Sex drive

“ In short, both in view of the fact that sexual ignorance with its possible missteps has much more disastrous consequences for the girl than it has for the boy, and in view of the fact that the sex instinct and its physical and psychic manifestations occupy a much more important part in woman's life than they do in the life of man, we consider the necessity of sex instruction much greater in the case of woman than in the case of man. I do not wish to be misunderstood as underestimating the need of sex instruction for the male—only I consider the need even greater in the case of the female. ”

“ If, therefore, we admit on the one hand that the sexual excesses of the female sex are especially grafted on hereditary disposition of character, or are primarily due to strong appetites, we are obliged on the other hand to recognize that the great role played by sexuality in the brain of woman renders it more difficult for her than for man to return to better ways when she has once prostituted herself, or when she has surrendered in any way to sexual licentiousness, even when her original quality was not bad. ”

“ There is also an increasing sex antagonism, growing out of woman's long struggle for the privilege of participating in activities and sharing prerogatives formerly limited to men, which acts as an inhibitory force to prevent the transference of the sexual emotion to its normal object in the opposite sex. ”

“ In addition to the imposition of these arbitrary standards of masculinity and femininity, society has forced upon its members conformity to a uniform and institutionalized type of sexual relationship. This institutionalized and inflexible type of sexual activity, which is the only expression of the sexual emotion meeting with social approval, not only makes no allowance for biological variations, but takes even less into account the vastly complex and exceedingly different conditionings of the emotional reactions of the individual sex life. ”

“ In our more civilised societies, as they exist today, woman possesses (more often perhaps in appearance than reality!) a somewhat greater freedom of sexual selection; she is no longer captured by muscular force, but there are still conditions entirely unconnected with sex attractions and affections, which yet largely dominate the sex relations. ”

“ Social institutions controlling sex activities based on the assumption that all women are adapted to as well as specialized for reproduction. Neurotic tendencies which unfit women for marriage—the desire for domination. Sexual anæsthesia another neurotic trait which interferes with marital harmony. The conditioning of the sexual impulse to the parent ideal and the erotic fetish as factors which determine mating. Homosexual tendencies and their part in the sex problem. The conflict between the desire for marriage and egoistic ambitions. ”

“ So long as responsibility was denied to women, so long as a father or a husband, backed up by the community, held himself responsible for a woman's sexual behavior, for her "virtue," it was necessary that the whole of sexual morality should revolve around the entrance to the vagina. It became absolutely essential to the maintenance of morality that all eyes in the community should be constantly directed on to that point, and the whole marriage law had to be adjusted accordingly. ”

“ The woman who employs the arts of dress to bring the physical peculiarities of sex into prominence, and uses every method of coquetry and flirtation to excite the attention and awaken the physical impulses of men, is abusing her sexual power. The degree in which she employs these arts, measures the extent to which her own nature is dominated by brute sexual instinct, and the unworthiness of the use to which she puts this instinct.
This power of sex in women is strikingly shown in the enormous influence which they exert upon men for evil. ”

“ Moreover, since the constitution of society has largely been in the hands of men, the nature of the sexual impulse in men has largely been expressed in the written and unwritten codes of social law. The sexual instinct in women is much more elusive. This, indeed, is involved at the outset in the organic psychological play of male and female, manifesting itself in the phenomena of modesty and courting. The same elusiveness, the same mocking mystery, meet us throughout when we seek to investigate the manifestations of the sexual impulse in women. ”

“ The woman that is governed by the egoistic-social instinct unwittingly plans for the man’s hasty emotional relaxation, the while completely holding her own emotional reactions in check, under perfect repressive control. In the average civilized woman [210] brought up under sex inhibitions this control by annihilation is the only control she has. The ability thus to annihilate the finest possibilities of erotic reaction in herself is the result of the only training many women get. It is the fine art of the prostitute, but not all of hers, however. ”

“ Without mentioning the possible disaster of pregnancy at this early juncture, I should like to emphasize that sexual intercourse 127 at this age, without the preparatory stage of adolescence having intervened, can cause a permanent aversion for the experience. It can produce a trauma of such severity that the young person may withdraw from the opposite sex entirely and remain withdrawn. Or it may encourage her to believe that she has attained her majority and cause her to act out this joyless and premature experience over and over with many different members of the opposite sex. ”

“ Useful to the race as was this evolution originally, its influence for good has long since reached its limit. Excessive sex-energy has threatened to "destroy both individual and race." Hence woman is declining longer to be confined to her highly specialized sexual function and is demanding an equal place in the social organization. She is gaining a social consciousness: Stetson, Women and Economics, 5, 12 ff., 37 ff., 48, 122-45. Cf. Schreiner, "The Woman Question," Cosmopolitan, XXVIII, 183 ff., on "sex-parasitism." ”

“ It is on the basis of the manifestations of this antagonism that some writers—as already mentioned—hold that the chief motive forces which are active in sexual repression are to be found in the instincts of the herd. Still more marked perhaps is the antagonism between sex and individuation. It has long been recognised, and modern psychological researches have pretty definitely proved, that many of the more complex desires and activities of the individual—desires and activities upon which human culture ultimately depends—are built up upon sublimations of the sexual tendencies. ”

