beyond the purely physical inadvisability, for abstinence during
adolescence. This reason has to do with the mental side of love, as well
as the physical. Young people, stepping into the dawn of love-life, are
naturally prone to fasten their affections on the first person they see.
Or, at least, to fall in love easily, and lightly. The normal girl yields
to a series of tentative love illusions before she meets with a man who
is fitted to become a husband for whom her love will be more or less
permanent. The adolescent girl falls madly in love with a man because
he is a “divine dancer,” because his hair curls in a provocative way,
because of a thousand transient reasons, none of which is a good basis
for future marital happiness. Even if the cause of her love is founded
on a firmer reason, even if the young man she loves is in every way
compatible to her eighteen-year-old psychology, it is unwise to marry
so early. He may be everything desirable in the eyes of the young girl,
they may like the same things, have the same tastes in literature, etc.,
but, still, waiting is wiser. For, the man who completely satisfies the
eighteen-year-old girl may fall far below the standards of the same girl,
when she views him from the pinnacle of twenty-five. The adolescent
girl is unformed mentally as well as physically. Her standards are
necessarily much lower than they will be five or more years later. She
cannot be expected, nor is she able, to look ahead toward the time when
her judgments will be matured, and to choose accordingly. We repeat that
self-restraint is to be greatly desired during the adolescent years.
In general, no girl of today should marry before she is twenty-five. She
can safely wait until she is thirty. By the time she is twenty-five,
she has reached a maturity of judgment that will allow her to choose
a permanent mate with whatever wisdom she can bring to bear upon the
subject. By that time, she is able to find men several years older than
herself more companionable, and this is as it should be. The young girl,
while she may have occasional “crushes” on older men, seeks her friends
and companions from among the boys who are of her own age. Her regard for
older men is more hero-worship than real affection. This would lead her,
if she chose a mate during these formative years, to pick one from among
the boys of her own age. And this is wrong. Men age much less rapidly
than women. Women are older by intuition and psychology than men. Theirs
is the burden of the future of the race, which may account for their
more adult attitude. So that, if a couple marry when they are nineteen
or twenty, and are the same age, ten years later the woman will be much
more mature in her outlook on life than the man of the same age. Here is
where the first seeds of discord are sown. Whereas, if the girl waits
until she is twenty-five, she has had time to realize this fact, and has
already altered her ideas concerning men, and chooses for her friends
men who are three, four, or even ten years older than herself. A girl
of twenty-five marrying a man of thirty stands a much better chance of
achieving permanent happiness than a girl of the same age marrying a man
of equal years.
Self-control during adolescence can be acquired without any unpleasant
effects, and without seeming a burden upon the young people. A
whole-hearted indulgence in all types of athletic exercise goes a long
way toward draining off the erotic energy crying elsewhere for direct
liberation. A devotion to any branch of learning, a hobby of any kind,
acquaintance with the world of nature, all these keep the mind in safer
channels. On the other hand, the way to stimulate these undesirable
emotions is attendance at suggestive shows, reading licentious books, and
indulging in giggled conversations with other girls upon the subject of
sex. The current tendency for young girls toward drinking is also bad,
since it stimulates the erotic energy. The wise young girl will avoid
all this, not prudishly, but calmly and intelligently, until she has
stored her body with the wealth of physical strength and her mind with
the wealth of counter-irritating knowledge. The average young girl does
most of these things because she fears the ridicule of her companions if
she refuses. Her answer can be simple. If she calmly points out that she
knows all of the decent facts about sex, and therefore does not need the
insinuated half-knowledge that pornographic plays and books give, she
will gain the respect, not the mockery, of her friends.
_Over-Indulgence._—Over-indulgence, in anything, is the gravest and
almost the only sin, from the standpoint of the individual. If the young
girl eats too much of her favorite sweet, she is almost sure to pay for
it by stomach ache, or indigestion. This stands equally true for all
ages. We have mentioned onanism. To be sure, most adults deny this fact,
and lyingly state that such was not the habit when they were young. How
much better, then, to admit it as a part of all youthful experience, and
combat it wisely and intelligently, and not to raise horrified hands,
and make the young person feel that she has committed a heinous crime,
the more dreadful because she is the first offender? The wisest and best
course is to avoid onanism altogether. If that is not possible, at first,
go in vigorously for physical and mental distractions, and rigorously
control it, until such a time as you can entirely end it.
