Protest was immediate and became a cause célèbre of the newly emerging women’s rights movement; the Contagious Diseases Acts legislation is often cited as one of the founding moments of modern feminism. Fears that young and respectable working-class women were being subjected to what amounted to sexual assault, and even rape, in the name of the law, became an outrage that united women across society to stand up for their human rights. The gross inequality of the acts, which condoned male sexual behaviour while penalizing and imprisoning working-class women, led to a more general campaign for
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