Abstract
In August 1912, well-known South African feminist Olive Schreiner wrote disgustedly to her close friend, sex psychologist Havelock Ellis, about a new weekly feminist journal called the Freewoman:
I think it ought to be called the Licentious Male. Almost all the articles are by men and not by women, and the whole tone is unlike even the most licentious females or prostitutes. It is the tone of the brutal self-indulgent selfish male. There is something that makes one sick, as if one were on board ship. It is unclean. And sex is so beautiful! (Schreiner to Ellis, 7 August 1912, in Cronwright-Schreiner, 1924, p. 312)
A greatly extended version of this article appears as Chapter 7 of Bland (1995).
Many thanks to Judy Greenway, Frank Mort, Helen Crowley and Martin Durham for their helpful comments and to Hilary Frances for sharing some of her research on Edith Watson.
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Bland, L. (1996). The Shock of the Freewoman Journal: Feminists Speaking on Heterosexuality in Early Twentieth-century England. In: Weeks, J., Holland, J. (eds) Sexual Cultures. Explorations in Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24518-5_5
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