Over-indulgence in intercourse is just as costly. This may either be
socially illicit intercourse, or intercourse in the marital state. At
times a married couple contains one or both members with a tendency
toward nymphomania, or excessive desire for men, in the woman, or toward
satyriasis, or excessive desire for women in the man. If the tendency
is too powerful, society is saved, because the parties so weaken
themselves that reproduction is impossible, and death or complete mental
or physical incapacity results. If it is merely a tendency, it should
and must be controlled. Every man and every woman must determine for
himself and herself the frequency of intercourse. Women, in general, are
less harmed by excess than men are. But this does not mean that women
cannot carry it to excess. There is less chance for her doing it, if she
confines her life to one man than if she chooses many men. The general
result of a woman’s over-indulgence is weakened nervous conditions, which
may even terminate in a complete mental breakdown, or in insanity.
_Venereal Diseases._—The two chief venereal diseases are gonorrhea and
syphilis. So far, we have voiced a loud outcry against popular lies
concerning sex. Now we will consider another of these lies, as harmful
as any of the previous ones: namely, that gonorrhea is “no worse than a
cold.” This is commonly accepted among most men and many women, and many
a good-hearted old family doctor will reassure the troubled young man
or woman with the same poisonous mental soothing syrup. Gonorrhea, once
contracted, is extremely difficult to eradicate. Many a man, acquiring it
from a prostitute or promiscuous woman, has infected his innocent wife;
many a man has infected an otherwise clean woman. Worse, many an innocent
girl, thinking because her friend is a gentleman and nice in every way,
has only to be repaid by this disease.
There is a greater penalty than this attached to the disease. The germs
of the disease often attack the eyes of children of parents one or both
of whom are afflicted with the disease. Twenty-five percent of all cases
of blindness are attributed to gonorrhea. This blindness of children is
one of the by-products of a disease casually dismissed as “no worse than
a cold.”
Syphilis, the other chief venereal disease, has been called by eugenists
one of the racial poisons. Any competent medical treatise will go into
details concerning its three stages, its powerful hold, once contracted,
and the details of symptoms and the long, painful and expensive method
of cure. We will only point out that it causes general debility, affects
every tissue and organ, causes skin and bone diseases, as well as
arterial diseases. In its later stages it produces paralysis, blindness,
deafness, disorders of speech, mental enfeeblement, and locomotor ataxia
(a wasting disease of the spinal cord). And this does not exhaust the
list. The penalty of careless pleasure is costly.
Fortunately, the governments of the world are now taking a hand in
eradicating this worst of all diseases. In its first stages, a cure is
comparatively sure; in the later stages, the case is often hopeless.
VII. IDEALISM.
_Chastity._—The average mind defines chastity as abstinence; in this
sense, lifelong chastity is, in most cases, a perversion. The dictionary
defines it as “pure from all unlawful sexual intercourse.” This gives
rise to the question as to what is unlawful. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
has accurately defined chastity, “not abstinence, but selection.” In this
sense, chastity is a virtue.
Most intelligent persons are willing to recognize that our moral
standards are changing. They are changing now at a greater rate than they
have for the last thousand years. Woman is responsible. It has taken that
long and longer for her to acquire enough inner power to set on foot the
forces that could liberate her from her world-wide subjection to man and
his laws. Now the forces have been liberated, and the woman of the future
will be a freer, finer and better rounded human being than the woman of
the dark past was. She has acquired education, a share in the knowledge
of the universe in which she lives. She has acquired a sounder body, more
fit to bear strong children. She has acquired a strong, well-functioning
mind, thereby giving a better heritage of mental aptitude to her
offspring, and thereby making herself more fit as a mother to help them
in their formative years. She has acquired at least a partial control
over the essential purse-strings. She can no longer be bought and sold as
a horse.
