WHAT CONSTITUTES SEX IMMORALITY?
The average mind, nurtured in apprehensive awe of that race fetish
called Public Opinion, is inordinately afraid of words.
"Atheist," "infidel," "ungodly" are epithets which have been used as
mental clubs, with temporary effect, to beat back the wave of
religious and scientific Rationalism, which punctuated the last
century.
These words have now lost much of their terror, even to the
undeveloped consciousness of the average, because it has been shown
that the God-idea which rational thought fain would substitute for the
old revengeful Deity, has not annihilated the world, but quite to the
contrary has resulted in a happier and higher ideal of godhood than
that which the early Church postulated.
Epithets are the mental bulwarks of the powers of resistance against
Evolution.
Ignorance is fearful of the unknown, and the knights of Enlightenment
have ever had to fight their way through the ranks of abuse and
criticism and misrepresentation.
Free-love is a phrase with which even the most intrepid advocate of
rational thought hesitates to claim affiliation; and yet the goal of
our highest endeavors must be a state of Society where Love, the god,
is free from the mire of corruption, and the bonds of slavery.
Let us not be afraid of so harmless a thing as a word, remembering the
case of the little girl who ran to her mother crying with indignation
because someone had alluded to her as an "aristocrat." She did not
know what the word meant, and so resented it as something undeserved.
When we examine into what the phrase free-love really means, we will
not be so fearful of its sound.
To whom is this epithet most frequently applied?
Is it to the average man who is known to be a Lothario in matters of
sex? Not at all. He is referred to as a "gay bachelor" or as one who
is "sowing his wild oats" or some other phrase, which in no way
affects his social standing.
Is it applied to women of the half-world, to recognized, and legalized
prostitution? Never! It is significant of the real meaning of
free-love that the term is never used in connection with what modern
reform has aptly designated the "white slave" traffic, for the obvious
reason that nowhere is Love so un-free; so enslaved and bound and
murdered as in this phase of woman's degradation.
Nor is the term applied to unfaithful wives, because in this type of
defiance of traditional sex-ethics there is always the spirit of
self-accusation; a tacit, if not open, admission of wrong-doing.
We never hear the awful accusation of "free-lover" hurled at the young
woman who has, what the world calls, "sinned," because, forsooth, she
pays the price of her deviation from social standards (when
discovered) by ostracism, and not infrequently by a broken heart, or
by sinking further into the depths of bondage; and so here again it is
evident that there is no freedom for whatever spirit of love actuates
her conduct.
It must be admitted that the term "free-love" is applied only to those
who openly claim the right to bestow their affections and indulge in
the sex-relationship, independent of the marriage ceremony. It matters
not whether this claim includes but one mate, or several. It is the
demand that they shall not forfeit their right to respect and
morality, which is resented by the many who still conform to
traditional customs, and which general conformity results in investing
the term "free-love" with an unpleasant odor.
Public opinion puts a premium upon deceit.
Such intimate matters as marriage and divorce are really no concern of
any person other than the contracting or the "distracted" parties.
The public is too concerned with trivialities and too little with
Truth. Nothing short of national insanity permits the existence of
divorce-courts, and the necessity for married persons desiring to
live apart, to slander and abuse each other like pickpockets before
they may act upon such a decision.
Some time ago the public press was filled with the minutest details of
the love story of a woman, who had lived for fifteen years hidden from
the world because she loved a man well enough to pay that price.
She might have insisted that the man obtain a divorce from his wife,
to whom he had been married seventeen or more years, and thus win the
approval of society. But this woman placed love above all material
things, and she preferred to take nothing from the wife. The love of
her husband the wife did not possess and, it would seem, did not care
for particularly. When through the accident of the man's death the
story came to light, the press was flooded with letters from prominent
club-women and from clergymen and others, stating upon what terms, if
any, this love-recluse should be forgiven.
Most of them decided that she should not be forgiven; a few seemed to
think that if she "repented" and lived thereafter a "pure" life, she
might in time be worthy of their forgiveness.
Such a spectacle! America will yet share the reputation with England
of being a nation without a sense of humor.
Eagerly the representative members of society "rush in where angels
fear to tread" upon any and all occasions to air their opinions upon
other people's conduct and thus prove their own virtue.
