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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78407 ***
+
+
+
+
+                         LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 846
+                       Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
+
+                          Womanhood: The Facts of
+                          Life Revealed to Women
+
+                              Gloria Goddard
+
+                       HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
+                              GIRARD, KANSAS
+
+                             Copyright, 1927,
+                          Haldeman-Julius Company
+
+                  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+                                              Page
+
+    I. The Opening Door of Womanhood             5
+
+         Adolescence                             5
+
+         Essential Education                     8
+
+         Adolescent Training                    11
+
+   II. The Origin of Love                       16
+
+         Natural Love                           18
+
+         Romantic Love                          19
+
+         Marital Love                           20
+
+         The Pyschological View of Love         21
+
+  III. Mating                                   23
+
+         Woman’s Equality                       23
+
+         The Right of Choice                    25
+
+         The Child Problem                      27
+
+         Moral Codes                            29
+
+         Courtship                              31
+
+   IV. The Proper Mate                          33
+
+         The Purpose of Marriage                33
+
+         Eugenics                               35
+
+         The Future of Eugenics                 38
+
+         Birth Control                          39
+
+    V. Proper Education                         41
+
+         In School                              41
+
+         At Home                                45
+
+         Love Education                         47
+
+   VI. The Price of Error                       49
+
+         Youthful Restraint                     49
+
+         Over-Indulgence                        54
+
+         Venereal Diseases                      55
+
+  VII. Idealism                                 56
+
+         Chastity                               56
+
+         Sexual Morality, Present and Future    57
+
+         The Purity Ideal                       63
+
+
+
+
+WOMANHOOD: THE FACTS OF LIFE REVEALED TO WOMEN
+
+
+
+
+I. THE OPENING DOOR OF WOMANHOOD.
+
+
+_Adolescence._—It is the habit of age to call youth the golden era, to
+speak of that period as the halcyon days of life, and to look back over
+its tempestuous beauty with eyes misted by years and longing. It is one
+of man’s most regrettable traits that he is ceaselessly yearning back
+toward the past. For the few brief years of childhood, he is content in
+the present, and looks, if he looks at all, toward the beckoning doorway
+of the future. Once he has reached that threshold, he commences the
+endless looking back, until we have a race of Lot’s wives whose souls,
+at least, are static from backward glances. This is particularly true of
+women, though it applies in general to the whole race. The child with her
+dolls is happy, and in her play looks toward the future when she will be
+a grown woman. Every girl who mothers her dolls has a yearning toward
+motherhood, but let the period for that estate arrive, and she looks
+back tearfully on her carefree childhood. Once the girl has stepped,
+irrevocably, into the narrow pathway of adolescence that leads to the
+opening door of maturity, she commences looking back. The adolescent girl
+pins up her hair, or bobs it, today, and gazes regretfully at the curls
+of childhood. She packs away her dolls, and passes the closet where they
+are sleeping with a sigh. The widespread fad of fancy dolls that has
+swept the country during the past few years has a double significance.
+Largely, it points toward starved motherhood. It is the irrefutable sign
+that there are thousands of women who long for children, but who, for
+various reasons, deny that urge. It points to something else, too. It is
+the answer to that harking back to childhood, when dolls were the only
+children, and all the world was play.
+
+This is regrettable. Looking back to the past is a deadening pastime. No
+one period of life should be more delightful than another. The rounded
+person lives fully in the present, and looks toward the future happily,
+with no yearnings toward the past. The chief reason why people look
+back, rather than forward is that, through faulty education, unfortunate
+miscomprehension, they spoil the present and see no hope for doing
+otherwise with the future. If we study the matter sensibly, we will
+see that we do not actually want to go back to the past for its actual
+activities; what we want is the happy carefree life we then enjoyed. But,
+if people lived rightly and thought correctly, they would not want to go
+back from a state of comparative freedom to a period of supervision. No
+normal, healthy adult wants to go back to a period wherein all of his
+thinking is done for him. It is merely an effort to dodge the cares of
+life. But, if our lives are properly regulated, and if we are properly
+educated, our cares will not hamper us, and gathering years will increase
+rather than decrease our enjoyment of living.
+
+This period of unrest, of wanting something that we have not, commences
+between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. In exceptional cases, it may be
+hastened or retarded. At first, it is mere unrest, and the mind fastens
+on the past, as something that it knows, only because it must have
+something to hold to, something to explain its uneasiness. Actually, at
+this time, it is the unrest of ignorance, the desire to know the causes
+and reasons for everything, especially ourselves. The adolescent girl,
+seeing, for the first time, most of the life about her, is puzzled, and
+longs to understand. She is restless because she cannot do so. Powers and
+faculties that only existed potentially before, now come into being. New
+relations are established, and for the first time, the ego recognizes
+itself, and takes the center of the stage.
+
+Heredity has done its part toward molding the young life, and slips
+quietly into the background. Childhood environment has started the girl’s
+development, especially those intricate and usually hidden bonds that
+exist between the daughter and the parents. A physical change commences
+its course, a change that will slowly guide the girl from childhood to
+womanhood. Physically, mentally, morally, the woman is gradually being
+born. From the soft clay of girlhood is springing what the woman will
+be. The model is being fashioned from within, where the girl’s real
+nature and hereditary instincts are doing their work, and from without,
+where environment and outside influence are doing their best to guide
+the new person. Tradition has said that love is blind. More truly might
+it be said that youth is blind. Youth starts toward life with eyes
+raised toward idealism whose glow blinds eyes already sightless through
+ignorance. The problem is, will those eyes, when they finally open upon
+such reality as the world knows, fall dejectedly upon gray ashy ruins,
+blackened by the now cold fires of that idealism, or will they gaze
+joyfully on a not too perfect world, but one still bright with hope and
+beauty? The burden of the choice lies, during these years, with the
+people around the girl. Tactful, sympathetic advice, and guidance by
+those whose lives touch hers will do much toward making a rounded woman
+of her, and will help to open her eyes on a world she will want to live
+in. Ignorance and false teachings on the subjects that vitally concern
+her may leave her a warped and twisted being, dragging weary feet down
+tedious years.
+
+
+_Essential Education._—Throughout a large portion of the world, education
+in sexual matters is the accepted custom. Most of the savage tribes
+have it. Oriental civilizations still practice it, and are the better
+for it. Our ancestors, until the birth of Christianity, knew it. The
+Old Testament lays down frank and open laws upon the subject. But the
+rites of sexual education had groped so far toward licentiousness, that
+Christianity, banning the latter, smothered the former. The Christian
+doctrine, aiming professedly toward cleaner living, taught that the body
+was worthless, and pointed toward a future life, when only the spirit
+would count. Since the body was worthless, and since catering to its
+appetites led to much so-called wrong, it followed that the body, and
+all that pertained to it, must be vile; only the soul was sacred. Out of
+this there gradually grew a taboo. Discussion of this vital subject was
+prohibited. It is this prohibition that has done the greatest harm to the
+Christian men and women of today.
+
+Any sensible person can see that this teaching is worse than false. It,
+not the body, is vile. Slowly, after nineteen hundred years of a lie, out
+of the blood of the World War, the truth is springing, phoenix-like. The
+lie has been the more insidious since men have never practiced it. The
+pale Galilean light of chastity has wavered like an _ignis fatuus_ over a
+distant horizon; men, gazing toward it, have stumbled into pitfalls that
+had otherwise been mountain heights. The joy of the body lived and grew
+in spite of taboos, but, like a flower doomed to bloom in a cellar, it
+flourished wanly, and raised its anemic tendrils in the foul blackness of
+subterfuge.
