SEX IN THE ADOLESCENT MALE
(FROM PUBERTY TO MATURITY)
Adolescence is the period when the boy is lost in the man. It is the
time of life embraced between the ages of fourteen or sixteen and the
age of twenty-five. Every boy, if properly trained, should reach this
period in a state of good general health and spirits. Hitherto he has
been led and guided. Now he must develop mental strength and will
power himself to choose the good and refuse the evil in the sexual
problems confronting him.
PUBERTY
According to climate puberty, the age when the human male becomes
sexually perfect, varies from ten to fifteen years. In the United
States puberty in the male usually occurs at the age of fourteen and a
half years. In tropical climates it occurs at nine or ten, and in cold
countries, such as Norway and Siberia, it may not take place until
eighteen or nineteen. Vigorous physical exercise tends to delay
puberty, anything exciting the emotions tends to hasten it.
Stimulating foods, pepper, vinegar, mustard, spices, tea and coffee,
excess meat nutriment hasten puberty. A cool, unstimulating vegetable
and farinaceous diet may delay the development of the sexual system
several months or a year.
THE SIGNS AND CHANGES OF PUBERTY
In the boy the signs of puberty are the growth of hair on the skin
covering the pubes and in the armpits. Chest and arms broaden, the
frame grows more angular, the masculine proportions more pronounced.
The vocal cords grow longer and lower the pitch of the voice. Hair
grows on chin, upper lip, cheeks, and often on the body surface.
THE SEXUAL MORAL LAW
The sexual moral law is the same for both sexes, and equally binding.
It may be summed up as follows: "Your sexual urges, instincts and
desires should never consciously injure an individual human being or
mankind in general. They should be exercised to further the value and
happiness of both."
THE MALE ADOLESCENT AND CONTINENCE
The perfect carrying out of this general moral law implies continence
on the part of the male adolescent until marriage. Continence is
positive restraint under all circumstances. Strict continence is
neither injurious to health, nor does it produce impotence. While
self-denial is difficult, since the promptings of nature often seem
imperious, it is not impossible. It is certain that no youth will
suffer, physically, by remaining sexually pure. The demands which
occur during adolescence are mainly abnormal, due to the excitements
of an overstimulating diet, pornographic literature and art, and the
temptations of impure association.
WHY YOUNG MEN GO WRONG
Foul thoughts, once they enter the mind, corrode it. The sensual
glance, the bawdy laugh, the ribald jest, the smutty story, the
obscene song may be met with on street corner, in the car, train,
hotel lobby, lecture hall and workshop. Mental unchastity ends in
physical unchastity. The habit common to most adolescent boys and
young men of relating smutty stories, repeating foul jokes and making
indecent allusions destroys respect for virtue. In addition there are
such direct physical causes of undue adolescent sexual excitement as
constipation and alcoholism, and such mental ones as nervous
irritability.
To the constant discussion and speculation regarding sex and its
mysteries by the adolescent young male, must be added the artificial
idea that idle prattling on the subject is a sign of "manhood." Thus
many young men whose natural trend is in the direction of decency and
right sexual living, "step out" or "go to see the girls," as the
phrase is, because they think that otherwise "they are not real men."
More subtle in its evil effect, yet somewhat less dangerous
physically, perhaps, than the professional prostitute is the lure of
the "hidden" prostitute, who carefully conceals her derelictions, and
publicly wraps herself in a mantle of virtue.
PROSTITUTION
The training of the average male mind in impure language and thought
during boyhood and adolescence, the cultivation of his animal at the
expense of the moral nature, often leads the adolescent to seek
satisfaction by frequenting the prostitute.
_Prostitution_, known as the "social evil," is promiscuous unchastity
for gain. It has existed in all civilized countries from earliest
times. Prostitution abuses the instinct for reproduction, the basic
element of sex, to offer certain women a livelihood which they prefer
to other means. Love of excitement, inherited criminal propensities,
indolence and abnormal sex appetite are first causes of prostitution.
Difficulty in finding work, laborious and ill-paid work, harsh
treatment of girls at home, indecent living among the poor, contact
with demoralizing companions, loose literature and amusements are
secondary causes. They all contribute to debauch male and female youth
and lead it to form dangerous habits of vicious sensual indulgence.
Prostitution seems inseparable from human society in large
communities. The fact is acknowledged in the name given it, "the
necessary evil." Regulation and medical control only arrest in a
degree the spread of venereal diseases to which prostitution gives
rise. The elementary laws on which prostitution rests seems to be
stronger than the artificial codes imposed by moral teaching. It is an
evil which must be combatted _individually_. Men are principally
responsible, in one way or another, for the existence of the social
evil. In the case of the young man, abstention is the only cure for
the probable results of indulging his animal passions by recourse to
the prostitute.
Prostitution, both public and private is the most dangerous menace to
society at large. It is the curse of individual young manhood because
of the venereal diseases it spreads. One visit to a house of
prostitution may ruin a young man's health and life, and millions of
human beings die annually from the effects of poison contracted in
these houses. "Wild oats" sown in company with the prostitute usually
bear fruit in the shape of the most loathsome and destructive sex
disorders.
The development of self-control, the avoidance of impure thoughts and
associations, the cultivation of the higher moral nature instead of
the lower animal one, and, finally, _marriage_, should prevent the
young man from falling into prostitution. All the state and medical
regulation in the world will not protect him from the venereal
diseases he is so apt to acquire by such indulgence.
FREE LOVE
Free love is the doctrine of _unrestrained choice, without binding
ties_, in sexual relations. For altogether different reasons, however,
it is quite as objectionable as prostitution for the young man. It may
offer better hygienic guarantees. But it is a sexual partnership which
is opposed to the fundamental institution of _marriage_, on which
society in general is based throughout the world. And, aside from the
fact that it is a promiscuous relationship not sanctioned by law or
society, it is seldom practically successful. It cannot admit of true
love without bitter jealousies.