The fact that this woman was not in any position to be forgiven or
unforgiven; that she was sublimely unconscious of and wholly
indifferent to their opinions; that she was unaware of any necessity
for either shame or repentance; seems not to have entered the silly
brains of these keepers of the public morals. She had loved one man
with a fidelity, a whole-heartedness, and a loftiness of
self-sacrifice which are as rare as they are great in these days of
pretense and hypocritical virtue, and she had paid the full price for
her idealism. She did not repine or regret. She only suffered, not
alone because of her unenviable notoriety, but because Death had taken
her loved one from her. Surely this was indeed an evidence of real
love in an unreal civilization, which should have brought out the
fearless sympathy and approval of every good woman in the land. It
should have been food for sermons in every pulpit in Christendom, that
a modern woman preferred solitary confinement with the man she loved
to the usual method of procedure, which insists upon the respectable
position of wife, no matter at what cost to another.
But this is Society's estimate of Love and Truth and Virtue, and it is
small wonder if real people become indifferent to Society's feelings.
If the term free-love were really synonymous with sex-promiscuity, we
would hear it used in connection with those whose frequent divorces
are the subject of press comment, but we do not, because by their
outward concession to established ethics they subscribe to the demands
of Convention.
The term, in its opprobrious sense, is almost always applied to women,
because for many centuries the men have claimed their right to
personal liberty in matters connected with the sex-relation, and until
women of the self-respecting and educated class began to openly
emulate the example of the male, there was no occasion to use the
phrase. Men come under its lash only when they, too, concede to women
the right to respectability notwithstanding defiance of tradition.
All of which goes to prove that the public mind is in reality
sufficiently clear on the matter of distinction between sex
promiscuity and free-love. It is likewise obvious that the opprobrium
that attaches to the phrase is not aimed at promiscuity but at the
claim to personal liberty in matters of the sex-relation and defiance
of Public Opinion which demands either ostensible concurrence in its
standards, or punishment for openly transgressing them.
The result of this unjust (and unfit, in the light of our other
advanced ideas) attitude toward the most important function of life,
has resulted in one of two lines of conduct as woman's only free
choice.
Either she must resort to deception, hypocrisy and pretense, shielding
her secret excursions into forbidden paths, by feigning a scorn and
abhorrence for the doctrine of free-love, the while she secretly
indulges her sex-nature, more or less promiscuously, or else she is
forced to repress all her natural instincts, and not infrequently
these instincts are abnormally strong because of pre-natal and
inherited influences.
Both of these courses, the only two which are open to the average
woman, are disastrous to the sex, and through them to the race,
because women are the mothers of men, and any course which binds and
fetters the free spirit of woman hampers race-improvement.
Repression of the natural functions of her being results in physical
disease, and ultimately in mental weakness. Unnatural expression of
the sex-function, under the ban of compulsion, whether through the
compulsion of marriage or through the more flagrant type of commercial
prostitution, is death to the best development of the race.
Women, through the urge of economic necessity, or through the
religious ideal of wifely submission and fidelity to their "Lord and
Master" have been compelled to develop a craftiness and an artificial
"modesty" which, in most cases, passes for femininity, and deceives,
as it is intended to do, the average man.
For centuries, a woman's only profession was matrimony. Her education
for this profession consisted first of all of complete ignorance of
all that relates to the most intimate and most vital part of her
nature--the function of sex. In the occasional instances where she had
inherited a degree of mentality which could not be dwarfed, she must
at least feign ignorance; and so, while secretly aware of every
emotion of the male, and covertly playing upon his sex-nature in her
task of "catching a husband," it is small wonder that women have
developed the traits of the cat animal, and are frequently both
treacherous and cruel.
Indeed, it is only because the Female Principle is the attracting and
conserving power of the bi-une sex-love, that she has broken through
these mental fetters, and in a few rare instances has hurled defiance
at the devils of convention and tradition and claims justification of
her own sex-nature, and her right to her own person, despite the
epithet of "free-love."
Woman's partial emancipation in some instances has, no doubt, "gone to
her head," as it were, and we see many women confounding license with
liberty; mistaking passion for Love; and exchanging restraint for
debauchery.
