"Civilization is bound up with the success of that movement.
The man who rejoices in it and strives to further it is alive;
the man who shudders and raises impotent hands against it is
merely dead, even though the grave yet yawns for him in vain.
He may make dead laws and preach dead sermons and his sermons
may be great and his laws may be rigid. But as the wisest of
men saw twenty-five centuries ago, the things that are great
and strong and rigid are the things that stay below in the grave.
It is the things that are delicate and tender and supple that
stay above. At no point is life so tender and delicate and
supple as at the point of sex. There is the triumph of life."
Havelock Ellis
Our approach opens to us a fresh scale of values, a new and effective
method of testing the merits and demerits of current policies
and programs. It redirects our attention to the great source and
fountainhead of human life. It offers us the most strategic point
of view from which to observe and study the unending drama of
humanity,--how the past, the present and the future of the human race
are all organically bound up together. It coordinates heredity and
environment. Most important of all, it frees the mind of sexual
prejudice and taboo, by demanding the frankest and most unflinching
reexamination of sex in its relation to human nature and the bases of
human society. In aiding to establish this mental liberation,
quite apart from any of the tangible results that might please the
statistically-minded, the study of Birth Control is performing an
invaluable task. Without complete mental freedom, it is impossible
to approach any fundamental human problem. Failure to face the great
central facts of sex in an impartial and scientific spirit lies at the
root of the blind opposition to Birth Control.
Our bitterest opponents must agree that the problem of Birth Control
is one of the most important that humanity to-day has to face. The
interests of the entire world, of humanity, of the future of mankind
itself are more at stake in this than wars, political institutions, or
industrial reorganization. All other projects of reform, of revolution
or reconstruction, are of secondary importance, even trivial, when we
compare them to the wholesale regeneration--or disintegration--that is
bound up with the control, the direction and the release of one of the
greatest forces in nature. The great danger at present does not lie with
the bitter opponents of the idea of Birth Control, nor with those who
are attempting to suppress our program of enlightenment and education.
Such opposition is always stimulating. It wins new adherents. It reveals
its own weakness and lack of insight. The greater danger is to be found
in the flaccid, undiscriminating interest of "sympathizers" who are "for
it"--as an accessory to their own particular panacea. "It even seems,
sometimes," wrote the late William Graham Sumner, "as if the primitive
people were working along better lines of effort in this direction than
we are... when our public organs of instruction taboo all that pertains
to reproduction as improper; and when public authority, ready enough to
interfere with personal liberty everywhere else, feels bound to act as
if there were no societal interest at stake in the begetting of the next
generation."(1)
Slowly but surely we are breaking down the taboos that surround sex; but
we are breaking them down out of sheer necessity. The codes that have
surrounded sexual behavior in the so-called Christian communities, the
teachings of the churches concerning chastity and sexual purity, the
prohibitions of the laws, and the hypocritical conventions of society,
have all demonstrated their failure as safeguards against the chaos
produced and the havoc wrought by the failure to recognize sex as a
driving force in human nature,--as great as, if indeed not greater than,
hunger. Its dynamic energy is indestructible. It may be transmuted,
refined, directed, even sublimated, but to ignore, to neglect, to refuse
to recognize this great elemental force is nothing less than foolhardy.
Out of the unchallenged policies of continence, abstinence, "chastity"
and "purity," we have reaped the harvests of prostitution, venereal
scourges and innumerable other evils. Traditional moralists have failed
to recognize that chastity and purity must be the outward symptoms of
awakened intelligence, of satisfied desires, and fulfilled love. They
cannot be taught by "sex education." They cannot be imposed from
without by a denial of the might and the right of sexual expression.
Nevertheless, even in the contemporary teaching of sex hygiene and
social prophylaxis, nothing constructive is offered to young men and
young women who seek aid through the trying period of adolescence.
At the Lambeth Conference of 1920, the Bishops of the Church of England
stated in their report on their considerations of sexual morality:
"Men should regard all women as they do their mothers, sisters, and
daughters; and women should dress only in such a manner as to command
respect from every man. All right-minded persons should unite in the
suppression of pernicious literature, plays and films...." Could lack
of psychological insight and understanding be more completely indicated?
Yet, like these bishops, most of those who are undertaking the education
of the young are as ignorant themselves of psychology and physiology.
Indeed, those who are speaking belatedly of the need of "sexual hygiene"
seem to be unaware that they themselves are most in need of it. "We must
give up the futile attempt to keep young people in the dark," cries Rev.
James Marchant in "Birth-Rate and Empire," "and the assumption that they
are ignorant of notorious facts. We cannot, if we would, stop the spread
of sexual knowledge; and if we could do so, we would only make matters
infinitely worse. This is the second decade of the twentieth century,
not the early Victorian period.... It is no longer a question of knowing
or not knowing. We have to disabuse our middle-aged minds of that fond
delusion. Our young people know more than we did when we began our
married lives, and sometimes as much as we know, ourselves, even now. So
that we need not continue to shake our few remaining hairs in simulating
feelings of surprise or horror. It might have been better for us if we
had been more enlightened. And if our discussion of this problem is to
be of any real use, we must at the outset reconcile ourselves to the
fact that the birth-rate is voluntarily controlled.... Certain persons
who instruct us in these matters hold up their pious hands and whiten
their frightened faces as they cry out in the public squares against
`this vice,' but they can only make themselves ridiculous."
