CONTINENCE--IS IT PRACTICABLE OR DESIRABLE?
Thousands of well-intentioned people who agree that there are times
and conditions under which it is woman's highest duty to avoid having
children advocate continence as the one permissible means of birth
control. Few of these people agree with one another, however, as to
what continence is. Some have in mind absolute continence. Others urge
continence for periods varying from a few weeks to many years. Still
others are thinking of Karezza, or male continence, as it is sometimes
called.
The majority of physicians and sex psychologists hold that the
practice of absolute continence is, for the greater part of the human
race, an absurdity. Were such continence to be practiced, there is no
doubt that it would be a most effective check upon the birth rate. It
is seldom practiced, however, and when adhered to under compulsion the
usual result is injury to the nervous system and to the general
health. Among healthy persons, this method is practicable only with
those who have a degree of mentally controlled development as yet
neither often experienced nor even imagined by the mass of humanity.
Absolute continence was the ideal of the early Christian church for
all of its communicants, as shall be seen in another chapter. We shall
also see how the church abandoned this standard and now confines the
doctrine of celibacy to the unmarried, to the priesthood and the nuns.
Celibacy has been practiced in all ages by a few artists,
propagandists and revolutionists in order that their minds may be
single to the work which has claimed their lives and all the forces of
their beings may be bent in one direction. Sometimes, too, such
persons have remained celibate to avoid the burden of caring for a
family.
The Rev. Dr. Thomas Robert Malthus, who in 1798 issued the first of
those works which exemplified what is called the Malthusian doctrine,
also advocated celibacy or absolute continence until middle age.
Malthus propounded the now widely recognized principle that population
tends to increase faster than the food supply and that unlimited
reproduction brings poverty and many other evils upon a nation. His
theological training naturally inclined him to favor continence--not
so much from its practicability, perhaps, as because he believed that
it was the only possible method.
We would be ignoring a vital truth if we failed to recognize the fact
that there are individuals who through absorption in religious zeal,
consecration to a cause, or devotion to creative work are able to live
for years or for a lifetime a celibate existence. It is doubtless true
that the number of those who are thus able to transmute their sex
forces into other creative forms is increasing. It is not with these,
however, that we are concerned. Rather it is with the mass of
humanity, who practice continence under some sort of compulsion.
What is the result of forcing continence upon those who are not fitted
or do not desire to practice it? The majority opinion of medical
science and the evidence of statistics are united on this point.
Enforced continence is injurious--often highly so.
"Physiology," writes Dr. J. Rutgers in _Rassenverbesserung_, "teaches
that every function gains in power and efficiency through a certain
degree of control, but that the too extended suppression of a desire
gives rise to pathological disturbances and in time cripples the
function. Especially in the case of women may the damage entailed by
too long continued sexual abstinence bring about deep disturbances."
All this, be it understood, refers to persons of mature age. For young
men and women under certain ages, statistics and the preponderance of
medical opinion agree that continence is highly advisable, in many
cases seemingly altogether necessary to future happiness. The famous
Dr. Bertillon, of France, inventor of the Bertillon system of
measurements for the human body, has made, perhaps, the most
exhaustive of all studies in this direction. He demonstrates a large
mortality for the boy who marries before his twentieth year. When
single, the mortality of French youths averages only 14 per thousand;
among married youths it rises to 100 per thousand. Which shows that it
is six or eight times more perilous for a youth to be incontinent than
continent up to that age. Dr. Bertillon's conclusions are that men
should marry between their twenty-fifth and thirtieth years, and that
women should marry when they have passed twenty. With the single
exception of young men and women below the ages noted, Dr. Bertillon's
statistics tell a very different story. And where it relates to
celibates, it is a shocking one.
"Dr. Bertillon shows that in France, Belgium and Holland married men
live considerably longer than single ones," writes Dr. Charles R.
Drysdale, in summing up the matter in "_The Population Question_" "and
are much less subject to becoming insane, criminal or vicious." From
the same studies we learn that the conjugal state is also more
favorable to the health of the woman over twenty years of age, in the
three countries covered.
An analysis of criminal records showed that more than twice as many
unmarried men and women had been held for crimes of all kinds than
married persons. Rates based upon 10,000 cases of insanity among men
and women in the same countries showed 3.95 per thousand for male
celibates against 2.17 for married men. For single women the rate was
3.4 against but 1.9 for married women. Insanity was reduced one-half
among women by marriage.
More startling still is the evidence of the mortality statistics.
Bertillon found that the death rates of bachelors and widowers
averaged from nearly two to nearly three times as high as those of
married men of the same ages. Dr. Mayer, in his _Rapports Conjugaux_,
showed that the death rates among the celibate religious orders
studied were nearly twice as high as those of the laity.
Can anyone knowing the facts ask that we recommend continence as a
birth-control measure?
