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SEX
AVOIDED SUBJECTS DISCUSSED IN PLAIN ENGLISH
_By_
HENRY STANTON
[Illustration]
SOCIAL CULTURE PUBLICATIONS
151 FIFTH AVENUE . NEW YORK
Copyright, 1922
SOCIAL CULTURE PUBLICATIONS
MANUFACTURED IN U. S. A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. SEX 5
II. THE TRANSITION FROM CELL TO HUMAN BEING 12
III. SEX IN MALE CHILDHOOD 20
IV. SEX IN FEMALE CHILDHOOD 26
V. SEX IN THE ADOLESCENT MALE 30
VI. SEX IN THE ADOLESCENT FEMALE 35
VII. SEX IN THE MARRIAGE RELATION (THE HUSBAND) 43
VIII. SEX IN THE MARRIAGE RELATION (THE WIFE) 45
IX. SEX DISEASES 53
X. LOVE AND SEX 57
CHAPTER I
SEX
The happiness of all human beings, men and women, depends largely on
their rational solution of the sexual problem. Sex and the part it
plays in human life cannot be ignored. In the case of animals sex
plays a simpler and less complex role. It is a purely natural and
instinctive function whose underlying purpose is the perpetuation of
the species. It is not complicated by the many incidental phenomena
which result, in man's case, from psychologic, economic, moral and
religious causes. Climate, social conditions, individual modes of life
and work, alcohol, wealth and poverty, and other factors affect sexual
activity in human beings.
Sexual love, which is practically unknown to the animals, is a special
development of the sex urge in the human soul. The deeper purpose of
the sex function in human beings, likewise, is procreation, the
reproduction of species.
The average man, woman and child should know the essential sex facts
in order to be able to deal with the sex problems of life. Of late
years there has been a greater diffusion of such knowledge. To a large
extent, however, children and adolescents are still taught to look on
all that pertains to sex as something shameful and immodest, something
not to be discussed. Sex is an "Avoided Subject."
This is fundamentally wrong. Sex affects the very root of all human
life. Its activities are not obscene, but Nature's own means to
certain legitimate ends. The sex functions, when properly controlled
and led into the proper channels, are a most essential and legitimate
form of physical self-expression. The veil of secrecy with which they
are so often shrouded tends to create an altogether false impression
regarding them. This discussion of these "Avoided Subjects," in "Plain
English," is intended to give the salient facts regarding sex in a
direct, straightforward manner, bearing in mind the true purpose of
normal sex activities.
The more we know of the facts of sex, the right and normal part sex
activities play in life, and all that tends to abuse and degrade them,
the better able we will be to make sex a factor for happiness in our
own lives and that of our descendants. Mankind, for its own general
good, must desire that reproduction--the real purpose of every sexual
function--occur in such a way as to perpetuate its own best physical
and mental qualities.
THE LAW OF PHYSICAL LIFE
It is a universal rule of physical life that every individual being
undergoes a development which we know as its individual life and
which, so far as its physical substance is concerned, ends with death.
Death is the destruction of the greater part of this individual
organism which, when death ensues, once more becomes lifeless matter.
Only small portions of this matter, the germ cells, continue to live
under certain conditions which nature has fixed.
The germ cell--as has been established by the microscope--is the tiny
cell which in the lowest living organisms as well as in man himself,
forms the unit of physical development. Yet even this tiny cell is
already a highly organized and perfected thing. It is composed of the
most widely differing elements which, taken together, form the
so-called protoplasm or cellular substance. And for all life
established in nature the cell remains the constant and unchanging
form element. It comprises the cell-protoplasm and a nucleus imbedded
in it whose substance is known as the nucleoplasm. The nucleus is the
more important of the two and, so to say, governs the life of the
cell-protoplasm.
The lower one-celled organisms in nature increase by division, just as
do the individual cells of a more highly organized, many-celled order
of living beings. And in all cases, though death or destruction of the
cells is synonymous with the death or destruction of the living
organism, the latter in most cases already has recreated itself by
reproduction.
We will not go into the very complicated details of the actual process
of the growth and division of the protoplasmic cells. It is enough to
say that in the case of living creatures provided with more
complicated organisms, such as the higher plants, animals and man, the
little cell units divide and grow as they do in the case of the lower
organisms. The fact is one which shows the intimate inner relationship
of all living beings.
THE LADDER OF ORGANIC ASCENT
As we mount the ascending ladder of plant and animal life the
unit-cell of the lower organisms is replaced by a great number of
individual cells, which have grown together to form a completed whole.