Taught upon the basis of conventional and traditional morality and
middle-class respectability, based on current dogma, and handed down to
the populace with benign condescension, sex education is a waste of time
and effort. Such education cannot in any true sense set up as a standard
the ideal morality and behavior of the respectable middle-class and then
make the effort to induce all other members of society, especially the
working classes, to conform to their taboos. Such a method is not only
confusing, but, in the creation of strain and hysteria and an unhealthy
concentration upon moral conduct, results in positive injury. To preach
a negative and colorless ideal of chastity to young men and women is
to neglect the primary duty of awakening their intelligence, their
responsibility, their self-reliance and independence. Once this is
accomplished, the matter of chastity will take care of itself. The
teaching of "etiquette" must be superseded by the teaching of hygiene.
Hygienic habits are built up upon a sound knowledge of bodily needs
and functions. It is only in the sphere of sex that there remains an
unfounded fear of presenting without the gratuitous introduction of
non-essential taboos and prejudice, unbiased and unvarnished facts.
As an instrument of education, the doctrine of Birth Control approaches
the whole problem in another manner. Instead of laying down hard and
fast laws of sexual conduct, instead of attempting to inculcate rules
and regulations, of pointing out the rewards of virtue and the penalties
of "sin" (as is usually attempted in relation to the venereal diseases),
the teacher of Birth Control seeks to meet the needs of the people.
Upon the basis of their interests, their demands, their problems, Birth
Control education attempts to develop their intelligence and show them
how they may help themselves; how to guide and control this deep-rooted
instinct.
The objection has been raised that Birth Control only reaches the
already enlightened, the men and women who have already attained a
degree of self-respect and self-reliance. Such an objection could not be
based on fact. Even in the most unenlightened sections of the community,
among mothers crushed by poverty and economic enslavement, there is
the realization of the evils of the too-large family, of the rapid
succession of pregnancy after pregnancy, of the hopelessness of bringing
too many children into the world. Not merely in the evidence presented
in an earlier chapter but in other ways, is this crying need expressed.
The investigators of the Children's Bureau who collected the data of the
infant mortality reports, noted the willingness and the eagerness with
which these down-trodden mothers told the truth about themselves.
So great is their hope of relief from that meaningless and deadening
submission to unproductive reproduction, that only a society pruriently
devoted to hypocrisy could refuse to listen to the voices of these
mothers. Respectfully we lend our ears to dithyrambs about the
sacredness of motherhood and the value of "better babies"--but we shut
our eyes and our ears to the unpleasant reality and the cries of pain
that come from women who are to-day dying by the thousands because this
power is withheld from them.
This situation is rendered more bitterly ironic because the
self-righteous opponents of Birth Control practise themselves the
doctrine they condemn. The birth-rate among conservative opponents
indicates that they restrict the numbers of their own children by the
methods of Birth Control, or are of such feeble procreative energy as to
be thereby unfitted to dictate moral laws for other people. They prefer
that we should think their small number of children is accidental,
rather than publicly admit the successful practice of intelligent
foresight. Or else they hold themselves up as paragons of virtue and
self-control, and would have us believe that they have brought their
children into the world solely from a high, stern sense of public
duty--an attitude which is about as convincing as it would be to declare
that they found them under gooseberry bushes. How else can we explain
the widespread tolerance and smug approval of the clerical idea of
sex, now reenforced by floods of crude and vulgar sentiment, which is
promulgated by the press, motion-pictures and popular plays?
Like all other education, that of sex can be rendered effective and
valuable only as it meets and satisfies the interests and demands of
the pupil himself. It cannot be imposed from without, handed down from
above, superimposed upon the intelligence of the person taught. It
must find a response within him, give him the power and the instrument
wherewith he may exercise his own growing intelligence, bring into
action his own judgment and discrimination and thus contribute to the
growth of his intelligence. The civilized world is coming to see
that education cannot consist merely in the assimilation of external
information and knowledge, but rather in the awakening and development
of innate powers of discrimination and judgment. The great disaster of
"sex education" lies in the fact that it fails to direct the awakened
interests of the pupils into the proper channels of exercise and
development. Instead, it blunts them, restricts them, hinders them, and
even attempts to eradicate them.
