Sex-education Part 6

[Sidenote: Young women misled by s.e.xual pessimists.]

One who studies carefully the various aspects of the extreme feministic movement must admit that there are many signs of the dangers which the above quotations point out so clearly. Of course, we cannot believe in the sincerity of all of the numerous women of thirty-five to fifty years who pretend to ignore s.e.x completely. Probably most of them have discovered that they have misunderstood themselves; but it is also probable that they have discovered too late for making a readjustment in their own lives. However, it matters little whether such women have really succeeded in ignoring s.e.x. The real problem for educational attack lies in the fact that such women often succeed in proselyting young women under twenty-five, and these in turn may not come to see the real truth about s.e.x and life until ten or fifteen years later.

Clearly, organized education must protect young women against such influences.

[Sidenote: The greatest good in s.e.x-education.]

The greatest good which may come from the s.e.x-education movement is not prevention or elimination of social diseases, it is not improved health, it is not general acceptance of the moral law of s.e.x, it is not one or all these that are devoutly to be hoped for; but far greater than such possible results from s.e.x-education, it will bring to many a man and woman a deeper, n.o.bler, and purer knowledge of what s.e.x means for the coming race and of what it means now to each individual who realizes life's fullest possibilities in conjugal affection which culminates in new life and new motives for more affection. Such an understanding of s.e.x in relation to home life will help this old world more than anything else which s.e.x-education may accomplish.

[Sidenote: The greatest s.e.x problem.]

The problems of s.e.x and marriage deserve far more attention than can be given in this lecture. I am convinced that knowledge of s.e.x in its physical, psychical, social, and aesthetic aspects is the only sure foundation for harmonious marriage under modern conditions. Therefore, I believe this to be the greatest s.e.x problem open to educational attack.

-- 13. _The Eighth Problem for s.e.x-instruction: Eugenics_

[Sidenote: Meaning of eugenics.]

Eugenics, or the science of human good breeding, is just now the most popular of the problems concerning human s.e.x and reproduction. In recent years, the biological investigators of heredity have published some startling facts which show that the human race must soon check its reckless propagation of the unfit and encourage reproduction by the best types of men and women. This is not the place for a review of the eugenic propositions. Those interested will find them in non-technical form in many books (see the bibliographical chapter of this book, page 248).

[Sidenote: Eugenics in biology.]

Some of the chief facts of eugenics should be a part of every well-organized scheme of s.e.x-instruction, and taught through biology (-- 17). Probably no other topic in biology is so likely to make an ethical-social appeal, for the central point of eugenics is the responsibility of the individual whose uncontrolled s.e.xual actions may transmit undesirable and heritable qualities and bring a train of disaster to generations of descendants.

[Sidenote: Relation of eugenics and s.e.x-hygiene.]

At this point we digress to correct the widespread error in confusing s.e.x-hygiene and eugenics. Many people who ought to know better use the two terms synonymously, perhaps because they are afraid of that comparatively novel but frank prefix in "s.e.x-hygiene." The fact is that eugenics and s.e.x-hygiene have little in common. Eugenics is the science of reproducing better humans by applying the established laws of genetics or heredity. In brief, it means, on the positive side, selecting desirable people as parents; and, negatively, preventing propagation by the undesirables. This is the sum total of the task of eugenics in the accurate sense of the term.

[Sidenote: Facts of heredity.]

So far as we know, each coming generation will inherit only qualities that the parents inherited from their parents. It is a well-known principle of biology that changes in the bodies of human beings during their lifetime (dating from the fertilized egg that produces the individual) are never in any noticeable degree inherited by descendants. In short, acquired characteristics of the body tissues do not influence the germ plasm, the living matter concerned with heredity and reproduction, but the germ plasm that determines what the next generation will inherit is fixed at birth. Thus tuberculosis, alcoholism, gonorrhea, and syphilis may be acquired during the life of an individual, but do not become fixed in the germ plasm. If the infants show effects of any of these diseases, it is not because of true heredity but because they were infected or influenced before birth. Rarely does this happen to children of a tuberculous mother, but often to those of a syphilitic mother. In a gonorrheal ophthalmia neonatorum (specific inflammation of infants' eyes) it is a case of infection _during_ birth.

[Sidenote: s.e.x-hygiene and eugenics parallel.]

Thus, it appears that s.e.x-hygiene either personal or social (concerned with venereal diseases) is not a part of eugenics. It is, however, a phase of euthenics, which deals with the environmental factors that affect the individual life. It is clear, then, that s.e.x-hygiene (in the strict medical sense) and eugenics are parallel and not conflicting.

Eugenics aims to select better parents who will transmit their own qualities genetically. s.e.x-hygiene in its personal and social aspects will make healthier parents able to give their offspring a healthier start in life, especially because the offspring is free from the prenatal effects of disease.

The teaching of heredity and eugenics is intended to develop a sense of individual responsibility for the transmission of one's good or bad inherited qualities to offspring. The teaching of s.e.x-hygiene, either personal or social, looks towards improving personal health and preventing infection and injurious influence on the unborn next generation. Obviously, we need both s.e.x-hygiene and eugenics as part of the larger s.e.x-instruction.

-- 14. _Summary of Lectures on s.e.x Problems_

[Sidenote: Problems of health, att.i.tude, and morals.]

We have made a general survey of the problems that offer reasons for s.e.x-instruction. We have noted that some of the problems are concerned with health and, hence, lie within the scope of s.e.x-hygiene in the strict sense of that term; but some of them have only the remotest relation to health and hygiene. On the contrary, they relate to the ethical, social, and aesthetic att.i.tude of individuals towards s.e.x and reproduction. Obviously, these touch problems not of s.e.x health, but of s.e.x morality. In their educational importance I believe them as great, perhaps even greater, than those of s.e.x-hygiene. In fact, I have come to believe that many individuals can best solve all their own s.e.xual problems on the basis of moral and aesthetic att.i.tude.

