Indecency

“ If indecency is then the distinguishing feature of the evening, she is the woman for your money. So she jumps rather than dances. She has a whole set of lascivious motions, fashioned quickly, which outdo the worst imaginings of the dirty-minded men who applaud her. ”

“ The question of immorality has been set aside, and the indecency has been admitted, but it remains for us to realize that anxiety for sincerity and truth, springing from the sense of pity and justice, makes indecency a condition of portraying human nature so that it may look upon its image and be ashamed. ”

“ But the tendency to bizarre indecency has increased so that now we are offered in our public ballrooms the spectacle of criminal impropriety—of women's bare legs with painted knees, of naked backs and lewdly veiled bosoms, of transparent skirts and suggestive nudity, of decorated flesh and vulgar exposure generally—the sort of thing that has ever preceded the downfall of civilizations. ”

“ True there are such things as intrinsic indecencies, such always and every where throughout Christendom, yet, whatever in speech outrages the common feeling of fitness, modesty and purity, is, by the rightminded eschewed, as then and there an indecency, not necessarily intrinsic, but relatively such. Thus numbers of words and phrases in our language, once universally used in refined society or in sermons on the gravest occasions, are now regarded as indecent, and are used only by persons utterly gross in all their tastes and tendencies. ”

“ Dark brows raised high to the temples, the sharp mocking triangle.
“‘It is more reasonable to annihilate a few than to allow many to poison themselves. . . . And degeneration,’ . . . etc. . . . This is true to the point of indecency.” ”

“ I want to dance, laugh, eat pink cakes, yellow cakes, drink thin, sharp wine. Or an indecent story, now—I could relish that. The older one grows the more one likes indecency. ”

“ Then we have the adventuress, who succeeds in making a handsome income by the unscrupulous use of her intelligence and charm. After that come the various types of women [Pg 27] who hire themselves or are hired out for the relief of excitable gentlemen. And lastly the crowd of desolate diseased refuse who pick up a living any way they can, in ways too horrible to think of, by the practice of vulgar indecency. ”

“ As to indecency, in proportion as it is flagrant is the shock and resentment against it; and as vanity is the source of indecency, so the universal discountenance and shame is its most effectual antidote. If it is public, it produces immediate reprisals from public opinion which no brow can stand ”

“ The same Innocence is the Protection of Virtue to this Day in the untaught Savages in many Parts of the now known World, where Nakedness is no Offence on one side, no Snare, no Incentive on the other; but Custom being the Judge of Decency to them, takes away all Sense of Indecency in going uncovered, whether in whole, or in Part. ”

“ To indulge in violent denunciation of the disgusting nature of homosexuality, and to measure the sentence by the disgust aroused, or to regret, as one English judge is reported to have regretted when giving sentence, that "gross indecency" is not punishable by death, is to import utterly foreign considerations into the matter. ”

“ We have forgotten the appearance of a healthy body, and feel ashamed to see one. By our mental attitude we accuse the Creator of indecency that “male and female created He them,” for, not only do we veil the bodies of the opposite sexes from each other, (which is a perfectly correct and wise thing to do) but daughters are ashamed to be seen nude by their own mothers, and mothers by their daughters. I believe in the sanctity of nudity. ”

“ We might thus create a real feeling of indecency, the perception of a new impurity, which would take the place of the former absence of all impure thought, and once established, the evil would be as real as our whims have made it in other respects. ”

“ To ignorant matrons, and to prejudiced physicians, have young women been obliged to submit the most secret parts of Nature for examination, without their reflecting that such acts of indecency is a downright attack upon chastity, and that every immodest, every indelicate situation, which caused an internal blush, was little less than prostitution. ”

“ As to the reproach of indecency, her defenders allege that, although there may be some crudities of expression which more recent times would not admit, it is absurd to bring such an accusation against one whose sanctity is generally conceded. ”

“ Gross indecency. Sunken sensualist. Rotten garbage of licentious thoughts. Roots like a pig. Rowdy Knight Errant. A poet whose indecencies stink in the nostrils. Its liberty is the wildest license; its love the essence of the lowest lust! Priapus—worshipping obscenity. Rant and rubbish. Linguistic silliness. [11] Inhumanly insolent. Apotheosis of Sweat. Mouthings of a mountebank. Venomously malignant. Pretentious twaddle. Degraded helot of literature. ”

“ For there can be no question but that one characteristic of excessive vice is indecency, a general baseness in its thoughts and acts concerning the body,40 and that the full portraiture of it cannot be given without marking, and that in the strongest lines, this tendency to corporeal degradation; 148 which, in the time of Dante, could be done frankly, but cannot now. ”

“ I hope, as he assures me, he was not guilty of indecency; but have reason to bless God, who, by disabling me in my faculties, empowered me to preserve my innocence; and, when all my strength would have signified nothing, magnified himself in my weakness. ”

“ If every father, for example, could say to his sons and daughters that if they showed themselves clean men and women he would back them in an early marriage, there would be an appreciable decrease in the amount of young manhood which is now squandered on indecency. ”

“ A woman wearing trousers would be considered so shocking that if she were so garbed on a public street she would probably be arrested for indecency.
We rose up betimes, for sleep weighs lightly on the hopeful as well as on the anxious. ”

“ Acquaint yourself with all depravity, debauchery, foul indecency ever known throughout the universe since the most ancient, forgotten times, multiply it even to Nth powers, limitless, and then you have not approximated their expressions! ”

