Sex-education Part 2

[Sidenote: Arguments for s.e.x-education.]

In these lectures I shall discuss the great s.e.x problems towards the solution of which knowledge conveyed by special education may help.

These problems offer reasons or arguments in favor of s.e.x-education, and I shall attempt to present them from this point of view. I shall at the same time point out in preliminary outline how organized instruction may apply more or less directly to the s.e.x problems that seem to show the need of educational attack, but in later lectures the organization of instruction will be considered more specifically.

[Sidenote: Propagandism needed.]

In reviewing the literature that during the past decade has advocated s.e.x-education, it has seemed to me that there is left little possibility of any decidedly new and important contribution to the arguments favoring such instruction, for the whole case has been splendidly presented by eminent writers in the fields of medicine, biology, sociology, and ethics. It now appears that the great majority of educators, scientists, and intelligent citizens in general have accepted the arguments for s.e.x-instruction, so far as they have been informed concerning the meaning and need of the movement; and this leads me to the belief that in the future we need not new arguments but frequent restatements of the established facts which indicate the importance of widespread knowledge regarding the function that is inseparably connected with the perpetuation of life. In short, we now need a propagandism for extending the s.e.x-education movement among the ma.s.ses of people.

For those who have already accepted s.e.x-education, a survey of the facts that created a demand for s.e.x-instruction will give a clearer outlook on the movement. The rapid increase of interest in s.e.x-education has been the result of widespread dissemination of convincing facts concerning some common disharmonies that grow out of the s.e.xual problems of the human race. These facts which have led to s.e.x-education should be kept in mind by all who wish to understand or to play a part in the instruction of young people.

It is quite unnecessary, and still more undesirable, to recite at length in these lectures the social, medical, and psycho-pathological facts concerning abnormal or perverted s.e.xual processes. Fortunately, the educational ends may be gained by a general review that points out the bearings of the main lines of the s.e.xual problems, the misunderstandings and mistakes that education may help prevent and correct.

[Sidenote: Parents should know reasons for s.e.x-instruction.]

It is important that the general public, especially the parents, should understand the reasons which have induced numerous physicians, ministers, and educators to become active advocates of systematic s.e.x-instruction for young people. Although the movement has made extensive progress in the ten years of propagandic work, is probably true that the majority of even intelligent parents are not yet convinced that their children need s.e.x-instruction. This is due largely to the fact that the parents have not yet been shown the reasons why it is now, and always has been, unsafe to allow children to gain more or less s.e.xual information from unreliable and vulgar sources. In fact, it is surprising to find many parents, especially mothers, who seem unable to grasp the idea that their "protected" children can possibly get impure information.

There are other parents who know that their children are almost sure to get vulgar information regarding s.e.xual matters, and that some young people are likely to make s.e.xual mistakes; but they calmly look upon such things as part of the established order of the world.

Still another type of parents who should know the reasons for s.e.x-instruction are those who accept the traditional idea that their daughters must be kept "protected" and "innocent" while their sons are free to sow a large field of "wild oats," concerning which society in general, and such parents in particular, will care little as long as social diseases, b.a.s.t.a.r.dy suits, or chronic alcoholism do not result from the dissipations. These are the fathers and mothers who need the most enlightenment concerning the importance of such s.e.x-instruction as will make clear the far-reaching consequences of "wild oat sowing."

Perhaps most such parents are ignorant, but some are simply thoughtless. As an ill.u.s.tration of the latter, the editor of a well-known magazine was recently talking with a prominent author and made some reference to the immoral habits of young men. Their conversation was essentially as follows: The author remarked, "I a.s.sume that my boys will be boys and will have their fling before they settle down and marry." The editor quickly replied, "Yes, and I presume that you expect your boys to sow their wild oats with my daughters, and that in return you will expect my sons to dissipate with your daughters. At any rate, you have d.a.m.nable designs on somebody's daughters." This put on the wild-oat proposition a light which was apparently new to the literary man, for he replied, "That is a phase of the young man's problem which never occurred to me. It does sound startling when stated in that personal way."

All these cla.s.ses of parents who have not yet learned the facts which point to ignorance as the cause of the abundant s.e.xual errors of young people and those who do not understand that s.e.xual promiscuity or immorality is an error of gravest significance both to the individual and to society, should have set before them time and again some of the startling facts which in the first five years of the American s.e.x-education movement were promulgated among physicians, ministers, and educators. All such ignorant or indifferent parents will not take an interest in the proposed s.e.x-instruction unless they are convinced by frank and forcible statements regarding the great need of special safeguarding of young people.