+
+Only within the last decade has man come to see the foulness of this
+course. Slowly the race is lifting itself out of this slough of deceit.
+It rests with each parent to see that the rising continues, until the day
+dawns when every girl and boy will know all of the facts of life, and
+know them correctly, in all their shining beauty. Then, and then only,
+will that _ignis fatuus_ fade in the new dawn of a brighter light.
+
+It is the silence of the parents that does the most toward making life
+seem sordid, and brutal. If the parent maintains an obdurate and
+sanctified silence, as the majority do, will the girl grow into a second
+Mary? Unfortunately, yes. But science has so far enlightened the race,
+that we no longer are willing to accept stories of virgin births, and are
+too apt to see, with cynical eyes, the Angel Gabriel in any of the young
+men about town. Mothers expect girls to wait for this necessary knowledge
+until they are married, and then to learn it from the young husband. But
+all too frequently, the husband is as sadly ignorant as his bride. What
+then? Will some miracle point the way to happiness? Sadly enough miracles
+are infrequent. Both young people blunder on, usually into misery.
+
+But even the most assiduous silence on the part of the parent rarely
+prevents the girl from learning some part of the truth. As soon as the
+little girl commences going to school, she is exposed to the danger of
+learning these vital facts, and learning them in a sordid way. Even the
+most careful of parents cannot keep from arousing a child’s curiosity
+concerning its body. Chance remarks are overheard; when the child reaches
+the school age, words seen in books, heard in conversation, send the
+curious one to the dictionary; worst of all, information is freely
+scattered by their less restrained and more evil-minded companions. These
+facts, seen through the fouling haze of secrecy and miscomprehension,
+tantalize the youthfully curious mind. The young girl, hating to appear
+less knowing than her acquaintances, adopts the secrecy of her elders,
+and prowls through books and dictionaries; her mind, like a mole, chases
+the truth through the dark of ignorance, until what truth she finally
+gleans is smudged with the filth of the streets, and dulled by an aura
+of shame. They learn bad habits, alone or by falling into unhealthy
+relationships with other girls, if they do not know the facts.
+
+This accurate knowledge, properly given, is the more valuable, if to it
+is added a restrained example on the part of the parents. If the mother’s
+actions are admirable, this example is a louder preachment to the young
+daughter than any amount of words. Nor need a mother shrink from telling
+her daughter the simple facts of life. These mysteries can be pointed out
+in a beautiful way through the life-stories of animals and plants. The
+simple tale of how young birds and kittens arrive in the world can be
+made into a lovely symbol of the girl’s own origin, and will point out to
+her the role that she, in the normal course of nature, will fulfil.
+
+
+_Adolescent Training._—The essential thing to guard in the adolescent
+girl is her bodily health. If the body is properly cared for, the sexual
+nature will take care of itself. Barring some physical deformity, sexual
+life grows strongly and healthily of its own accord. A normal woman is
+capable of bearing at least thirty children. This is neither desirable
+nor economically possible, today. The task is to rein sexual energy, not
+to stimulate it. Exercise drains off this energy, which, in the girl,
+is chiefly an undefined longing. Enjoyable occupations keep the girl’s
+mind occupied and prevent that restlessness that is so taxing to the
+adolescent person. All young girls should be encouraged in participating
+in sports. They develop a healthy body, increase grace, and occupy a
+nervous mind.
+
+Occupying the mind does not mean keeping it ignorant. The most curious
+mind is usually the most empty one, provided the emptiness is not due
+to sheer laziness. Young minds are very empty, and the only sure way
+to fill them properly is to give them complete and adequate knowledge.
+If the adolescent girl knows the true clean facts of sex, she will not
+spend surreptitious hours poring over filthy books. This ignorance not
+only pollutes the young mind, but helps to ruin the young eyes. Girls
+seek eagerly for trashy books, then read them in bed, at night, and hide
+them during the day, for fear of being caught with them. The moralists
+of today who would suppress all of the so-called foul literature would
+achieve their purpose if, instead of indicting these books, they
+turned their energies to teaching youth the decent facts. This would
+immediately decrease the market for such trash, for the educated mind
+gets no thrill out of such books. These books pander to the ignorant, the
+curious-minded. The young people seize them, and read them avidly, in
+the vain hope of learning something of this whispered mystery. They are
+invariably disappointed. There would be nothing really wrong with such
+books, if they actually told any facts. They don’t—they merely add fuel
+to an already hot fire.
+
+The girl’s mind, properly equipped with a knowledge of the realities
+of life, should be fed on good books. She should be encouraged in the
+studies that she prefers. It is a great mistake of parents to force their
+children to learn certain things, whether the children want to or not. If
+the girl shows a fondness for languages, let her study them; if she leans
+toward astronomy, let her learn what she can about it. True, it may be an
+interest of which she will soon tire, but some of it will linger in her
+mind, and the mental training will be invaluable. As much as possible,
+turn the adolescent mind toward things outside of itself. Interest the
+young girl in the world about her, and thus avoid that super-development
+of the ego that leads to the lonely introspective person.
+
+The period of adolescence brings with it a complete physical change. It
+is now that menstruation begins. If the girl has been kept in ignorance
+up to this time, she should be told all the truths of life now. Also,
+her health should be guarded more carefully than ever before. This does
+not mean coddling; it merely means proper attention to food, exercise,
+and rest. Many girls are very much weakened by this condition at first.
+Plenty of fresh air and sleep are the best remedies. Of course, if the
+girl continues to suffer from this period, she should be put in the hands
+of a capable doctor. Even in these broadening days, this remains the one
+subject that the most frank-minded persons refuse to discuss. This absurd
+secrecy has given rise to the most harmful myths on the subject. There
+is no reason why a healthy woman should suffer during this time. It is
+a natural physical phenomenon that takes place once every twenty-seven
+days. Certain conditions and certain climates sometimes lengthen or
+slightly decrease the time between, but no pain should ever result. The
+most that should be expected is a certain lassitude during the flow.
+If a girl or woman does suffer pain, she should immediately consult a
+physician. Many women go on through life suffering at this time rather
+than talk to a doctor on the subject. This is a ridiculous reticence.
+Under normal conditions the flow will last three or four days.
+
+Due to this strange silence on the subject, many absurd notions and
+taboos have grown up concerning this period. Many women still believe
+that they must not bathe, walk, or indulge in any form of exercise during
+this time. Provided the woman is healthy, this is untrue. During these
+periods, the body is more susceptible to colds than at other times;
+therefore it is unwise to expose oneself. A warm bath will have no ill
+effect, and moderate exercise will do no harm. There is no reason why
+one’s daily routine should be altered in any way by this condition.
+The main thing to remember is to keep the body clean, and to take such
+sanitary precautions as will insure comfort and ease, and will prevent
+any unpleasant odors. Such equipment as is necessary is obtainable in
+every drug store.
+
+It is highly important for the girl who is experiencing these periods for
+the first time to avoid undue excitement, and above all, any emotional
+indulgences. The girl who is equipped with the proper knowledge will
+realize this, and will know that the proper restraint at this period will
+insure her a healthy future. Sexual indulgences during the adolescent
+period weaken the nervous system, and generally enervate the body.
+
+Adolescent girls are invariably sentimental and romantically inclined.
+The parents should not laugh at this display—rather they should guide
+it into right channels. Faulty sex-consciousness is grounded in this
+ridicule of the parents. If her sentimental dreams are sneered at, the
+girl does not cease having them; on the contrary, they increase in
+volume, but she hides it all, and ultimately grows shy and reticent.
