Taboo and genetics : $b A study of the biological, sociological and psychological foundation of the familyKnight, Melvin M. (Melvin Moses)
Science
Taboo and genetics : $b A study of the biological, sociological and psychological foundation of the family
Knight, Melvin M. (Melvin Moses)
Sex (Biology); Sex (Psychology); Taboo; Women
Among the chief causes which have impelled women into prostitution
rather than into family life are the following: (1) Slavery; (2)
poverty; (3) inclination. These causes have been expanded and re-grouped
by specialists, but the only addition which the writer sees as necessary
in consequence of the study of taboo is the fact that the way of the
woman transgressor is peculiarly hard because of the sex taboo, the
ignorance and narrowness of good women, and the economic limitations of
all women. Ignorance of the results of entrance into a life which
usually means abandonment of hope may be a contributing cause. Boredom
with the narrowness of family life and desire for adventure are also
influences.
That sex desire leads directly to the life of the prostitute is
unlikely. The strongly sexed class comes into prostitution by the war of
irregular relationships with men to whom they have been attached, and
who have abandoned them or sold them out. Many authorities agree on the
frigidity of the prostitute. It is her protection from physical and
emotional exhaustion. This becomes evident when it is learned that these
women will receive thirty men a day, sometimes more. A certain original
lack of sensitiveness may be assumed, especially since the
investigations of prostitutes have shown a large proportion, perhaps
one-third, who are mentally inferior. It is an interesting fact that
those who are sensitive to their social isolation defend themselves by
dwelling on their social necessity. Either intuitively or by a trade
tradition, the prostitute feels that "she remains, while creeds and
civilizations rise and fall, blasted for the sins of the people." A
beautiful young prostitute who had been expelled from a high grade house
after the exposures of the Lexow Investigation, once said to the writer:
"It would never do for good women to know what beasts men are. We girls
have got to pay."
The lady, dwelling on her pedestal of isolation, from which she commands
the veneration of the chivalrous gentleman and the adoration of the
poet, is the product of a leisure assured by property. At the end of the
social scale is the girl who wants to be a lady, who doesn't want to
work, and who, like the lady, has nothing to sell but herself. The life
of the prostitute is the nearest approach for the poor girl to the life
of a lady with its leisure, its fine clothes, and its excitement. So
long as we have a sex ethics into which are incorporated the taboo
concepts, the lady cannot exist without the prostitute. The restrictions
which surround the lady guard her from the passions of men. The
prostitute has been developed to satisfy masculine needs which it is not
permitted the lady to know exist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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