When a girl has passed the transition period of puberty and is entering upon young womanhood she exerts an irresistible attraction on the male sex. Whether she give the impression of a luscious red rose or of a delicate white lily, the charms of a beautiful, healthy, bright girl of seventeen or eighteen are undeniable and their appeal to the esthetic and sexual sense of every normal male is a normal, natural phenomenon. Whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that it is so, we will not stop to discuss here. But it is a natural phenomenon, a natural law, if you will, and one does not quarrel with natural phenomena. It is useless. But the attraction which the girl exercises on the male is fraught with danger to her, and therefore a few words of advice and of warning are not out of place.
Temptations. Fortunate are you, my young girl friend, if you come from a well-sheltered home, if you have been properly brought up, if you have a good and wise mother who knows how to take care of you. A mother's wise counsel given at the proper time, and her comradeship all the time, are more invulnerable than an armor of bronze and more secure than locked doors and barred windows. But if you have lost your
mother at an early age, or if your mother is not of the right sort—it is no use hiding the fact that some mothers are not what they should be—if you have to shift for yourself, if you have to work in a shop, in an office, and particularly if you live alone and not with your parents, then temptations in the shape of men, young and old, will encounter you at every step; they will swarm about you like flies about a lump of sugar; they will stick to you like bees to a bunch of honeysuckle.
I do not want you to get the false idea that all men or most men are bad and mean, and are constantly on the lookout to ruin young girls. No. Most men are good and honorable and too conscientious to ruin a young life. But there are some men, young and old, who are devoid of any conscience, who are so egotistic that their personal pleasure is their only guide of conduct. They will pester you. Some will lyingly claim that they are in love with you; some perhaps will sincerely believe that they are in love with you, mistaking a temporary passion for the sacred feeling of love. Some will even promise to marry you—some making the promise in sincerity, others with the deliberate intent to deceive. Still others will try to convince you that chastity is an old superstition, and that there is nothing wrong in sexual relations. In short, all ways and means will be employed by those men to induce you to enter into sexual relations with them.
Don't you do it!
I am not preaching or sermonizing to you. I am not appealing to your religion or your morals. For if you have strong religious or moral ideas against illicit sexual relations, you are not in need of mine or anybody else's advice. But I assume that you are a more or less modern girl, with little or no religious bringing-up, or perhaps a radical girl, who has shaken off the shackles of religion and tradition. And to you I say: Don't you do it. Why? Because your welfare, your future happiness, is at stake. I am speaking from the point of view of your own good, and from that point of view I say: Resist all attempts which men make exclusively for the purpose of satisfying their sexual desire, their lust.
You will ask again, why? For several reasons. First, you run the risk of venereal infection. The danger is not so great now as in former times, but is great enough. There are still plenty of men dishonest enough to indulge in sexual relations with a woman when they know they are not radically cured. The same man who will not get married unless he is sure that he is perfectly cured will not hesitate to subject a transient girl or woman to the risk of venereal infection. I know personally, because I have treated them; yes, I treated several intelligent and radical young men who infected young girls. And some of these girls in their turn, through ignorance and innocence, infected other men. So then, the first danger is the danger of venereal infection.
The second danger, still greater and more certain than the first, is the danger of impregnation. And pregnancy for a girl under our present moral and social-economic conditions is a terrible calamity. She is ostracized everywhere, and it means, if discovered, her social death. But you will say: "Aren't there any remedies that can be used to prevent conception? Aren't you yourself among [265]the world's chief birth-controllers; one of the world's chief advocates of the use of contraceptives?" Yes, my dear young lady, but I never made the claim that the contraceptives were absolutely infallible, I never claimed that they were 100 per cent. effective in 100 per cent. of all cases. But if they are effective 999 times or even 990 times in every 1000 they are a blessing. And thousands of families so consider them.