The average woman is either almost entirely lacking in sex desire or
she is abnormally active in that function. In truth, the same state of
affairs prevails here, as in so many other phases of our modern life,
namely, there is no balance. We are a civilization of extremes; we are
one-sided, abnormal; distorted. We are seeking the pivotal point of
our destiny, which is the soul, but few have reached that point. Those
who have not, are groping through the jungles of the mental plane of
consciousness, upheld on the one hand by the upward trend of their
being, which seeks the level of the soul-conscious state; and held
back on the other hand by the trammels of the sense-conscious type
from which the race has developed to its present condition.
Those instances where women indulge in excesses are comparatively rare
in proportion to numbers, and they loom large in perspective because
of their very incongruity with our ideals of womanly conduct. The vast
majority of women may be safely trusted to use their sex-freedom, when
it shall have truly arrived, for the purpose of finding that one and
only mate which their souls instinctively know to be our rightful
heritage--the proverbial "pearl of great price" which insures
immortality in the bliss of union with our Beloved.
Love, when freed from the illusions of sense; from the shackles of
commercialism; from the bonds of error regarding the meaning and
purpose of marriage; freed from selfishness and licentiousness; will
solve the question of sex-promiscuity. This for the obvious reason
that Love seeks its own. If left free to seek, it will find.
But, if sex promiscuity is far from being free-love, if the doctrine
of sex freedom is fraught with many dangers under our present social
system, it must be conceded that no one method of social evolution,
thus far devised, can be recommended as ideally perfect. The best that
we can hope to do is to emphasize the importance and the sacredness
and the innate purity of the sex-relation, while conceding to both
sexes all the personal liberty possible.
And above all, we should avoid condemnation of those who claim the
right to freedom, lest we cover up a condition which can but be the
better for being open to the light. Particularly should we shield
women from the charge of immorality, and licentiousness, when we see
them straying down the by-paths of the senses, in their quest for
freedom, remembering that the centuries of repression and submission
and consequent deception have left their mark upon woman's
temperament.
Man has for ages boasted of his sex virility; of his conquests in what
he has termed "love." Not infrequently a man's choice of a wife is the
result of much seeking in the garden of Life; and much sipping of the
honey from the various flowers that grow therein. Often, indeed, a man
frankly tells the woman he would marry that he knows he loves her
above all other women for the convincing reason that he has tried so
many and none have held him. Should a woman make the same confession
and draw the same conclusion, he would be horrified.
It must be admitted, then, that the term "free-lovers" is applied only
to those who defy Public Opinion and claim their right to respect and
morality despite their defiance of Society's false standards of
morality. These standards are false because they are based upon
criticism and censure of results instead of upon motives.
Society ignores, if it does not actually encourage, frivolous
flirtations, and frowns most harshly upon instances of real love. It
sets the seal of disapproval and ostracism upon those who, because of
circumstances or possibly because of indifference to man-made laws,
take their affairs into their own hands and refuse to exhibit either
penitence or shame when the world discovers that they neglected the
marriage ceremony. If two persons truly love each other and there is
nothing to interfere with their undergoing the publicity of a marriage
ceremony, well and good, unless, indeed, it is a matter of principle
with them that our social customs are a fetich. But there are
innumerable instances where there are obstacles to unions which to
overcome would involve hardships and suffering to others, or where
absurd laws prevent marriage, and where two persons loving each other,
prefer to pay the price of social ostracism to separation. Such as
these lose nothing by Society's disapproval, but Society does lose
something by persecuting those who are independent enough and honest
enough to act from motive, rather than from custom, and who insist
upon maintaining their self-respect, in the face of criticism.
Self-respect is not related to braggadocio.
It must be admitted that as yet there are few persons who have the
courage to endure martyrdom for their convictions, which is, perhaps,
just as well, because the majority are unable to distinguish between
brazen shamelessness and unashamedness. The average woman will stick
to the safe habit of dissembling.
Women have learned the lesson of the cat too thoroughly to jump
immediately from the back-yard of Deception to the front porch of
Truth.
In this one respect at least, however much she may indulge her desire
for frankness in other directions, a woman will lie valiantly,
self-protectingly, and continually, even though she follow in secret
the example of the cat, which (seeing its master come home from the
hunt with a string of birds, and displaying, with much pride and
satisfaction, the results of his prowess), conceived the idea that it
would also be a fine thing for her to go forth and kill the canary.
