These, therefore, are the chief foes of sexual morality: the struggle for wealth (as exemplified in the domination of private capital) and the use of alcohol. Let us combat both in the name of ethics. “In hoc signo vincemus!”
The following will, I hope, make my meaning still clearer.
In sexual ethics many diseases and abnormalities play, of course, a great part. First of all there are the venereal diseases, and particularly syphilis and gonorrhœa, which often destroy family happiness and endanger the offspring. It is too often forgotten that chronic gonorrhœa can poison marriage, and that decay of the spinal marrow (locomotor ataxia) and the so-called softening of the brain (progressive or general paralysis) are nothing else than a very late result of syphilis, appearing from ten to twenty years after infection.
In a brief statistical discussion of the question, based upon medical information, I have shown that seventy-five per cent of venereal infections are acquired while in a state of alcoholic excitement. In the vast majority of these cases the infection is communicated by means of prostitution, which, as the result of the incredibly numerous and varied sex relationships of the women, serves simply as a vast manufactory of venereal diseases.
It is true that married women are often infected by their husbands or lovers, but this is only a result of the previous visits of the latter to houses of ill-fame. Hygiene and morals both suffer serious injury in this way. Any one who is infected, and nevertheless has sexual connection with a person not infected in the same way, commits a basely immoral act, if not a crime. This is done, however, daily, when the infection is concealed. Nay, more, the medical men who officially visit and examine prostitutes are well aware that they can at most only temporarily remedy a few of the worst symptoms, and that they are powerless to cure the disease itself. In spite of this such women are set at liberty once more to carry on their disastrous trade! And very few prostitutes ever completely escape venereal infection.
These are the fruits of paid “love,” maintained chiefly by the drinking habits of the present day. It is plain that the chief task of sexual ethics must be the cleansing of this Augean stable. There are, however, a host of other social evils of a similar kind, such as the seduction and exploitation of waitresses, women factory workers, and so forth. These abuses belong to the same domain and present the same opportunities of infection.
The various perversions of the sexual instinct constitute another prolific source of disaster. Most of these are hereditary, and therefore inborn. We will only briefly mention sadism (the combination of acts of cruelty and violence with sexual gratification), masochism (sexual gratification combined with the passive endurance of similar cruelty and violence), inverted sexual feeling (homosexuality), fetishism (sexual attraction for inanimate objects), exhibitionism, sodomy, etc.