[Sidenote: Present attitude.]
Even a limited study of the prevailing attitude towards sex and
reproduction convinces one that back of the greatest sexual problems of
our times is the almost universal secrecy, disrespect, vulgarity, and
irreverence concerning every aspect of sex and reproduction. Even
expectant motherhood is commonly concealed as long as possible, and all
reference to the developing new life is usually accompanied with
blushes and tones suggestive of some great shame. Nothing sexual is
commonly regarded as sacred. Love and marriage, motherhood and birth,
are all freely selected as themes for sexual jests, many of them so
vulgar that no printed dictionary supplies the necessary words. And I
am not simply referring to the great masses of uneducated people, for
the saddest fact is that a very large proportion of intelligent people
have not an open-minded and respectful attitude concerning sex and
reproduction.
[Sidenote: Vast change of attitude needed.]
Now, unless we can devise some way to counteract the prevailing narrow,
vulgar, disrespectful, and irreverent attitude towards all aspects of
sex and reproduction; unless we can make people see sexual processes in
all their normal aspects as noble, beautiful, and splendid steps in the
great plan of nature; unless we can substitute a philosophical and
aesthetic view of sex relationship for the time-worn interpretation of
everything sexual as inherently vulgar, base, ignoble, and demanding
asceticism for those who would reach the highest spiritual development;
unless we can begin to make these changes in the prevailing attitude
towards sex and reproduction, we cannot make any decided advance in the
attempt to help solve sexual problems by special instruction.
First of all, sex-education must work for a purified and dignified
attitude which sees vulgarity and impurity only when the functions of
sex have been voluntarily and knowingly misused and thereby debased.
Sex-education must work against the idea that sexual processes are
inherently vulgar, degraded, base, and impure. Such an interpretation
is correct only when sexual instincts are uncontrolled and thereby out
of harmony with the highest ideals of life. But control does not mean
asceticism which aims at complete subjugation of sexual instincts and
would annihilate them if that were biologically possible. The early
Christians, disgusted with the sexual degradation of the paganistic and
materialistic Romans, preached a doctrine of sexual asceticism as the
ideal for those who would rise to the heights of spiritual life. This
pessimistic interpretation of the relation of sex and life has
persisted even in some ecclesiastical teachings of the twentieth
century, and probably has had not a little responsibility for the
widely accepted and depressing view that sex is a necessary but
regrettable fact of human life.
[Sidenote: Attitude changing.]
Fortunately, the old ascetic point of view is passing rapidly.
Nineteenth-century science has given us a nobler view of the physical
world. Scientifically considered, matter is no longer base and
degraded. Especially has the biological science of the past fifty years
made _living_ matter and its activities profoundly impressive. And of
the life-activities none are so significant and so all-important as
those relating to the perpetuation of the human species. Biological
science has taught this emphatically, and the processes connected with
sex have been lifted to a place of dignity and purity.
[Sidenote: AEsthetic attitude desirable.]
The old asceticism, with its uniformly dark outlook on life, has no
lessons worth while in our modern problems relating to sex.[10] We need
severe control and not annihilation of our most powerful instincts. The
bright outlook of aesthetics rather than the dark one of asceticism
should prevail, for sex-instincts and processes are essentially pure
and beautiful phases of that wonderful something we call "life."
Sex-education should aim to give this attitude by presenting life as
fundamentally free from the degradation arising from misuse and
misunderstanding of sex.
[Sidenote: Not a new ideal.]
The aesthetic interpretation of sex is no new ideal. Canon Lyttleton,
formerly Head Master of Eton College and later Canon of Westminster,
believed that "viewed rightly, the subject of sex, the ever-recurring
miracle of generation and birth, is full of nobleness, purity, and
health." The late Dr. Prince A. Morrow wrote, "the sex function is
intimately connected with the physical, mental, and moral development.
Its right use is the surest basis of individual health, happiness and
usefulness in life, as well as of racial permanence and prosperity. Its
abuse and misuse is the cause of a vast deal of disease and misery."
And finally, we may quote President-Emeritus Eliot of Harvard
University: "Society must be relieved by sound instruction of the
horrible doctrine that the begetting and bearing of children are in the
slightest degree sinful or foul processes. That doctrine lies at the
root of the feeling of shame in connection with these processes and of
the desire for secrecy. The plain fact is that there is nothing so
sacred and propitious on earth as the bringing of another normal child
into the world in marriage. There is nothing staining or defiling about
it, and therefore there is no need for shame or secrecy, but only for
pride and joy. This doctrine should be part of the instruction given to
all young people."
[Sidenote: Attitude all-important in sex-education.]
If sex-education succeeds in giving young people this enlightened
attitude, there will be little difficulty in solving most of the
ethical and hygienic problems of sex. A young man who has caught a
glimpse of the highest interpretation of sex in its relation to human
life, in short a young man to whom all natural sexual processes are
essentially pure and noble and beautiful, is not one who will make
grave hygienic mistakes in his own life, and he will not be personally
connected with the social evil and its diseases, and he will avoid
almost intuitively the physiologic and psychologic mistakes that most
often cause matrimonial disaster. Everything, then, in successful
sex-education depends upon the attitude formed in the minds of
learners; and towards this our major efforts should be directed.
[Sidenote: Comparison with animals not helpful.]
The prevailing vulgar attitude towards sex will not be greatly improved
by repeated emphasis upon the animal nature of reproduction in attempts
at supporting the thesis that propagation is the sole function of
sexual processes in human life. Such an interpretation of human
sexuality as purely animalistic in function is implied, if not
expressed, by some workers for the "purity" movement. I sincerely
believe that such a view will inevitably tend to increase the feeling
that sexual processes are heritages from the beasts which unfortunately
must be tolerated because nature has provided no other way for
perpetuating human life.
