[Sidenote: Objection to word "sex."]
Some educators have expressed the wish that some one might suggest a
satisfactory substitute for the terms "sex-hygiene" and
"sex-education," omitting the word "sex." This word and its companion
"sexual" are objectionable because they are associated in the minds of
most people with vulgar interpretation of the physical aspects of the
beginning of individual life, and much of the opposition to the
proposed sex-instruction in home and schools is evidently based on the
feeling that the very word "sex" involves something inherently vulgar.
[Sidenote: Definite words necessary.]
It is probable that many decades will pass before the majority of
intelligent people cease to feel that the words "sex" and "sexual" have
had such vulgar associations that they should be kept out of our
everyday vocabulary, but I can see no hope of developing an improved
attitude towards the sexual aspect of human life if we continue to
admit that we are afraid of the necessary words. It seems to me that in
one decade there has been a great advance in that the scientific
writers and speakers on problems of sex have been using words which
definitely and directly express the desired meanings, and have avoided
the suggestive circumlocutions which characterize many modern realistic
novels. One who does not already appreciate the serious impressiveness
of cold scientific language in discussion of sexual problems should
take one of the indecently suggestive paragraphs from stories in the
most notoriously vulgar of the fifteen-cent magazines, and translate
the meaning of the paragraph into direct and definite words. The result
will be complete loss of the stealthy suggestiveness which has made
concealed sexuality so dangerously attractive to the type of mind that
revels in the modern sex-problem novels. We want no such suggestive
concealment in a scheme of sex-education, for it aims at a purer and
higher understanding of sex in human life. We must have direct and
definite and dignified scientific language, and among the necessary
words none are as essential as "sex" and "sexual." We must use them
freely if attitude towards sex is to be improved; and their dignified
and scientific usage will gradually dispel the embarrassment which many
unfortunate people now experience when these words remind them that the
perpetuation of life in all its higher forms has been intrusted to the
cooperation of two kinds, or sexes, of individuals.
Thus viewing the objections which have been raised against the use of
the word "sex" in the educational movement, I have shifted my first
stand with the opposition until now I favor the frank and dignified use
of this and similar words on appropriate occasions. I believe that
those interested in the search for solutions of the vital problems of
sex should quietly but systematically work to include the words "sex"
and "sexual" in the dignified and scientific vocabulary needed by all
people to express the newer and nobler interpretations of the
relationships between men and women.
[Sidenote: No "sex" studies.]
Of course, this does not mean that sex, either as a word or as a fact
of nature, should be over-emphasized with people who are too young to
appreciate the fundamental facts of life. As already suggested, it is
not desirable that any parts of the curricula for schools should be
known to the pupils as "sex" studies; but we need such terms as
"sex-hygiene" and "sex-instruction" to indicate to teachers and parents
that certain parts of the education of the children are being directed
towards a healthy, natural and wholesome relation to sex.
[Sidenote: "Sex" and "love."]
It is absurd to suppose that the free, dignified, and scientific use of
the word "sex" is going to make people more sensual, more uncontrolled,
and more immoral. There is much more reason for fearing the free use of
the word "love," which has both psychical and physical meanings so
confused that often only the context of sentences enables one to
determine which meaning is intended. In fact, many writers and speakers
seek to avoid all possible misunderstanding by using the word
"affection" for psychical love. Now, in spite of such confusion, and
the fact that to many people the word "love" in connection with sex
suggests only gross sensuality, we continue to use it freely and it is
one of the first words taught to children. Why then do we not hear
protests against using the word "love"? Simply because we have been
from childhood accustomed to the word, first in its psychical sense,
and it is only later that most of us have learned that it has a sensual
meaning to some people. In short, familiarity with the word "love" in
its psychical sense has bred in us a contempt for those who mistake the
physical basis of love for love in its combined physical and psychical
completeness.
[Sidenote: Meaning of sex.]
To many it is surprising to find that the word "sex" has never been
used in such degraded connections as has the word "love," and that it
has not been half so much misunderstood. There is no obvious vulgarity
in the lexicographer's definitions of the word "sex." It simply means,
as the science of biology points out so clearly, that the perpetuation
of human life, and of most other species of life, has been intrusted to
pairs of individuals which are of the two kinds commonly called the
sexes, male and female. Why nature determined that each new life in the
vast majority of species should develop from two other lives has long
been a biological puzzle, and most satisfactory of the answers given is
that bi-parental origin of new individuals allows for new combinations
of heritable qualities from two lines of descent. However, such a
biological explanation of the relation of the two sexes to double
parentage is of relatively little practical significance in present-day
human life when compared with the fact that out of the necessity for
life's perpetuation by two cooperating individuals there has grown
psychical or spiritual love with all its splendid possibilities that
are evident in ideal family life. Moreover, the influence of sex in
human life has extended far beyond the family (that is, that group of
individuals who stand related to one another as husband, wife, parents,
and children), for it is a careless observer indeed who does not note
in our daily life many social and psychical relationships of men and
women who have no mutual interests relating to the biological processes
of race perpetuation. Of course, the psychologist recognizes that far
back of the platonic contact of the sexes on social and intellectual
lines is the suppressed and primal instinct that provides physical
unions for race perpetuation. However, this is of no practical
interest, for, as a matter of fact, the primal instincts are quite
subconscious in the usual social relations between the sexes.
[Sidenote: The larger view of sex.]
There is grandeur in this view of sex as originally a provision for
perpetuation of life by two cooperating individuals, later becoming the
basis of conjugal affection of the two individuals for each other and
of their parental affection for their offspring, and finally leading to
social and intellectual comradeship of men and women meeting on terms
which are practically free from the original and biological meaning of
sex.
Instead, then, of trying to keep sex, both word and fact, in the
background of the new educational movement, I believe it is best to
work definitely for a better understanding of the part which sex plays
in human life, as outlined in the preceding paragraph. Hence, in these
lectures I shall never go aside in order to avoid either the word or
the idea of sex; on the contrary, I shall attempt to direct the
discussion so as to emphasize the larger and very modern view of the
relationship of sex and human life.
[Sidenote: The many-sided bearings of sex.]
In this first lecture I want to make it clear that the role of sex in
human life is vastly greater than that directly involved in sexual
activity. I shall in several lectures touch the big problems from the
standpoint of the sexual instincts as these play an important part in
social, psychical, and aesthetic life even if they are rarely exercised,
physiologically, or if, as in millions of individuals, they never come
to mean more than possibilities of sexual activity for which
opportunities in marriage do not come. I am especially anxious to avoid
the narrow viewpoint of numerous writers on sex-hygiene who seem to
overlook the fact that sexual functioning is only a prominent incident
in the cycle of sexual influences in the lives of most people. Human
life, and especially marriage, should no longer be regarded from the
mere biological point of view as for the sole purpose of reproductive
activity. It is a far more uplifting view that the conscious or
unconscious existence of the sexual instincts, with or without
occasional activity, affords the fundamental physical basis for states
of mind that may profoundly affect the whole course of life in every
normal man and woman.
Supplementary to this section on the "Misunderstanding of Sex," I
suggest the reading of Chapters I-VI of "Sex" by Geddes and Thomson,
the "Problems of Sex" by the same authors, and Chapter VI in "The
Wonder of Life" by Thomson.