Sexual freedom

“ Prostitution has undoubtedly had some effect, and possibly a large effect, in checking the increase, if not in producing the decrease, of certain individual qualities which are deemed undesirable, either from the personal or the social point of view.
In its commenst form, prostitution is a means of limiting the sexual freedom of women, while extending the largest freedom to men compatible with such restriction upon the female. It provides, in other words, the greatest possible sexual liberty for male and the greatest possible limitation for women, which can coexist. ”

“ Many of these [193] radical women frankly say that they would like to marry the "right man," but failing to find that rare species, they claim their right to sexual freedom in more or less capricious liaisons. ”

“ For married people and their progeny the consequences of the existing relationships of force and prostitution are truly appalling. But this same society, especially the male portion of it, never wearies of pronouncing their anathemas on freedom in love. "Free love' is a word of terror, but free prostitution has become a social institution, which is approved inside and outside of marriage by a legal license. And shall I tell you why men condemn freedom in love? ”

“ The movement which is taking place among us to liberate sexual relationships from an excessive bondage to fixed and arbitrary regulations would have been impossible and mischievous but for the concomitant growth of a sense of personal responsibility in the members of the community. It could not indeed have subsisted for a single year without degenerating into license and disorder. Freedom in sexual relations involves mutual trust and that can only rest on a basis of personal responsibility. Where there can be no reliance on personal responsibility there can be no freedom. ”

“ With deep sorrow we must admit the absolute truth of the charge that too many men clamber out of the abyss of debauchery to a blighted marriage. But the demand 264for equal moral rights, for the abandonment of the hitherto prevalent bisexual ethical standards, is in vain conflict with actuality, with the defensive instincts of young men, with the difficulties entailed by the struggle for existence, with the increasing pretensions (to sexual freedom) of women themselves ”

“ Not only have the acquired liberties and the social aims of the present day a tendency to give to women in general a freer and higher position, to emancipate them from the bonds in which owing to the conditions of family life they have so long been shackled, but some members of the women’s rights party go even farther, and demand for women greater freedom in the sphere of sexual activity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This dual division of the erotic feelings has on the one side brought about such fine and lofty, and on the other such coarse and debased manifestations that neither one nor the other has any counterpart among the nations—or classes within a nation—where this division is unknown, since there the freedom of sexual choice is undisputed. ”

“ In this attitude towards sex boundaries or captions may lie the explanation, incidentally, of what is a constant puzzle to the European visitor—the freedom of social intercourse allowed to the youth of opposite sexes. Since consummation only constitutes sexual intimacy in American opinion, and since consummation, it is assumed, is utterly out of the question, why raise barriers between boys and girls? The assumption that consummation is out of the question is, by and large, correct, which is still another puzzle. ”

“ But the emergence of women has had another significant effect, namely: an increase in frankness concerning extra-legal sexual relations, if not in their number. Of late there has been much public discussion of the wantonness of our modern youth; which, being interpreted, means the disposition of our girls to take the same liberty of indulgence in pre-nuptial sexual affairs that has always been countenanced in boys. This tendency is an entirely [Pg 148] natural result of woman’s increased freedom. ”

“ And while we to-day have the same simple and clean ideas all over the world about sexual restraints and sexual freedoms, people in those days had the most various and complicated codes, half-hidden and half-confessed. ”

“ No attempt will be made to take up the matter of the good or evil of sexual intercourse among humans aside from the matter of conscious procreation, but as an historian, it might be worth while to ask the exponents of the impurity complex to explain the fact that, without exception, the great periods of cultural efflorescence have been those characterized by a large amount of freedom in sex-relations, and that those of the greatest cultural degradation and decline have been accompanied with greater sex repression and purity. ”

“ To conclude, liberty of the sexual life remains united, in our mind, with a preparatory sexual education and a power of individual determination.
Liberty of sexual life in all circumstances, of course: in or out of union... If it is true that sexual experiences differ from one another, how can jealousy — morbid attitude of love — exist? Can an individual, subject or object of an experience, reasonably bemoan the lack of necessary qualifications which make one of their fellows the subject or object of another experience? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It seems from the records that there was much talk in your day about the scandalous fact that there were two distinct moral codes in sexual matters, one for men and another for women — men refusing to be bound by the law imposed on women, and society not even attempting to enforce it against them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have an interest in everything that concerns the well-being of humanity, and in science, art, and industry. With my energy it is comparatively easy to postpone for a time the satisfaction of my desires, which will be described hereafter. Intentionally and consciously, I curse the morality of to-day, which forces those who are abnormal sexually to break laws that are voluntarily established, and regards sexual congress of two persons of the same sex as a matter depending on the choice of the individual, and a matter in which law-makers have a right to interfere. ”