Virtually all of the dangers to health involved in absolute continence
are involved also in the practice of continence broken only when it is
desired to bring a child into the world. In the opinion of some
medical authorities, it is even worse, because of the almost constant
excitation of unsatisfied sex desire by the presence of the mate.
People who think that they believe in this sort of family limitation
have much to say about "self-control." Usually they will admit that to
abstain from all but a single act of sexual intercourse each year is
an indication of high powers of self-restraint. Yet that one act,
performed only once a year, might be sufficient to "keep a woman with
one child in her womb and another at her breast" during her entire
childbearing period. That would mean from eighteen to twenty-four
children for each mother, provided she survived so many births and
lactations. Contraceptives are quite as necessary to these
"self-controlled" ones who do not desire children every year
as to those who lead normal, happy love lives.
From the necessity of contraceptives and from the dangers of this
limited continence certain persons are, of course, relieved. They are
the ones whose mental and spiritual development is so high as to make
this practice natural to them. These individuals are so exceedingly
rare, however, that they need not be discussed here. Moreover, they
are capable of solving their own problems.
Few who advocate the doctrine of absolute continence live up to it
strictly. I met one woman who assured me that she had observed it
faithfully in the thirteen years since her youngest child was born.
She had such a loathing for sexual union, however, that it was
doubtless the easiest and best thing for her to do.
Loathing, disgust or indifference to the sex relationship nearly
always lies behind the advocacy to continence except for the conscious
purpose of creating children. In other words, while one in ten
thousand persons may find full play for a diverted and transmuted sex
force in other creative functions, the rest avoid the sex union from
repression. These are two widely different situations--one may make
for racial progress and the happiness of the few individuals capable
of it; the other poisons the race at its fountain and brings nothing
but the discontent, unhappiness and misery which follow enforced
continence. For all that, an increasing number of persons, mostly
women, are advocating continence within marriage.
Sexual union is nearly always spoken of by such persons as something
in itself repugnant, disgusting, low and lustful. Consciously or
unconsciously, they look upon it as a hardship, to be endured only, to
bring "God's image and likeness" into the world. Their very attitude
precludes any great probability that their progeny will possess an
abundance of such qualities.
Much of the responsibility for this feeling upon the part of many
thousands of women must be laid to two thousand years of Christian
teaching that all sex expression is unclean. Part of it, too, must be
laid to the dominant male's habit of violating the love rights of his
mate.
The habit referred to grows out of the assumed and legalized right of
the husband to have sexual satisfaction at any time he desires,
regardless of the woman's repugnance for it. The law of the state
upholds him in this regard. A husband need not support his wife if she
refuses to comply with his sexual demands.
Of the two groups of women who regard physical union either with
disgust and loathing, or with indifference, the former are the less
numerous. Nevertheless, there are many thousands of them. I have
listened to their stories often, both as a nurse in obstetrical cases
and as a propagandist for birth control. An almost universal cause of
their attitude is a sad lack of understanding of the great beauties of
the normal, idealistic love act. Neither do they understand the
uplifting power of such unions for both men and women. Ignorance of
life, ignorance of all but the sheer reproductive function of mating,
and especially a wrong training, are most largely responsible for this
tragic state of affairs. When this ignorance extends to the man in
such a degree as to permit him to have the all too frequent coarse and
brutal attitude toward sex matters, the tragedy is only deepened.
Truly the church and those "moralists" who have been insisting upon
keeping sex matters in the dark have a huge list of concealed crimes
to answer for. The right kind of a book, a series of clear, scientific
lectures, or a common-sense talk with either the man or woman will
often do away with most of the repugnance to physical union. When the
repugnance is gone, the way is open to that upliftment through sex
idealism which is the birthright of all women and men.
When I have had the confidence of women indifferent to physical union,
I have found the fault usually lay with the husband. His idea of
marriage is too often that of providing a home for a female who would
in turn provide for his physical needs, including sexual satisfaction.
Such a husband usually excludes such satisfaction from the category of
the wife's needs, physical or spiritual.
This man is not concerned with his wife's sex urge, save as it
responds to his own at times of his choosing. Man's code has taught
woman to be quite ashamed of such desires. Usually she speaks of
indifference without regret; often proudly. She seems to regard
herself as more chaste and highly endowed in purity than other women
who confess to feeling physical attraction toward their husbands. She
also secretly considers herself far superior to the husband who makes
no concealment of his desire toward her. Nevertheless, because of this
desire upon the husband's part, she goes on "pretending" to mutual
interest in the relationship.