And if a married woman gets caught once in a while, the misfortune is not so great. But if the accident happens to a non-married woman, the misfortune is great. Then again, you want to bear in mind that accidents are less likely to happen to married than to non-married women. The married woman has no fear, needs no secrecy, and she can go about the method of preparation carefully, with deliberation. The unmarried girl, as a rule, has not the proper conveniences, more or less secrecy must be maintained, hurry is not infrequently necessary, and that is why accidents are more apt to occur in spite of the use of contraceptives. So then, the second danger, even more sinister than the first, is the danger of pregnancy. "But if a misfortune happens, can I not have an abortion produced?" No, not always. Physicians willing to induce an abortion are not found on every corner. But this is not the principal point. What I have to say on the subject, I will say later on in this chapter.
Then it is well for you to bear in mind that those very men who use their utmost efforts, who strain every fibre and every nerve to get you, will despise you and detest you as soon as they have succeeded in making you yield to their wishes. This is one of the worst blots on the male man's character, a blot from which the female character is entirely free. And some men—fortunately their number is not very large—are such moral skunks that they take morbid pleasure in boasting publicly of their sexual conquests, and unscrupulously peddle about the name of the girl whom, by cunning false promises or other means, they succeeded in seducing. And of course such a girl finds it difficult or impossible to get married, and must end her days in solitude, without the hope of a home of her own.
For the above reasons I advise you earnestly and sincerely not to yield to the solicitations of thoughtless or unscrupulous men, who think of nothing but their coarse sensual pleasures. It is advice dictated by common sense, by your own deeper interest, aside from any religious or moral considerations.
The above advice, or call it sermon if you will, is meant principally for young girls, girls between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. If a girl has reached the age of twenty-eight or thirty and is willing to enter upon illicit sexual relations with her eyes open, with a full knowledge of the possible consequences, then it is her affair, and nobody shall say her nay. Nobody has a right to interfere.
Nor should my advice be understood as directed to cases where there is sincere reciprocal affection and a mutual understanding. This is an entirely different matter, and has nothing to do with cases where the man is the pursuer or seducer and the woman an unwilling or reluctant victim.
But whatever the relations between the man and the girl may be, whether she yielded in a fit of passion, or was seduced by false promises, by "moral" suasion, by hypnotic influence or by the vulgar method of being made drunk, what is she to do if she finds herself, to her horror, in a pregnant condition? There are two ways open to her: either let the pregnancy go to term or to have an abortion brought on.
Temptations. Fortunate are you, my young girl friend, if you come from a well-sheltered home, if you have been properly brought up, if you have a good and wise mother who knows how to take care of you. A mother's wise counsel given at the proper time, and her comradeship all the time, are more invulnerable than an armor of bronze and more secure than locked doors and barred windows. But if you have lost your
mother at an early age, or if your mother is not of the right sort—it is no use hiding the fact that some mothers are not what they should be—if you have to shift for yourself, if you have to work in a shop, in an office, and particularly if you live alone and not with your parents, then temptations in the shape of men, young and old, will encounter you at every step; they will swarm about you like flies about a lump of sugar; they will stick to you like bees to a bunch of honeysuckle.
I do not want you to get the false idea that all men or most men are bad and mean, and are constantly on the lookout to ruin young girls. No. Most men are good and honorable and too conscientious to ruin a young life. But there are some men, young and old, who are devoid of any conscience, who are so egotistic that their personal pleasure is their only guide of conduct. They will pester you. Some will lyingly claim that they are in love with you; some perhaps will sincerely believe that they are in love with you, mistaking a temporary passion for the sacred feeling of love. Some will even promise to marry you—some making the promise in sincerity, others with the deliberate intent to deceive. Still others will try to convince you that chastity is an old superstition, and that there is nothing wrong in sexual relations. In short, all ways and means will be employed by those men to induce you to enter into sexual relations with them.
Don't you do it!