She has at last managed to toss aside the old double standard of
morality. Now she can demand of her mate either complete monogamy for
both, or her right to share in whatever laxity he demands.
_Sexual Morality, Present and Future._—The keynote of the new sexual
morality is freedom on both sides. This means, first, freedom from
financial considerations. Love is a deep-rooted instinct, whose fruition
means years or a lifetime of happiness or unhappiness for the individuals
concerned, and the creation, of the men and women of the future. None
of these are purchasable commodities. A man cannot buy a woman’s love,
nor a child of his own breeding to do him honor; neither can either sex
sell these delights. But, in point of fact, this is just what is done in
many cases today, and is what was the common procedure of fifty years
ago. Under the dying regime, a woman had to marry for the best home and
support she could get. There was no other way open to her to obtain these
things. A man knew he could have the best of women for his wife, if he
could pay the price of her support. If a man was poor, he must accept
accordingly. Men bought women to live with and to mother their children;
women traded their loveliness for comfort and ease. Neither could buy
love, and neither ever found it, unless the man found it in his mistress.
But even then, under this ancient order, a man’s mistress looked with
fonder eyes upon his checkbook than upon his face. Why men chose this
beastly course is more than inexplicable, but they did, and it was
entirely of their own making.
Women have a different idea on the subject. They have felt the horror
of the man-made way, and have struggled to end it. They have seen that
the first step toward any equality was to gain economic equality, and
they have wisely fought for that first. Now, they have just achieved it.
Woman, as a class, has achieved financial equality with man. This leaves
them free to set love, and love alone, as a standard of choice for a
mate. The result cannot fail to be wholesomely uplifting to the entire
race. Love is gradually coming to be experienced for love only, and not
for money.
The next revolutionary step is the realization that marriages are not
sponsored by a group of bodiless cherubs, sitting on some remote cloud
in heaven, but are of the earth, earthy, and are consequently human
relationships, of a contractural nature, which may be terminated like
any other human relationship. Our whole method of mating is haphazard
in the extreme; there is no provision for adequate knowledge of the
proposed partner; there is no certainty that this woman or man, thrown in
contact with that man or woman through proximity or unplanned causes, is
a human organism so sensitive physically, mentally, and spiritually that
it can co-operate helpfully with its mate. Men and women are doomed to
make mistakes. We are all willing to admit these mistakes in any field
other than the love field, and would hold a man a fool if he remained
under business contract with a partner absolutely unfitted to associate
with him in that particular enterprise. Yet, we expect persons who make
mistakes in the matrimonial field to stick it out, regardless of the
unfitness of either member of the agreement.
It remains for the new morality to propose a dignified way of terminating
such errors. At the present time, the divorce laws hold in practice
that the man and woman who realize their unfitness for each other, and
determine to secure a divorce, are criminals, guilty of collusion; this
at least is the law in many states and nations. Certain states hold that
the “guilty party” in a divorce action may not remarry. One party to
the action must be considered, legally at least, a social pariah before
any termination of the marital vows will be allowed. This is more than
absurd, it is brutal. Divorce laws in harmony with the new morality will
permit a man and woman, who have erred in their love choice, to part as
friends, rather than as enemies, and will leave no stigma of shame upon
either of them, nor any restrictions as to their future actions.
The third, and most radical plan of the new morality, at least from the
purist point of view, will allow for companionate matings. If a man
or woman, having carefully considered what may be lost or gained by a
wider type of love relationships, determines to risk the experiments
without taking advantage of other women or men, this is an individual
choice; and the new morality, in all matters, is giving the individual
as much intelligent choice as it can, consonant with social safety. Such
adventures are like laboratory experiments in eugenics for the good of
the race; they may result in unhappiness, but the very discovery that
unhappiness has resulted is a social fact which may aid future decisions.
There will be no blame attached to the experiment if it fails, no insult
visited upon the participators. If the reverse is true, and happiness
results, this is also a social fact which may aid future decisions. In
any event, it will be regarded as a legitimate experiment, attaching
praise rather than blame on those who, in the full possession of their
faculties, and after mature consideration, enter upon it.
