Emasculation

“ When considered in 307regard to the historical facts of this epoch, it will be noticed that the process by which the vital forces and energy of the people were lowered and which in common parlance is termed emasculation, accompanied an evolution which was in fact depressing the female forces of the nation, leaving to the male forces an ever greater predominance in the directing of the people’s destiny. ”

“ This sect believes in and practises emasculation as the surest way of attaining perfection. Man, they say, should be like the angels, without sex and without desire. This practice reminds one of an early Christian sect, the Valesians, which not only emasculated members of their own sect, but performed the same operation forcibly on those who fell into their hands. ”

“ At home I thought for a time that I was cured, but I was mistaken, and after seeing Clifford last Thursday I have grown worse than ever so far as my passion for him is concerned. Heaven, only knows how hard I have tried to make a decent creature out of myself, but my vileness is uncontrollable, and I might as well give up and die. I wonder if the doctors knew that after emasculation it was possible for a man to have erections, commit masturbation, and have the same passion as before. I am ashamed of myself; I hate myself ”

“ She believes that "two fates await woman unless she rids herself of contempt for functions and duties purely hers, feminism and feministicism. She is handicapped every month for two or three days by weakness or pain. The craze to do men's work will result in man's emasculation. ”

“ Often this is the cause of her throwing herself into temptation, and becoming a victim of the base passions of those who are ever on the watch for such. Thus she is driven, step by step, to utter prostitution,—all from being made the slave to the sensual passion of the husband. Had she had a spiritually-minded and noble husband, or the courage to assert her rights, her home would have been her heaven, and her progress and improvement, not her degradation and ruin, the law of his life. ”

“ Luxury and debauchery enervate the classes which indulge in them. The people of these classes intermarry among themselves, no new blood is added, hence, in a very few generations, degeneration sets in.
Effemination and viraginity are common types of degeneration which always follow in the wake of luxury and debauchery. Effemination makes its appearance early in life. The young boy likes the society of girls; he plays with dolls, and, if permitted, will don female attire and dress his hair like a girl. ”

“ Weep, poor girl, weep, for that virginity is already far away, and nothing, it is said, flees faster than the illusion which departs, if it be not a virginity which flies away.
And a vague terror was mingled with her remorse.
The first apprehension which strikes brutally against the edifice of illusions of the woman who has committed a fault, is the anxiety regarding the opinion of the man who has incited her to that fault; I am speaking, be it understood, of one in whom there remains the feeling of modesty, without which she is not a woman, but an unclean female. ”

“ He casts a lustful eye upon every passing female, and indulges unchaste imaginations and feelings. Although his conscientiousness or intellect may prevent actual indulgence, yet temptations now take effect, and render him liable to err; whereas before they had no power to awaken improper thoughts or feelings. Thus many young men find their ruin.
4. Legal Marriage.—What would any woman give for merely a nominal or legal husband, just to live with and provide for her, but who entertained not one spark of love for her, or whose affections were bestowed upon another? ”

“ Committing Adultery in the Heart.—A young man who allows his mind to dwell upon the vision of nude women will soon become a victim of ruinous passion, and either fall under the influence of lewd women or resort to self-abuse. The man who has no control over his mind and allows impure thoughts to be associated with the name of every female that may be suggested to his mind, is but committing adultery in his heart, just as guilty at heart as though he had committed the deed. ”

“ Now whenever nature is the cause of these habits, nobody would call people who give way to them incontinent, any more than we should call women incontinent for being not males, but females.—For all excess whether of folly, cowardice, incontinence, or savagery is either brutal or morbid.—ch. 8., for he is necessarily incapable of repentance and is therefore incurable, as to be incapable of repentance is to be incurable:—If a person gives in where people generally resist and are capable of resisting, he deserves to be called effeminate and luxurious; for luxury is a form of effeminacy. ”

“ Would it were possible to shut my ears to the fact that Vice in this age prevails to such a degree that Nature has had to yield to foul lusts, that men corrupted even to the length of suffering themselves to be treated as women are filled with lust towards their own sex; yet vice itself set some limit to its own excesses, and the last extremity of this lewdness was to have ruined one that might have grown into a man. But what a height of insanity is here! Young men are chosen as mistresses, and a man is called upon to endure the treatment proper to a woman. ”

“ PSYCHIC IRRADIATIONS OF LOVE IN MAN
Masculine Audacity.—In the normal male the sentiment of sexual power favors self-exaltation, while the contrary sentiment of impotence, or even that of mediocre sexual power, depresses this sentiment of exaltation. Yet, in reality, the sexual power of man has not the capital importance for a normal and virgin woman that men imagine, influenced as they are by [116] self-exaltation; what imposes on women is especially masculine audacity, and in sexual matters this increases with experience and practice. ”

“ Can one be surprised at the force of a habit, the slightest infractions of which are punished with such atrocious shame? As to the utility of modesty, it is the mother of love. As to the mechanism of the feeling, nothing is simpler. The mind is absorbed in feeling shame instead of being occupied with desire. Desires are forbidden, and desires lead to actions. It is evident that every tender and proud woman—and these two things, being cause and effect, naturally go together—must contract habits of coldness which the people whom she disconcerts call prudery. ”

“ Who can abide the test of our blessed Lord’s comment on the seventh commandment? He that looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. So that one knows not which to wonder at most, the ignorance or the insolence of those men, who speak with such disdain of them that are overcome by desires, which every man has felt in his own breast! The desire of every pleasure of sense, innocent or not, being natural to every child of man. ”

