Émile Armand

“ In calling for sexual liberty, we simply demand the possibility for every individual to dispose, as they wish and in all the circumstances of their sexual life — according to the qualifications of temperament, sentiment, and reason which are peculiar to them. ”

“ Considered instead, from the particular point of view, ceasing to be an abstraction, and becoming a way, a means, liberty is understood. It is thus that we call for the freedom of thought, which is to say the power, without external hindrance, to express thoughts in speech or in writing, in the manner in which they present themselves in the mind. It is thus the integral expression of the thought which is the goal pursued, and not liberty. ”

“ We demand for the research and practice of sexual liberty the same broad daylight as for those of other liberties, persuaded that to its development and evolution are linked not only the increase of individual and collective happiness, but also in large part the disappearance of the present state of things.
Moreover, we do not declare ourselves more in favor of unicity or plurality in love than we do against either; and it could well be that in a given couple, one of the constituents will practice unicity while the other practices plurality. ”

“ Intellectual life, artistic life, economic life, sexual life — we demand for them the liberty to manifest themselves freely, as individuals, in view of the liberty of individuals, apart from the legalistic conceptions and the prejudices of religious or civil order. ”

“ Sexual life is so complicated that the existence of [multiple] simultaneous experiences of sexual life is easily comprehensible, since in each experience, sometimes it is the sentimental or emotional side which dominates, sometimes the emotional or sensual side, and sometimes is the side of pure physical satisfaction. From experience to experience, the degrees of moral, emotional or voluptuous sensations, vary so strangely that we can conclude from it that no experience resembles that which preceded it, or is pursued similarly. ”

“ Both sexes should be lead to understand, for example, that it is up to the woman to choose the hour of conception. And neither sex should be ignorant of the means of contraception. Following my thought to its logical conclusions, I would say that in a society which had not made it possible for its female constituents to refuse or avert an undesired pregnancy, those constituents would be perfectly justified in leaving their progeny to the care of the collectivity. ”

“ Sentimental experience is one thing, sensual experience another, and the choice of a procreator yet another. It could be that the being that a woman chooses for procreator would not be the one for whom she feels the most affection and that she seeks in the one certain physical qualities to which she is indifferent in the other. ”

“ We declare it an “absurdity” for a young boy or girl of sixteen years to be bound for life in marriage and yet nothing appears more natural than a being of that age maintaining sexual relations with another, of the emotional or physical sort. Moreover, the sexual life from fifteen to twenty years of age differs from the sexual life consider at thirty-five or in the autumn of life. ”