[Sidenote: Special a.s.sociations needed.]

Since there are so many people who still need the most elementary knowledge concerning the s.e.xual problems that demand educational attack, it is important that there should be local a.s.sociations which can manage lectures, publications, conferences, and other means of informing the public as to the gravity of the s.e.xual problems of our times, and as to the part which s.e.x-instruction may play in the attempt at finding a solution. Such work is now being done splendidly by the societies named in -- 51. The magnitude of the problem of reaching the public is such that there is abundant work for numerous branches of such societies or for local groups willing to take a part in the needed work. As suggested elsewhere, the success of the movement for s.e.x-instruction of children of school ages will depend largely upon the att.i.tude and cooperation of parents; and hence it is important that parents should be led to understand the reasons or arguments for s.e.x-instruction. In other words, they should know the problems that indicate the importance of enlightening the rising generation concerning the great facts of s.e.x and life.

[Sidenote: Books for parents.]

Among the numerous publications that seem to me adapted for convincing parents that their children need instruction, I commonly mention the following: Lowry's "False Modesty" and "Teaching s.e.x Hygiene," Howard's "Start your Child Right," Wile's "s.e.x Education," Galloway's "Biology of s.e.x," March's "Towards Racial Health," Lyttleton's "Training of the Young in Laws of s.e.x," and pamphlets by Dr. Prince Morrow. See also pages 241-243.

[Sidenote: Knowledge needed concerning eight s.e.x problems.]

There are eight important s.e.x problems of our times that offer reasons or arguments for s.e.x-instruction, because ignorance plays a large part in each problem. I shall state them briefly here and discuss each in succeeding lectures: (1) Many people, especially in youth, need hygienic knowledge concerning s.e.xual processes as they affect personal health. (2) There is an alarming amount of the dangerous social diseases which are distributed chiefly by the s.e.xual promiscuity or immorality of many men. (3) The uncontrolled s.e.xual pa.s.sions of men have led to enormous development of organized and commercialized prost.i.tution. (4) There are living to-day tens of thousands of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children, the result of the common s.e.xual irresponsibility of men and the ignorance of women. (5) There is need of more general following of a definite moral standard regarding s.e.xual relationships. (6) There is a prevailing unwholesome att.i.tude of mind concerning all s.e.xual processes. (7) There is very general misunderstanding of s.e.xual life as related to healthy and happy marriage. (8) There is need of eugenic responsibility for s.e.xual actions that concern future generations.

Here are the eight s.e.xual problems of our times. Any one of them has significance great enough to demand the attention of educators and social reformers. One and all they point to the need of better understanding regarding the s.e.xual functions and their relation to life. I shall now turn to outline the main facts concerning each of these s.e.xual problems so far as it seems likely that they will concern educators and social workers. For convenience I shall use the following brief headings: (1) Personal s.e.x-hygiene, (2) social diseases, (3) social evil, (4) illegitimacy, (5) s.e.xual morality, (6) s.e.xual vulgarity, (7) s.e.xual problems and marriage, (8) eugenics.

[Sidenote: Historical order.]

These s.e.xual problems toward whose solution special instruction of young people may help are stated here in the order in which they have attracted attention as reasons for s.e.x-education. Thus, for instance, personal s.e.x-hygiene was the chief reason recognized twenty years ago; social diseases began to attract public attention ten years ago; commercial prost.i.tution has been especially prominent in the discussions of the past five years; and only recently has there been emphasis on s.e.x-education with reference to eugenics.

The historical order which I follow in this lecture is not now the order of greatest importance. For example, s.e.xual morality (5) and vulgarity (6) are probably of far greater significance than any of the other s.e.xual problems that offer arguments for s.e.x-education.

[Sidenote: Not all s.e.x problems concern youth.]

To avoid possible misunderstanding, let me repeat from the first lecture the proposition that s.e.x-education should extend in home and school from childhood to maturity. It follows that these lectures concerning the problems of s.e.x that seriously affect the human race are not all applicable as arguments for instruction in schools or for children of school age. Some of the problems of s.e.x point to the need of special instruction in pre-adolescent or in adolescent years, but some of them concern directly only those who are approaching maturity.