But to tabby's surprise, her ability was rewarded with chastisement;
whereupon she pondered the question over and over: "How can it be,
that what is virtue in man is vice in a cat?"
We are not told in the story what conclusion she arrived at, but we
can imagine that her conclusion was that which women have arrived at,
in a similar situation, to wit: man is unjust and unreasonable, but he
is also stronger than I am, and therefore, while I shall follow his
example, I shall take good care to hide the feathers.
In the meantime, we are crossing the bridge that leads from the
jungles of our animal nature, where prowl the beasts of deceit; greed;
selfishness; sensuality; vanity; avarice; and domination; to the
Heights, illumined by Love set free.
Let us not jostle and crowd each other too harshly, while we are en
route.
But, of course, we are confronted with the pertinent query as to what,
if any, absolute standard of morality there can be in matters of the
sex relation. Freedom is so easily misconstrued into implying
sex-promiscuity; and monogamy, the final survival of the various
systems of marriage, has in its modern as well as in its ancient
aspect so much of coercion; and coercion is cited as the insuperable
obstacle to attainment of the supreme state of spiritual sex-union,
that the would-be initiate becomes confused, and is lost in a maze of
paradoxes.
Moral distinctions are too fine for the undeveloped man-animal, and
that is the reason why man-made laws have been necessary. The
objection to them is not in their original intention, but in their
failure to die after they have become senile.
Moral standards are as unstable as the shifting sands of the sea.
"Our moral sentiments," say Letourneau, "are simply habits incarnate
in our brain, or instincts artificially created; and thus an act
reputed culpable at Paris, or at London, may be, and frequently is,
held innocent at Calcutta or at Pekin."
And Emerson, the intellectual Seer, says: "There is a soul at the
centre of nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us
can wrong the universe."
It is a colossal piece of impudent presumption, when we come to think
about it, for Man to ask the Supreme, Absolute, Infinite Power to
forgive him. But, if we cannot wrong the universe, we can and we do
wrong ourselves and each other as mortals.
That is the whole gist of the story. We are constantly wronging
ourselves and each other and calling upon God to support us in our
strife when God cannot know aught save the call of Love.
The growing, evolving race, has found it necessary to establish
certain loosely defined codes of morals and of social ethics, in the
same way that man has bridled the horse that he may control him;
incidentally, we may observe that where this bridle formerly included
"blinders," it now permits the horse to see whither he is going.
Perhaps a brief survey of the standards of sexual morality which have
upheld (or down-held, just as we look at it) the human race until now,
may be illuminating.
It has been disputed, if, under the matriarchal system of polygamy,
the moral condition of the people was higher than under the
patriarchal system, and probably no satisfactory conclusion can be
reached upon this point, save and except that any condition, however
primitive, which permitted to the female freedom of choice, must be
better than that in which she is the object of coercion. This is
evident, because the degree of coercion can never, under any
circumstances, be as great with the male as with the female.
Therefore, matriarchal polygamy is comparatively more nearly moral
than is patriarchal polygamy, and when all is said and done, historic
morality is comparative.
But from the standpoint of modern idealism matriarchal polygamy seems
to be a very low estimate of moral conduct; and from the standpoint of
sexual idealism it is a low standard; a standard only a degree higher
than that of patriarchal polygamy--a standard which is the lineal
descendant of the ethics of the marriage-by-capture period of human
evolution, and from which we are today by no means free, owing to
economic, religious, and ethical conditions.
There is a tacit acknowledgement on the part of the unorganized
brotherhood of the Enlightened, that laws are made for the guidance of
the masses. Unbridled ignorance is a dangerous force; as dangerous as
an unbridled horse, unless it be that the horse exhibits intelligence
enough to know where it is headed for and how to avoid obstacles en
route.
And even as the laws of a community are made for the intellectually
undeveloped, so the commandments were compiled for the spiritual
guidance of the uninitiated.
We trust that it will not shock the sensibilities of the "pious" when
we affirm and maintain and insist that the ten commandments are not
"from God" in the letter of the statements, as postulated by Theology.
