§ 57
One type of instinctive behaviour is the almost universal tendency to reason by analogy which frequently turns out to be a reasoning by false analogy and by association of the contiguity type.
It would be quite as reasonable for a woman to say that, because a prostitute enjoys roast beef or lobster (or anything between), the pure wife should feel it a sin to enjoy good food.
Of course there are people who think it is wrong to enjoy anything, but while overgratification from food or drink has a certain essential sensuality about it and gluttony was one of the “seven deadly sins,” there is no psychological principle according to which intense enjoyment is rightly prohibited, providing the consumption of food does not exceed the necessity of the body for growth and restoration of tissue. Up to that point the more one enjoys one’s food the better for himself and incidentally for everyone else. If, however, the enjoyment has to come from an increase in the amount consumed or the cost of it, then a quite unjustifiable element of unsocial action surely enters.
One should enjoy food, and the more enjoyment the better, provided the enjoyment does not depend on the increase in amount or expensiveness of it.
Similarly there is every good reason why both women and men should enjoy sex and regard it as quite as necessary as food.
Instinctively both women and men would do so if their sexual instincts were accessible. Those men and women to whom their instincts are accessible do gain their greatest comfort if not their greatest happiness through the uninhibited expression of the sex instinct.