Part 12

Accepting, then, beauty of dress as worthy of encouragement, what shall be done about its sexual attractiveness? This is a difficult question in these days with ever-changing fashions whose novelty makes extreme modes more dangerously attractive than they would be if universally adopted for a long term of years. But permanency of extreme styles or general adaptation of modest ones are absolutely impossible for the average woman of to-day. Hence, we must look forward to one extreme style following another. Young men must face the problem and fight their own battles. Like certain widespread diseases, there is constant danger of infection, and the only hope for young men is in special education as a kind of protective inoculation against temptation. This means that young men should be taught to see beauty in woman's form, face, and dress without allowing themselves to get into habits of sensual or physical emotions. Of course, for the normal young man there is sure to be more or less consciousness of emotions stimulated by the beautiful associated with women, but the individual man may train himself to turn such emotions into æsthetic or psychical lines instead of into those which are sensual, animalistic, or physical. In this connection, I have long been of the opinion that training in art appreciation, especially of sculpture, may help many men to an æsthetic attitude towards the human form.

It is well known that beauty of woman's face or form or dress has sometimes led men into immorality; but I often wonder whether such men of weak control would not have fallen sooner or later at the command of some other form of stimulation. At any rate, such men do not lead us to general conclusions, for there are many more men who have been led upward and not downward by the combined beauty of form, face, and dress of women.

[Sidenote: Duty of women.]

While we refuse to excuse men who allow the sexual suggestiveness of women's dress to overcome their self-control, we should at the same time recognize that women have themselves to blame for much of the existing situation. I believe it is true that the average woman does not understand how dress that makes unusual exposure of the body may make a sexual appeal to men; but there is no such innocence on the part of the demi-mondes by whom many of the most dangerous styles are introduced. Perhaps women of intelligence and good standing may some day come to realize their responsibility for wearing clothing that means unusual temptation for men. However, this seems Utopian in these years when even women of the best groups are wearing equivocal dress; and so men must learn to fight their own battles against natural instincts stirred to greater intensity by dress invented to increase the trade of the women of the underworld.

§ 37. _The Problem of Self-control for Young Men_

[Sidenote: Difference between sexes.]

[Sidenote: Automatic arousing of boys' instincts.]

The problem of control of the insistent passions of normal young men has been unscientifically minimized by numerous writers and lecturers. It should be noted that many of these are men who have long since forgotten the storms and stresses of their early manhood, and others are women who do not know the facts indicating that the sexual instincts young men are characteristically active, aggressive, spontaneous, and automatic, while those of women _as a rule_ are passive and subject to awakening by external stimuli, especially in connection with affection. Such forgetful men and uninformed women are prone to regard the lack of control of many young men as simply due to "original sin," "innate viciousness," "bad companions," or "irresistible temptations"; and they overlook the great fact that maintaining perfect sexual control in his pre-marital years is for the average healthy young man a problem compared with which all others, including the alcoholic temptation, are of little significance. Such being the truth about young men, nothing is to be gained and much is to be lost if older people fail to take an understanding and sympathetic attitude. I question whether any young man has ever been helped through his adolescent crises by such oft-repeated assertions as that "there is no more reason that a young man should go astray than that his sister should," or, in other words, that "continence is as easy for a young man as for a girl of similar age." An observing young man will doubt such statements, and if he has had access to scientific information, he will feel sure that there has been an attempt to influence him by the kind of exaggeration commonly adopted by specialists in moral preachments. The plain truth is that there is a physiological "reason" or explanation, although not a justification for failure of self-control. Even if we accept the improbable statement of some writers that boys and girls are in early adolescence potentially equal in sexual instincts and assuming that they may be protected equally against vicious habits, we must not forget that every normal boy passes in early puberty through peculiar physiological changes that arouse his deepest instincts. I refer especially to the frequent occurrence of involuntary sexual tumescence and to the occasional nocturnal emissions, which processes leave the boy in no doubt whatever as to the nature, source, and desirability of sexual pleasure. Especially is this true of the automatic emissions that usually follow continence of healthy young men, for in connection with such relief of seminal pressure every nerve center of the sexual mechanism seems to be involved in the culminating nerve storm of which the awakening individual is often quite pleasurably conscious. In short, as men looking backward to their early manhood well understand, the physical sensations that come into the normal sexual experience of the adolescent boy are different only in degree of intensity from those which later are concomitants of sexual union. Such, in brief, is the physiological history of the normal adolescent boy, and one who has fallen into even most limited masturbation will probably be still more conscious of the fact that the ordinary sequence of events in the

## activity of the sexual organs leads to intense excitement that has

almost irresistible attractiveness.