Only the truth, plainly spoken, can help these people. The woman is
condemned to physical, mental and spiritual misery by the ignorance
which society has fixed upon her. She has her choice between an
enforced continence, with its health-wrecking consequences and its
constant aggravation of domestic discord, and the sort of prostitution
legalized by the marriage ceremony. The man may choose between
enforced continence and its effects, or he may resort to an unmarried
relationship or to prostitution. Neither of these people--the one
schooled directly or indirectly by the church and the other trained in
the sex ethics of the gutter--can hope to lift the other to the
regenerating influences of a pure, clean, happy love life. As long as
we leave sex education to the gutter and houses of prostitution, we
shall have millions of just such miserable marriage failures.
Such continence as is involved in dependence upon the so-called "safe
period" for family limitation will harm no one. The difficulty here is
that the method is not practical. It simply does not work. The woman
who employs this method finds herself in the same predicament as the
one who believes that she is not in danger of pregnancy when she does
not respond passionately to her husband. That this woman is more
likely to conceive than the emotional one, is a well-known fact. The
woman who refuses to use contraceptives, but who rejects sex
expression except for a few days in the month, is likely to learn too
soon the fallacy of her theory as a birth-control method.
For a long time the "safe period" was suggested by physicians. It was
also the one method of birth control countenanced by the
ecclesiastics. Women are learning from experience and specialists are
discovering by investigation that the "safe period" is anything but
safe for all women. Some women are never free from the possibility of
conception from puberty to the menopause. Others seemingly have "safe
periods" for a time, only to become pregnant when they have begun to
feel secure in their theory. Here again, continence must give way, as
a method of birth control, to contraceptives.
In the same category as the "safe period," as a method of birth
control, must be placed so-called "male continence." The same practice
is also variously known as "Karezza," "Sedular Absorption" and
"Zugassent's Discovery." Those who regard it as a method of family
limitation are likely to find themselves disappointed.
As a form of continence, however, if it can be called continence, it
is asserted to bring none of the long course of evils which too often
follow the practice of lifelong abstinence, or abstinence broken only
when a child is desired.
Its devotees testify that they avoid ill effects and achieve the
highest possible results. These results are due, probably, to two
factors.
First, those who practice Karezza are usually of a high mental and
spiritual development and are, therefore, capable of an exalted degree
of self-control without actual repression. Second, they have the
benefit of that magnetic interchange between man and woman which makes
for physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. This stimulation becomes
destructive irritation in ordinary forms of continence.
The Oneida Community, a religious group comprising about 130 men and
150 women, which occupied a part of an old Indian reservation in the
state of New York, were the chief exponents of "male continence." The
practice was a religious requirement with them and they laid great
stress upon three different functions which they attributed to the
sexual organs. They held that these functions were urinary,
reproductive and amative, each separate and distinct in its use from
the others. Cases are cited in which both men and women are said to
have preserved their youth and their sexual powers to a ripe old age,
and to have prolonged their honeymoons throughout married life. The
theory, however, interesting as it may be when considered as
"continence," is not to be relied upon as a method of birth control.
Summing it all up, then, continence may meet the needs of a few
natures, but it does not meet the needs of the masses. To enforce
continence upon those whose natures do not demand it, is an injustice,
the cruelty and the danger of which has been underestimated rather
than exaggerated. It matters not whether this wrong is committed by
the church, through some outworn dogma; by the state, through the laws
prohibiting contraceptives, or by society, through the conditions
which prevent marriage when young men and women reach the age at which
they have need of marriage.
The world has been governed too long by repression. The more
fundamental the force that is repressed the more destructive its
action. The disastrous effects of repressing the sex force are written
plainly in the health rates, the mortality statistics, the records of
crime and the entry books of the hospitals for the insane. Yet this is
not all the tale, for there are still the little understood hosts of
sexually abnormal people and the monotonous misery of millions who do
not die early nor end violently, but who are, nevertheless, devoid of
the joys of a natural love life.
As a means of birth control, continence is as impracticable for most
people as it is undesirable. Celibate women doubtless have their place
in the regeneration of the world, but it is not they, after all, who
will, through experience and understanding recreate it. It is mainly
through fullness of expression and experience in life that the mass of
women, having attained freedom, will accomplish this unparalleled
task.
The need of women's lives is not repression, but the greatest possible
expression and fulfillment of their desires upon the highest possible
plane. They cannot reach higher planes through ignorance and
compulsion. They can attain them only through knowledge and the
cultivation of a higher, happier attitude toward sex. Sex life must be
stripped of its fear. This is one of the great functions of
contraceptives. That which is enshrouded in fear becomes morbid. That
which is morbid cannot be really beautiful.
A true understanding of every phase of the love life, and such an
understanding alone, can reveal it in its purity--in its power of
upliftment. Force and fear have failed from the beginning of time.
Their fruits are wrecks and wretchedness. Knowledge and freedom to
choose or reject the sexual embrace, according as it is lovely or
unlovely, and these alone, can solve the problem. These alone make
possible between man and woman that indissoluble tie and mutual
passion, and common understanding, in which lies the hope of a higher
race.