I want now, in a final section of this chapter, to consider, as fully as
the limits of my space will allow, the outside facts of
prostitution--that is, the popular view on the subject.
Externally, prostitution exhibits two factors: lust in men and a
dependent condition among women, which makes them surrender themselves
as victims to this lust. This is the accepted, sentimental, and
picturesque description: a sort of compound of sinfulness and pathos,
making a draught, if the truth is faced, not always altogether
unpleasing to women, a fact which surely accounts for the excitement and
veiled pleasurable curiosity with which the subject usually is
approached. For the lust, men are held responsible, and the chaste
characters of women are held up in contrast. Now, it is this view of the
matter which affords prostitution one of its most certain opportunities
of permanency: also it gives women, when they attack it, all the
pleasing satisfaction of virtue that is realized without effort. At the
same time, it explains why they object to repressive measures that are
framed to end it.
During the agitation, for instance, for the repeal of the 40 D Act,
women and women-like men wallowed in righteousness. Never did I hear
more nonsense talked than at the meetings I attended on this subject.
Women's instinctive attitude had a unique chance of displaying itself,
and one wondered at the combined prudery and sentiment with which the
subject was approached, while the most offensive part of their
conventionalism was the sex-obsession, which was clotted, like cream
turned sour, on all their judgments.
Consider again the controversy that has raged with regard to the
providing of prophylactic outfits to our men in the Army and Navy. One
would think this was a simple matter. Precautions taken before, or
within a short time after contact, enormously lessen the dangers of
infection.[141:1] And yet prophylaxis is objected to on the grounds that
it is immoral: that it invites to sexual indulgence by providing
immunity from infection. It is also held to give rise to a false
security.
Really, it is difficult to have patience. Huge sums are being spent in
treating these diseases after they have been contracted, but we must not
give our young men the means whereby they may be prevented from being
contracted. Such miserable prejudice would be funny, unless one
remembers the unconscious cause which gives it so burning a strength.
Some months ago, during the war, I attended a conference to protest
against the giving of prophylactic outfits to the overseas troops. It
was called and conducted by ladies, the incarnation of all the virtues,
effervescing in the most appalling sentimentality I have ever come
across, even at meetings of women met to discuss the morals of men.
Interminable floods of gush! They talked of nothing but purity, its
beauty, its healthfulness, its moral uplifting to the soul of the young
man--its Devil knows what. Venereal diseases were nature's punishment
for impurity; to provide prophylaxis was to insult the pure youth, to
hurry on to sin the youth who was not pure. Such was the pleasing
doctrine slowly and solidly defended, while the real problem of how to
prevent the spread of venereal diseases--especially how to stop the
birth of infected children, was lost in white clouds of virtue. And
many of these women themselves were mothers! When I remonstrated,
attempted to show that the one fact to go for was the prevention of
infection as in that way only could the spread of the plague be stayed
and the innocent saved from suffering with the sinner, I was charged,
denounced, and cut to pieces. I am sure that every one of those good
women pitied me--as a matter of fact, one speaker said frankly that she
was very sorry for my son; plainly they were very doubtful of my virtue.
Since that day I have noted that very few invitations to attend Women's
Conferences have been sent to me.
This shelving of the real facts, of course, is unconscious on the part
of women. The lust of men as the true cause of evil is the one popular
and accepted view of the situation, and from this it follows that the
prostitute is the man's victim, and as such must be protected. This is
highly pleasing; a view depending, as it does, on the moral superiority
of women, which stands them as Amazons of purity on the glorious
mountain heights of virtue, from where they must send down climbing
ropes and ladders, in the form of moral warnings and carefully edited
sexual instruction, possibly made pleasing by cinemas and theater
illustrations, to pull men up out of the deep valleys of vice.
Yet this view is singularly untrue; for if we inquire into this question
of men's lust, it is obvious that not they, but women, are the more
responsible. How often it is woman who awakens this male lust, fans it
to flame, feeds it to keep it at fever heat. Woman indeed must so act,
since nature urges behind; but the prostitute uses this power without
rest, she lives, not indeed sacrificed by men's lust, but kept alive by
it. Always there is the invitation--"Come and find me." To be
provocative is the one fixed simple rule of her life. Men's lust is a
necessity to her very existence. Starving nations do not so eagerly
await the coming of the food-laden ships which will keep them alive as
the prostitute watches for the rising of the male desire. The dismay
when it is reluctant to quicken is as sincere as it is disquieting to
acknowledge. In the final result the woman may be the victim, but at the
start she is the controller of the assault. She directs a continuous
attack; her relation to men is comparable to that of a magnet to a heap
of iron filings.