+She begins to fall in love with matinée idols, with the older men about
+her, with some favorite teacher. This is natural, and should not be
+suppressed. If she has proper sex-knowledge, and is considerately treated
+by her parents, she will soon grow out of this stage into a normal
+womanhood..
+
+A girl’s first sweethearts should not be jeered at. If her youthful
+friendships are encouraged among nice boys, if her choice of a first
+“beau” is accepted as natural, and not made fun of, she will avoid that
+sex-consciousness which so frequently leads to secrecy in such affairs,
+and to ultimate misery. Do not fear to have your daughter go out with
+young boys. See that her friends are honorable boys, and that she knows
+what life means, and no harm can come to her. Parents recoil in horror
+from the fear of a youthful misstep, and scorn the unfortunate girl who
+makes it. They never realize that the fault lies with them. Nine-tenths
+of the unfortunate errors made by young girls and boys are made through
+ignorance. If a girl has no knowledge of life, she is an easy victim of
+any man’s or boy’s pleadings. Her curiosity urges her on, and once the
+thing is done, she, not the guilty parents, pays for the social sin.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE ORIGIN OF LOVE.
+
+
+The thing we call love is known to no species but man. The urge toward
+mating is in all plant and animal life, taking place at such times and
+places and in such a manner as is most valuable to the species. No one,
+even the most prudish, regards the mating of animals as shameful. We do
+not speak with bated breath of the arrival of a litter of kittens, nor
+do we lock the cat in the closet when she feeds these offspring. Yet,
+the very same phenomenon, taking place among men, is spoken of in hushed
+tones, and when we see a woman nursing a baby in public, we regard her as
+little higher than an animal.
+
+There is no longer much doubt of the fact that man evolved from
+lower animals. But, while this is an accepted truth, few realize the
+significant facts that follow from it. In animals, the thing we term love
+is merely an urge planted there for the continuation of the species.
+Selection is made for fitness only. The female does the choosing, and
+picks out the mate that seems to her to have the best attributes for
+the furtherance of a strong and healthy stock. Animals have no knowledge
+of paternity. Only in man, and that very recently, has this knowledge
+developed. In zoology, children are taught that certain animals eat their
+young, if the mother does not protect them. We are told of the brutality
+of the male rabbit, who is supposed to do this. But the rabbit has no
+realization of the fact that he had anything to do with the tiny hairless
+things that clutter his home. It is not male jealousy, or any such
+emotion that prompts this, but the sheer instinct to kill for food. The
+idea of paternity has grown up within civilized times.
+
+In most of the lower animals, the female is the acknowledged selector.
+Again, only man has built up the myth that he does the choosing. The
+selectivity of the female is responsible for the development of brain,
+and is therefore responsible for her own downfall. It was the dawning
+realization that men were the fathers of children that changed early
+civilization from a matriarchate, or mother-rule, to a patriarchate, or
+father-rule. Up to this time, the women, as mothers of the race, had
+held a high place in the tribe; she had the sole choice of mates; she
+ruled and guided the children to maturity. When paternity was finally
+acknowledged, and the man was admitted as much kin to the child as the
+woman, he claimed a right to part control of it. His high opinion of
+women, as the founders of his clan, diminished, and he commenced to
+domineer over her as he did over lesser males. With the acknowledgement
+of paternity came the first conflict between men and women. No animal
+ever fights with, or abuses his female, or any of the females of his
+pack. Man, who admits that he is made in the image of some god, was the
+first to introduce this lowest form of animalism into the world, and into
+a partly cultured world, at that. The male had become stronger than the
+female, through her selection of strength, and he soon became lord over,
+not only his children, but his wife as well. From that dark day, down to
+the present, man has ruled the world, and enslaved the women. He has made
+the laws and made them so that women have grown weaker and weaker. Today,
+things are changing, and once more woman is standing equal with her mate.
+
+
+_Natural Love._—Originally, love meant merely selection for purposes of
+reproduction. In the ancient days, even religion was founded upon this
+basic principle of fertilization. It remained for Christianity to deny
+the necessity of this deep fundamental fact.
+
+Sheer animal passion, or natural love, is no less noble than the
+highly sophisticated esthetic sentiment that we favor today. Nor can
+love necessarily be limited to one individual. Monogamy is a stricture
+laid down to bind us by religion and social morals. The lower animals
+are not usually monogamous. Women have done most to advance this law,
+although they, too, in the dawn of life were not more monogamous than
+men. They were more selective, that is all. Modern monogamy is a product
+of property rights, and was merely intended to insure the legitimacy of
+the sons so that they might inherit the father’s property. But this
+monogamy never applied to the men. Man’s nature is against it, while his
+mouth speaks words in its favor. With the appearance of monogamy, came
+prostitution. Men demanded that their wives be virtuous, and then went
+out and sought other women for their pleasure. This gave rise to the
+double standard, of which more will be said later.
+
+Some persons believe that the coming of Christianity raised woman’s
+status. This is far from true. Christianity, bringing its preachment
+against the flesh, made woman appear as an evil influence. Men were
+told to scorn the body. By this time, men were ruling the world, so
+they immediately laid all of the blame of sex upon the women. Many of
+the early promoters of the church preached violently against marriage,
+calling it sinful and wicked. Men came to assume the attitude that they
+could be pure and godly, were it not for the alluring seductiveness of
+women. The urge of man toward women was denounced as a thing of the
+devil. Today, our growing intelligence recognizes the folly of this, and
+the purity and loveliness of natural love is conceded.
+
+
+_Romantic Love._—Romantic love is a hot-house growth feasting upon the
+dank soil of denial of natural impulses. It grew up in the days of roving
+knighthood, when for long months, and perhaps years, the lovers were
+separated. Men and women swore fidelity to each other, and the women at
+least were obliged to keep their vows. It became more noble to refuse
+than to accept love. All that the couple required was to be together.
+They contented themselves with sighs and madrigals. Natural love demands
+the possession of the person of the beloved; romantic love contents
+itself with the mere presence, or often the mere thought, of the beloved.
+Such love, in general, was regarded as illicit. Young knights knew this
+passion for great ladies, who were unattainable through marriage, or high
+station. Thus sprang up the belief that it was wrong. In fact, it is
+harmful only to those who yield to it, in that it festers in the soul,
+and knows no outlet.
+
+
+_Marital Love._—This form of love, the affection between husband and
+wife, is also of comparatively late growth. In general, it requires
+monogamy. Frequently it is at war with romantic love. In early centuries,
+there was no thought of love when a union between two persons was
+arranged. The mating was planned for political or monetary reasons. Then,
+when romantic love sprang up, certain young people rebelled against this
+cold-blooded way of disposing of their lives, and chose to marry for
+love. Often this is no more satisfactory than the commercial method. In
+many European countries, the two are still divorced. In France, the wife
+and the mistress are both socially acknowledged facts, but are rarely
+embodied in the same person. In America there is a growing tendency to
+make wife and mistress always one and the same person. This is the ideal
+situation, though it is by far the more difficult of consummation. It is
+a sin to yield one’s body to a man whom one does not love.
+
+
+_The Psychological View of Love._—Freud, who blames most of man’s
+unhappiness on improper sex-knowledge and development, divides the growth
+of love in the human being into three stages:
+
+    1. Auto-eroticism, or self-love.
+
+    2. Homosexuality, or love of the same sex.
+
+    3. Heterosexuality, or love of the opposite sex.