This has been the great defect of sex education as it has been practised
in recent years. Based on a superficial and shameful view of the sexual
instinct, it has sought the inculcation of negative virtues by pointing
out the sinister penalties of promiscuity, and by advocating strict
adherence to virtue and morality, not on the basis of intelligence or
the outcome of experience, not even for the attainment of rewards, but
merely to avoid punishment in the form of painful and malignant
disease. Education so conceived carries with it its own refutation. True
education cannot tolerate the inculcation of fear. Fear is the soil in
which are implanted inhibitions and morbid compulsions. Fear restrains,
restricts, hinders human expression. It strikes at the very roots of joy
and happiness. It should therefore be the aim of sex education to avoid
above all the implanting of fear in the mind of the pupil.
Restriction means placing in the hands of external authority the power
over behavior. Birth Control, on the contrary, implies voluntary action,
the decision for one's self how many children one shall or shall not
bring into the world. Birth Control is educational in the real sense
of the word, in that it asserts this power of decision, reinstates this
power in the people themselves.
We are not seeking to introduce new restrictions but greater freedom. As
far as sex is concerned, the impulse has been more thoroughly subject to
restriction than any other human instinct. "Thou shalt not!" meets us at
every turn. Some of these restrictions are justified; some of them are
not. We may have but one wife or one husband at a time; we must attain a
certain age before we may marry. Children born out of wedlock are deemed
"illegitimate"--even healthy children. The newspapers every day are
filled with the scandals of those who have leaped over the restrictions
or limitations society has written in her sexual code. Yet the voluntary
control of the procreative powers, the rational regulation of the number
of children we bring into the world--this is the one type of restriction
frowned upon and prohibited by law!
In a more definite, a much more realistic and concrete manner, Birth
Control reveals itself as the most effective weapon in the spread of
hygienic and prophylactic knowledge among women of the less fortunate
classes. It carries with it a thorough training in bodily cleanliness
and physiology, a definite knowledge of the physiology and function
of sex. In refusing to teach both sides of the subject, in failing to
respond to the universal demand among women for such instruction and
information, maternity centers limit their own efforts and fail to
fulfil what should be their true mission. They are concerned merely with
pregnancy, maternity, child-bearing, the problem of keeping the baby
alive. But any effective work in this field must go further back. We
have gradually come to see, as Havelock Ellis has pointed out, that
comparatively little can be done by improving merely the living
conditions of adults; that improving conditions for children and babies
is not enough. To combat the evils of infant mortality, natal and
pre-natal care is not sufficient. Even to improve the conditions for the
pregnant woman, is insufficient. Necessarily and inevitably, we are led
further and further back, to the point of procreation; beyond that, into
the regulation of sexual selection. The problem becomes a circle. We
cannot solve one part of it without a consideration of the entirety. But
it is especially at the point of creation where all the various
forces are concentrated. Conception must be controlled by reason, by
intelligence, by science, or we lose control of all its consequences.
Birth Control is essentially an education for women. It is women who,
directly and by their very nature, bear the burden of that blindness,
ignorance and lack of foresight concerning sex which is now enforced
by law and custom. Birth Control places in the hands of women the
only effective instrument whereby they may reestablish the balance in
society, and assert, not only theoretically but practically as well, the
primary importance of the woman and the child in civilization.
Birth Control is thus the stimulus to education. Its exercise awakens
and develops the sense of self-reliance and responsibility, and
illuminates the relation of the individual to society and to the race in
a manner that otherwise remains vague and academic. It reveals sex not
merely as an untamed and insatiable natural force to which men and women
must submit hopelessly and inertly, as it sweeps through them, and then
accept with abject humility the hopeless and heavy consequences.
Instead, it places in their hands the power to control this great force;
to use it, to direct it into channels in which it becomes the
energy enhancing their lives and increasing self-expression and
self-development. It awakens in women the consciousness of new glories
and new possibilities in motherhood. No longer the prostrate victim of
the blind play of instinct but the self-reliant mistress of her body and
her own will, the new mother finds in her child the fulfilment of her
own desires. In free instead of compulsory motherhood she finds the
avenue of her own development and expression. No longer bound by an
unending series of pregnancies, at liberty to safeguard the development
of her own children, she may now extend her beneficent influence beyond
her own home. In becoming thus intensified, motherhood may also broaden
and become more extensive as well. The mother sees that the welfare of
her own children is bound up with the welfare of all others. Not upon
the basis of sentimental charity or gratuitous "welfare-work" but upon
that of enlightened self-interest, such a mother may exert her influence
among the less fortunate and less enlightened.
Unless based upon this central knowledge of and power over her own body
and her own instincts, education for woman is valueless. As long as she
remains the plaything of strong, uncontrolled natural forces, as long as
she must docilely and humbly submit to the decisions of others, how
can woman ever lay the foundations of self-respect, self-reliance
and independence? How can she make her own choice, exercise her own
discrimination, her own foresight?
In the exercise of these powers, in the building up and integration of
her own experience, in mastering her own environment the true education
of woman must be sought. And in the sphere of sex, the great source and
root of all human experience, it is upon the basis of Birth Control--the
voluntary direction of her own sexual expression--that woman must take
her first step in the assertion of freedom and self-respect.
(1) Folkways, p. 492.