They bear all the earmarks of the ancient Hebrew race-mind, which
placed a man's "neighbor's wife" in the same category with "his ox and
his ass and his house" and his other property and possessions.
There is but one commandment of the Most High God, alias Eros, and
that is so interwoven into the fabric of creation that we cannot break
it if we would, although we may and do break ourselves in trying to
live in defiance of its immutability.
"We cannot wrong the universe!"
Our moral standards, in so far as they relate to the sexes, are at
present the logical descent of Hebrew adherence to phallic worship,
engrafted into the Roman outgrowth of the God-idea. Both the Hebrew
and the Roman customs maintained the inferiority and the consequent
subjugation of woman, despite the fact that the Roman Church exalted
the Virgin as a personality; but the postulate of the Church that Mary
was so exalted by a miracle, which never could be repeated, killed any
forlorn hope which might have lurked within the female breast
regarding a possible emulation of her example. No other woman might do
more than cringe and crawl and beg and whine; or cajole and wheedle
and buy the Holy Mother's intercession, which intercession, even if
successful, could at best but secure her an eternal job in the
Heavenly hierarchy, where, sexless, companionless, mateless, anaemic,
she could look all day at a male God whom she could never presume to
reach.
Rather a lonesome outlook for eternity, and it is small wonder that
woman got discouraged at the prospect. The miracle is rather that she
endured it so long.
But the Roman system had at least one virtue. It instilled into the
mortal mind of its people a sub-conscious realization of the ideal of
monogamy; not an ideal monogamy by a long way, but a monogamic ideal.
They are quite different; but inasmuch as it is an outward semblance
of a more spiritual conception of marriage than that of polygamy, it
is the highest ideal yet realized for the many, and does duty in our
present day and age, as consistent with our superior civilization.
Monogamy at least pretends to be a marriage by mutual consent; and
even in the pretense there is the germ of a hope; but it would be
folly to deny that underneath this appearance of marriage by mutual
consent we see the remnants of the traditional idea of the right by
purchase, and therefore we have the jealousy that arises by virtue of
our property rights.
The right by purchase assuredly underlies our present-day marriage
system, although it is disguised as economic necessity; as a religious
sacrament; and as a suitable or a brilliant "catch"--a type of
marriage by capture which forms the ideal of our own upper-class women
and which the housemaid copies in her limited way.
Viewed from the surface evidence, the average woman of today is, as
Kipling says, far "more deadly than the male." She is more
unscrupulous in her methods; more unreasonable in her demands; more
devoid of sentiment or sympathy; more fickle in her desires and more
nagging in her complaints. But, when all is said and done, we must
admit that woman is only expressing her inheritance. When she becomes
balanced, the sexes will meet on common ground.
Woman's demand for better physical environment; for more comfort, and
more justice; presages, after all, a higher and a more satisfactory
idea of the marriage relationship. Underneath this materialistic
demand, there is the silent voice of the soul calling for a more
ideal marriage relation. It is the materialistic expression of a
spiritual urge and will in time rise to higher ground. It is a demand
for a better state than that which our grandmothers enjoyed, or
endured.
We have seen in the history of marriage, that the estimate of sexual
immorality has been based, all too frequently, upon woman's disregard
for the rights of her husband in her person.
For centuries the burden of sustaining a sexual moral standard has
rested almost wholly upon the shoulders of the women; and it is
therefore natural that the present-day defiant attitude of many women
toward the traditional standard should be viewed with alarm; and there
is more in this thought of alarm than the mere anxiety on the part of
man to hold woman to her appointed task of guardian of marital
morality.
Although men may wander from the home and fireside, it is a peculiar
fact that they generally hold to a mental string by which they may
find their way back again, very frequently the more contented to be
there for their wanderings. But with a woman it is different. Once a
woman has broken loose from the ties that have bound her to her
inherited post of morality-preserver, she seldom goes back again, but
keeps on her way until she finds that for which she seeks, or gives up
the search of her own volition.
Is this, then, evidence that it is a woman's first duty to "stay put"
when matrimonial exigencies have placed her in a specific "pocket" of
the matrimonial billiard-table?
We believe not; and this belief is founded upon the fact that the
female principle, which is, we admit, the centralizing, centripetal
force in the cosmos, is not always manifested in the form of woman.