+
+The infant is always auto-erotic. It gains its first pleasure from
+suckling the mother’s breasts, or the bottle. Soon it discovers the
+pleasure of this apart from the mere joy of eating. Then it sucks
+anything handy. It will suck an empty bottle, a toy, its thumb. This
+practice naturally should be discouraged, chiefly because it is deforming
+to the mouth. Soon the child discovers its own body. It finds real joy
+in handling its own body. The normal child grows out of this stage as
+it grows out of safety pins and bibs. There are cases where the child
+does not grow out of this phase of life. Something goes wrong, and the
+child’s development is arrested, and throughout life he or she remains
+a victim of self-love. The next thing that the normal child realizes is
+the existence of other persons in the world. This realization naturally
+centers on children. The grown-ups are very remote. Children come to
+have reality for the small child. She recognizes something akin to
+herself, and, since she has no way of knowing differently, she assumes
+that all children are physically equipped like herself. Boys and girls
+are alike to her; she does not know that there is any difference, other
+than clothes, between them. Her affections are drawn away from herself to
+others, and usually center upon some older girl. This is the period of
+homosexuality. Its most common manifestation is the schoolgirl “crush” on
+an older girl, or a favorite woman teacher. This is the most dangerous
+period for the girl’s future happiness. If she chances to place her
+affection in a girl or a woman who is emotionally biased, she may ruin
+her life or, at least, seriously damage it. Homosexuality, put into
+physical practice, definitely retards the mental growth of the person.
+The right sort of friendship, at this stage, can lead the girl through
+the period without any danger. Mothers, in general, should not encourage
+their daughters in friendships for older girls. It is better to drain off
+this urge in friendships for girls of an equal age.
+
+A great number of children actually practice onanism, or self-love, and
+homosexuality. In general, parents are horrified by the thought of such
+things. The danger arises if the child does not normally grow out of
+these practices. They are the lowest forms of love merely because they
+are obviously sterile forms.
+
+From these two stages, the normal girl or boy passes to the third when
+she or he reaches adolescence.
+
+This third stage, heterosexuality, is the ultimate love development, in
+that it signifies love for the opposite sex. The young body has at last
+matured and grown into harmony with natural laws. This is the highest
+form of bodily contact with human beings. This is the ultimate threshold
+of womanhood. The girl who reaches this point and goes on into life
+with the proper regard for the opposite sex, is a woman; those whose
+development is retarded and whose inclinations linger in one of the
+earlier stages never fully achieve true womanhood.
+
+
+
+
+III. MATING.
+
+
+_Woman’s Equality._—As we have shown before in this Little Blue Book,
+woman, in the dawn of man’s history, was acknowledged as superior. It
+was woman who mothered the race, therefore she was allowed to rule the
+clan. With the coming of paternal knowledge, woman sank, until in the
+days when civilization had reached its highest point in Greece and Rome,
+woman was merely a chattel. This was not wholly true, even then. In the
+Old Testament, lineage was always traced through the mother, showing that
+the matriarchal idea still lingered. In Greece, Rome and Egypt women were
+politically men’s equal, at least in the matter of property rights. With
+the coming of Christianity woman reached her lowest point in the social
+scale. She became hardly more than a breeder. Men ruled the world and
+their homes with equal rigor. But slowly, during the past hundred years,
+woman has been winning back her rightful position. The very nature of
+woman’s duty, her motherhood, may keep her from ever fully sharing all
+of man’s activities, but she can and will be equal in importance and in
+power. The first thing for her to realize is that she must concentrate
+on shining in those lines of endeavor where she has supremacy, and leave
+to men the other fields of endeavor. Man has built up a civilization
+of dollars and things. It remains for women to reconstruct this to a
+civilization of persons. Millions of dollars are spent yearly to produce
+better cattle, and almost nothing is spent for better babies. It remains
+for the women to see that this condition is altered.
+
+Already, they have done a great deal. One hundred years ago, women had
+no voice in the government; today, they have gained seats in state
+legislatures, in federal legislatures, in state and federal courts and
+two have gained seats in State capitols. A century ago, a woman entering
+upon industrial life found it impossible to receive the same wages or
+consideration paid to men; the higher institutions of learning were
+closed to her. Now, she can engage in any occupation, and granted the
+same ability, can earn as much as a man; she can attend a good college
+or university. Worst of all, one hundred years ago, she was completely
+dependent upon a man for her very livelihood. Her choice was limited. She
+must choose between being the wife, mistress, or spinster daughter of a
+man. Now she has won in the economic field, and can accept or decline any
+or many men, at will.
+
+This last is of the utmost importance and has done more than anything
+else to change woman’s status, and to give her love-life a chance to
+blossom normally. A woman of a century ago had neither the opportunity
+nor the ability to choose the man she wished for husband or lover. She
+was dependent upon a father, who sold her to the highest bidder. Her
+wishes were rarely consulted. The father had reared her and he decided
+who would undertake her future support. A woman, unable to support
+herself, could not afford to refuse a man when he offered to marry her.
+Now, any woman can support herself. She is limited only by her education,
+which she can make as little or as great as she chooses, and by her
+abilities. But there is some path of economic independence opened to
+every woman. She need no longer wait for a man to marry her so as to
+insure her future safety. She can pick a mate, or decline one at will.
+This more than anything else will help to put love relationships upon a
+footing of decency and equality. When a man marries a woman, not because
+the woman needs support, but because she loves him, there will be less
+chance or need for illicit and clandestine loves.
+
+
+_The Right of Choice._—Those who oppose woman’s entry into industry,
+when defeated on every point, fall back upon the absurd notion that it
+will tend to make woman bold, incline her to do the choosing of a mate.
+Naturally, men resent this. It will take from them their lordship. They
+will no longer be able to feel themselves masters in their own homes.
+Nothing better for civilization could happen. There should be no master
+in any home. Men and women should rule equally.
+
+In point of fact, women have always done the choosing, from the
+matriarchate down to the present. To be sure, daughters have been
+married off according to parental arrangement, but where this custom has
+prevailed, the sons have been similarly treated. Marriages were arranged
+by the families, with little regard for the young persons. In America,
+the large majority of young people are allowed to decide for themselves
+in the matter of marriage. And the women do the choosing. Oh, they don’t
+actually propose. Their tactics are far more subtle. Tantalizing frocks,
+alluring rouges, provocative perfumes, all do their part toward luring
+the man on. From among several young men, it is the girl who makes the
+choice, and does it so cleverly, and perhaps so unconsciously, that the
+young man thinks all credit is due to him. When the daughters are inept,
+the mothers are usually on hand to help.
+
+This is right. Only, it should be frankly admitted, rather than cloaked
+under a veil of hypocrisy. For the good of the race, women are the better
+choosers. Man, whose only instinct is the biological urge to fertilize,
+pursues all women, and takes those whom he can get. From among a group of
+women, he is sure to take the least clever, the one who is slow-witted
+in eluding him, the one whom he can get. To be sure, he may try to pick
+the most beautiful, but usually her beauty covers an empty head, and
+he doesn’t care. Needless to say, these women are not the best fitted
+to mother the race. When a woman chooses from among a number of men,
+she picks the tallest, the strongest, the most clever. So, while man’s
+choice tends to bring down the standard of the race, woman’s tends to
+raise it.
+
+Prudish minds may some day come to realize that there is no immodesty in
+a woman’s letting a man know that she is willing to marry him. The best
+of all methods would be where the proposal was a mutual thing.
+
+
+_The Child Problem._—The natural purpose of mating is to beget children.
