The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals — John Shaqi
The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals
Science
The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals
Sex instruction
This involves, at least for the present state of society, some information
regarding the two chief venereal diseases: that all prostitutes,
professional or otherwise, are sooner or later infected, and that no
reglementation can give security. They should know something of the
horrors of syphilis, its loathsomeness, its extraordinary power to
penetrate to the physiological Holy of Holies, poison the germ cells, and
damn in advance the unborn children of its victim. They must know the
fatal treachery of gonorrhea: how it lurks unsuspected in the victim who
supposes himself cured, and strikes, like a bolt out of clear sky,
blinding newborn infants, and robbing innocent wives of motherhood,
health, or life itself.
To object to this instruction because it is gruesome, or because it may
seem like intimidation, is sentimentalism: in this matter, as elsewhere in
the realm of knowledge, the truth should scare no one who does not need to
be scared. It is better to be safe than sorry; and it is better to be
scared than syphilitic. "I dare do all that may become a man," says
Macbeth; "who dares do more is none"; let a man dare if he will with his
own body, aye, his own soul; he is but a coward who does not shrink from
buying voluptuous moments with the hazard of wife and child. Hydrophobia
is far less perilous than venereal disease, and if one hundredth as many
were attacked by it the world would be placarded with scarlet danger
signs; the man who decried the precautions as intimidation would be shut
up in a home for imbeciles. If this is intimidation, let us have more of
it.
Above all, boys should learn the beauty and glory of the true relation of
the sexes; the bond of love and unity between man and woman truly
married--in soul as well as body. As he cherishes and vindicates the honor
of his father and mother and sisters, so should he be taught to use his
intelligence and heart to hold sacred in youth the powers and functions
that will enable him to become in turn husband and father, to give a clean
soul and body in marriage to a pure woman, and to pass on the germ of life
to the children of his body. A few lessons on heredity will show him that
he is but the steward of an inheritance that has come down from a thousand
ancestors and may well be perpetuated through generations to come.
Prudence is good; but no narrow selfish motive will meet the need. The lad
who is "good" merely for the sake of his own skin is usually a poor
creature; the finest lad--who might perhaps hazard his own individual
fate--will refuse to gamble with the souls and bodies of those others who
shall be his own flesh and blood. No virtue is safe that is not
enthusiastic: and only altruism is truly enthusiastic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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