Any of these terrible diseases may be the gift the young wife receives from her infected husband in the wedding-night. Still the danger from syphilis for the woman is by far less imminent than that threatening her from gonorrhoea. No man, except he be an idiot, would think of getting married while still suffering from syphilis of the initial and secondary stages, when the disease is highly infectious. During the latent and tertiary stages the danger of infecting the wife is very slight indeed. But there is no immunity for the offspring, during the latent and tertiary stages.
The two venereal diseases are thus, each in its way, inflicting the greatest suffering upon the innocent wife and child, disrupting the family and causing the degeneration of the race. There is no greater scourge devastating every nation to-day than the two venereal diseases. No other disease has such a murderous influence upon the offspring as syphilis, and no other disease is so destructive to the health and reproductive function of woman as gonorrhoea.
Thus the dangers of venereal diseases beset not only the individual but through the individual the whole race. Both venereal diseases respect no social position and recoil before no virtue. They ramify through every class and rank of society. Like “pallida mors” they approach with equal step the habitations of the poor and the palaces of the rich.
With these dangers staring at him, no man has a right to justify the double standard of sex-morality. No young man should even think of exposing himself, his future wife and offspring to all these dangers for the mere pittance of a short momentary enjoyment in the company of the pestiferous individuals, of these fallen angels whom the Bible describes as the “strange woman which flattereth with her words, her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell, going down to the chambers of death.”
These meretricious women are constantly seeking those whom they may devour and are laughing at the wholesale ruin they are spreading. These unscrupulous courtesans are individuals without industry, preferring indolent lives with a show of finery and a brief period of gratification of their sensuality. They indulge their selfish lust ad libitum, with no thought as to what the result may be.
Most of the devotees of Venus vulgativa spend their brief lives, trying to lead boys and young men into wickedness and mischief. As a rule, they are all unclean and diseased and rejoice to return to their partners, the so-called “prostituants,” the infection they have received from other prostituants. The young man, therefore, will in the majority of cases surely carry away some foul disease from these women. When we consider how difficult and rare a thing it is to thoroughly cure a woman of gonorrhoea, it is easily understood how dangerous it is for the youth to trust himself at any time in her subsequent life within her infected presence.
Hence the youth have no right to become the main contributors to the resources of the venal woman, whether of the street or of the palatial home. Clandestine vice is, as a rule, more dangerous in regard to contracting venereal diseases than the immorality of the street. The majority of young men drift into illicit, sensual life and its dangers and pitfalls without the least physiological necessity. Until the age of twenty of the woman and twenty-five of the man is reached, youth itself gains by complete abstinence. The teens, says Ellen Key, should be the age of the erotic prologue not of the drama. Premature erotic claims are less the result of the needs of the organism than the influence of the imagination upon it. The young boys of sixteen to twenty-five are only in love with love. It is the longing for love rather than love itself that renders them an easy prey for the venal woman.
Masculine chastity must not, therefore, be laughed at. The necessity of self-control and of chastity must be impressed upon the mind of the young man as the only way to secure the strong mental and physical qualities for the future paternal relations.[EJ]
There is not the slightest shadow of support in any teachings of physiology or hygiene for the double standard of morality of the sexes. There is no reason why a moral wrong in the woman should be a justifiable necessity with the man. From no medical studies and investigations anywhere attainable, would the physical necessity of sowing of “wild oats” for a young man hold good. No one will deny that, as far as the gentler sex is concerned, continence (at least between the age of sixteen to thirty-five) is compatible with health, then the general belief of young men that sensual indulgence is necessary for healthy manhood, has no justification in physiology. Purity is as little injurious to a man as to a woman. It is a most absurd and erroneous teaching that, unless inclination is gratified, a man’s health will suffer.
The instinct of generation has been compared with the instinct of hunger and thirst, and as the latter must be satisfied, so must the former be gratified. But there is no proper parallelism between these two instincts. Food and drink are vital necessities of the organism from the first day of conception, to replace the stuffs consumed in the metabolism of the vital functions. The generative instinct appears a number of years after birth, hence does not serve any vital necessity. This instinct could, if at all, only be compared with the instinct of micturition or defecation, and the relief of the physical pressure in the generative organs is brought about by the self-regulating action of nocturnal emissions. It may be more natural and agreeable for a healthy man and woman, after they have reached a certain age, to indulge in the exercise of their organs of generation at reasonable intervals, than to abstain from it. But to proclaim that this abstinence, compatible with health in women, is injurious to men, is sheer absurdity.