Sex-education: A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its relation to human lifeBigelow, Maurice A. (Maurice Alpheus)
Science
Sex-education: A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its relation to human life
Bigelow, Maurice A. (Maurice Alpheus)
Sex instruction
The atypical girls of good social groups who need guidance regarding
pre-marital continence are of two types: either one with intensive
sexuality which is often modifiable by medical or surgical treatment;
or one of probably normal instincts but with radical sexual philosophy.
The first type needs not only emphatic instruction regarding
continence, but more often medical help, either for general health or
for correction of localized sexual disturbance. The second type must be
treated exactly as suggested for young men, because they are the women
whose anarchistic repudiation of laws and convention in general has led
to their acceptance of a _single_ standard of morality for men and
women, but one of freedom from monogamic ideals. This type of women,
long well known in the student groups of Paris and in Russian
universities, is becoming more and more evident in America, especially
among some well-educated young women who have dropped their ideals of
chastity because they have found attractiveness in more or less
superficial studies of radical socialism. Many of these 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. Others of these women are so highly
individualized that marriage is beneath their contempt, either because
it will "interfere with a career" or because the legal aspects and
ecclesiastical ceremonies still suggest the old-time subjection of the
wife to the husband. Women who are in a position to know from personal
knowledge of radical people declare that there are still relatively few
educated women who deliberately cut loose from monogamic standards; and
that they are most commonly found among certain intimate and
unconventional groups of students and professional workers, especially
those who are united in "Bohemian life" by artistic or literary
interests. But while such sexually anarchistic women are not common in
America, there is reason for fearing that, unless some unexpected check
comes to this undercurrent towards sexual freedom, it may be found ten
or twenty years hence that a surprisingly large number, but _never a
majority_, of unmarried young women have fallen into the sexual
promiscuity that is so common among unmarried men of the same ages.
[Sidenote: Radical sex literature.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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