Motherhood and the Relationships of the SexesHartley, C. Gasquoine (Catherine Gasquoine)
Philosophy
Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes
Hartley, C. Gasquoine (Catherine Gasquoine)
Mothers; Sex; Women -- Social and moral questions
These wrong and vulgar conditions without doubt have acted more strongly
against men than against women. And I would note in passing, that here,
as I believe, we find one explanation of the greater continence among
unmarried women than among unmarried men. It is not because satisfaction
for the sex-needs is more necessary for the health and well-being of men
than it is for the health and well-being of women—a statement I do not
believe; nor is it proved that this absence of conscious sex-desires
necessarily implies the absence of unconscious sex-action; all that can
be claimed is that the sexual impulses have been diverted into different
expressions, and the explanation of such diversion is to be sought in the
boy’s and young man’s education and life, which forces sex so much more
strongly into the conscious thought and attention.
We are dealing with a question very difficult to solve. On this
assumption that the sex-needs of the man are more imperative than the
sex-needs of the woman, much that is false has been accepted as true;
there are many who have advocated a “duplex sexual morality,” and while
demanding from the woman complete sexual abstinence until she marries,
regard this as impossible in the case of men. Such a separation as
this between the sex-needs of man and the sex-needs of woman is, in my
opinion, a very grave error. Celibacy is unnatural and harmful in man, it
is at least equally unnatural and harmful in woman.
Now, it is on this question of the sex-needs of women that I find
myself, as I have suggested already, in such direct opposition to the
great majority of women, numbers of whom do not, will not, admit to
a consciousness of any kind of sexual need. I believe they are quite
honest, but I know they are mistaken.
The doctrine of chastity being the natural and special virtue of women is
entirely false. Complete abstinence from love cannot be borne by women
through a long period of years without producing serious results on the
body and the mind. And these results are by no means clearly dependent
on a conscious knowledge of unsatisfied sex. The evil may be pronounced
even when the woman herself has not the slightest knowledge of her real
needs. In many women the penalty is paid in an unceasing and wearying
restlessness of mind and body. We have also to face the fact that
prolonged and enforced abstinence may act to cultivate a morbid obsession
with sexual things. I believe that the celibate often is less chaste than
the normally sexual individual. This may seem to be a wanton charge to
some, but I am not speaking without due consideration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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