+The original scheme of nature is built around this fact. But nature had
+no hand in planning civilization, large cities, and our present economic
+standards. It is all very well to say that people are going contrary to
+the plans of nature in refusing to have children, and that this is a sin.
+Poverty is a sin, the struggle for existence is a sin. And since these
+are part and parcel of our living today, it is often better to add the
+so-called sin of refusing to have children to the list than to commit
+a more heinous offense by bringing small lives into the world without
+having the adequate means to provide for them. No human being has an
+ethical right to bring children into the world unless he can provide
+healthy surroundings and all of the normal advantages.
+
+Those who rant against socialism and the insubordination of the working
+classes, and who spend large sums of money in a vain endeavor to keep
+these less fortunate individuals from rising against wealth, would do
+better if they spent that money in preaching against too many children
+and in teaching men and women how to limit their families to their means.
+If the poor were not largely sex-ignorant, and were not over-ridden by
+religious superstition, they would not have such families, and would
+stand some chance of improving their condition. A working man with a
+dozen children stands very little chance of raising himself out of the
+squalor in which he was born. Give the same man one or two children,
+and his energies could be spent in learning more, in rising, instead
+of in the everlasting enervating struggle for enough bread to feed
+the too-profuse mouths. The children would have a greater chance. Two
+children put through high school are infinitely more valuable to the
+state and the family than a dozen who are forced into sweat shops before
+they are old enough to leave off playing dolls.
+
+Here is where the women of today may help. Those who give an intelligent
+interest to politics can, if they will, help the passage of bills that
+will allow for sex education, and that will teach families not to have
+more children than they can decently support. The general idea that all
+women want children is an absurd fallacy. Most women have them because
+they do not know how to prevent it. Certainly, the average man, given his
+choice, would not elect to have a number of children, so that he could
+have the privilege of slaving away his days to feed them.
+
+Nor need the pessimists fear that this will lead to race suicide. The
+average couple is glad enough to have two or three children, provided
+they can support them adequately. If some of the economic load of the
+present were lifted by a wise state legislation, most married persons
+would be glad to raise a small family. It is the strain of too many
+children that wears out the parents, and that reduces each child’s chance
+for a happy, useful life.
+
+
+_Moral Codes._—The double code of morality is one of the most insidious
+weeds of our man-made civilization. By this code man is forgiven all of
+the social sins; woman, none. This code has been rigidly enforced down
+to the last twenty years, and is still largely favored in many places.
+This amazing code allowed—rather expected—every young man to sow his wild
+oats before his marriage. His escapades, provided they were carried on so
+as not to appear too brazen, were condoned, and frequently encouraged.
+But when he came to marry, regardless of how many unsavory affairs he
+had indulged in, he demanded, and society backed him in this demand, a
+pure, unsophisticated girl. Women, on the other hand, were required to
+be absolutely pure and innocent, else their value as wives was gone. It
+was insisted that the young girl sit by the fire and sew a fine seam
+until some man came with the offer to transfer her to his fireside, to
+continue the seam. If, as too frequently occurred, no man came, she must
+decline into a sour spinsterhood, and give her energies to care of the
+sick, or church suppers, with a sweet smile, while her vitals were gnawed
+by the malignant cancer of ingrowing love-longing. Any girl, who by the
+slightest gesture, stepped a fraction of an inch from this allotted
+way, was immediately damned, and was thenceforth not a fit mate for any
+“nice” man, but the prey of all men. If a girl yielded to unmarried
+love, the river or prostitution were the delightful alternatives offered
+her, and men and women united in maligning her. Surreptitiously, the men
+changed their maledictions with the waning light of day. Needless to
+say, since the human animal is removed by degree rather than kind from
+his four-footed ancestors, there was a great demand for prostitutes. Men
+could not satisfy their urge toward variety among the women of their
+class, so they devised a system whereby they could keep their women
+virtuous, and still enjoy the fruits of passion. The prostitute was
+allowed to carry on her tragic trade, but was thrust into the lowest
+depths of degradation.
+
+With woman’s rising importance in the economic world, this double
+standard will cease. Already it is showing signs of age. Woman has traded
+the fragility of the hot-house rose for the sturdier wind-blown beauty of
+the wild rose, and she has not suffered for it. The old legend that men
+admired only the shy retiring girl has been shattered. The business girl
+is not left to sit at home in the evening while her more simple sister is
+wooed. Far from it—men are anxious to win the favor of these new women.
+Nor do they ask for ignorance in them, nor decline to marry them when
+they discover their knowledge of life. The modern girl, who accepts a
+friendship if she wishes one, has no difficulty in finding a permanent
+mate when she desires to. The time will come when the double code is
+but an unpleasant memory of an incomplete civilization. Woman has the
+choice. It is more probable, and will be infinitely more beneficial to
+the race, that she will choose a single standard, whereby men and women
+may be monogamous, if they desire, but may elect any other course that
+is mutually agreeable. Under such a system, prostitution will wither,
+or will be carried on only by those who select it voluntarily, and the
+exploitation of young and innocent girls will end.
+
+
+_Courtship._—The average person believes that courtship ends when the
+minister brushes the bride’s cheek with his ecclesiastical lips. And this
+belief is the rock on which marriage founders. The girl, once married,
+is convinced that her life-work has been accomplished, so she ceases to
+consider her new husband. How many young girls are there who would come
+down to entertain her beau for the evening with frowsy hair, and in an
+untidy house dress? Not one. When a young man is coming to call, the
+girl primps and dresses in her most becoming frocks. She fixes her hair
+smartly, powders, and looks as alluring as possible when she opens the
+door for him. One year after they are married, the man comes in after a
+weary day’s work and finds a dowdy woman, with wisps of hair streaking an
+unpowdered face, through which a shiny nose gleams like a beaconlight.
+When the beau comes wooing, the young girl sees that the living room is
+neat and dusted. When the young husband returns in the evening, papers
+may be lying about everywhere, the furniture undusted, and a general air
+of unkemptness may prevail. We do not say this is universally true.
+Fortunately it is not. But it has a wide enough prevalence to be worthy
+of discussion. These same women complain bitterly that their husbands
+come home and bury themselves in the paper, or do not come home at all,
+or pay more heed to their business than to their wives. True, and can you
+blame them? Far better to fasten their eyes upon neat black print than
+upon a frowsy woman. It is this sort of carelessness that sends men to
+billiard parlors, to poker games and to other women.
+
+Of course there arises the cry of the old justification. Before marriage,
+the woman had no house nor children to keep her busy all day. Cannot a
+woman keep her house and herself clean and attractive at the same time?
+A large number of women do do it, so all could. It is hard to understand
+the psychology that is deep-rooted in many women and that allows them
+to be slovenly. No one expects a woman, if she must do her own work, to
+be attired in a party frock when her husband comes home in the evening.
+But she can wear a simple pretty house dress, with a gay cretonne apron
+over it, she can have her hair nicely arranged, and her face powdered.
+If a woman must do her own work, she should live in a home small enough
+for her to take care of, and still allow her time for herself. She
+should not have so many small babies that every minute is occupied with
+them. She should learn all of the simple labor-saving devices that make
+housework easier. The home is the last place to be standardized. It is
+no wonder that men become impatient with women, and conclude that they
+are shiftless and brainless. If the same tactics were applied to business
+universal bankruptcy would result. Housework can be standardized, and
+should be. Once that women realize this, their labors will be cut in half.
