Sex Part 2

What has been said in general about practical observance of the laws of s.e.x hygiene in the preceding chapter for boys, applies to girls as well. If anything the s.e.x precautions taken in infancy should be even more closely followed, as girls are by nature less robust than boys.

If children could be raised in entire accordance with natural laws, the s.e.xual instinct of girls as well as boys would probably remain dormant during the period stretching from infancy to p.u.b.erty. As in the case of the boy, so in that of the girl, any manifestation of s.e.xual precocity should be investigated, to see whether it be due to natural or artificial causes. In either case the proper remedies should be applied.

s.e.x PRECOCITY IN GIRLS

There are cases of extraordinary s.e.x precocity in girls. One case reported in the United States was that of a female child who at birth possessed all the characteristics usually developed at p.u.b.erty. In this case the natural periodical changes began at birth! Fortunately, this is a case more or less unique. In little girls and boys undue s.e.xual handling or t.i.tillating of their genital organs tends to quiet them, so nurses (let us hope in ignorance of the consequences!) often resort to it. Sending children to bed very early, to "get rid of them," or confining them in a room by themselves, tends to encourage the development of vicious habits. A single bed, both in the school and in the home, is indispensable to purity of morals and personal cleanliness. It tends to restrain too early development of the s.e.xual instinct both in small girls and small boys.

s.e.xUAL SELF-ABUSE IN GIRLS

Small girls, like small boys, display an intelligent curiosity as regards the phenomena of s.e.x at an early age. And what has already been said regarding its improper gratification in the preceding chapter, so far as boys are concerned, applies with equal force to them. In their case, however, the mother is a girl's natural confidant and friend. Self-abuse in one or another form is as common in the case of the girl as in that of the boy. As a rule, girls who live an outdoor life, and work with their muscles more than their mind, do not develop undue precocious s.e.xual curiosities or desires. At least they do not do so to the same extent as those more nervously and susceptibly const.i.tuted. The less delicate and sensitive children of the country tend less to these habits than their more sensitively organized city brothers and sisters. Girls who have formed vicious habits are apt to indulge in the practice of self-abuse at night when going to bed. If there is cause for suspicion, the bedclothes should be quickly and suddenly thrown off under some pretense. Self-abuse usually has a marked effect on the genital organs of girls. The inner organs become unnaturally enlarged and distended, and _leucorrhea_, catarrh of the v.a.g.i.n.a, attended by a discharge of greenish-white mucus, often develops.

RESULTS OF SELF-ABUSE IN GIRLS

Local diseases, due to this cause, result in girls as well as boys.

Temporary congestions become permanent, and develop into permanent irritations and disorders. Leucorrhea has already been mentioned.

Contact with the acrid, irritating internal secretions also causes _soreness of the fingers at the root of the nails_, and warts.

Congestion and other diseases are other ultimate results of the habit; and these congestions to which it gives rise unduly hasten the advent of p.u.b.erty. Any _decided enlargement of the l.a.b.i.a and c.l.i.toris in a young girl_ may be taken as a positive evidence of the existence of the habit of self-abuse. Sterility, and atrophy of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s--their deficient development--when the vice is begun before p.u.b.erty, is another result.

PRURITIS AND FEMININE NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS

_Pruritis_ (itching genitals), though not necessarily caused by self-abuse, may be one of its consequences. Continued congestion causes the genital parts to itch terribly. This itching increases until the desire to manipulate the genitals becomes irresistible. It will then be indulged in even in the presence of strangers, though the girl in question at other times may be exceptionally modest. Girls addicted to the vice also suffer from nocturnal emissions. The general effect of self-abuse is much the same in the case of a girl as in that of a boy, for leucorrhea is injurious in somewhat the same fashion as seminal loss. In the case of girls the greatest injury, however, is due to the nervous exhaustion which succeeds the unnatural excitement.

WHAT MOTHERS SHOULD DO FOR THEIR GIRLS

A healthy girl should be happy and comfortable in all respects. She will not be so, especially with regard to her s.e.x problems, unless she can appeal to her mother as a friend and confidant. While keeping your girl's mind pure and healthy by precept and example, do not forget that the best way to protect her against evil influences and communications is to tell her the exact truth about s.e.x facts, as they apply to her, just as the father should his boy. Keep your girl fully occupied and do not leave her s.e.x education to the evil winds of chance.

Let s.e.x knowledge take its place as a proper, necessary part of her general education. If your daughter feels she can at all times talk freely to you all will be well. Gratify her natural s.e.x curiosity in a natural way. See that _immediate_ medical attention is given inflammations, excoriations, itchings and swellings of her genital organs. Such conditions will lead her to rub and scratch these parts--never to be touched--for relief. If, as a result of the sensations experienced, masturbation results, _yours is the sin_.

CHAPTER V

s.e.x IN THE ADOLESCENT MALE

(FROM p.u.b.eRTY TO MATURITY)

Adolescence is the period when the boy is lost in the man. It is the time of life embraced between the ages of fourteen or sixteen and the age of twenty-five. Every boy, if properly trained, should reach this period in a state of good general health and spirits. Hitherto he has been led and guided. Now he must develop mental strength and will power himself to choose the good and refuse the evil in the s.e.xual problems confronting him.

p.u.b.eRTY

According to climate p.u.b.erty, the age when the human male becomes s.e.xually perfect, varies from ten to fifteen years. In the United States p.u.b.erty in the male usually occurs at the age of fourteen and a half years. In tropical climates it occurs at nine or ten, and in cold countries, such as Norway and Siberia, it may not take place until eighteen or nineteen. Vigorous physical exercise tends to delay p.u.b.erty, anything exciting the emotions tends to hasten it.

