Sex instruction; Women social reformers -- United States -- Biography
When the sexual impulse makes itself felt strongly in the adolescent boy
or girl, they, feeling satisfied with the physical beauty and perfection
of the other, marry, they are unconscious that the incentive to love
when based on physical attraction alone is soon destroyed. For sickness,
poverty or disease will affect even the most seemingly perfect physical
attraction.
Let us not confuse the sexual impulse with love, for it alone is not
love, but merely a necessary quality for the growth of love.
No sexual attraction or impulse is the foundation of the beautiful
emotion of love. Upon this is built respect, self-control, sympathy,
unity of purpose, many common tastes and desires, building up and up
until this real love unites two individuals as one being, one life. Then
it becomes the strongest and purest emotion of which the human soul is
capable. There is no doubt that the natural aim of the sexual impulse is
the sexual act, yet when the impulse is strongest and followed by the
sexual act without love or any of the relative instincts which go to
make up love, the relations are invariably followed by a feeling of
disgust. Respect for each other and for one's self is a primary
essential to this intimate relation.
In plant and animal life the reproductive cell of the male is the active
seeker of the passive female cell, imbued with the instinct to chase and
bodily capture the female cell for the purpose of reproduction.
This instinct man, as he is today, has inherited, and, as with the lower
forms of life, the senses are intensely involved. It is kept alive by
the sense of sight, sound and smell, and reaches its highest development
through the sense of touch. It is heightened by touching smooth and soft
surfaces—which is said to account for the pleasure of kissing.
In the early part of this article I spoke of the desire to touch being
stronger in girls than in boys. This desire leads a girl to kiss and
fondle a man without any conscious desire for the sexual act; whereas in
the man, to be touched and caressed by the girl for whom he has a sexual
attraction, stimulates the accumulation of sex cells, and the desire for
the sexual act becomes paramount in his mind. Many a young girl bubbling
over with the joy of living, innocent of any serious consequences, is
oft-times misjudged by men on account of these natural actions. But she
soon puts on her armor of defense, and stifles and represses any
outbursts of affection.
Society, too, condemns the natural expression of woman's emotion, save
under certain prescribed conditions. In consequence of this, women
suppress their natural desires and direct this great force into other
channels, participating in the bigger and broader movements and
activities in which they are active today.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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