[Sidenote: Average young women different.]

Now, most scientifically-trained women seem to agree that there are no corresponding phenomena in the early pubertal life of the normal young woman who has good health. A limited number of mature women, some of them physicians, report having experienced in the pubertal years localized tumescence and other disturbances which made them definitely conscious of sexual instincts. However, it should be noted that most of these are known to have had a personal history including one or more such abnormalities as dysmenorrhea, uterine displacement, pathological ovaries, leucorrhea, tuberculosis, masturbation, neurasthenia, nymphomania, or other disturbances which are sufficient to account for local sexual stimulation. In short, such women are not normal. Such facts have led many physicians to the generalization that the average healthy adolescent girl does not undergo normal spontaneous changes which make her definitely conscious of the nature, source, and desirability of localized sexual pleasure. On the contrary, such consciousness commonly comes to many only as the result of stimuli arising in connection with affection.[18] Clearly it is nonsense to claim that the sexual temptations arising within the individual are equal for the two sexes. Potentially, girls may have passions as strong as boys, but they do not become so definitely and spontaneously conscious of their latent instincts.

[Sidenote: Helping the young man.]

Thus considering the available facts regarding the physiological reasons for the sexual tendencies of men, it seems to me that we gain nothing in trying to minimize the young man's sexual problems, for he is quite conscious that they are insistent. Far better it is that mature men who know life in its completeness should make the young man feel that his problems are not new, not insignificant, and that many another man has met and solved them in such a way as to make life more full of real happiness. Such sympathetic helpfulness will mean something to a young man, but he cannot be led far by one who in his own early experience has not learned both the strength and the mastery of the sexual instincts.

[Sidenote: Women should know.]

In another lecture I have discussed the proposition that it would be better for all concerned if women could have scientific understanding of the physiological facts concerning the sexual tendencies of men, not to make women more lenient or forgiving towards the mistakes of men, but rather to enable women to play an important part in the necessary adjustments through helpful comradeship. This last phrase will mean nothing to many people, but in many a modern home a well-informed wife has been able to lead the way to the satisfactory solution of the fundamental problems of life.

[Sidenote: Self-control in marriage.]

There is another and an all-important phase of the problem of teaching self-control which is commonly overlooked by those who are trying to help young men solve their greatest problems. I have in mind the need of self-control in marriage. Most writers and lecturers who emphasize the arguments for absolute self-control or continence before marriage, omit all reference to marital life. The natural inference, and one widely followed, is that the only moral duty of a young man is to control his intense desires and avoid illicit relations until sexual abandon is permitted under the license of the law and the benediction of the church. Such, I submit, is a fair conclusion for young men to draw from at least ninety per cent of the sex-education literature that is current to-day.

Now, I believe this is all wrong. In fact, I am so radical as to believe that the intelligent women of the world would gain more from temperance and unselfishness and delicacy of men in sexual functioning in marriage than from sexual continence before marriage. Of course, I do not propose that ideal sexual conditions in marriage may justify pre-marital incontinence, but I make this sharp contrast simply to emphasize the belief that sexual intemperance and selfishness of men in marriage causes more mental and physical suffering of women than does sexual incontinence of men before marriage, and I am not forgetting the vast problem of social diseases and prostitution.

I urge, then, that those who attempt to direct young men through the mazes of sexual life should hold up ideals not only of pre-marital continence, but also of post-nuptial temperance and harmonious adjustment between husband and wife. This post-nuptial problem is far more difficult to solve, for the intimacy of married life, especially in the earlier years, is sure to offer stimuli that are likely to make sexual instincts more insistent than those that come from celibate repression. However, self-control and temperance in marriage is no new and unattainable ideal, and harmonious adjustment of men and women in marriage is far more common than the pessimists would have us believe.

§ 38. _The Mental Side of the Young Man's Sexual Life_

[Sidenote: Effect of mental imagery.]

Most of the discussions of the education of young men for moral living have centered around the problem of keeping him from physical sexual

## activity. So far as society is concerned, this is the great

desideratum. So far as the individual life is concerned, it is important that self-control should extend to mental imagery. Professors Geddes and Thomson have well said, in "Sex," that "while anatomical chastity is a moral achievement, it is not the deepest virtue. The incisive declaration: 'Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart' expresses an even more searching standard, and modern science brings home to us the radical importance of our reflex thought and deep-down impulses, which appear to bulk largely in molding our lives and the lives of those who may spring from us." In language adapted to the understanding of average young men, this idea should be emphasized.