+
+The only way to make marriage a continual happiness is to continue the
+courtship through life. Each party must make the effort to keep the
+desire of the other alive and eager. Husband and wife must regard each
+other as they did before marriage. This will not be hard if there was
+true love to start with, and it will be infinitely worth while. Marriage
+is not a thing to be lightly entered into and lightly cast aside. It
+requires constant care on the part of each.
+
+To be sure, if after these attempts to preserve the love of the
+pre-marriage days, that love dies, it is better for the temper, health,
+and morality of both parties to separate. But all other methods should be
+adequately tried first.
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE PROPER MATE.
+
+
+_The Purpose of Marriage._—The essential thing to found a happy marriage
+upon is the choice of a proper mate. Marriage, even from the most modern
+standpoint, is something more than the satisfaction of the love desire.
+It is an institution upon which all of our social life is founded. More
+than that, it is the one undisputed method of gaining immortality. Men
+and women live on in their children, their grandchildren, forever.
+The perpetuity that they hand down must be the finest that they are
+capable of. If two incompatible people marry and live together, they
+give that incompatibility of temperament to all posterity. They bequeath
+dissatisfaction, unrest, misery to the world, for it is an undisputed
+fact that the children of unhappy couples are rarely rounded persons. So
+it is no light matter to choose a fitting mate.
+
+The perpetuation of the race is one of the deep fundamental principles of
+marriage. It remains for each couple to see that their offering to this
+end is the best that they can possibly make. From the standpoint of the
+race, it is essential that only those who are fit should mate and give
+children to the future.
+
+The majority of matings are haphazard. A young woman chooses a husband
+from among the men with whom she is thrown in contact. She cannot wait
+until she has seen and known all the available men. Too often she takes
+to the first one who pleases her. The economic independence of women
+will alleviate this slightly. A young woman no longer needs to marry
+in her earliest twenties. She can afford to wait. This gives her a
+better chance of selection. But even with necessity for marrying early
+removed, she knows little or nothing about the man she chooses. He is
+attentive, dances well, is amusing, so she marries him. She does not stop
+to consider his physical fitness to be the father of her children. Mere
+passion too often determines the matter. This is a thing that comes very
+easily, and on the crest of its urge, people marry. As easily it goes,
+when there is no fundamental compatibility behind it. Then marriage is
+wrecked. A young woman should not marry hastily, nor choose as a basis
+of this estate the momentary thrill of a kiss, nor the charm of a man’s
+dancing ability. We are not suggesting long tedious engagements, but as
+deep a knowledge of the man as is possible before the girl enters into
+matrimony with him.
+
+
+_Eugenics._—The girl is confronted with the problem, What is the fitting
+mate? Her own inclinations should be the first guide, but when they have
+singled out a possible choice, she should bring common sense to their
+aid. In general, all persons turn to their opposites. This is right.
+Opposites in appearance and temperament are usually the most congenial.
+This does not mean violent contrasts. A man who cares nothing for the
+theater, dancing, social life should not pick a girl whose whole life is
+bound up in these. If a woman feels immense or insistent love for a man
+whom she knows is not a fit father for her children, she should either
+forget the desired mating or the children. Eugenics, or the choice of
+proper mates, is being more carefully studied from a scientific point of
+view, and will ultimately be invaluable, at least as far as procreation
+goes.
+
+Eugenics is the science of improving the stock; of making the offspring
+as nearly perfect as possible. It has been practiced in the breeding
+of animals for a long time. Every farmer knows the value of having the
+best cattle he can obtain, and having them, of mating his cows with
+thoroughbred bulls. Yet people still shudder at the thought of applying
+its principles to the human race. Its formulator, Francis Galton, defined
+it as “the science which deals with all influences that improve the
+inborn qualities of a race.” He further explained this idea and expanded
+it, saying that the aim of eugenics is
+
+    to check the birthrate of the Unfit instead of allowing them
+    to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish
+    prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race
+    by furthering productivity of the Fit, by early marriages and
+    healthful rearing of their children.
+
+There is much to be said for and gainst the wholesale acceptance of this
+theory. In essence, it imperils the personal selection for marriage; and
+comes very close to being an officious attempt to interfere with human
+freedom. Yet, it is gaining ground in the world’s legislation. To the
+individual, it may seem to impose unnecessary hardships and restrictions;
+but that is not its aim.
+
+Extreme advocates of eugenics say flatly that “we should rather bring
+the propagation of the race to the level of the stud-farm, than that it
+should go on in the old haphazard way which surely leads to catastrophe.”
+While we do not want science for domestic animals and chance for men,
+the average thinking person will reject this stringent proposal. But
+some middle course lies open. Legislation prohibiting certain matings
+would be obnoxious, but certain laws making health attractive would
+meet with approval. There are extreme cases when laws should act, not
+to prohibit mating, but child-bearing. If the state should believe that
+certain persons were absolutely unfit for parenting children, it is
+possible, by a simple operation, to insure them against this, without
+detriment to the health of either sex. There are times when this is
+highly desirable. Switzerland, in ten years, largely abolished a certain
+type of feeble-mindedness by this method. If science believes that such
+traits as feeble-mindedness, insanity, epilepsy, dipsomania and syphilis
+are inheritable in such proportions that prohibition of offspring should
+be required, such a law should be resorted to.
+
+But, since such laws are not at present prevalent, it remains for
+each man and woman to choose wisely and healthily. If a young woman
+is certain that she cannot be happy without mating with a man who is
+consumptive, paralytic or inflicted with some other inheritable disease,
+she should enter upon the marriage with a firm will against giving
+birth to any children. This may seem a very harsh stricture, but if the
+young woman will stop to realize that having children by such an unfit
+father may carry on the disease in a worse form through her children or
+grandchildren, she will grant the wisdom of the plan. No woman wants
+deformed or unhealthy children. If she marries a man in such a condition,
+she does it open-eyed, but to go through the trials of child-birth for
+the sake of a life that will be marred by illness, is another matter. It
+is not only unfair to the parents, but brutally unfair to the child. If
+people would get over the idea that children owe all to their parents,
+and come to realize how much parents owe to their children, they would
+see the sense of such reasoning. After all, it is a great responsibility
+to bring a life into the world. Remember that the person for whose life
+you are responsible had no choice in the matter. You bring them here. It
+is up to you to see that they arrive in a not too happy world, equipped
+with every possible weapon to gain happiness. The children of unhealthy
+parents are unfairly handicapped from the start.
+
+
+_The Future of Eugenics._—Certain scientists do not regard eugenics as
+simply as we have done. Bertrand Russell, in _Icarus_, is sure that
+eugenics will become universal.
+
+    This power will be used, at first to diminish imbecility, a
+    most desirable object. But probably, in time, opposition to the
+    government will be taken to prove imbecility, so that rebels
+    of all kinds will be sterilized. Epileptics, consumptives,
+    dipsomaniacs and so on will gradually be included; in the end,
+    there will be a tendency to include all who fail to pass the
+    usual school examinations.
+
+He believes that the result will increase the average intelligence, and
+decrease brilliance.
+
+Viscount Haldane, considered by some as a greater scientist, and a more
+brilliant critic, indicates that eugenics may come in by a pleasanter
+though more startling route. By 1950, he anticipates the production of
+the first ectogenetic child, or child born from a womb withdrawn from the
+mother’s body for all of the embryonic period. By a simple operation, he
+prophesies that science will be able to remove an ovary from a woman,
+and keep it growing in a suitable fluid for as long as twenty years,
+producing a fresh ovum each month, of which 90 percent can be fertilized,
+the embryos grown successfully, for nine months, and then brought out
+into the air. Many nations will hail this movement because of the falling
+birthrate that they are at present suffering from. He believes that
+such an absolute separation of reproduction from love will make a deep
+and profound effect upon morality. It will be possible then for each
+generation to choose only the perfect parents to produce the coming
+generation. There is much to be said in favor of this amazing idea, and
+of course, a great deal to be said against it. But the ever-increasing
+growth of intelligence will ultimately wipe out the majority of the
+objections.
