Sexual vice

“ Photography and all the perfected methods of reproduction of pictures, the increasing means of travel which facilitate clandestine sexual relations, the industrial art which ornaments our apartments, the increasing luxury and comfort of dwellings, beds, etc., are, at the present day, so many factors in the science of erotic voluptuousness. Prostitution itself has become adapted to all the pathological excrescences of vice. In a word, the artificial culture of the human sexual appetite has given rise to a veritable high school of debauchery. ”

“ Although written, as the author declares, to show the necessity for the proper development, distinctions, and discipline of sex in the young, it touches upon the important questions of the tendencies of sexual vice in modern civilization, and upon the disastrous results of those sins which society winks at, upon woman. ”

“ It is the most dangerous of all sexual abuses, because the most extensively practiced. The vice consists in any excitement of the genital organs produced otherwise than in the natural way. It is known by the terms, self-pollution, self-abuse, masturbation, onanism, manustupration, voluntary pollution, solitary or secret vice, and other names sufficiently explanatory. The vice is the more extensive because there are no bounds to its indulgence. Its frequent repetition fastens it upon the victim with a fascination almost irresistible. ”

“ In the majority of persons who are subject to this vice, it is congenital; or at any rate the sexual inclination can be followed back into the years of childhood, like a kind of physical hermaphroditism. Sexual contact with a woman inspires them with real disgust. ”

“ In all this we can but observe the worship of the sexual; though obscure, yet every manifestation of human existence points to it. The good people of the earth profit by the grand and noble sexual unity in the marital existence, and by the pure, social relations, and chaste affections of the unmarried; [8] but these are but a small part of human society. The masses express their worship for the sexual by debauch, dissipation, vice and crime. ”

“ There are hundreds of books and pamphlets that deal with amazing boldness with the sexual mistakes of human life, but there is not in general circulation to-day any printed matter which deals with normal sexual life with anything like the frankness and directness that is common in widely circulated literature on social vice and its concomitant diseases. ”

“ The pa- thological manifestations alone bear the stamp of the really extraordinary, of relative ori- ginality, and present certain features, according to whether the sexual instinct is dulled or excited. The moral depravity of healthy subjects, with full conscience of their vice, produces the fewest new forms from the sexual point of view, and borrows its forms mostly from morbid conditions. ”

“ That the former instinct has grown into disrepute and has come to be considered a forbidden topic in polite society, is due to the fact that sexual passion, like all other human acts which may be a source of gratification, can degenerate by overindulgence into a destructive and demoralizing vice. ”

“ Boys and girls growing up, first learn of these things from their vulgar companions, stumble into love, courtship, and marriage, blundering and groping--all because they have been denied instruction in one of the subjects which are vital for their health and happiness. Venereal diseases and sexual sins are augmented because of the ignorance which prudishness insists upon. Women fall; men patronize the prostitutes, contract gonorrhea and syphilis, and carry them to their wives, because of this ignorance; and society reaps wretchedness and vice. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the other hand, an ever-larger proportion of girls belonging to the “middle and upper classes,” abstaining alike from the good and the evil results of marriage, falls under the yoke of sexual impulses denied satisfaction or gratified by abnormal means, and suffers in consequence both physically and mentally. ”

“ The man who, for some reason or another, cannot obtain normal coitus should content himself with nocturnal emissions, and the woman with voluptuous dreams, and should both abstain from active and voluntary excitations. For my part, I consider prostitution, or "love" which is bought, as a variety of compensatory masturbation, and not as normal copulation. Coitus with a prostitute, generally infected with venereal disease, who receives new clients continually, has as little affinity with love as with the normal object of the sexual appetite—reproduction ”

“ If the poets and the preachers of morality apostrophize me with indignation saying that this is the prostitution of love, I shall be obliged to protest. So long as sexual enjoyment is not bought, there is no prostitution. Man has as much right to a certain agreeable satisfaction of his sexual appetite, even without exalted sentiments, as he has to satisfy his hunger and thirst, as long as he does no harm to anyone. ”

“ Parents would often refrain, on the plea that innocence must not be disturbed, from teaching their children anything about sex. So impure and evil a subject must not be referred to. Such unpleasant problems as venereal disease must be hidden out of sight, although prostitution and venereal disease continue to flourish. The Victorian, in fact, carried out the Puritan doctrine that all sex is evil, by outwardly pretending that, unless married, he possessed no sexual instinct. ”

