pleasure. It is no wonder in this context that the church was one of the primary opponents of Stopes' ideas about sex.

On the other hand, sex had always been a pressing interest for most people, despite its repression. For the middle classes this was a particularly interesting dilemma. On the one hand the level of education of the middle class ensured that they were more likely to repress sexual urges, because they were keen to the control birth of children. On the other hand this very sobriety meant that they lacked the more debauched and free sexual experiences of the working classes. However a small, growing number of educated people were becoming enthusiasts for a new model of sexual conduct. This involved gratifying sexual desire, particularly for women, while not causing pregnancy. It was an important flip side to the birth control movement and to a large extent also a key component that Marie Stopes promoted.

The twin agendas of sexual pleasure alongside birth control were not a practical fit, but rather required a unitary aim of ensuring sexual education regarding the use of birth control methods and the use of contraceptives. Stopes remained opposed to abortion as being morally repugnant. Indeed she also argued that sexual pleasure should be derived only in the context of marriage.

Marie Stopes' own life

Marie Stopes had a fairly conventional middle class upbringing, with a number of unique characteristics that may have shaped her development. Her father's interest in paleo-botany, and his collection of fossils inspired her to study in this direction. Her mother's feminist convictions undoubtedly also had an influence on her later interest in matters of sexual equality.

Marie Stopes was an adventurous individual. Her studies and love affairs took her to foreign countries such as Germany, where she obtained her PhD and to Japan in 1907, where she led an expedition to find fossilised ferns. She became a leader in her chosen field of Paleo-botany.

However Marie also had intense sexual feelings and reflected frequently on these. She was confronted by her pursuit of a career as well as her interest in men and future motherhood. Sexual interaction with men proved to me a source of frustration and fascination.

Marie's first marriage, at the relatively late age of 31, was to a Canadian but the marriage was eventually annulled. The grounds were on the lack of consummation of the marriage and it is arguable that a significant amount of material from this experience made its way into her book. She had a number of other intense relationships with men and it is uncertain how sexual these had been.

Marie Stopes seemed to tower over men in general. It is hard to determine whether this was purely due to her own dominant personality or the passivity of her partners. In any case her next marriage to Humphrey Roe also involved her domination in the marriage, to the point of contempt for her husband.

The marriage resulted in the birth of a son. Marie set out to dominate the sons's development and sought to determine who he married. This agenda, highlighted a facet of her socio-political leanings. Marie Stopes was a passionate advocate of eugenics policies, which had much greater credence in this era, and she felt that her son's choice of bride was genetically flawed. This element of Stopes' philosophy continues to have repercussions to her contemporary image and to movements associated with her name.

Details of the book, Married Love

Below follow some excerpts from the book Married Love, first published in 1918. The text speaks for itself in terms of what it reveals about the book. At the same time the commentary helps to highlight the significance and scope of the book and its social context.

Marie Stopes was not alone in dealing with new ideas in the realm of sex and marriage. Her recount of the following highlights the contemporary discussion of alternatives to marriage, but also her intuitive insight into the fundamental issues that face relationships:

"Now that so many "movements" are abroad, folk on all sides are emboldened to express the opinion that it is marriage itself which is at fault. Many think that merely by loosening the bonds, and making it possible to start afresh with some one else, their lives would be made harmonious and happy. But often such reformers forget that he or she who knows nothing of the way to make marriage great and beautiful with one partner, is not likely to succeed with another. Only by a reverent study of the Art of Love can the beauty of its expression be realised in linked lives."

Marie Stopes took an interest in the particular and unique sexual characteristics of men and women. In doing so, she touched on the issue of women's mysterious and sometimes frustrating conduct to men:

"He observes that one week his tender love-making and romantic advances win her to smiles and joyous yielding, and then perhaps a few days later the same, or more impassioned, tenderness on his part is met by coldness or a forced appearance of warmth, which, while he may make no comment upon it, hurts him acutely. And this deep, inexplicable hurt is often the beginning of the end of his love."

She went on to explain that much of women's moody nature could be attributed to mentrual cycle and in addition suggested that this also affected women's interest in sexual activity. Although this concept is familiar today it is no longer a commonly accepted opinion. The reason is probably because of the recent efforts to suppress the idea that women may be guided in their moods by fertility cycles. The implication that this is associated with irrationality has a negative impact on the acceptance of women's participation in the professional world.

Yet Stopes did not suggest that women were less competent to make social and personal achievements. She indicated that it was largely human sexual history which had constrained achievements. Yet there was the prospect of greater opportunities:

"Woman, so long coerced by economic dependence, and the need for protection while she bore her children, has had to be content to mould herself to the shape desired by man wherever possible, and she has stifled her natural feelings and her own deep thoughts as they welled up."

There were a number of case studies cited in her book, which recall the modern letters in sexual advice columns, dealing with the sensitivity and responsiveness of the opposite sex:

"So unaware of the elements of the physiological reactions of women are many modern men that the case of Mrs. G. is not exceptional. Her husband was accustomed to pet her and have relations with her frequently, but yet he never took any trouble to rouse in her the necessary preliminary feeling for mutual union.... Because she shyly asked him, Mrs. G.'s husband gave her one swift unrepeated kiss upon her bosom. He was so ignorant that he did not know that her husband's lips upon her breast melt a wife to tenderness and are one of a husband's first and surest ways to make her physically ready for complete union."

Stopes also revealed the level of inhibition that was prevalent in British society. She indicated that contrary to some established beliefs, sexual desire was an autonomous force that was not necessarily focussed on a person who is loved:

"So widespread in our country is the view that it is only depraved women who have such feelings (especially before marriage) that most women would rather die than own that they do at times feel a physical yearning indescribable, but as profound as hunger for food."

Stopes emphasised how natural it was for both men and women to feel sexual desire, as a manifestation of love. She recognised women as being as sexually passionate as men:

"A woman may be, like a man, so swayed by a great love that there is not a day in the whole month when her lover's touch, his voice, the memory of his smile, does not stir her into the thrilling longing for the uttermost union."

But Marie Stopes did not stop at vague references to desire. Her book contained explicit clinical references to the key aspects of intercourse, dispelling myths of the time and being quite overt in her description of body parts and their functions:

"Many men imagine that the turgid condition of an erection is due to the local accumulation of sperms, and that these can only be naturally got rid of by an ejaculation. This is entirely wrong."

"...when the woman is what is physiologically called tumescent...local parts are flushed by the internal blood-supply and to some extent are turgid like those of the man, while a secretion of mucus lubricates the opening of the vagina."

Some of her prescriptions on sexual intercourse may now seem a little quaint:

"The mutually best regulation of intercourse in marriage is to have three or four days of repeated unions, followed by about ten days without any unions at all, unless some strong external stimulus has stirred a mutual desire."

We should consider that Marie Stopes wrote to some extent more toward the needs and satisfaction of women. She advocated particularly that men needed to have greater sensitivity to women's sexual needs and to be essentially better lovers:

"...it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the majority of wives are left wakeful and nerve-racked to watch with tender motherly brooding, or with bitter and jealous envy, the slumbers of the men who, through ignorance and carelessness, have neglected to see that they too had the necessary resolution of nervous tension."

Ahh, the old premature ejaculation. It seems that some things never change.