[Sidenote: Many women pessimistic concerning sexuality.]
The most significant point in the sex-education movement at present is
the fact that numerous women of the most intelligent groups are tending
rapidly towards accepting an optimistic and aesthetic view of sexual
relationships so far as these are normal and ethical and guided by
affection. However, this higher philosophy of sexual life is still very
far from being universal among educated women, and it is probably true
that to the great majority of them sexuality has no aesthetic meaning
but is simply a very troublesome physical function and an animal method
for perpetuating the human species. That such an attitude should be
common is not surprising, for in recent years numerous educated women
have gained abundant information concerning abnormal sexuality, while
very few have caught glimpses of the higher possibilities of the
sexual functions. The truth is that it has been and still is difficult
for most women to get well-balanced knowledge of sexual normality.
There are hundreds of books and pamphlets that deal with amazing
boldness with the sexual mistakes of human life, but there is not in
general circulation to-day any printed matter which deals with normal
sexual life with anything like the frankness and directness that is
common in widely circulated literature on social vice and its
concomitant diseases. Likewise, it is difficult for women to get the
true view of sexual life from personal sources, for the vulgar side of
sexuality is the one usually discussed by most people, some of whom
revel in obscenity, some have had personal experiences that have caused
ineradicable bitterness, and some more or less sincerely believe that
knowledge of vice is of value as a safeguard or an antidote. The bright
side of the sexual story is rarely told in conversation, either because
it is unfamiliar or because it is the sacred secret between pairs of
individuals who together have found life in all its completeness.
[Sidenote: AEsthetic outlook.]
Fortunately, this depressing emphasis on sexual abnormality is
beginning to disappear, and we see sure signs of coming attention to
sexual health rather than to disease and to purity rather than to vice.
Leading women are beginning to give, through the impersonal medium of
science and general literature, some definite and helpful testimony
concerning the pathway to the essential good that is bound up in
sexuality. It is especially important that young women of culture
should be helped to this point of view, and as far as possible before
they learn much concerning the dark problems that have originated from
failure to keep sexual functions sacred to affection and possible
parenthood. The educated women of to-day who have acquired and retained
faith in the essential goodness of human sexual possibilities, and who
at the same time have an understanding of the mistakes that weak humans
are wont to make, are sure to play a most important part as teachers
and mothers and leaders in the movement which is already guiding
numerous intelligent men and women to a purified and noble view of the
sexual relationships. As I see the big problems that demand
sex-education, the future will depend largely upon the attitude of
women. It is an essential part of the feministic movement. In the past
there have been many alarming signs of a destructive sex antagonism
that charged men with full responsibility for existing sex problems.
But the advance guards of feminism are beginning to recognize that
there are all-essential relationships between the sexes, and that only
in sex cooperation can there be any permanent solution of the great
questions. It is a great advance from the sex hostility of Christabel
Pankhurst's "Plain Facts on a Great Evil" to the co-working attitude of
Louise Creighton's "Social Disease and How to Fight It," of Olive
Schreiner's "Woman and Labor," of Ellen Key's "Love and Marriage," and
of Gascoigne Hartley's "Truth About Woman," all of which give us hope
that women with optimistic and aesthetic interpretation of sex are
coming to take the lead towards a better understanding of the relations
of sex and life.