But let us acknowledge from the start that we stand before an
extremely complicated question, in which no routine formula can do
justice to the manifoldness of problems. Most of these discussions are
misshaped from the beginning by the effort to deal with the whole
social sex problem, while only one or another feature is seriously
considered. Now it is white slavery, and now the venereal diseases;
now the demands of eugenics, and now the dissipation of boys; now the
influence of literature and drama, and now the effect of sexual
education in home and school; now the medical situation and the
demands of hygiene, and now the moral situation and the demands of
religion; now the influence on the feministic movement, and now on art
and social life; now the situation in the educated middle classes, and
now in the life of the millions. We ought to disentangle the various
threads in this confusing social tissue and follow each by itself. We
shall see soon enough that not only the various elements of the
situation awake very different demands, but that often any single
feature may lead to social postulates which interfere with each other.
Any regulation prescription falsifies the picture of the true needs of
the time.
II
We certainly follow the present trend of the discussion if we single
out first of all the care for the girls who are in danger of becoming
victims of private or professional misuse as the result of their
ignorance of the world of erotics. This type of alarming news most
often reaches the imagination of the newspaper reader nowadays, and
this is the appeal of the most sensational plays. The spectre of the
white slavery danger threatens the whole nation, and the gigantic
number of illegitimate births seems fit to shake the most indifferent
citizen. Every naïve girl appears a possible victim of man's lust,
and all seem to agree that every girl should be acquainted with the
treacherous dangers which threaten her chastity. The new programme
along this line centres in one remedy: the girls of all classes ought
to be informed about the real conditions before they have an
opportunity to come into any bodily contact with men. How far the
school is to spread this helpful knowledge, how far the wisdom of
parents is to fill these blanks of information, how far serious
literature is to furnish such science, and how far the stage or even
the film is to bring it to the masses, remains a secondary feature of
the scheme, however much it is discussed among the social reformers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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