Most men, it is true, are not only tolerant of women's wiles; they like
them. But most men succumb, I believe, against their will, and often
against their inclination to this tyranny of lust. Men's chivalry as
well as their pride has woven a cloak of silence around this question;
this silence has protected women--even the worst.
There is such a thing as too much temptation for a man; temptation that
a woman has no right to give unless she knows a man loves her and is
ready to marry her. It is damnably hard on men.
The truth in these matters is not often spoken. In spite of the
emancipation upon which they pride themselves, in spite even of much
precocious experience, almost all women lead a shielded life; vast
tracts of experience are usually outside their knowledge or their power
of comprehension. This explains, I think, their belief in the old
fiction that the seduction of men by women does not take place, but all
men know it goes on unceasingly. Women have been shielded by men to an
extent which few of them acknowledge. This is one reason why the best of
them find it so difficult now to face the woman's responsibility in
these problems of sex frankly and simply.
At one time this failure in feminine honesty on the part of so many
advanced women made me angry as it appeared to me to be a conscious
shirking. I know now I was wrong; this attitude is an unconscious one
and this makes it much more dangerous. I fear nothing can change it, at
least, for a very long time. As women's spiritual temperature rises,
their honesty tends to fall, so much sometimes as to freeze their
intelligence.
Women, even the fairest and most advanced, are willing to accept little
shame for a depravity which their sex shares equally with the
inescapable and surrendering enemy--man. Perhaps the position is
unavoidable. I am not certain, and it is very difficult to find the
truth. But no man, I think, could satisfy completely in woman the
craving for dominion, which the delusive humility of his desire awakens.
Then when a woman commits the error--from a womanly point of view--of
hunting down her man in haste for gain, instead of drawing and binding
him slowly and unconsciously by love, she awakens the same instinct for
dominion in the man. It is the lust to devour, to crush, quickened into
being by suggestion. It explains, perhaps, the cruelty of all wild-love.
The position now in relation to the problem we are considering, and
keeping in view these facts of the relationship of the woman and the
man, should be clearer: the spread of venereal disease must be attacked
by restricting the trade of the prostitute. Action must begin there.
Acknowledging frankly women's power over men and the magnitude of the
temptation they exercise, we must accept the best means to control it.
America has proved what can be done. We want strong restrictive laws to
prevent street soliciting and make possible the detention of every
infected person.
Why can't we face the situation now when we are trying to tidy up our
social life. Health, that was necessary in war time, is surely equally
important in peace? Even the prostitute, the professional and the
amateur, will benefit: restrict the opportunities of this easy way of
getting money and presents from men and other ways of living and
obtaining presents must be resorted to. Thus there will be a finer
chance of reformation than ever there was before. To urge moral reforms,
to talk sloppy nonsense about liberty, about the poor prostitute, police
interference, and all that humbug; to seek cover under "the unequal
action of the laws between men and women," or any other form of excuse,
is willfully to falsify the position. For myself, I assert without a
shadow of hesitation, that I would quite gladly be wrongfully accused of
street soliciting, submit to medical examination, be mistakenly detained
in prison or any other indignity, if by so doing I knew I lessened by
ever so little the chance of a syphilitic child being born.
Is the evil to remain uncorrected from one generation to another? That
is the question. Uncorrected evil multiplies itself, and the sum is a
huge national disaster. I wish passionately that I had greater powers to
make you see what to me is so plain. The mistake has been the
muddle-headed thinking that sets apart these diseases from all other
sicknesses of our bodies, obscuring the plain and comparatively simple
question of cure with the entirely opposed problem of punishment; a
confusion and losing of the way that leads inevitably into a
forest-tangle of difficulty and unanswerable questions. And this
heritage of wrong-thinking has compassed our feet, binding them and
throwing us down, as soon as we try to move on, always hindering reform
from generation to generation, and, until that entanglement is broken
through, by bringing into it the light of honest thinking, the evil will
go on, unchecked by our futile tearings here and there at withered
branches. The supporting stem will continue to flourish and the
devastating diseases will be spread.
(See Sir G. Archdall Reid's letter in Appendix.)