“ Many prostitutes who take no pleasure in their unclean intimacies not only endure a disgusting life for the favor and means thus gained, but affect intense passion in their sexual contacts because they have learned that such exhibitions gratify men."
18. Husband's Brutality.—Husbands! It is your licentiousness that drives your wives to a deed so abhorrent to their every wifely, womanly and maternal instinct—a deed which ruins the health of their bodies, prostitutes their souls, and makes marriage, maternity and womanhood itself degrading and loathsome. ”

“ In fact, a lunatic asylum reveals to us, in the form of repulsive caricatures, all gradations and variations of a more or less degenerate feminine sexual life, coquetry, wearing all kinds of ornaments, jealous anger, erotic excitement, etc.
The sexual excitation of the insane often makes them soil themselves with urine and excrements, and heap insults on persons whom their diseased imagination suspects of sexual assaults or immodest acts toward themselves or others. They have a tendency to believe themselves betrothed or married to kings, emperors, Jesus Christ or God. ”

“ 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 Product of Lust.—Lust pure and simple. The only difference between a marriage of this character and prostitution is, that society, rotten to its heart, pulpits afraid to cry aloud against crime and vice, and the church conformed to the world, have made such a profanation of marriage respectable. To put it in other words, when two people determine to live together as husband and wife, and evade the consequences and responsibilities of marriage, they are simply engaged in prostitution without the infamy which attaches to that vice and crime. ”

“ Before science can offer a new marriage law the psychology of mating must be further studied. Women are classifying as prostitution a marriage in which psychical values are ignored. They seek chastity in marriage according to the definition given in Doctor S. Herbert’s Fundamentals in Sexual Ethics, “Chastity—true chastity—has reference not so much to actions as to feelings and motives. ”

“ When a woman of high moral character and strong passions is subjected for a very long period to the perpetual strain of such sexual craving, especially if combined with love for a definite individual, a chain of evil results, physical and moral, may be set up, and numerous distinguished physicians have recorded such cases, which terminated at once in complete recovery as soon as the passion was gratified. ”

“ Any stimuli which cause an unpleasant reaction, such as obnoxious odors, a disagreeable tone of voice, an ugly feature of the face or figure, an awkward appearance, bad taste in dress, etc., are apt to adversely affect eroticism. Therefore, when one of the opposite sex by any of these means arouses disgust, the anti-fetich paralyzes the sexual appetite, and even a symbol of the objectionable object may cool love. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a youth than to make the startling discovery that he, though extremely conscientious and offenceless, is a type of sexual cripple that has always been regarded by the sexually full-fledged—because of their ignorance and Phariseeism—as the lowest of the low, a monster of wickedness, and an outcast from society? ”

“ I saw her several years afterwards with her husband, happy and flourishing.
I have mentioned this case to show that, even in women, sexual excess does not necessarily destroy the character, the sentiments of modesty, nor the will. It all depends on their cause. If there is congenital weakness of character, the evil is irreparable; but if it is only due to external forces which can be eliminated in time, its effect may often be permanently suppressed. Some female inebriates are sexually cold and repulse men ”

“ It is generally conceded by students of sociology that earlier marriages tend to decrease the causes of the evil of prostitution, illicit sexual relations, and general sexual morality; and the consequent spread and existence of the venereal diseases which have followed in the trail of such relations. And it is likewise conceded that prostitution is an evil, and a cancer spot upon modern social{166} life, and that venereal diseases constitute a frightful menace to the health and physical welfare of the race. ”

“ Unnatural Lust.—Worst among the sins of impurity, as such, are crimes of unnatural lust, for they exercise the sexual act, not only illicitly, but also in a manner that defeats its purpose of reproduction. ”

“ The most ordinary and invariable forms of polite intercourse are regarded by these women, whose powers of observation are morbidly stimulated, as being indications of a special “attention” paid to themselves. They persecute these men with their own attentions, and imagine that it is the men who are persecuting them. Often this morbid mental state is associated with sexual malpractices, masturbation, etc. Not rarely, such degenerates are affected with lascivious dreams. Often they experience hallucinations of sexual perception in the form of supposed assaults on their virginity. ”

“ It is well known that terror or pain in either sex will temporarily destroy all physical pleasure. In married life, injury from childbirth, or brutal or awkward conjugal approaches, may cause unavoidable shrinking from sexual congress, often wrongly attributed to absence of sexual passion. ”

“ Most of the successful novels deal with the so-called sex problem, our plays are to a great extent sex problem plays and our newspapers are full of sex crimes and sexual divagations of many kinds. This acts as a strong incitement to sexuality and represents exactly the opposite of what nature intended in the matter. As a consequence, all the tendencies to over-solicitude with regard to sexual affections and all that instability of mind and over-reaction to all forms of irritation that comes in the midst of sexual excitation are noted. ”

“ 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. ”