In the opinion of some physiologists the greatest harm done to the individual who has long been a victim of masturbation is in the centering of the attention on imaginary sexual situations. This is especially true of mental masturbation. Hence, the relation of masturbation to the possible establishment of a disordered mental state should be known by adolescent boys and young men.

[Sidenote: Control of thoughts.]

It appears from the experience of many men that strenuous work and play are the only efficient weapons for driving sexual images into the background of the mind. This applies not only to sordid and lewd thoughts of unchaste sexual situations, but also to the mental images that are inevitably associated with the purest affection and which should be trained to obey when calm reason so orders.

The following literature will be especially helpful to young men: W.S. Hall's "Sexual Hygiene for Men," or his "Sexual Knowledge"; Exner's "The Rational Sex Life for Men"; Morrow's "The Young Man's Problem," and "Health and Hygiene of Sex for College Students"; King's "Fight for Character" (Y.M.C.A.); and the chapter on Ethics of Sex in "Sex" by Geddes and Thomson.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] The first three pamphlets are published by the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis (New York); the Exner pamphlets by the Association Press (New York).

[18] This is really not surprising if we remember the peculiarities of human instincts mentioned in an earlier lecture (§ 3).

IX

SPECIAL SEX-INSTRUCTION FOR MATURING YOUNG WOMEN

[Sidenote: Parents would limit knowledge of daughters.]

It was my original plan to make this lecture parallel with the preceding one for young men, but much discussion with parents and with scientifically trained women whose suggestions and criticisms I value has shown me that there is no consensus of opinion as to what should be taught to young women between eighteen and twenty-two years of age. I have found many fathers and mothers who think that their boys of fourteen or fifteen should be informed as suggested in the preceding lecture; but concerning some of the facts for boys these same parents were doubtful whether their daughters ought to know before twenty, and some of them have said twenty-five and even thirty. Some of them have said that they see no reason why an unmarried young woman of the protected group should know much more than a very limited amount of personal hygiene; but most of these people were decidedly hazy as to how the young woman about to marry may be sure of getting belated knowledge. In short, all along the line I have found intelligent parents and others who believe in very thorough sex-instruction for boys, but that "nice" girls should be kept as ignorant and innocent as possible. With such disagreement existing, it is evidently not possible to make such specific recommendations as have been made for boys.

§ 39. _The Young Woman's Attitude towards Manhood_

[Sidenote: Women should have ideals.]

Among those who agree heartily with the proposition that by education the young man's attitude towards womanhood (§ 30) should be cultivated I find, to my surprise, many who object to any parallel attempt to influence young woman's ideals of manhood. I say that I am surprised because it has long seemed to me that many of the faults of men are largely traceable to the fact that women as a sex have not been able to hold a high standard for manhood; and, therefore, I wonder when some thinking women question the desirability of trying to influence young women by organized instruction. Of course, we must not forget that before the coming of the economic and social freedom of women there were very few of them who were able to maintain a stand for their ideals of manhood; but this is no longer true in a great and rapidly increasing group of the individualized and educated classes. Therefore, it seems clear that if the better groups of women want a higher type of manhood capable of better adjustment in marriage, it is important that they consider ways and means of molding the minds of young women with reference to ideal manhood.

[Sidenote: Ideals and disappointment.]

Occasionally I have met a strange view of life in some men and women who have grown pessimistic from revelations concerning the sexual-social problems and who think that true manhood is so rare that emphasizing it with young women will lead to ideals that can rarely be realized in actual life; and therefore, for women so influenced there will be increasing discontent and disappointment in marriage or deliberate celibacy. No doubt this is in part true, as witness the many highly educated women who have written or said that there seem to be few attractive marriageable men of their own age. However, it is rare indeed that such women say that life would have meant more without the higher education and its resulting ideals that have stood in the way of marriage such as might be happy for uneducated women. This is in line with the fact that many cultivated men and women find that education has given unattained ideals and unsatisfied ambitions and strenuous life and disappointments, but it is rare that they long for the care-free and animal-like happiness of the tropical savage. We must remember that education gives us keener feeling for life's pains, but it also compensates by giving soul-satisfying appreciation of its joys. So it seems reasonable to believe that while educating young women to believe in and demand a higher ideal of manhood in its natural relations to womanhood will certainly make disappointments more heart-pressing for some, it will just as surely make realization the supreme happiness of others. And as adjustment of manhood and womanhood through the larger sex-education becomes more and more abundant and more and more perfected, the sum total of human happiness will increase.