[Sidenote: Many-sided instruction needed.]

Considering, as we have done, the s.e.x problems in their many aspects, we are forced to the conclusion that s.e.x-education will prove adequate only when it combines instruction from the several points of view. It must be much more than the s.e.x-hygiene with which the s.e.x-instruction movement started. We need s.e.xual knowledge that will conserve health, that will develop social and ethical and eugenic responsibility for s.e.xual actions, that will lead to increased happiness as well as to improved health, and that will give a n.o.bler and purer view of life's possibilities. In all these lines in which s.e.x influences human life profoundly, s.e.x-education holds out the hope of help towards a better life for all who receive and apply its lessons.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In the _American Journal of Public Health_ for July, 1913, Dr.

John S. Fulton, Director General of the XV International Congress on Hygiene and Demography, criticized severely the extremely radical statistics that were presented on charts at the s.e.x-hygiene exhibit of the Congress, and were later published in Wilson's "Education of the Young in s.e.x-hygiene."

[2] There is danger in quoting to young men the estimates as to prevalence of social diseases and, therefore, of promiscuity. Fear of consequences will not control one who is led to believe that he is doing what most men do. (See Parkinson in _Educational Review_, Jan.

1911, pp. 44-46.)

[3] Many writers have discounted the value of warnings involved in s.e.x-instruction concerning social disease (see especially Cabot's papers referred to in -- 46, and Parkinson in _Educational Review_, January, 1911).

[4] Louise Creighton, in her excellent little book on "The Social Disease and How to Fight It" (Longmans), has well presented the problems of social impurity from woman's point of view.

Dr. W.S. Hall, in "Life's Problems," has given in a few pages the necessary protective knowledge.

[5] See "The s.e.xual Necessity," by Drs. Howell and Keyes.

[6] See also, Henderson's "Education with Reference to s.e.x."

[7] See chapter on "Motherhood and Marriage" in Foerster's "Marriage and the s.e.x Problem."

[8] As an ill.u.s.tration of this fact, out of 558 Pittsburgh professional prost.i.tutes, 406 had never had children. Of the 152 who were mothers, only 24 had two or more children.

[9] Many thinking men and women now agree with Ellen Key that "marriage is immoral without mutual love," that "love is the sole decisive point of view in questions concerning this relationship,"

that "it will come to pa.s.s that no finely sensitive woman will become a mother except through mutual love," that "everything which is exchanged between husband and wife in their life together can only be the free gift of love, can never be demanded by one or the other as a right." (Key--"The Morality of Woman.")

[10] Foerster, in his "Marriage and the s.e.x Problem," urges that self-control over s.e.xual pa.s.sions is the working of the old idea of asceticism, which he believes "should be regarded, not as a negation of nature nor as an attempt to extirpate natural forces, but as practice in the art of self-discipline. Its object should be to show humanity what the human will is capable of performing, to serve as an encouraging example of the conquest of the spirit over the animal self." My personal view is that nothing is gained by confusing self-control and the old asceticism.

[11] Misunderstood, it seems to me, because her philosophy demanding that marriage begin with, exist with, and end with love means freedom in love, and this has been misinterpreted as "free love" in the sense of promiscuity. I know of no writer who stands for marriage on a higher plane than that advocated by Ellen Key. Her lecture on "Morality of Woman" (Seymour Co., Chicago) is a good condensed statement of her largest ideas and a helpful introduction to "Love and Marriage."

III

ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL ATTACK ON THE s.e.x PROBLEMS

-- 15. _The Task of s.e.x-education_

[Sidenote: Pragmatic solution of s.e.x problems.]

In the preceding series of lectures we have surveyed eight important s.e.x problems that can never be solved, even in part, unless by widespread information that specifically guides the individual and organized society in the adjustment of s.e.xual instincts to the peculiar conditions that obtain in our modern civilized life. To spread the knowledge that will help civilized humanity on towards the best possible adjustment of s.e.x and life, and therefore to a pragmatic solution of s.e.xual problems, is the task or the chief aim of s.e.x-education.[12]

[Sidenote: No hope for complete solution.]

[Sidenote: Constant advance towards ideals.]

Of course, only the ultra-Utopian dreamer claims that s.e.x-education can solve all the s.e.xual problems of civilized life, but even the most pessimistic disbeliever in the new movement admits that knowledge of s.e.xual life will be helpful to the great majority of people. Hence, it is worth while to organize the educational attack on the s.e.x problems which we have considered in the preceding lectures. It seems to me that we may gain an advantage by frankly admitting that the educational attack is not expected to solve all s.e.x problems for all people, for by such admission we put to flight those shallow cynics who have opposed the s.e.x-education movement because they think (and probably correctly) that immorality and social diseases and all other s.e.xual disharmonies will continue to exist as long as the human species does. Likewise, there will be dishonesty and murder and preventable diseases and all other human troubles in spite of education; but the advancement of learning has slowly and progressively reduced the sum total of all the disharmonies of life until now civilized people are largely free from many of the original or barbaric conditions. Along similar lines we may confidently think of s.e.x-education as making a constantly advancing and victorious attack on the problems of life that have grown out of our primitive s.e.xual instincts. s.e.x-education, like all other education, strives towards ideals that individuals and society may always approach but may never reach. It is only another case of Emerson's advice, "hitch your wagon to a star," which means the adoption of high ideals that lead ever on and on towards better life.