The balanced individual is bi-sexual, even as the balanced "twain-one"
is bi-sexual. If man was all male principle, and woman all female
principle they would not be complementary, but antithetical. Each must
be balanced within himself and herself before they can merge into each
other.
Affinities are numerous, but mates are found but once; otherwise, the
problems that are being discussed here would never have arisen.
If, then, as has been shown in the fact that only counterpartal unions
are real, eternal and spiritually indissoluble; and that only true
mates can thus unite, and when thus united have no desire to wander,
what becomes of our ideas of sexual infidelity?
Since the very law of the Cosmos has seen to it that we cannot be
untrue to the only one who seemingly has a right to our fidelity in
the sex relation and since this union can become general only by
freeing love from bondage, what becomes of the laboriously built up
ethics of our social intercourse?
Are they to be abandoned as of no value?
We can almost hear the storm of protest which the righteous reader may
feel in duty bound to let loose at such a suggestion, if for no other
reason than that protest is the accepted way of proving one's own
virtuous tendencies.
In the early seventies, a woman named Virginia Woodhull brought down
upon her defenseless head the un-Christian-like abuse of the Christian
public by announcing a doctrine which seems to have been nothing more
dreadful than that of an equal standard of morality for men and women.
The poor woman died broken-hearted, it is said; and yet nothing that
we can unearth regarding her personal life and habits would seem to
have warranted the cruel gibes that were hurled at her. The dear old
lady lived a most continent, even ascetic life.
But the world has made rapid strides since that time, and we trust
that the urgent need of something reasonable and feasible upon the sex
question will inspire the reader to an unprejudiced review of this
chapter. We would that it were possible to supply a modicum of
understanding with each copy of this volume; but since it is not, we
must take our chance with the average. Let us reason together:
Expediency is the mother of morality in social organizations, which
have, of necessity, unstable, ever-changing standards. These standards
represent, for some, ideals yet to be attained; while for others they
become mere mileposts on the path of Evolution. The individual
reaches, and then passes, an accepted ideal; gradually when a
sufficient number, constituting a majority, have reached this ideal,
it ceases to be a standard for the social organization, and another
ideal is substituted.
The laws of the cave-man called for self-restraint exercised toward
his own immediate clan, and this necessity for self-restraint was
based upon nothing higher than the law of self-preservation; but
gradually the sphere widened; from clan to nation. So do our ethical
and moral standards enlarge. Traditional concepts are not necessarily
wrong, but they are almost sure to be inadequate to evolving Mankind.
Formerly, sexual morality consisted of the reservation of the person
of a sister to the use of her brothers. Any infringement upon this
moral code was punished by death to the woman and to her out-clannish
lover.
And we have today an analogous example, although we are glad to say,
it is not the highest standard; still, if one's husband or wife
violates the marriage vows, it is more condonable, if the
co-respondent be of the wealthy class; and in monarchies it is
accounted an honor to have been selected as the king's favorite.
The institution of prostitution which exists everywhere today has its
standards in the different countries; and the white races seem to
think that their morality is superior to that of the Orientals because
the social standing of prostitutes in the Orient is not irretrievably
lost; they are permitted, in the event of marriage, to resume social
equality with other women. Among white people, prostitutes have no
other recourse than to sink lower and lower, until utter degradation
is reached.
We believe that the Oriental view of the situation is a far higher
standard of morality than is our Occidental attitude.
If there can lawfully be such an organization as is now being proposed
as desirable in large cities, namely, a "morals police," it certainly
should be instigated by a more sane purpose than that which is at the
root of our present police guardianship.
Attempts at suppression of prostitution have hitherto been conducted
on the principle that the women of that class are objectionable to the
sight of our mothers and sisters and wives, and the sinfulness of the
hopelessly "fallen" ones has been the theme of press and pulpit. And
all the time the women of the half-world have resented this attitude
as being unjust, and unfair, and hypocritical, and untenable. They
have known that if the act of selling their bodies to men is a crime
against the community, then more than half the feminine world is
criminal. And they have contended that since the "respectable" women
were neither contacted nor exploited by them, they cannot see wherein
they offend society, provided the laws of sanitation and segregation
are complied with.