+
+The foremost thinkers of today regard eugenics as a matter worthy of
+their discussion and serious consideration. We offer what science may
+suggest as possible solutions of the race problem. How the state and
+country may regard these discoveries is another and quite unpredictable
+matter. It is very probable that things will not advance as briskly as
+these two quoted scientists anticipate. Nor need we be too much concerned
+with the fate of 1950. It remains for each individual to give his and her
+consent to adequate eugenic protection. Greater happiness will result
+from a certainty that the parties to any marriage are fit for parenthood.
+
+
+_Birth Control._—The chief reason why many people are against eugenics is
+that it demands birth control. Many religions denounce this practice,
+and in general the state is against it. No doctor is allowed to give
+advice on this subject.
+
+The very persons who shudder and brand any passion as animal, regard
+promiscuous breeding as human. There is nothing more animal-like than
+being merely a vehicle for breeding purposes. Yet that, according to the
+laws of state and religion, is all that marriage is for.
+
+This theory is expected to apply to the poor; it does not concern the
+rich. Artificial methods of preventing conception are widely known among
+those who could well afford to have children. In many localities it is
+a crime to furnish this information. A doctor, though he knows that the
+parents are unfit for parenthood, may not do anything to prevent the
+birth of a child. The poor, therefore, who have the greatest need for the
+information, cannot acquire it, in general.
+
+Of course, any form of abortion, or killing the embryo after it has been
+conceived in the womb, can be said to resemble murder. But the prevention
+of conception is another matter. No actual life is being terminated; then
+one is merely being prevented for the good of all concerned. One cannot
+expect human beings to remain continually continent. This is unnatural
+and wrong, to say nothing of being harmful to the parties concerned.
+Ultimately, the stringent laws on this subject will be altered for the
+general good of present generations and those yet unborn.
+
+
+
+
+V. PROPER EDUCATION.
+
+
+_In School._—The most outstanding error, the one most fraught with dire
+consequences, is the taboo on sex, and the consequent silence upon
+any matter pertaining to it. All life is dependent upon sex, and all
+civilization is combined in an effort to make it appear non-existent by
+ignoring it.
+
+With silly sham codes and an absurd veil of surface morality, civilized
+society blinds its eyes to sex, and tries to believe that in so doing it
+is eradicating man’s most fundamental yearning. Naturally, it does no
+such thing. But what does it do? If it were only a negative result that
+it achieved, it would be hardly worthy of notice, and could be passed
+over with a light laugh as a fond parent ignores the amusing make-believe
+of a child. Such is not the case. The conventions and moral codes are
+more deadly than a mere sop thrown out to soothe Rotarian consciences.
+This smoke screen, released to blind the enemy, has deadened the eyes of
+the defense, and left them open to the most insidious advances of their
+declared foe. All that conventional morality has succeeded in doing is
+promulgating an ignorance that is more devastating than anything the
+most licentious knowledge could possibly foster. Young persons, reaching
+maturity, blunder onto sex, blinded by ignorance. Small wonder that they
+make so many grave mistakes. It is hard on both sexes, but harder on
+girls. In spite of our broadening attitude, girls still pay the price of
+ignorance in most communities. What chance has a young girl, brought up
+to believe that she was dropped through the window by a stork, or that
+her mother found her under a rose bush, when she goes out into a man-made
+world? She has been taught to keep her boy friends at a proper distance,
+but when she is alone, and lonely, she finds it not too hard to give the
+first kiss. Once given, she can see no harm in it. Somehow it doesn’t
+seem nearly as evil as her parents had told her it was. She does not
+know that the kiss is a mere preliminary, and when she finally yields,
+she does not realize the full import of her action. She has only blind
+ignorance with which to defend herself from the world, only ignorance to
+protect her from disease, or illegitimate motherhood.
+
+Has this ignorance kept girls any purer? No. An appalling number of
+babies are born to ignorant girls every year. The crime is not only
+against the girl, but the baby, who comes into the world branded by the
+stigma of illegitimacy. And society blames the girl for not knowing how
+to take care of herself when all of the social energies have been united
+to maintain her ignorance.
+
+Perhaps the worst result of this sex-ignorance is prostitution. We wonder
+how many people know where the recruits to this profession are gathered.
+To be sure, there are some who enter it voluntarily, but they are few.
+The great majority of them are innocent girls, usually from small towns
+or country homes, who fall into the trap of some wily man, a trap not
+baited by the man, but by the girl’s ignorance. Since this has been the
+result of ignorance, is there a remedy? Yes, education.
+
+Almost everything is taught in our schools today, from how to add two
+and two to the theory of the fourth dimension. What is taught about sex?
+In general, nothing. In most of the grade schools there is a course in
+hygiene, but this assiduously avoids all mention of the most important
+hygiene of all—sex-hygiene. There are courses which teach the structure
+of the human body. They give long Latin names to each bone, from the
+skull to the great toe. But, when they reach the central sections of
+man’s anatomy, they hurriedly locate the stomach and intestines, and
+rush on to the thigh bone, leaving a great void between. The reasons
+for this are absurd. First there is the puritanical teaching that the
+body is vile, and that any conversation about it is evil. But they do
+not consider that head, shoulders, chest, thighs, feet are vile. Those
+portions of the body are acceptable, even to puritan thinking. Only the
+generative organs are banned. The second reason given for not teaching
+sex in the schools is that the imparting of scientific information on the
+subject will stimulate undesirable conduct on the part of the pupils.
+The so-called undesirable conduct is participated in anyhow, and it is
+rendered the more harmful through ignorance. The majority of intelligent
+persons today realize the error of these taboos, but, when asked to
+advocate sex-knowledge, they decline to support such a reform.
+
+In the last few years there has been some advance made, through the
+study of biology. The study of plant and animal life is an excellent
+introduction to that of human life. This is particularly true of the
+latter, of which human life is merely a more advanced stage. But it is to
+be feared, that if the smug teachers of these subjects realized this they
+would immediately expunge it from school curriculums. However, botany
+and zoology are taught, and it behooves the student to give them careful
+attention, as it is his only chance of learning anything about sex under
+the present standards. There is no shame attached to conversation about
+flowers, their seeding and blooming. We speak of pollen, stamen and
+pistil without any maiden blushes. We learn of the promiscuity in nature
+without raising horrified hands. The development of the young from the
+fertilized ovum to the production of the seed and the plant gives a
+symbolic picture to the mind of what she is to expect in the human world.
+
+In zoology we come to the next step in this surreptitious learning. Here
+certain things are regarded shameful by some persons. To the farmer,
+there is nothing wrong in what a city person may think is not nice.
+But the farmer would not regard with the same latitude similar human
+functions. We do not blush when we speak of a chicken laying eggs,
+nor of the pet cat’s litter of kittens. Even in the most fastidious
+society anyone may with propriety call attention to a tom cat’s nightly
+song of wooing. A clear knowledge of zoology will give any student
+fair comprehension of her own sex-life. In the higher animals, the sex
+functions almost parallel our own. Learned through these channels,
+instead of through filthy gutter talk, sex unfolds itself to the youthful
+mind as an interesting and natural phenomenon, divested of all shame and
+guilt.