Looking thus towards the ultimate good, I must refuse to accept the hopeless and depressing view that all young women should be kept ignorant of their relation to men and life in order that the absence of ideals of manhood may protect some women against possible disappointment by men.

§ 40. _The Young Woman's Attitude towards Love and Marriage_

[Sidenote: Reasons not same as for men.]

In the preceding lecture to the parents and teachers of young men I emphasized the importance of developing the young man's ideals of love and marriage primarily because such ideals have so often helped men morally in character-formation and character-protection. I feel sure that this is not the chief reason why the ideals of young women should be developed along parallel lines. On the contrary, it seems to me that those representative women are right who think that the first reason why ideals of young women should be influenced is that there is need of a radical change in the attitude of a very common type of young women who are flippant and disrespectful concerning love and marriage, and whose influence on the morals of men is decidedly bad because they often give unguided young men their first and strongest impressions concerning women. A second reason, which is equally applicable to both sexes, is that advance understanding of the relations of love and marriage is likely to lead to happy and satisfactory adjustment in marriage.

[Sidenote: Men naturally lead in love.]

Perhaps the flippant and disrespectful attitude concerning affairs of the heart develops in many young women because they do not consciously feel in advance of experience the demand for affection which comes so naturally and spontaneously to many, possibly to all, normal young men whose views of life have not been artificially twisted. I fully realize the treacherous nature of the ground on which walks one who tries to compare the two sexes concerning their relative attitudes towards love, but certain it is that the novelist's descriptions of men as the leaders and aggressors in love is not fiction but the common fact of real life. Man's tendency towards leadership in love is not scientifically explained by any superficial assumption that established social conventions have repressed an original spontaneity of women. On the contrary, there are the best of physiological and psychological reasons for believing that the social conventions have arisen as an expression of masculine aggressiveness and natural tendency towards leadership in affairs of the heart. The accepted fact is that many young women have no understanding of or demand for affection until experience has taught them its place in life. In the records of real life, as well as in fiction, many a young woman's possibilities of happiness have been lost because she did not understand herself when love came into her experience.

[Sidenote: Affection in marriage.]

Another side to the problem of the young woman's relation to love and marriage is brought to our attention by the lamentable fact that many wives lose interest in devoted husbands when the children come. This is probably true in at least half the families; and many matrimonial disharmonies are the result. This is really one of the greatest problems of marriage which cultured women should consider seriously; for even more than in most other sex problems, it is one for the solution of which women are in a position to take the leading part. This problem is especially important in these days when the household inefficiency, personal extravagance, and desire for social position of numerous young women of eighteen to thirty are having an enormous influence in advancing the age of marriage because many of the best types of young men pause and consider seriously the impossibility of adjusting a small salary to the ideas of their women friends as to what is the minimum of a family budget. Add to such facts a growing pessimism of young men regarding inconstant affections of wives with children, and the need of special educational attack is evident.

[Sidenote: The duty of parents.]

From whatever side we look at the question whether the larger sex-education should somehow try to mold the ideals of young women with regard to love and marriage, we see reasons why parents should encourage their maturing daughters to get some advance understanding of such relation. If parents are themselves unable to help their daughters to this understanding, they can at least exert great influence by their own attitude, and they can approve the reading of books, and perhaps there may be opportunity for hearing lectures by women who understand life.

[Sidenote: Books.]

With regard to good literature that will help in this line, there are chapters in many of the books mentioned at the end of this lecture, and in more or less indirect form in the general literature suggested in the preceding lectures concerning young men, and in § 12 which deals with the general educational problem of marriage.

§ 41. _Reasons for Pre-marital Continence of Women_

[Sidenote: Many women do not need reasons.]

Many women who have lived protected lives have declared themselves unable to understand why a young woman should need reasons for pre-marital continence; and these women are probably right so far as the great majority of the daughters of families in good social conditions are concerned. As pointed out in earlier lectures, there is abundant evidence that the average adolescent girl who is protected against external sexual stimuli and influenced constantly by the prevailing ideals which demand chastity of women, is not likely to need any arguments why she should avoid pre-marital incontinence. Moreover, there seems to be little danger that the average girl with good social environment will ever question her ideals of chastity unless under the stress of overwhelming affection; in other words, there is little possibility that such women will be interested in the strictly mechanical, non-affectionate, and unsentimental sexual relations which must inevitably characterize the common prostitution of men.

[Sidenote: Unprotected girls.]