[Sidenote: Sexual pessimism.]
An intelligent woman, a happy wife and mother, who had accepted this
ascetic and pessimistic view of sex, said the other day: "Oh, love and
marriage and motherhood would be so beautiful were it possible to
escape the unspeakably vulgar facts of physical life!" Poor woman! It
must have been some fiend incarnate who in the guise of a prophet of
purity preached to her the animalistic interpretation of sex, which
made her overlook the fact that the very beauty which she could not
quite grasp had its origin in her emotions arising from the despised
sexual nature.
This is not an isolated case. Several young women who have graduated
from college within ten years vouch for the statement that many
thoughtful students are strong in the belief that ideal marriage is
platonic friendship and that it is a sad fact of life that husband and
wife must lay aside their high ideals in order to become parents.
Such depressing interpretations of life are bound to come from the
radical type of "purity" preaching based on the sexual mistakes of the
past and on the lives of animals. A similar pessimistic view regarding
the function of eating might be based on mistakes of drunkards and
gluttons and on the habits of the porcine family. If these are to guide
our conduct, then food-taking is to be regarded as a necessary but
vulgar habit inherited from our animal ancestors; and if we are to be
logical and attempt to rise to ideal purity in eating, we must hasten
to dispense with the culinary science and all the aesthetics which have
made civilized eating a fine art. Of course, this is just what the
strict ascetic does; but such radical disbelievers in the pleasures
that we have associated with eating would be declared lunatics in any
civilized country.
[Sidenote: Two kinds of hunger.]
I have chosen eating for illustrating my point, for the demands for
food and for sexual activity are the two primal and necessary forms of
hunger. The hunger for food has led to the refinements of civilized
dining, but there has been great evolution. The animals feed (German,
fressen) in order to satisfy hunger only; civilized humans eat (essen)
not only to satisfy the hunger appetite inherited from the animals, but
also for the sake of the concomitant social aesthetic pleasures that add
much to the joy of living. Now, if we are logical, we must interpret on
parallel lines the sexual hunger that is necessary for the perpetuation
of human life. Like eating, it is a necessary function inherited from
the animals; but there has been an evolution of greater significance.
In the animal world, sexual activity has only one function,
reproduction; but human life at its highest has superadded psychical
and social meaning to sexual relationships, and the result has been
affection and the human family. If we reject this higher view of the
double significance of sexuality in human life, and insist that only
the necessary propagative function is worthy of recognition, it is
almost inevitable that most people will continue to accept the hopeless
view that human sexuality is on the same vulgar plane as that of the
animals; in short, that it is only an animal function. This, I insist,
is a depressing interpretation that will never help overcome the
prevailing vulgar attitude toward sex.
[Sidenote: Human sexuality more than animal.]
It is only by frankly recognizing and developing the psychical and
aesthetic meanings that are distinctly human and superadded to the
merely propagative function of the animals, that people can be led far
away from the vulgar outlook on sex and reproduction in human life.
[Sidenote: Relation of attitude and morality.]
There is no question that wholesome attitude towards sex and
reproduction is closely associated with the problems of sexual
morality, and especially so far as educational procedure is concerned.
It is true that large numbers of moral people hold the vulgar attitude
towards sex and reproduction; but for people who do not accept the
moral code without question there is probably no better way of teaching
sexual morality than by influencing the individual's attitude. There
are many people who stand for sexual morality for no other reason than
that they have a dignified and aesthetic attitude towards sex.
[Sidenote: Sexual vulgarity a stage in evolution.]
There is much evidence that the world is rapidly improving in this
respect. Sexual vulgarity seems to represent a stage in the evolution
of human life from the barbaric to the fully civilized. The sexual
vulgarity of primitive peoples, both ancient and modern, has been all
too frequently recalled by writers whose pseudo-scientific
superficiality leads them to believe that knowledge concerning barbaric
and ultra-bestial sensuality will help solve modern sex problems. In
the classical days when Venus and Bacchus and other deities of
sensuality were worshipped by their devotees, there was sexual
vulgarity in action and language such as now exists only among the most
ignorant or depraved people in civilized lands. The advent of Christian
civilization in Europe left no place for temples and worship of
sensuality, but still the age-old tendency towards a crude and
barbaric kind of sexual vulgarity and obscenity has continued in
folklore, in colloquial language, and in literature. However, there has
been a vast change in the attitude of the best people within the last
two centuries. Once many English writers, many of them now deservedly
obscure, published prose and poetry that would now be criminal. An
unexpurgated edition of Shakespeare's "Complete Works," or of
Boccaccio's "Decameron," could not be circulated through the United
States mails, and there are many good people who are asking how long we
shall continue to allow the unexpurgated "Old Testament" the privilege
of circulation. It is not simply prose and poetry that has been
purified. Scientific literature has shown the influence of the reaction
against obscenity. Linnaeus and other naturalists of the past were fond
of giving scientific names that perpetuated vulgar comparisons with
sexual organs, but no naturalist of the present day would dare suggest
such designations for unnamed animals and plants. The older medical
literature contains abundant obscenities; but scientific dignity, as
well as the refinement of modern medical writers, has tended to compel
the elimination of vulgarity. However, there are still too many
physicians, especially those working with venereal and genito-urinary
diseases, who go out of their way to illuminate their conversations,
lectures, books, and magazine articles with veiled vulgarity. Even
high-class medical journals occasionally contain illustrations of this
tendency. However, the medical profession as a class stands for
dignified scientific presentation of facts, and obscenity will soon be
tabooed in medical and all other reputable literature. Save for
occasional emanations privately printed by and for degenerate persons,
public obscenity will soon be unknown. Its complete disappearance will
have a vast influence upon the problem of sexual attitude.