+
+The third step in teaching sex in schools is in the study of human
+physiology. At present this is a much-neglected subject. But, the time
+will come when it is included in every school course. It can be taught to
+segregated classes. No emphasis need be placed on the generative organs,
+provided they are mentioned in their proper place. The tendency of the
+pupils to giggle will disappear if the teacher is sufficiently cool and
+detached. The teaching, to be valuable, must be comprehensive both as to
+the organs, and their use and abuse.
+
+
+_At Home._—The best place for a child to learn the proper facts of sex is
+in the home. The right education at home is more than ever essential at
+present, since there is no attempt to teach such matters in the schools.
+But even when the schools have broadened to include this subject, it
+should be fully and adequately discussed at home. This education should
+begin as soon as the child manifests any curiosity on the subject. In
+general, a child is still very young when she asks, “Where did I come
+from?” The taboo-inhibited parent need not think that the child fully
+accepts the threadbare stork or rosebush story. The child may ask for
+fuller information, but more often, she merely remains silent. For
+several years, she may learn nothing to contradict this story. But,
+one day, through her reading or her companions, truth or near-truth
+will come to her. It will have two deep effects upon her young mind.
+First, it will start that hideous belief that there is something wrong
+with sex, something evil about it, that prompted her parents to hide
+it under a foolish legend. All right, that is what we want, the parent
+may answer. But the second effect is such that no parent can desire. It
+gives the child her first glimpse of deception, and breaks her faith in
+her parents. Remember, that all of the child’s early training has been
+to convince her that she must always tell the truth. She is punished for
+lies and deceptions. Then, she suddenly discovers that these parents, who
+taught her to speak the truth, have lied to her. She does not stop to
+reason why, she only sees the fact. And a very disillusioning fact it is.
+Very few parents realize that the art of lying is taught by themselves
+while they are trying to instil truth as a virtue into the young mind.
+Example is more powerful than words, or even punishment. The child learns
+that the parents teach truth, then lie themselves. If the parents are
+strict, and, by punishment, prevent the child from deception during its
+childhood, the lesson she learns is only that force has the right of
+deception. She comes to the conclusion that the elders can do as they
+wish, and need not be honorable, and the lesson lingers.
+
+How much better is the simple truth. Certainly no one advocates telling
+a child all of the scientific facts that govern sex. But when the child
+asks, tell her simply the truth, in a plain sweet manner. Tell her that
+she was carried close under her mother’s heart, until she was big enough
+to come out into the world. From this simple beginning, the story can be
+filled in as the child’s mind grows old enough to understand.
+
+This requires, first, proper knowledge on the part of the parent. It is
+the duty of every woman who is a mother or who expects to become one,
+to learn all of the facts about sex. This knowledge will have a twofold
+value. It will assist in her own life, and will equip her properly to
+answer her daughter’s questions.
+
+When a girl enters adolescence, it is imperative that her mother tell
+her frankly and without shame all of the details and practices of sexual
+life. Knowledge is the best protection that any girl can have. The duty
+of the wise parents is to enlighten their children fully about the
+possible ways before them, and what good or ill will be won by following
+each. The girl who has a thorough comprehension of these facts may be
+depended upon in the majority of cases to decide far more wisely and
+constructively problems connected with the sexual urge, than the girl who
+is reared in blindness and receives such information as she gathers from
+doubtful sources, thick with the slime of evil minds.
+
+
+_Love Education._—The adolescent and the young woman will find this
+information too elementary to be satisfactory. Love is more than a matter
+of human psychology and its functioning. It is a very subtle art. There
+must be, ultimately, education in the art of love. The savage races all
+believed in this. The ceremonies of initiation that were held at the time
+of puberty of the young men and women, were merely the culmination of an
+education in love-making that was given frankly and openly in all the
+tribe. These practices still prevail among such tribes as have evaded the
+missionaries.
+
+The average man or woman, barring such stray and frequently fouled hints
+as he receives from friends and companions equally ignorant, enters upon
+marriage with no understanding of what he is called upon to do. When the
+daughter of a nice respectable family marries, she is, presumably at
+least, a virgin. The young man may or may not be; the assumption being
+that he is not. His sexual knowledge has been gained through prostitutes
+and “common girls.” More often he has no idea what to do. The girl, we
+repeat, is virginal. She is not supposed to have any but the most vague
+ideas on the subject. If the girl really has no knowledge of men, she is
+shy. Naturally, the largest part of the burden falls upon the man. But
+the girl should know in advance what sex means. If she does know, it will
+do a great deal to dissipate her unnecessary shyness.
+
+We repeat, love is an art. The girl must realize that she may suffer a
+tremendous shock which will render her frigid for life. Medical records
+are black with the countless cases where the experiences of the nuptial
+night have wrecked the whole subsequent content of the woman, and
+in extreme cases, her reason. Young wives who commit suicide on the
+honeymoon are frequently so impelled by the man’s initial and usually
+quite unconscious brutality. Love is an art, calling for infinite tact on
+the part of both the man and the woman.
+
+It will require an immense change in modern conceptions before any
+wholesale education in the art of love can be given in this country.
+None the less, it is indispensable to right living and happy loving. It
+remains for the wise individual to educate herself, by extensive reading
+of literature upon the subject, and by a personal contact with those in
+a position to know. It is an idealistic dream to hope for such education
+now. But, we can be optimistic, for the history of any radical idea is
+that it has been proposed, hooted at, persecuted, and finally adopted.
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE PRICE OF ERROR.
+
+
+_Youthful Restraint._—While full sex-knowledge is advised at an early
+age, sexual practices are by no means so desirable. The adolescent girl
+should save her strength until she has acquired full bodily maturity.
+This is best, not only for herself, but for her children. The children
+of immature women are, in nine cases out of ten, weaklings. The girl is
+not bodily prepared for this great strain. She has not enough strength
+of body or mind to give to the proper development of the child she is
+carrying. Since the girl herself is not fully grown, since her mind
+is young and still largely unformed, and her body just stepping out
+of childhood and groping toward womanhood, how can she expect to give
+birth to a child fully equipped with all the potentialities of ripe
+maturity? The offspring of girls are necessarily more than immature,
+since, obviously, the child cannot possess more than its parents give it.
+Therefore, self-restraint, during the body-forming period of adolescence,
+is the only way of securing a rounded flowering into womanhood, and the
+surety of healthy children.
+
+Sexual restraint during adult life is an entirely different matter.
+There is a certain misguided medical backing available to support
+the theory that men and women can abstain for life without damage to
+them. There are occasional high bloodless ascetics who can change the
+suppressed desire into a mysticism soothing to themselves and to others
+of the race. But for the average man and woman, a life of abstinence is
+a physiological crime. Such people are warped and twisted out of any
+chance of normal happiness. Such living runs diametrically opposite to
+the true physiological needs implanted in every human being. On a large
+scale, it is suicidal to the race; individually, it is destructive of
+a rounded normal development. The woman who remains denied for life
+acquires all the caricatured attributes of the “old maid.” She acquires
+a sour disposition, and is the bitterest gossip concerning even the
+normal sexual practices of other women. She is the waspish snappy school
+teacher to whom the guiding of the youthful mind is assigned, with
+ultimate harm to it. In both men and women, a life of abstinence is worse
+than a mistake: it is, in its truest sense, a perversion.
+
+While abstinence for life is unnatural, there is still another reason,
+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.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78407 ***