-- 6. _First Problem for s.e.x-instruction: Personal s.e.x-hygiene_

[Sidenote: Personal and social hygiene.]

It is convenient to group under personal s.e.x-hygiene all hygienic knowledge concerning s.e.xual processes in their personal as distinguished from their social aspects. The distinction between these two aspects of s.e.x-hygiene is essentially on the same basis as that between personal and public hygiene. For example, indigestion and overwork are matters of personal hygiene, while tuberculosis and typhoid are problems of public hygiene because the individual case leads through infection to disease of others. Similarly, such individual disorders as masturbation and deranged menstruation concern personal health directly, while venereal diseases are clearly included in social s.e.x-hygiene.

[Sidenote: Personal s.e.x-hygiene needed.]

If there were no other reasons for s.e.x-instruction, I believe that it would be worth while to teach such hygienic knowledge of self and s.e.x as would guard young people against harmful habits and unhealthful care of their s.e.xual mechanisms; and which, moreover, would guide them across the threshold of adolescence with some helpful understanding of the significance of the metamorphosis. Many men and women suffer from injured, if not ruined, health because they did not know, especially between ten and fourteen years, the laws of personal s.e.x-hygiene, which concern health in ways not involving s.e.xual relationship. Many boys and some girls are injured both physically and mentally by the habit of masturbation. Numerous girls are injured physically and many mentally because they have not learned in advance the nature and hygiene of menstruation. Many boys are injured both in mind and character because they have no scientific guidance which helps them understand themselves during the stormy transition from youth into manhood. Moreover, there are certain simple hygienic commands that children under twelve should receive from parents and teachers. In all these lines the bearings of personal hygienic instruction are so obvious that we need not at this time stop to consider in more detail this first reason or problem for s.e.x-instruction of young people.

-- 7. _Second Problem for s.e.x-instruction: Social Diseases_

[Sidenote: Recent publicity regarding vice and disease.]

During the past decade the general public has received some astounding revelations concerning the enormous extent of illicit s.e.xual promiscuity, which is immorality according to our commonly accepted code of morals. Along with the evidence as to the existence of widespread promiscuity, has come the still more alarming information from the medical profession that s.e.xual promiscuity commonly distributes the germs of the two highly infectious and exceedingly destructive diseases, syphilis and gonorrhea, known in medical science as venereal or social. When these are acquired by individuals guilty of s.e.xual promiscuity, they seriously and often fatally affect the victim; but of far greater social-hygienic importance is the medical evidence that they are very often transmitted to persons innocent of any transgression of the moral law, especially to wives and children.

The medical revelations concerning the relation of s.e.xual immorality to the plague of social diseases, has come from certain eminent physicians, notably the late Dr. Prince A. Morrow. His translation of Fournier's "Syphilis and Marriage" (1881), his own "Social Diseases and Marriage" (1904), and several of his pamphlets published by the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, have been authoritative statements of conditions as the medical world sees them.

[Sidenote: Social diseases and immorality.]

The extent of social diseases is a fairly accurate measure of the minimum amount of immorality, for nothing is better established in medical science than that promiscuity in s.e.xual relations is directly or indirectly responsible for spread of the microorganisms which cause the diseases. If for several generations all men and women limited their s.e.xual relations to monogamic marriage, and the relatively rare cases of non-s.e.xual and prenatal infection were treated so as to render them non-contagious, the social diseases would probably disappear from the human family. Such a statement is significant only in showing the relation of social diseases to s.e.xual promiscuity, for of course, there is no reasonable hope that the venereal germs will ever be annihilated by universal monogamy.

[Sidenote: Attack by education and sanitation.]

Reduction of the amount of venereal disease must depend upon (1) hygienic and moral education which will lead people to avoid the sources of infection and (2) sanitary and medical science which works either by applying antiseptic or other prophylactic methods for preventing development of the causative microorganisms, or by using germicides for destroying those germs which have already produced disease. Thus the educational and the sanitary attack on the social diseases lie parallel. Both are needed, for, even with all the possible methods of attack, the progress against these diseases will be exceedingly slow.

Those who are interested in the facts relating to social diseases which point to the need of s.e.x-education as one method of prevention, are referred to the pamphlets published by the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis; Morrow's "Social Diseases and Marriage"; Creighton's "The Social Disease and How to Fight It"; Dock's "Hygiene and Morality"; Henderson's "Education with Reference to s.e.x"; and certain chapters in Warba.s.se's "Medical Sociology."