“ But what is much worse than this douche of cold water which suddenly substitutes the reality of coitus for the ideal exaltation of sentiment, are the subsequent discoveries made by the young wife, when the cynical mind of her husband on the subject of sexual connection and love is unveiled to her in all its grossness, resulting from his previous life of debauchery. Torn and sullied in its deepest fibers, the feminine mind then becomes the seat of a desperate struggle between reality full of deceptions and the illusions of a dream of happiness. ”

“ Women suffering from affectional perversions, resulting in the trains of evils known as "female complaints," have a positive means of rejuvenation in the will, in the cultivation of the purer attributes of their nature observance of the law of soap and water, and a firm determination to be no longer slaves to drugs, anger, selfishness, the doctors, envy, or anything else calculated to unbalance them. ”

“ After having reduced man to a mere shadow of his former self, after having atrophied, besmirched and slandered the sex instinct until it was literally ashamed to show its face (fancy, the fundamental instinct of life [Pg 34] being ashamed to show its face!) —after having heaped up so much odium on the waning innocence of sexual beauties and the sacred joys of procreation that shame descended upon them like a deadly and withering shroud—no wonder that there were some, nay, thousands, who were ready to acknowledge that there was a life away from the fundamental instinct of life! ”

“ Have you a heart? Beware of love, for it is worse than disease for a debauchee, and it is ridiculous. Debauchees pay their mistresses, and the woman who sells herself has no right but that of contempt for the purchaser. ”

“ And then she became dumb, and kissed me with the kisses she alone was able to give, and in comparison with which the caresses of any other woman were but an insipidity.
The constraint and the silence enhanced the furious tension of my nerves. Surprise, the joy of revenge, and, perhaps, a somewhat perverse jealousy inflamed my desires. The elastic firmness of her flesh and the supple violence of the movements wherewith she enveloped me demanded, promised, and deserved the most ardent caresses. ”

“ After half-a-century of rare opportunities to learn human nature, I have ascertained that I was tried worse than any one else I have heard of—that is, by torture of sexual desire that must not be gratified, and practically was not from seven to eighteen, inclusive. ”

“ The acute panic of the personality is due to the perverse sexual cravings which threaten to overcome the ego, and disestablish the individual's self-control. At the same time, the affections for winning social esteem are pushed into an eccentric adjustment. The weakness of the ego may be attributed to fatigue, debilitating illness, loss of the love object, homesickness, misfortunes, imposition on the part of a superior, or erotic companions. As the individual shows his eccentricities and irritability, he is often teased and tormented by his fellows. ”

“ The doctrine laid down in these volumes seems to be, that lust went on unchecked, that it was attended with no evil results, either physically or morally, to the individual, or to the society in which such scenes are supposed to have existed. To enable him to live as these gods of old are supposed to have done, with what companions must he not associate? He reads in them of the pleasures, nothing of the penalties, of sexual indulgence, and it is at a later period that the poor schoolboy is first to learn that sexual pleasure is not to be indulged in with impunity. ”

“ The absence of temptation will leave an instinct dormant which free opportunity to indulge will develop into a dominant appetite. And nothing more quickly drafts strength or ambition than absorption in sex pleasures; we need to put our energies into something that instead of being inimical is forwarding to the rest of our interests.
(6) Sexual intemperance coarsens, blunts delight in the less violent and more delicate emotions. The pleasures of sex, though of the keenest, are not lasting, like those of the intellect, of religion, art, and manly achievement. ”

“ If such outrages as these, however they may rankle in the female mind, were held sufficient to procure a dissolution of our marriages, I fear that many of us would be cast back upon cold comfortless celibacy whilst we were engaged in daily and nightly toil to procure the means of ease and luxury for those who would banish us from their hearts, and from our own homes because we had fainted, not faltered in their service. ”

“ Let human modesty be spared. Let the lust of flesh and blood go on with the rest, the secret of shame being respected. Why is the bedchamber filled with a crowd of deities, when even the groomsmen [241] have departed? And, moreover, it is so filled, not that in consideration of their presence more regard may be paid to chastity, but that by their help the woman, naturally of the weaker sex, and trembling with the novelty of her situation, may the more readily yield her virginity. ”

“ Can any satisfaction except egoistic-social come to a man who prides himself on his conquests, on how easily women fall for him? Can he be said to be motivated more by erotic or by egoistic-social impulses in his attempts to add other women to his list, or to run risks and arouse in his soul the excitements of danger? ”

“ But all social barriers which oppose his appetite only increase his desire, and he becomes less and less able to dominate his passion for certain young men. The disgust and indignation of the latter, when they discover that they are not the object of simple affection but of perverted sexual love, are expressed only too clearly, and the poor invert sees himself condemned to perpetual torment in trying to hide his most violent desires and his most intimate and ideal aspirations, and finally to live in continual dread of being betrayed and prosecuted. ”

“ Without it, love-making, when possible at all, is at best a mere reflex.
Such is the condition of millions of women today, however—and not surprising, either, in view of the times and the customs—that they are inclined to refuse male address, and to whine, scold, heckle, disobey, begrudge, demean, belittle, routinize, particularize, censor, evade, scorn, shame, humiliate, et cetera, before or during or after sexual relations. ”

“ Later, although hidden and disguised, this wish can be at the root of much of her sexual problems with men, causing her to be neurotically competitive with them and to reject her own female role as unworthy. ”

“ And, this great means of influence over the minds of women having been acquired, an instinct of selfishness made men avail themselves of it to the utmost as a means of holding women in subjection, by representing to them meekness, submissiveness, and resignation of all individual will into the hands of a man, as an essential part of sexual attractiveness. Can it be doubted that any of the other yokes which mankind have succeeded in breaking, would have subsisted till now if the same means had existed, and had been as sedulously used, to bow down their minds to it? ”