“ INDELICATE APPAREL.
As God may help me I am going to set forth the evil effects of improper dress or an excessive discipleship of costume. It is a simple truth that you all know, although the pulpit has not yet uttered it, that much of the womanly costume of our time is the cause of the temporal and eternal damnation of a multitude of men. There is a shamelessness among many in what is called high life that calls for vehement protest. The strife with many seems to be how near they can come to the verge of indecency without falling over. ”

“ What we call decency is custom; what we term indecency is merely customary.
.... The noblest pursuit of Man is the pursuit of Woman.
.... “Immoral” is the solemn judgment of the stalled ox upon the sun-inspired lamb.
“ITEMS” FROM THE PRESS OF INTERIOR CALIFORNIA.
.... A little bit of romance has just transpired to relieve the monotony of our metropolitan life. Old Sam Choggins, whom the editor of this paper has so often publicly thrashed, has returned from Mud Springs with a young wife. ”

“ Decency cannot be discussed without indecency. ”

“ MOLL.
That’s not I yet!
PYE. And with most impudent prostitution show your naked bodies to the view of all beholders.
WIDDOW.
Our naked bodies? fie, for shame!
PYE.
Attend me: and your younger daughter be strocken dumb.
MOLL. Dumb? out, alas: tis the worst pain of all for a Woman. I’d rather be mad, or run naked, or any thing: dumb? ”

“ Such competent studies as have been made do conclude that so complex and numerous are the causes of sexual vice that it is impossible to assert with any assurance that 'obscenity' represents a ponderable causal factor in sexually deviant behavior. ”

“ If the Laws and Government, the Administration of Justice, and the Care of the Magistrates were the same, and the Circumstances of the People were likewise the same, I should be glad to hear a Reason, why there should be more or less Incontinence in England, if we were Heathens, than there is, now we are Christians. The real Cause of Fornication, and Adultery, the Root of the Evil, is Lust. This is the Passion, which is so difficult to conquer, whilst it affects us. ”

“ The conclusions to which I am led by this enquiry into sexual inversion are that its several manifestations may be classified under the following categories: (1) Forced abstinence from intercourse with females, or faute de mieux; (2) Wantonness and curious seeking after novel pleasure; (3) Pronounced morbidity; (4) Inborn instinctive preference for the male and indifference to the female sex; (5) Epochs of history when the habit has become established and endemic in whole nations. ”

“ For those who are introduced before their naked mistresses while in the bath, study to strip themselves in order to audacity in lust, casting off fear in consequence of the wicked custom. The ancient athletes, ashamed to exhibit a man naked, preserved their modesty by going through the contest in drawers; but these women, divesting themselves of their modesty along with their chemise, wish to appear beautiful, but contrary to their wish are simply proved to be wicked. For through the body itself the wantonness of lust shines clearly ”

“ One may be a Godiva and be far more modest than another who veils not only her whole body but even her face. And for myself, I wish to record my conviction that it would be far better for the morals of civilized man if he would bring up his children of both sexes to recognize and know the sanctity of nudity, rather than to cover the body as he does and to affirm by his words and suggest by his demeanor that he regards an exposed body as indecent. ”

“ It seems almost incredible that in some countries medical men who are not ashamed to throw young men into the arms of prostitution, blush when mention is made of anticonceptional methods. This false modesty, created by custom and prejudice, waxes indignant at innocent things, whilst it encourages the greatest infamies. ”

“ In some countries of Europe, women of their stamp often despise every appearance of decency, assume the disgusting depravity of male debauchees, with all the airs of affected infidelity, and real profligacy ”

“ Women that follow such practices, by their looks offer themselves for prostitution. “For the light of the body is the eye,” says the Scripture, by which the interior illuminated by the shining light appears. Fornication in a woman is in the raising of the eyes. [725]
“Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, and concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: for which things’ sake cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience,” [726] cries the apostle. ”

“ You will have a great treat, we shall shock the girl's modesty by stripping and exposing her, you win see how delightful the sight of her pretty form is added to the distressing sense of humiliation we will make her feel; the real lovers of the birch watch and enjoy all the expressions of the victim's face, and do all they can to increase the sense of degradation, as well as to inflict terrible and prolonged torture by skilful appliance of the rod, and placing the victim in most painful, distended positions to receive her chastisement. ”

“ The so-called innocence, or naïve ignorance, of an adolescent possesses quite a peculiar charm of attraction for libertines of both sexes, who find a refined erotic pleasure, a unique relish, in the seduction of the innocent, in the role of "initiator in the sexual art." ”

“ This fact depends on convention, and sometimes on the absence or perversion of sexual feelings. Brought up to prudery, sometimes to an absurd extent as in England, these women lose their natural feeling and often suffer from the excitation, indignation, and perpetual fright, which result from it. The exaggerations of prudery, moreover, easily lead to opposite excesses, or else degenerate into hypocrisy. The prude is ashamed of the most natural things, and undergoes continual torment. ”

“ One is drunkenness; the other fornication. The viciousness of these vices is so little disguised, even from those who habitually practise them, that there will be a protest against merely describing one of them by the right Biblical name. Why not say prostitution? For this reason: prostitution is a word applied to only one half of the vice, and that the most pitiable. Fornication hits both sinners alike. Prostitution applies only to the woman. ”

“ I have been charged with almost everything bad, except incontinence, and it is attributed to me as thinking a woman may be guilty of every crime in the catalogue of crimes, provided she retain her chastity. ”

“ For the rest, to be dressed with a kind of brutal gaudiness, to be very thirsty and violently flushed, to laugh perpetually at everything and at nothing, thoroughly to enjoy, in short, a momentous occasion—all this is not, in simple persons of the more susceptible sex, an unpardonable crime. ”

“ 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. ”