The first question to arise, in connection with this idea, is that of
the home and the children. Neither of these, in their present condition,
are matters of unusual human glory. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s extended
studies of each are recommended for reading. They offer a new and
intelligent slant upon our homes and our child-rearing. Motherhood is
unquestionably a great benefit to society. It is of greater value to
society than to the individual. Motherhood pensions and similar remedies
are steps toward a social repayment of this benefit. These matters are
all experimental. It is not suggested that any young couple start to
put them into immediate practice. The important thing is to realize
their imminence, and to regard them with something of a scientific
detachment, rather than with a bitter bias and prejudice. All of these
absurd prejudices are alien to human instincts, and are based upon Moses’
translation of thundering over a mountain top. We are tending toward
efficiency in all human concerns upon the industrial field; let us tend
also upon the extension of efficiency to matters concerning the home.
Woman’s work in the home will not always remain the low domestic thing
that it is. Scientific information and the aid of experts are invaluable
in home management and child-rearing, no less than in the rotation of
crops and the development of fatter hogs and slimmer dahlia stems.
Child rearing will some day be included in matters where efficiency and
modern methods will prevail. This may very well involve some form of
institutional raising. If such is the case, it will be wise to understand
in advance that this will date from a period when our culture is
determined by human beings more than by money; and that the institutions
of the future will be administered by those who today make a success of
their individual establishments, rather than by those who today make a
failure of the institutions entrusted to their care. Against this theory,
most persons advance the objection that the majority of present day
institutions are failures. This does not necessarily imply that those of
the future, once wisely conceived, and adequately run, will be failures.
There was a time when any man could start a small furnace and manufacture
steel, if he wished to. Each small manufacturer competed with another
equally small. Some produced good material, others poor. Would anyone
suggest that the U. S. Steel Company be returned to that condition? So
will people of the future, when enlightenment has come to them, realize
the advantages accruing from specialized rearing of children by competent
persons, over the present haphazard system.
There are comparatively few women who are fitted for maternity. It
requires more than love. It requires tact, patience, infinite interest in
the small minds. Not one woman in one hundred is so equipped. Nor, would
fifty percent of the women of today choose maternity, if they thought
they could reject it honorably. Women become mothers, in at least fifty
percent of the cases, first because they do not know how to avoid it,
second because they believed it a social obligation. Many mothers never
learn to love their children, consequently, their care of them is a
drudgery that is ruinous to parent and child alike.
In this one matter of the home, woman is remaining backward. She has
accepted all other advances, but she will not learn to systematize her
home. She hoots at all scientific advice. There have been institutions
working for years to lighten woman’s labor in the home, and not one
woman in a thousand has accepted their findings. Most women sacrifice
their lives to household drudgery, toiling daily over scrub board, mop,
and stove, despite the fact that even now, all of this work can be cut
in half by a small amount of systematizing, and the use of scientific
appliances. The day will come, however, when woman will be converted to
these things, and then her life will be freer for other enjoyment.
_The Purity Ideal._—Nine out of ten of the women who accept the ideal of
virginity as that of purity have no idea where this delusion originated.
The theory of woman’s innocence and purity was launched during the days
of chivalry. Even modern women have a soft spot in their hearts for
chivalry. What was it? Was it the high and noble Galahad belief that
women were superior spiritual beings, far above the touch of mere man?
If so, man’s actions have never proved it. It was not. In a few words,
men put women on a so-called pedestal, not to worship her, but to keep
her from seeing what they were doing. They told her the world was a low
place, and they would shield her from it, and women, blinded by flattery,
fell for the hoax. Men have never really reverenced women. A few have
reverenced one woman, mother, wife or sister. But the fundamental
reason for their so doing was not to do honor to her, but to keep her
ignorant of what they were doing. Men realized, either consciously or
unconsciously, that they could rule the world only so long as women were
ignorant of its customs and habits. An ignorant foe is no foe. Therefore,
so long as women were kept in ignorance, they could not threaten man’s
supremacy.
Face this fact, all women. Stop yielding to the silly, hypocritical sham
of chivalry, and your progress in man’s world will be made in rapid,
shining strides.