Now, a friend who has read this chapter up to this point, objects that I
am laying too great stress on one aspect of the problem, bringing
forward with undue insistence the importance of restricting
prostitution--the removal of the woman tempter as the only practical way
to prevent the spread of sexual diseases. She does not, I think, like my
dismissal of conscious moral striving from a principal place in my
scheme of reformation. That, at least, I gather from what she has said
to me. Stronger, however, than this feeling, is, I am sure, an
unconscious, or at any rate an unacknowledged, irritation at what she
feels to be a failure on my part _to blame men_; I say too little about
their weakness and their lust.
I grant this. In the first place I am convinced of the folly of
preaching to anyone. Then, as I am always asserting, I believe in the
continuous responsibility of woman, and, therefore, if I am to be
honest, I must accept here as in all relations between the sexes, the
validity of the man's plea that rings--yes, and will continue to
ring--through the centuries: "The woman tempted me." We are dealing with
forces that I do not believe can be set aside, forces active long before
human relations were established, which press on women back and back
through the ages. Woman possesses the sacred right of protecting man, it
is a duty imposed upon her by nature, and one that she cannot safely
escape. Let me assert that this is no sentimental statement. The
essential fact in every relationship of the sexes is the woman's power
over the man, and it is the misuse of that power that leads to all
prostitution.