Stimulating foods, pepper, vinegar, mustard, spices, tea and coffee, excess meat nutriment hasten p.u.b.erty. A cool, unstimulating vegetable and farinaceous diet may delay the development of the s.e.xual system several months or a year.

THE SIGNS AND CHANGES OF p.u.b.eRTY

In the boy the signs of p.u.b.erty are the growth of hair on the skin covering the p.u.b.es and in the armpits. Chest and arms broaden, the frame grows more angular, the masculine proportions more p.r.o.nounced.

The vocal cords grow longer and lower the pitch of the voice. Hair grows on chin, upper lip, cheeks, and often on the body surface.

THE s.e.xUAL MORAL LAW

The s.e.xual moral law is the same for both s.e.xes, and equally binding.

It may be summed up as follows: "Your s.e.xual urges, instincts and desires should never consciously injure an individual human being or mankind in general. They should be exercised to further the value and happiness of both."

THE MALE ADOLESCENT AND CONTINENCE

The perfect carrying out of this general moral law implies continence on the part of the male adolescent until marriage. Continence is positive restraint under all circ.u.mstances. Strict continence is neither injurious to health, nor does it produce impotence. While self-denial is difficult, since the promptings of nature often seem imperious, it is not impossible. It is certain that no youth will suffer, physically, by remaining s.e.xually pure. The demands which occur during adolescence are mainly abnormal, due to the excitements of an overstimulating diet, p.o.r.nographic literature and art, and the temptations of impure a.s.sociation.

WHY YOUNG MEN GO WRONG

Foul thoughts, once they enter the mind, corrode it. The sensual glance, the bawdy laugh, the ribald jest, the s.m.u.tty story, the obscene song may be met with on street corner, in the car, train, hotel lobby, lecture hall and workshop. Mental unchast.i.ty ends in physical unchast.i.ty. The habit common to most adolescent boys and young men of relating s.m.u.tty stories, repeating foul jokes and making indecent allusions destroys respect for virtue. In addition there are such direct physical causes of undue adolescent s.e.xual excitement as constipation and alcoholism, and such mental ones as nervous irritability.

To the constant discussion and speculation regarding s.e.x and its mysteries by the adolescent young male, must be added the artificial idea that idle prattling on the subject is a sign of "manhood." Thus many young men whose natural trend is in the direction of decency and right s.e.xual living, "step out" or "go to see the girls," as the phrase is, because they think that otherwise "they are not real men."

More subtle in its evil effect, yet somewhat less dangerous physically, perhaps, than the professional prost.i.tute is the lure of the "hidden" prost.i.tute, who carefully conceals her derelictions, and publicly wraps herself in a mantle of virtue.

PROSt.i.tUTION

The training of the average male mind in impure language and thought during boyhood and adolescence, the cultivation of his animal at the expense of the moral nature, often leads the adolescent to seek satisfaction by frequenting the prost.i.tute.

_Prost.i.tution_, known as the "social evil," is promiscuous unchast.i.ty for gain. It has existed in all civilized countries from earliest times. Prost.i.tution abuses the instinct for reproduction, the basic element of s.e.x, to offer certain women a livelihood which they prefer to other means. Love of excitement, inherited criminal propensities, indolence and abnormal s.e.x appet.i.te are first causes of prost.i.tution.

Difficulty in finding work, laborious and ill-paid work, harsh treatment of girls at home, indecent living among the poor, contact with demoralizing companions, loose literature and amus.e.m.e.nts are secondary causes. They all contribute to debauch male and female youth and lead it to form dangerous habits of vicious sensual indulgence.

Prost.i.tution seems inseparable from human society in large communities. The fact is acknowledged in the name given it, "the necessary evil." Regulation and medical control only arrest in a degree the spread of venereal diseases to which prost.i.tution gives rise. The elementary laws on which prost.i.tution rests seems to be stronger than the artificial codes imposed by moral teaching. It is an evil which must be combatted _individually_. Men are princ.i.p.ally responsible, in one way or another, for the existence of the social evil. In the case of the young man, abstention is the only cure for the probable results of indulging his animal pa.s.sions by recourse to the prost.i.tute.

Prost.i.tution, both public and private is the most dangerous menace to society at large. It is the curse of individual young manhood because of the venereal diseases it spreads. One visit to a house of prost.i.tution may ruin a young man's health and life, and millions of human beings die annually from the effects of poison contracted in these houses. "Wild oats" sown in company with the prost.i.tute usually bear fruit in the shape of the most loathsome and destructive s.e.x disorders.

The development of self-control, the avoidance of impure thoughts and a.s.sociations, the cultivation of the higher moral nature instead of the lower animal one, and, finally, _marriage_, should prevent the young man from falling into prost.i.tution. All the state and medical regulation in the world will not protect him from the venereal diseases he is so apt to acquire by such indulgence.

FREE LOVE

Free love is the doctrine of _unrestrained choice, without binding ties_, in s.e.xual relations. For altogether different reasons, however, it is quite as objectionable as prost.i.tution for the young man. It may offer better hygienic guarantees. But it is a s.e.xual partnership which is opposed to the fundamental inst.i.tution of _marriage_, on which society in general is based throughout the world. And, aside from the fact that it is a promiscuous relationship not sanctioned by law or society, it is seldom practically successful. It cannot admit of true love without bitter jealousies.

CHAPTER VI