Essays in medical sociology, Volume 1 (of 2)Blackwell, Elizabeth
Science
Essays in medical sociology, Volume 1 (of 2)
Blackwell, Elizabeth
Prostitution; Sexual ethics; Social medicine
Our brothers have hitherto been the rough and active pioneers of human
progress, first moulding the material framework of society, then
becoming its leaders and teachers--teachers of those fundamental moral
relations on which human society rests.
But a time has come in the development of the race, when much of the
teaching and judgment formed by one-half the race alone, is seen to be
liable to error, and requires to be weighed and approved by the other
half of mankind.
The women half is necessarily slower in development, from being
appointed to bear that great altruistic burden, maternity. But the
very shackles or sufferings thus undergone for the sake of the race
tend gradually to produce in women special adaptations to the higher
spiritual ends of creation.
When we now inquire into and weigh the value of the teachings offered
to women as the guide of their human relationship to men, we are
struck with its amazing contradictions. All classes and sections
bring forth their varying opinions. The scientist and the theologian,
the physician, the lawyer and the journalist, the literary and the
business man, the official and the man of leisure, are all seen
carrying their load of heterogeneous materials to help build up the
Babel of advice to women. All assert their knowledge of ‘Nature and
Instinct,’ of ‘Science and History,’ or ‘the tragical plea of material
necessity,’ to justify opinions founded on misunderstood data. But the
sectional opinions of a portion of the race must necessarily be either
imperfect, arrogant, or sentimental, and God confounds the Tower which
foolish mortals strive to raise to heaven. All those, both men and
women, who retain their reverence for sex, turn away from this unseemly
Babel of conceit and short-sightedness, and ponder these things in
hearts earnestly seeking truth.
The great question now at issue is the Unity of the Moral Law. This
unity is being attacked by the intellectual short-sightedness or
unconscious intellectual dishonesty of those who should be its most
enlightened upholders.
One of our leading family journals has lately stated that ‘the modern
notion of equality impairs the responsibility of special classes for
special virtues.’ There is a sense in which special classes may be said
to hold special responsibility. Women who are so vitally affected by
the relations of the sexes are especially called on to strengthen and
guide the sexual virtue of a people. They must consider the conditions
essential to such virtue, and when they clearly see the truth, an army
of noble men will zealously help in shaping truth in practice. The
great truth which women are now learning is the necessity that every
man should be chaste. This is the truth so long unrecognised, but at
last discovered as the solution of the great social problem. Without
male chastity, female chastity is impossible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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