In other words, they have said that it is none of Society's business
whether they sell themselves to one man or to a number, since they
must pay the penalty. And their attitude is relatively right. It is
none of Society's business whether a woman is a prostitute or not,
considered as an offense against Society. That is the wrong attitude
toward this condition of our social disorder.
No prostitute offends you or me. She, poor creature, offends herself,
and we offend her and ourselves by permitting social conditions that
make for such degradation. We are conniving with her to barter her
birthright of freedom and real love for food and shelter, and taint
and tinsel, whenever we encourage marriage on any other ground than
that of true love, and when we regard virtue as a matter of physical
contact.
If we judge from the many plays which we see on the boards; if we are
influenced by the press and the pulpit; we must acknowledge that the
general idea of sexual morality is an absurd one. The inference is
that one special organ of a woman's physical body is the sole
custodian of all virtue and all morality. The accepted idea seems to
be that if a woman is married her body is then the property of her
husband. Her emotions, her mind, her heart, her happiness, her
preferences do not count for anything. The one act is made
all-important. On the husband's side, if he provides for his wife and
family, he is justified in exacting the sole right to the wife's body,
and although his own heart and caresses may be given to another, he
justifies himself, and the wife not infrequently feels satisfied, as
long as he provides well for her. What is this but prostitution? The
principle is the same as in the case of the recognized prostitute,
although the conditions are easier for the woman, and less cheapening
of her womanhood, but the difference is only in degree.
Now, a singular idea of fidelity, a direct antithesis to the one just
mentioned, prevails among prostitutes, when married either by law or
by selection.
They may surrender their physical body to another, for money, and
according to their idea they may yet remain true to the husband or
lover, because the matter is a business transaction. The other man has
only what he has purchased, namely, the physical body. But should the
woman permit another man to arouse in her a sexual response; should
another invade her mind, absorb her thoughts, or engage her heart, the
husband is outraged and the woman realizes her unfaithfulness.
All of which goes to show that up to the present time sexual morality
has in itself no absolute uniform standard by which it can be measured
and satisfactorily and convincingly presented to all persons, as have
other phases of morality, such as honesty, justice, mercy, generosity,
friendship, fidelity to country, and self-sacrifice to the good of
humanity.
And although all these moral qualities have their bearing upon sexual
morality, they do not establish a uniform ideal of sexual morality.
Honesty is honesty whether in Paris, London, Calcutta, or Pekin, but
as has been previously observed, sexual morality is determined by
local conditions.
Can there, then, be established a universal standard of sexual
morality? There can, but its universal acceptance is a remote
probability, albeit it will arrive some day.
First of all, the sex relation must be absolutely free from sale;
coercion; or barter; whether within the respectable "sale" of
matrimony or of recognized prostitution. It must be free from any
erroneous idea of marital duty; it must be exalted, reverenced,
deified, in all its aspects, from the impregnation of a plant, to the
sexual embrace of human lovers.
An Utopian dream it appears, if we note but one side of the picture.
If we consider the lightness with which so many men look upon the
physical form of women; and if we realize the attitude of so many
women toward men, in their conflict with life, using the age-old dowry
from mother Eve, of sex, as a weapon of defense and of offense; if we
listen to the ribald songs that offend our ears and nauseate our
souls, not only in music-halls and on the streets, but in supposedly
cultured homes; and above all if we contemplate the uncleanness of
mind displayed by those who are really in earnest in their endeavor to
uplift the moral tone of the world.
These latter are, by far, the worst enemies to the Regeneration of
Sex. A wise man once said, "Save me from my friends; I can protect
myself against my enemies"--and so it is in this instance.
Most "Civic-Leaguers" and members of "Vice-Commissions" (why that
name, anyway?) are infected with the bacteria of sex-degradation.
They really require a lengthy process of mental disinfection, before
attempting to handle so delicate a problem as this one of sexual
uplift.
A woman member of a Young People's Civic League of the second largest
city in the United States recently declared in public print, of the
beautiful and chaste painting "September Morn," that it was "lewd,
filthy, and suggestive of unclean things." This type of woman is
intrusted with the task of teaching youthful minds; polluting them
with the blasphemous affirmation that the Creation of the
Father-Mother God of the universe is "lewd and filthy!"
