Indecent behavior

“ A boy of chivalrous feeling, whose blood would boil at any other form of outrage on a girl, will read a newspaper account of rape or indecent assault with a pleasure so intense that indignation and disgust are quite crowded out of his mind.
If, repelled by the coarseness of the streets, the young man allows lust or passion to lead him into seduction, he commits a crime the consequences of which are usually cruel in the extreme; for in most cases the seduced girl sinks of necessity into prostitution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She had got down to the naked fundamentals of decency and indecency that are deep hidden by, and for most of us under, hypocrisies of conventionality. She had found out that a decent woman was one who respected her body and her soul, that an indecent woman was one who did not, and that marriage rites or the absence of them, the absence of financial or equivalent consideration, or its presence, or its extent or its form, were all irrelevant non-essentials. ”

“ But do you know, Miss, that our sex feel the most profound contempt for a woman who is so weak as to make such an exhibition of folly? It might do for great people, at a great party,—but in dirty, sloppy, muddy streets, by servant-girls as well as by fashionable women, it is considered not only indecent, but as evincing a want of common sense. ”

“ A thing evil of itself and inexcusable under all conceivable circumstances; for instance, blasphemy, idolatry, lying.
(b) Needing excuse, as the killing of a man, the looking at an indecent object. Such things are not to be done except under certain circumstances and with a grave reason. Thus indecent sights may be met in the discharge of professional duty. In that case indeed they cease to be indecent. They are then only indecent when they are viewed without cause. The absence of a good motive in a case like this commonly implies the presence of a bad one. ”

“ Young girls have been seen to yield themselves in wild abandon to their influence, and have been carried half fainting to dark corners of the hall and there, almost helpless, have been subjected to the most indecent advances. ”

“ Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature!—ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your tear, your respectability, that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating extasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is—nor what faith or art or health really is. ”

“ They commit rape and indecent acts in public and often appropriate strange objects, hair or wearing apparel, with the idea of obtaining means to satisfy their vices, either because they are unconscious of doing wrong or because, like true megalomaniacs, they believe the stolen goods to be their own property. ”

“ A fine, handsome, decently-dressed female, about fifteen years of age, who had remained a little behind our party to speak with a friend, was stopped, seized, and brutally assaulted by some of the ruffians, who attempted to take the most indecent liberties with her person. ”

“ Any person who—
(a)
entices, solicits, or importunes in any public place for immoral purposes; or (b)
wilfully and openly exhibits himself or herself in an indecent dress or manner at any door or window or within view of any public street or place or in any place to which the public have access, shall be guilty of an offence.
Persons living on earnings of prostitution or committing or assisting in commission of indecent acts. 20. (1) Any person who—
(a)
knowingly lives wholly or in part on the earnings of prostitution; or (b)
in public commits any act of indecency with another person ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides this they dance especialy the young girls whenever they can collect 8 or 10 together, singing most indecent words using most indecent actions and setting their mouths askew in a most extrordinary manner, in the practise of which they are brought up from their earlyest childhood ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it is to be hoped that this example will be sufficient to deter all others from the commission of any such foul and unnatural crimes: for which, if they should escape the shame and ruin which they so well deserve in this world, they will be most certain of meeting with their full punishment in the next: for unnatural affections are equally vicious and equally detestable in both sexes, nay, if modesty be the peculiar characteristick of the fair sex, it is in them most shocking and odious to prostitute and debase it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Eliot you will be struck by the indecency of the one, and the obscurity of the other. Mr. Joyce's indecency in Ulysses seems to me the conscious and calculated indecency of a desperate man who feels that in order to breathe he must break the windows. At moments, when the window is broken, he is magnificent. But what a waste of energy! And, after all, how dull indecency is, when it is not the overflowing of a superabundant energy or savagery, but the determined and public-spirited act of a man who needs fresh air! ”