In this complete whole the cells, in accordance with the specific
purpose for which they are intended, all have a different form and a
different chemical composition. Thus it is that in the case of the
plants leaves, flowers, buds, bark, branches and stems are formed, and
in that of animals skin, intestines, glands, blood, muscles, nerves,
brain and the organs of sense. In spite of the complicated nature of
numerous organisms we find that many of them still possess the power
of reproducing themselves by division or a process of "budding." In
the case of certain plants and animals, cell-groups grow together into
a so-called "bud," which later detaches itself from the parent body
and forms a new individual living organism, as in the case of the
polyps or the tubers in plant life.
A tree, for instance, may be grown from a graft which has been cut off
and planted in the ground. And ants and bees which have not been
fecundated are quite capable of laying eggs out of which develop
perfect, well-formed descendants. This last process is called
parthenogenesis. It is a process, however, which if carried on through
several generations, ends in deterioration and degeneracy. In the case
of the higher animals, vertebrates and man, such reproduction is an
impossibility.
These higher types of animal life have been provided by nature with
special organs of reproduction and reproductive glands whose
secretions, when they are projected from the body under certain
conditions, reproduce themselves, and increase and develop in such
wise that the living organism from which they proceed is reproduced in
practically its identical form. Thus it perpetuates the original type.
Philosophically it may be said that these cells directly continue the
life of the parents, so that death in reality only destroys a part of
the individual. Every individual lives again in his offspring.
THE TRUE MISSION OF SEX
This rebirth of the individual in his descendants represents the true
mission of sex where the human being is concerned. And reproduction,
the perpetuation of the species, underlies all rightful and normal sex
functions and activities. The actual physical process of reproduction,
the details which initiate reproduction in the case of the human
being, it seems unnecessary here to describe. In the animal world,
into which the moral equation does not really enter, the facts of
conjugation represent a simple and natural working-out of functional
bodily laws, usually with a seasonal determination. But where man is
concerned these facts are so largely made to serve the purposes of
pruriency, so exploited to inflame the imagination in an undesirable
and directly harmful way that they can be approached only with the
utmost caution.
The intimate fact knowledge necessary in this connection is of a
peculiarly personal and sacred nature, and represents information
which is better communicated by the spoken than by the printed word.
The wise father and mother are those naturally indicated to convey
this information to their sons and daughters by word of mouth. By
analogy, by fuller development and description of the reproductive
processes of plant and animal life on which we have touched, the
matter of human procreation may be approached. Parents should stress
the point, when trying to present this subject to the youthful mind,
that man's special functions are only a detail--albeit a most
important one--in nature's vast plan for the propagation of life on
earth. This will have the advantage of correcting a trend on the part
of the imaginative boy or girl to lay too much stress on the part
humanity plays in this great general reproductive scheme. It will lay
weight on the fact that the functional workings of reproduction are
not, primarily, a source of pleasure, but that--when safeguarded by
the institution of matrimony, on which civilized social life is
based--they stand for the observance of solemn duties and obligations,
duties to church and state, and obligations to posterity. Hence,
parents, in talking to their children about these matters should do so
in a sober and instructive fashion. The attention of a mother,
perhaps, need not be called to this. But fathers may be inclined, in
many cases, to inform their sons without insisting that the
information they give them is, in the final analysis, intended to be
applied to lofty constructive purposes. They may, in their desire to
speak _practically_, forget the moral values which should underlie
this intimate information. Never should the spirit of levity intrude
itself in these intimate personal sex colloquies. Restraint and
decency should always mark them.
In making clear to the mind of youth the fact data which initiates and
governs reproduction in animal and in human life, the ideal to be
cultivated is continence, the refraining from all experimentation
undertaken in a spirit of curiosity, until such time as a well-placed
affection, sanctioned by the divine blessing, will justify a sane and
normal exploitation of physical needs and urges in the matrimonial
state. To this end hard bodily and mental work should be encouraged in
the youth of both sexes. "Satan finds work for idle hands to do," has
special application in this connection, and a chaste and continent
youth is usually the forerunner of a happy and contented marriage. And
incidentally, a happy marriage is the best guarantee that
reproduction, the carrying on of the species, will be morally and
physically a success. Here, too, the fact should be strongly stressed
that prostitution cannot be justified on any moral grounds. It
represents a deliberate ignoring of the rightful function of sex, and
the perversion of the sane and natural laws of reproduction. It is in
marriage, in the sane and normal activities of that unit of our whole
social system--the family--that reproduction develops nature's basic
principle of perpetuation in the highest and worthiest manner, in
obedience to laws humane and divine.