“ Professor Forel speaks of subduing the sexual instinct. I would rather speak of transmuting it. The direct method of attack is often futile, always necessitous of effort, but it is possible for us to transmute our sex-energy into higher forms in our individual lives, thus justifying the evolutionary and psychological contention that it is the source of the higher activities of man, of moral indignation and of the “restless energy” which has changed the surface of the earth. ”

“ In controlling her own sexual life, and in realizing that her responsibility for such control can no longer be shifted on to the shoulders of the other sex, women will also indirectly affect the sexual lives of men, much as men already affect the sexual lives of women. ”

“ From a mistaken standpoint other supporters of women’s rights oppose the ideal method in sex-relations, life-long monogamy, and the ideal of sexual sensibility, motherhood, and they put forward quite new sexual pretensions on behalf of women, as belonging to them by natural right. ”

“ He believes that temporary sexual intimacies between boys and girls under 20 from the period of puberty would be far less harmful than separation of the sexes until marriage, with its resultants: masturbation, hysteria, repressed and disordered functions in young women, seduction, prostitution, venereal affections, and many other evils. ”

“ This does not prevent us, however, from believing them mistaken in their reading of the situation, and pathetic in their illusions about their own and their sex’s capacities. So indefatigable are they, indeed, that large numbers of apparently monorchid and shallow-minded men have already gone over to their side; while the conversion of girls and young women to a sexless life is one of the least obvious but most pernicious results of their activities. ”

“ Politicians, publicists, and ecclesiastics all refuse to acknowledge the obvious fact that the increasing economic independence of women is alone responsible for this phenomenon.
Notwithstanding the fact that during the last twenty-five years marked progress is observed in the social and economic conditions of women, still the sexual position of the great mass of women has steadily declined. The fact that so far as her sex relations are concerned civilized woman occupies a lower position than that occupied by the female animal has already been noted in these pages. ”

“ We cannot refrain from quoting at length from Lombroso and Ferrero a passage relating to the evolution of sexual manners in the female sex (Woman as Criminal and Prostitute) : “In the lowest stages of development, the feeling of modesty is entirely wanting; limitless freedom in sexual intercourse is the general rule; and even where no system of 303promiscuity prevails, marriage rather fosters than discourages prostitution, especially in countries in which husbands are accustomed to expose their wives for sale. ”

“ Because of the economic dependence of the human female on her mate she is modified to sex to an excessive degree. This excessive modification she transmits to her children; and so is steadily implanted in the human constitution the morbid tendency to excess in this relation, which has acted so universally upon us in all ages, in spite of our best efforts to restrain it." While in man the immediate dominating force of sexual passion may be more conspicuous, in woman it holds more universal sway. ”

“ Sex-energy in its primal manifestation is exhibited in the male of the human species to a degree far greater than is necessary for the processes of reproduction,—enough, indeed, to subvert and injure those processes. The direct injury to reproduction from the excessive indulgence of the male, and the indirect injury through its debilitating effect upon the female, together with the enormous evil to society produced by extra-marital indulgence,—these are facts quite generally known. ”

“ While from this woman, again, to the one who bears few or no children, but who, whether as a wife or mistress, lives by the exercise of her sex function alone, the step is short. There is but one step farther to the prostitute, who affects no form of productive labour, and who, in place of life, is recognised as producing disease and death, but who exists parasitically through her sexual attribute. ”

“ Many still are the men and women—and not among the conservatives only—who are strongly opposed to girls receiving any instruction in sex matters. Some say that such instruction—except a few hygienic rules about menstruation—is unnecessary, because the sex instinct awakens in girls comparatively late, and it is time enough for them to learn about such matters after they are married. ”

“ It is worth noting that the spread of feminism will reinforce the action of sexual selection in keeping down the numbers of this "intermediate sex." In the past, women who lacked femininity or maternal instinct have often married because the pressure of public opinion and economic conditions made it uncomfortable for any woman to remain unmarried. ”

“ Yet others see in the commercial spirit of the age and the avarice for profits and unearned livelihoods the basis of sex vice. Education, the responsibility of doctors and parents, marriage laws and customs, recreation, labor conditions and wages all receive their emphasis in the discussion of the causes of sex irregularities and morbidity.
In each line of thought and endeavor women will be found today in the United States as leaders in the crusade against the social evil. ”

“ For the vast majority of men the celibate life is not intended, and to some extent, though, as we shall [Pg 35] see, not entirely, other rules apply. What indeed we have so carefully to distinguish is the transference of sex from the repression of sex. To transfer the sex-force is a healthy and natural energy, whereas to repress sex is an evil which must always tend to produce unfortunate results. ”

“ For we know that the sexual libido in women after the menopause is often and for several years stronger than before. Why? Nor has Nature abolished the sexual instinct and the passionate desire for sex relations in all those men and women who are for some reason or other sterile, or otherwise so defective that no child can result from the union. ”

“ But in efforts to teach chastity, sex itself must not be made to appear an evil thing. This is a grave mistake and all too common since the rise of the sex-hygiene movement. Undoubtedly a considerable amount of the celibacy in sensitive women may be traced to ill-balanced mothers and teachers who, in word and attitude, build up an impression that sex is indecent and bestial, and engender in general a damaging suspicion of men. ”

“ Yet at no time—especially in women, who present all the various stages of the sexual life in so emphatic a form—would education be more valuable. The great burden of reproduction, with all its absorbing responsibilities, has suddenly been lifted; at the same time the perpetually recurring rhythm of physical sex manifestations, so often disturbing in its effect, finally ceases ”