“ Those who have not become utterly destitute of modesty shut out strangers, but bathe with their own servants, and strip naked before their slaves, and are rubbed by them, giving to the crouching menial liberty to lust, by permitting fearless handling, for those who are introduced before their naked mistresses while in the bath, study to strip themselves in order to show 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 ”

“ Some male sex deviants do not stop with infecting their often-innocent partners: they descended through perversions to other forms of depravity, such as drug addiction, burglary, sadism, and even murder. ”

“ The motives that bring to pederasty a man originally normal sexually and of sound mind are various. It is used temporarily as a means of sexual satisfaction faute de mieux,—as in infrequent cases of bestiality,—where abstinence from normal sexual indulgence is a necessity. [18] It thus occurs on shipboard during long voyages, in prisons, in baths, etc. It is highly probable that, among men subjected to such conditions, there are single individuals of low morals and great sensuality, or actual urnings, who seduce the others. Lust, imitation, and desire further their purpose. ”

“ Listen to the heart-rending stories of girls in the houses of prostitution. Each has her story of circumstantial events to relate. Circumstances of varied gravity have caused the multitudes of “fallen women” to occupy their degraded sphere of shame and debauch. Many of these have never been predisposed to a sexual livelihood by an erotic disposition, and they only stay by compulsion and fear of reproach that must follow if they return to society. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The crime of rape presumes a temporary, powerful excitation of sexual desire, induced by excess in alcohol, or by some other condition. It is highly improbable that a man morally intact would commit this most brutal crime. ”

“ The vision of imagination has penetrated all draperies, and carried with it the lascivious sense which the unobstructed eye would not. Sensuality has been promoted rather than suppressed. The exhibition of the naked human body is the beginning of sexual morality. ”

“ There is no occurrence in the whole vast and diversified range of sexual evil, from the first lewd thought in the mind of the budding child, the very suspicion of which makes the parent tremble, down to the last ghastly and bloody spasm of lust which rends its hapless victim in some rusurban woodland, that is not fed mainly from this mystery and mother of abominations to whose care civilization has remitted the entire subject. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Unfortunately it must be admitted that the most revolting of these crimes are done by sane individuals who, by reason of satiety in normal sexual indulgence, lasciviousness, and brutality, and not seldom during intoxication, forget that they are human beings. ”

“ We know that also in the case of the normal sexual inclination of the male, innocence on the part of the female exerts a notable stimulus, in which connexion the question whether we have to do here with a result of conventional opinions or with an inborn mental disposition, must naturally be left open.117 But it is a fact that just as the knowledge of a woman's immoral past, or obscene remarks or gestures on her part, will in many men suffice to inhibit sexual desire; so, on the other hand, for many men, innocence in the woman heightens the stimulus. ”

“ The delicate brain, which is being molded, with the other organs of the body, receives its cast largely from those mental and nervous sensations and actions of the mother which are the most intense. One of the most certain effects of sexual indulgence at this time is to develop abnormally the sexual instinct in the child. Here is the key to the origin of much of the sexual precocity and depravity which curse humanity. Sensuality is born in the souls of a large share of the rising generation. What wonder that prostitution flourishes in spite of Christianity and civil law? ”

“ But corporal punishment entails other dangers, in addition to the risk of the origination or the awakening of a sexual perversion. Certain children, having experienced sexual stimulation as a result of such punishment, will endeavour to secure its repetition. I have known cases in which sexual perverts have deliberately misconducted themselves in school, in order to be punished, and thus to enjoy voluptuous sensations. ”

“ Were these girls attacked by a malady, a complex hallucination of the senses that led them to firmly believe they were possessed or owned by a supernatural being who obliged them to abdicate their free will in his favor? Were they only, after all, prostitutes suffering from nymphomania? We can only insist that prostitution, or a low standard of morality, enters largely into the history of those possessed by incubi. ”

“ In old debauchees, who have become satiated with normal sexual intercourse, and more or less impotent, and also morally depraved; and who resort to pederasty, in order to excite their lust with this new stimulus, and aid their virility, that has sunk so low psychically and physically. ”