Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6: Sex in Relation to SocietyEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6: Sex in Relation to Society
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
work and sexual activity such as was supposed by Möbius. I am of
opinion that the unquestionable fact of the intellectual
inferiority of so many women is due to the inhibition of thought
imposed upon them for the purpose of sexual repression."
It is only of recent years that this problem has been realized
and faced, though solitary thinkers, like Hinton, have been
keenly conscious of its existence; for "sorrowing virtue," as
Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox puts it, "is more ashamed of its woes
than unhappy sin, because the world has tears for the latter and
only ridicule for the former." "It is an almost cynical trait of
our age," Hellpach wrote a few years ago, "that it is constantly
discussing the theme of prostitution, of police control, of the
age of consent, of the 'white slavery,' and passes over the moral
struggle of woman's soul without an attempt to answer her burning
questions."
On the other hand we find medical writers not only asserting with much
moral fervor that sexual intercourse outside marriage is always and
altogether unnecessary, but declaring, moreover, the harmlessness or even
the advantages of sexual abstinence.
Ribbing, the Swedish professor, in his _Hygiène Sexuelle_,
advocates sexual abstinence outside marriage, and asserts its
harmlessness. Gilles de la Tourette, Féré, and Augagneur in
France agree. In Germany Fürbringer (Senator and Kaminer, _Health
and Disease in Relation to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 228) asserts
that continence is possible and necessary, though admitting that
it may, however, mean serious mischief in exceptional cases.
Eulenburg (_Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 14) doubts whether anyone,
who otherwise lived a reasonable life, ever became ill, or more
precisely neurasthenic, through sexual abstinence. Hegar,
replying to the arguments of Bebel in his well-known book on
women, denies that sexual abstinence can ever produce satyriasis
or nymphomania. Näcke, who has frequently discussed the problem
of sexual abstinence (e.g., _Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie_,
1903, Heft 1, and _Sexual-Probleme_, June, 1908), maintains that
sexual abstinence can, at most, produce rare and slight
unfavorable results, and that it is no more likely to produce
insanity, even in predisposed individuals, than are the opposite
extremes of sexual excess and masturbation. He adds that, so far
as his own observations are concerned, the patients in asylums
suffer scarcely at all from their compulsory sexual abstinence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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