Let us get this truth implanted in our mentality, as it is inrooted in
our souls, namely:
Sex is always the purest, the holiest, and the most sacred thing in
the universe--because God is Him-Her-Self, bi-sexual. The
righteousness of it cannot be determined by so fickle a thing as man's
customs; cannot be dependent upon mortal laws. This statement,
indisputable as it is, will nevertheless start a chain of thought
which may lead to confusion; and it is because of this tendency to
confusion that the real issue is so frequently avoided. But let us see
if we may not dispel the confusion by a system of logical deduction.
One thing is certain. The present condition of the Sex-problem is
sadly chaotic. If we cannot hope to clarify it to the comprehension of
the average, we may at least do so for some.
One of the first objections to the acceptance of the statement that
the sex relation is, per se, always right, will be found in the
conclusion to which the average mind immediately jumps: "Ah, then it
is right for men and women who are depraved and licentious to live as
they do; it is right for husbands and wives to deceive each other, and
while pretending to be faithful to their marriage vows, to secretly
carry on flirtations and intrigues with other men and other women!"
Ask one hundred men or one hundred women this question: "Is the
sex-relation right or wrong?"
The men will declare that it is "right sometimes and wrong sometimes."
The women, almost as a unit, will do the same. Occasionally a woman
will be found sufficiently illumined to give a sane answer.
Following up the thoughtless answer with the request to illustrate,
and the reply will be something like this: "Well, if people are
married it is right, but if they are not married it is wrong;" and
even as this silly answer is given, the person answering knows that it
is puerile; but since the Public Mind prefers hypocrisy to Truth, few
have the temerity, and fewer yet have the capability, to utter Truth.
It would be as sensible to say that it is right for the sun to shine
sometimes and wrong for it to shine some other times. It is right for
the sun to shine. This is all the answer that there is, and all that
is needed.
Whether the sunshine bestows life and health, or decay and death, is
entirely "up to us." The sun does its part. It is fulfilling the
inexorable law of Nature, and is therefore right.
But of even greater importance in the universe is this law of sex. The
law is forever and always right. Our concept of it may be right or it
may be diseased. As a matter of fact it is, in all too many cases,
diseased. If it were not, there would be no disease in the world.
How is it possible to have a perfect flower--a healthy, normal and
wholesome sprout from a diseased root?
The root of all life is sex. We have thought disease into it, and the
only remedy is to change our thought toward the function. This may be
done by realizing that the sex-relation is always pure, holy,
sacred--the bi-une God of the universe. This statement is quite
different from saying that people are always right or sacred in their
sex-relations.
To say that the sex-relation is always right under the institution of
marriage and always wrong outside of it, is a lie. A lie cannot bring
back health to either a person or a principle. Truth is the only thing
that can make us whole--and the first office of Truth, as everyone
knows, is to make us free. We cannot be whole until we are free, and
the essential thought to be free from, is an attempt to keep alive the
lie that the righteousness of Sex, per se, depends upon marriage.
Does the libertine believe in the sacredness of sex? Never. Does the
prostitute claim for herself spotless purity? If she did, she would
not sell herself for money.
Do men and women who are living in secret unfaithfulness hold exalted
ideals of sex?
If they did, they would not maintain a life of deceit.
These people live as they do, because they have divorced sex from
love. They agree absolutely with the blind "moralists" who regard Sex
as a human plaything--something which may be called bad one day and
good the next, according to whether it is viewed from afar or near.
Does anyone imagine that when Society shall have established the "one
standard of morality" replacing the double standard which now
persecutes the woman only, for infringement upon Society's one demand,
that of concealment, that the answer to sex-degradation will have been
found?
A single standard is an improvement upon the old habit of stoning the
woman only and letting the man go free. But why stone anybody?
History fails to record a single instance where Society has succeeded
in improving either itself or its victims by the procedure. The best
that can be said of the stoning habit is that it distracts attention
from ourselves.
Persons who hold exalted ideas of the function of sex, realizing that
a force so eternal and universal must be disassociated from man-made
regulations, are not in danger.
Such as these will not foster deceit nor profligacy, any more than
they will cringe and crawl under the lash of Society's disapproval,
should they encounter it. They know that if they would find the
highest good, they must serve Truth first of all, no matter how high
the price of such devotion.