Sex instruction; Women social reformers -- United States -- Biography
Neither the boy nor the girl knows the difference between the sexual
impulse and love. A boy meets a girl he feels a great attraction for
her, he feels the sexual impulse throbbing within him, he is full of
this life-giving current, he feels it throughout his being; he walks
lighter and straighter, he feels it in his voice, in his laughter; he
grows tenderer within himself, and to women. He feels all this and is
sure it is a love that will never die. If there is an attraction on the
girl's part there is no difficulty in persuading her that this feeling
is love.
But it is not love; it is the creative force or sexual impulse scattered
through his being and the sexual act brings it to a focus.
If motherhood comes to the girl through this relation, she has developed
and the experience has enriched her life. But today the girl has an idea
she has escaped the greatest disgrace when she has avoided motherhood.
If the relation was based on physical attraction alone, a few abortions
and the monotony of every day life soon remove this, and the man goes
elsewhere in search of this wonderful sensation which he felt at first,
but did not know how to keep or how to use.
The girl, however, has become a new being, sexually awakened and
conscious of it, but ignorant of the use of the forces she possesses,
she plunges forth blindly, with social and economic forces against her,
and prostitution beckoning at every turn. So she soon passes with the
crowd on the road to the Easiest Way. This is the story of thousands of
young girls living in prostitution.
Women should know that the creative instinct does not need to be
expended entirely on the propagation of the race. Though the sex cells
are placed in a part of the anatomy for the essential purpose of easily
expelling them into the female for the purpose of reproduction, there
are other elements in the sexual fluid which are the essence of blood,
nerve, brain and muscle. When redirected into the building and
strengthening of these, we find men or women of the greatest endurance
and greatest magnetic power. A girl can waste her creative powers by
brooding over a love affair to the extent of exhausting her system, with
results not unlike the effects of masturbation and debauchery.
The sexual impulse is natural. It is natural in animals, degenerates,
and in man. But in man it is mixed with other essentials which,
together, are termed love. These essentials are derived from man's power
of reasoning by which he is known as a higher species and through which
he differs from the animals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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