[Sidenote: Difference between sexes.]
[Sidenote: Automatic arousing of boys' instincts.]
The problem of control of the insistent passions of normal young men
has been unscientifically minimized by numerous writers and lecturers.
It should be noted that many of these are men who have long since
forgotten the storms and stresses of their early manhood, and others
are women who do not know the facts indicating that the sexual
instincts young men are characteristically active, aggressive,
spontaneous, and automatic, while those of women _as a rule_ are
passive and subject to awakening by external stimuli, especially in
connection with affection. Such forgetful men and uninformed women are
prone to regard the lack of control of many young men as simply due to
"original sin," "innate viciousness," "bad companions," or
"irresistible temptations"; and they overlook the great fact that
maintaining perfect sexual control in his pre-marital years is for the
average healthy young man a problem compared with which all others,
including the alcoholic temptation, are of little significance. Such
being the truth about young men, nothing is to be gained and much is to
be lost if older people fail to take an understanding and sympathetic
attitude. I question whether any young man has ever been helped through
his adolescent crises by such oft-repeated assertions as that "there is
no more reason that a young man should go astray than that his sister
should," or, in other words, that "continence is as easy for a young
man as for a girl of similar age." An observing young man will doubt
such statements, and if he has had access to scientific information, he
will feel sure that there has been an attempt to influence him by the
kind of exaggeration commonly adopted by specialists in moral
preachments. The plain truth is that there is a physiological "reason"
or explanation, although not a justification for failure of
self-control. Even if we accept the improbable statement of some
writers that boys and girls are in early adolescence potentially equal
in sexual instincts and assuming that they may be protected equally
against vicious habits, we must not forget that every normal boy passes
in early puberty through peculiar physiological changes that arouse his
deepest instincts. I refer especially to the frequent occurrence of
involuntary sexual tumescence and to the occasional nocturnal
emissions, which processes leave the boy in no doubt whatever as to the
nature, source, and desirability of sexual pleasure. Especially is this
true of the automatic emissions that usually follow continence of
healthy young men, for in connection with such relief of seminal
pressure every nerve center of the sexual mechanism seems to be
involved in the culminating nerve storm of which the awakening
individual is often quite pleasurably conscious. In short, as men
looking backward to their early manhood well understand, the physical
sensations that come into the normal sexual experience of the
adolescent boy are different only in degree of intensity from those
which later are concomitants of sexual union. Such, in brief, is the
physiological history of the normal adolescent boy, and one who has
fallen into even most limited masturbation will probably be still more
conscious of the fact that the ordinary sequence of events in the
activity of the sexual organs leads to intense excitement that has
almost irresistible attractiveness.
[Sidenote: Average young women different.]
Now, most scientifically-trained women seem to agree that there are no
corresponding phenomena in the early pubertal life of the normal young
woman who has good health. A limited number of mature women, some of
them physicians, report having experienced in the pubertal years
localized tumescence and other disturbances which made them definitely
conscious of sexual instincts. However, it should be noted that most of
these are known to have had a personal history including one or more
such abnormalities as dysmenorrhea, uterine displacement, pathological
ovaries, leucorrhea, tuberculosis, masturbation, neurasthenia,
nymphomania, or other disturbances which are sufficient to account for
local sexual stimulation. In short, such women are not normal. Such
facts have led many physicians to the generalization that the average
healthy adolescent girl does not undergo normal spontaneous changes
which make her definitely conscious of the nature, source, and
desirability of localized sexual pleasure. On the contrary, such
consciousness commonly comes to many only as the result of stimuli
arising in connection with affection.[18] Clearly it is nonsense to
claim that the sexual temptations arising within the individual are
equal for the two sexes. Potentially, girls may have passions as strong
as boys, but they do not become so definitely and spontaneously
conscious of their latent instincts.
[Sidenote: Helping the young man.]
Thus considering the available facts regarding the physiological
reasons for the sexual tendencies of men, it seems to me that we gain
nothing in trying to minimize the young man's sexual problems, for he
is quite conscious that they are insistent. Far better it is that
mature men who know life in its completeness should make the young man
feel that his problems are not new, not insignificant, and that many
another man has met and solved them in such a way as to make life more
full of real happiness. Such sympathetic helpfulness will mean
something to a young man, but he cannot be led far by one who in his
own early experience has not learned both the strength and the mastery
of the sexual instincts.
[Sidenote: Women should know.]
In another lecture I have discussed the proposition that it would be
better for all concerned if women could have scientific understanding
of the physiological facts concerning the sexual tendencies of men, not
to make women more lenient or forgiving towards the mistakes of men,
but rather to enable women to play an important part in the necessary
adjustments through helpful comradeship. This last phrase will mean
nothing to many people, but in many a modern home a well-informed wife
has been able to lead the way to the satisfactory solution of the
fundamental problems of life.
[Sidenote: Self-control in marriage.]
There is another and an all-important phase of the problem of teaching
self-control which is commonly overlooked by those who are trying to
help young men solve their greatest problems. I have in mind the need
of self-control in marriage. Most writers and lecturers who emphasize
the arguments for absolute self-control or continence before marriage,
omit all reference to marital life. The natural inference, and one
widely followed, is that the only moral duty of a young man is to
control his intense desires and avoid illicit relations until sexual
abandon is permitted under the license of the law and the benediction
of the church. Such, I submit, is a fair conclusion for young men to
draw from at least ninety per cent of the sex-education literature that
is current to-day.
Now, I believe this is all wrong. In fact, I am so radical as to
believe that the intelligent women of the world would gain more from
temperance and unselfishness and delicacy of men in sexual functioning
in marriage than from sexual continence before marriage. Of course, I
do not propose that ideal sexual conditions in marriage may justify
pre-marital incontinence, but I make this sharp contrast simply to
emphasize the belief that sexual intemperance and selfishness of men in
marriage causes more mental and physical suffering of women than does
sexual incontinence of men before marriage, and I am not forgetting the
vast problem of social diseases and prostitution.
I urge, then, that those who attempt to direct young men through the
mazes of sexual life should hold up ideals not only of pre-marital
continence, but also of post-nuptial temperance and harmonious
adjustment between husband and wife. This post-nuptial problem is far
more difficult to solve, for the intimacy of married life, especially
in the earlier years, is sure to offer stimuli that are likely to make
sexual instincts more insistent than those that come from celibate
repression. However, self-control and temperance in marriage is no new
and unattainable ideal, and harmonious adjustment of men and women in
marriage is far more common than the pessimists would have us believe.