“ Sexual Rights.—While sexual sentiments form part of the most sacred and intimate conditions of individual happiness, they are also closely and indissolubly connected with the social welfare of humanity. In no domain is it more difficult to combine harmoniously the welfare of the community with that of the individual, and this is why questions of right in sexual matters are among the most difficult to solve.
The satisfaction of the sexual appetite in man is part of his natural rights. Natural science compels us to formulate this principle ”

“ I may, however, remark that among a number of primitive races, and in young and progressive nations, whose sexual life is still comparatively pure, prostitution is only feebly developed. It is especially to Napoleon I that we owe the present form of regulation and organization of prostitutes. Like all his legislation on marriage and sexual intercourse, this regulation is the living expression of his sentiments toward woman; oppression of the female sex, contempt of its rights, and degradation of its individuals to the state of articles of pleasure for men, and machines for reproduction. ”

“ Man Responsible.—Every great social reform must begin with the male sex. They must either lead, or give it its support. Prostitution is a sin wholly of their own making. All the misery, all the lust, as well as all the blighting consequences, are chargeable wholly to the uncontrolled sexual passion of the male. To reform sinful women, reform the men. Teach them that the physiological truth means permanent moral, physical and mental benefit, while seductive indulgence blights and ruins. ”

“ A Catholic revisionist/progressive view of sex before or outside of marriage would maintain that sexual encounters cause no unjust harm, involve free consent, mutuality of sexual desire, and equality of personhood, power, and status. ”

“ It was never meant by those who first cautiously advised a clearer understanding of sexual relations and hygienic laws that everybody should chatter freely respecting these grave issues; that teachers, lecturers, novelists, story-writers, militants, dramatists, and social workers should copiously impart all they know, or assume they know, to the world. The lack of restraint, the lack of balance, the lack of soberness and common sense were never more apparent than in the obsession of sex, which has set us all a-babbling about matters once excluded from the amenities of conversation. ”

“ Men themselves will see that they are bound to put a check upon lust, and forbid the exercise of physical sex to the injury of another individual. Serious consideration will then be given to the ways in which sexual power may be rightfully exercised, and preserve its distinctly human features of affection and mutual responsibility. Whilst social sentiment is growing towards such recognition, it is our duty as women unflinchingly to oppose prostitution—i.e., mercenary indiscriminate sexual intercourse—and to refuse utterly to countenance it. ”

“ Out of the unchallenged policies of continence, abstinence, "chastity" and "purity," we have reaped the harvests of prostitution, venereal scourges and innumerable other evils. Traditional moralists have failed to recognize that chastity and purity must be the outward symptoms of awakened intelligence, of satisfied desires, and fulfilled love. They cannot be taught by "sex education." They cannot be imposed from without by a denial of the might and the right of sexual expression. ”

“ Contesting voices are heard on all sides. Tolstoi’s rigid demand for complete sexual abstinence, the exhortation of the professors of the German universities to their students in favor of moral purity, the associations for the official prevention of venereal diseases, the agitation among young men in favor of abstinence from sexual intercourse before marriage, finally, the clamorous voices of the supporters of women’s rights—all these are influences within the sphere of sexual morality, which must lead slowly but surely to extensive social changes in the sexual life of women. ”

“ For a great deal of sickening hypocrisy, for the high tide of prostitution, and for the prevalence of sexual diseases, we may thank both our barbarous, undifferentiated legal judgments about the sexual situation, and our inability to develop a finer moral perception of the immense psychologic differences that may exist in free sexual activity. ”

“ Sexual liberty is exclusively individual order. It presupposes an education of the will which permits each to determine for themselves the point where they will cease to be master of their passions or penchants, and education perhaps much more instinctive than it appears at first look. Like all liberties, that of the sexual life involves an effort, not of abstinence — (in fact, abstention from the experiences of life is a mark of moral insufficiency, as debauchery is a sign of moral weakness) — but of judgment, discernment, and classification. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The political emancipation of women is likely to lead to a comparatively stringent enforcement by law of sexual morality (that is why so many of us dread it) ; and this will soon compel us to consider what our sexual morality shall be. At present a ridiculous distinction is made between vice and crime, in order that men may be vicious with impunity. ”

“ But while there can be no doubt about the amply adequate character of the existing social reaction to all manifestations of perverted sexuality, the question still remains how far not merely the law, but also the state of public opinion, should be modified in the light of such a psychological study as we have here undertaken. It is clear that this public opinion, molded chiefly or entirely with reference to gross vice, tends to be unduly violent in its reaction. What, then, is the reasonable attitude of society toward the congenital sexual invert? ”