I am not preaching or sermonizing to you. I am not appealing to your religion or your morals. For if you have strong religious or moral ideas against illicit sexual relations, you are not in need of mine or anybody else's advice. But I assume that you are a more or less modern girl, with little or no religious bringing-up, or perhaps a radical girl, who has shaken off the shackles of religion and tradition. And to you I say: Don't you do it. Why? Because your welfare, your future happiness, is at stake. I am speaking from the point of view of your own good, and from that point of view I say: Resist all attempts which men make exclusively for the purpose of satisfying their sexual desire, their lust.
You will ask again, why? For several reasons. First, you run the risk of venereal infection. The danger is not so great now as in former times, but is great enough. There are still plenty of men dishonest enough to indulge in sexual relations with a woman when they know they are not radically cured. The same man who will not get married unless he is sure that he is perfectly cured will not hesitate to subject a transient girl or woman to the risk of venereal infection. I know personally, because I have treated them; yes, I treated several intelligent and radical young men who infected young girls. And some of these girls in their turn, through ignorance and innocence, infected other men. So then, the first danger is the danger of venereal infection.
The second danger, still greater and more certain than the first, is the danger of impregnation. And pregnancy for a girl under our present moral and social-economic conditions is a terrible calamity. She is ostracized everywhere, and it means, if discovered, her social death. But you will say: "Aren't there any remedies that can be used to prevent conception? Aren't you yourself among [265]the world's chief birth-controllers; one of the world's chief advocates of the use of contraceptives?" Yes, my dear young lady, but I never made the claim that the contraceptives were absolutely infallible, I never claimed that they were 100 per cent. effective in 100 per cent. of all cases. But if they are effective 999 times or even 990 times in every 1000 they are a blessing. And thousands of families so consider them.
And if a married woman gets caught once in a while, the misfortune is not so great. But if the accident happens to a non-married woman, the misfortune is great. Then again, you want to bear in mind that accidents are less likely to happen to married than to non-married women. The married woman has no fear, needs no secrecy, and she can go about the method of preparation carefully, with deliberation. The unmarried girl, as a rule, has not the proper conveniences, more or less secrecy must be maintained, hurry is not infrequently necessary, and that is why accidents are more apt to occur in spite of the use of contraceptives. So then, the second danger, even more sinister than the first, is the danger of pregnancy. "But if a misfortune happens, can I not have an abortion produced?" No, not always. Physicians willing to induce an abortion are not found on every corner. But this is not the principal point. What I have to say on the subject, I will say later on in this chapter.
Then it is well for you to bear in mind that those very men who use their utmost efforts, who strain every fibre and every nerve to get you, will despise you and detest you as soon as they have succeeded in making you yield to their wishes. This is one of the worst blots on the male man's character, a blot from which the female character is entirely free. And some men—fortunately their number is not very large—are such moral skunks that they take morbid pleasure in boasting publicly of their sexual conquests, and unscrupulously peddle about the name of the girl whom, by cunning false promises or other means, they succeeded in seducing. And of course such a girl finds it difficult or impossible to get married, and must end her days in solitude, without the hope of a home of her own.
For the above reasons I advise you earnestly and sincerely not to yield to the solicitations of thoughtless or unscrupulous men, who think of nothing but their coarse sensual pleasures. It is advice dictated by common sense, by your own deeper interest, aside from any religious or moral considerations.
The above advice, or call it sermon if you will, is meant principally for young girls, girls between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. If a girl has reached the age of twenty-eight or thirty and is willing to enter upon illicit sexual relations with her eyes open, with a full knowledge of the possible consequences, then it is her affair, and nobody shall say her nay. Nobody has a right to interfere.
Nor should my advice be understood as directed to cases where there is sincere reciprocal affection and a mutual understanding. This is an entirely different matter, and has nothing to do with cases where the man is the pursuer or seducer and the woman an unwilling or reluctant victim.
But whatever the relations between the man and the girl may be, whether she yielded in a fit of passion, or was seduced by false promises, by "moral" suasion, by hypnotic influence or by the vulgar method of being made drunk, what is she to do if she finds herself, to her horror, in a pregnant condition? There are two ways open to her: either let the pregnancy go to term or to have an abortion brought on.
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