[Sidenote: Estimated amount of disease.]

With regard to the accuracy of the commonly quoted statements concerning the prevalence of social disease, and therefore of immorality, it must be said in all fairness that there has been much guesswork and some deliberate exaggeration. We learn from various books and lectures that fifty, sixty-five, seventy-five and even ninety per cent of the men in the United States over eighteen years of age are at some time infected with at least one of the social diseases. The fact is that there is no scientific way of getting accurate statistics, for unlike other contagious diseases, the venereal ones are kept more or less secret, and numerous cases cannot be discovered by health officers. All the published figures regarding the prevalence of such diseases are merely estimates based upon the experience of certain physicians with special groups of men, especially in hospitals. There is no reliable scientific evidence as to the prevalence of venereal disease in the whole ma.s.s of our American population.

[Sidenote: Education not concerned with percentages.]

However, so far as education is concerned, there is nothing to be gained by dispute as to the possible inaccuracy of the higher percentages,[1] for it is generally admitted that probably over fifty per cent of the men in America and Europe become infected with gonorrhea or syphilis, or both, one or more times during their lives, especially in early manhood. This conservative estimate is sufficient to show that the s.e.xual morals of probably the majority of men are at some time in their lives loose. There is reason to believe that with most such men the period of moral laxity is in early manhood before marriage, which, though not excusable, is explainable on physiological grounds. It is important to correct the wrong impression which is now widespread, especially among women who have read the more or less sensational statements in certain books and magazines, that the quoted figures on social disease mean that from fifty to ninety per cent of all men are immoral from time to time for many years. If that were true, the situation represented by the highest estimates would be hopeless, and we might as well start out to adjust society to a system of recognized s.e.xual promiscuity. Fortunately, it is far from true, for a great many men included in even the conservative statistics of social disease were infected because they strayed from the moral path very few times and in many cases only once. This fact makes the outlook for improved s.e.xual morals and health more hopeful, for probably the majority of young men need help in controlling themselves for a few years only, especially between eighteen and twenty-five.[2]

[Sidenote: Established facts.]

The reports of medical men regarding the damage done by the social diseases are inaccurate chiefly when they attempt to state percentages of the whole population. They are reliable when they state observed facts, such as the following: It is now established in medical science that (1) gonorrheal infection results in tens of thousands of cases in complications, such as heart disease, gonorrheal rheumatism, sterility of both men and women, blindness of infants, inflammatory diseases of female reproductive organs, and other well-marked sequelae of the disease; and (2) that syphilis is responsible for a large majority of cases of locomotor ataxia, paresis and certain types of insanity, and also for numerous aneurisms of arteries, many apoplexies, and much disease of liver, kidneys, and other organs. Moreover, syphilis is charged with being the greatest race destroyer. Fournier, the great French specialist, noted that only two children survived from a series of ninety pregnancies of syphilitic women of the well-to-do cla.s.s. It is probably true that much less than ten per cent of syphilitized embryos ever grow into mature men and women, and even these few survivors are likely to carry in their bodies the germs or the "virus"

of syphilis which may affect the next generation.

[Sidenote: Social diseases admittedly dangerous.]

Such direct statements as the above may be accepted as not exaggerated.

However, it little matters in s.e.x-education, except for the purposes of sensational writers, whether statistics regarding the damage done by venereal diseases are more than estimates; for it is sufficient to remember that every physician of large experience agrees that syphilis and gonorrhea are so common and so destructive of health and life that they must be cla.s.sed among the most dangerous diseases that now threaten the human race. This ought to be sufficient to attract the serious attention of every thinking man and woman.

[Sidenote: Double standard of morality.]

Thus, in general survey, we see the great problems of social-s.e.xual hygiene caused by diseases that are widely distributed because s.e.xual instincts are uncontrolled. In short, the alarming problem of the social diseases results from masculine promiscuity or the failure of men to adhere to the monogamic standards of morality. In other and familiar phrasing, there is widespread acceptance and practice of the so-called "double standard of s.e.xual morality," a monogamic one for respectable women and promiscuity for many of their male relatives and friends. (See writings of Morrow, especially "The s.e.x Problem"; also Creighton's "The Social Disease.")