Facts and Fictions of Life

by Helen H. Gardener

The boys who are encouraged to "sow their wild oats" and taught that it is safe to do so under State regulation should hear the reports of some of the students of hereditary traits, conditions and developments. There is to-day in an asylum not so far from the Inspector's own door but that its records are easy of access, one victim of this pernicious theory whose history runs thus: He was a gentleman of good social, financial and mental surroundings. He was a "young man about town." He possessed, (perhaps it was an hereditary trait) more consciousness of the fact that he was a male animal than that he was an intelligent, self-respecting human being who had no moral right to degrade another human being for his gratification, while he assumed to still retain a higher and safer plane than his companions in vice. He was, in brief, no better and no worse than many young fellows who—alas, that they are so taught by men who believe themselves good and honorable—"turn out to be good family men."

After his system was thoroughly inoculated, physically, mentally, and morally or ethically, with the tone, the condition, the trend of the life which the inspector, and many other good men, insist is unfit for the ears of women, but necessary to the welfare of men and "best" for them; after his life and flesh had this trend and absorption he married a lovely wife from a good family. All went well. Society smiled (this is history, not fiction), and said that rapid men when they did marry, made the best husbands after all. It said such men knew better how to fully appreciate purity at home.

Society did not state that there could be no purity in a stream where half of the tributaries are polluted. But society was satisfied to talk of "pure homes" so long as there was one pure partner to the compact, which resulted in the home. It does not talk of an honest firm if but one of its members is (privately and in his own person,) honest while he accedes to the dishonest practices of his associates. But society was satisfied. A child was born, society was charmed. Four more children came. Society said that this late profligate was doing his duty as a good citizen of the State. He is now about forty-seven years old. He is a "paretic" in an asylum, and, if that were all, then the inspector's theory might still stand, because he would say that at least the awful calamity had been staved off all these years while he had built a "pure" home and left to his country others to take his place. The facts are these: His oldest son is an epileptic, the second is a physical caricature of a man, the third is a moral idiot. He has no moral sense at all, while he is mentally bright. He delights in victimizing dogs, cats, or even smaller children. All things, in fact, which are in his power are his legitimate prey. Then there is a girl. In the phraseology of the doctor she "shows only the general, constitutional signs of her inheritance."

The youngest son is now less than seven years old; he is such a hopeless sex maniac even now that the parents of other children do not dare allow them to be alone with him for one moment.

In telling me of this case the asylum physician, himself a profound student of heredity, said of the child:

"He would shame an old Parisian debauchee. The Spartans were not so far wrong after all. They killed all such children as these before they had the chance to grow up and still further pollute the stream of life." And so our good citizen followed only the usual course prescribed by the inspector—and by society—and the result is (leaving out the horrible, necessary sacrifice of a woman—some woman or some number of women)—the result of the plan is this; a house of vice, (in a secluded quarter "for greater safety"); a few years of license which he believed to be his legitimate perquisite in the world and "no harm done;" the association of the later years of his wasted energies, and his pretense and vice-soaked life and flesh with the life of a pure girl, and then the legacy to society of five more sex maniacs, (who, being born in a wedlock, which, by its present terms, laws, and theories, still further develops sex mania in men and thereby implants the disease in each generation to be fought with or yielded to again); a doddering, drivelling wreck of a man in an asylum at the prime of his manhood; a worse than widowed wife with a knowledge in her soul which is an undying serpent as she looks in despair upon the five lives she has given, in her pathetic ignorance and trust. And his is not an unusual record. Of course its details are seldom known outside of the family and physicians. It is legitimate fruit of a tree which society in its avarice and ignorance and vice carefully fosters. It is the tree, the fruit of which fills our jails, mad-houses, asylums, poorhouses and prisons year after year, and yet we tend it carefully and keep its root strong and vigorous by exactly the methods recommended by the police inspector and by all believers in State regulated and State licensed vice, that is: It must be systematically continued for the good of "robust boys who might else be on the island with muffled hands. It must be kept in certain quarters and secret for greater safety to men, and that our wives and daughters may not hear of it."

Not hear of it until when? Not until the years come when the honest physician must tell her, if not the cause, at least the horrible facts, when it is too late for her to prevent the awful crime of giving life to the children of such a husband. We hold it a terrible crime to take life. Is it not far more terrible in such a case to give life? In the one instance the results to the victims are simply the sudden ending of a more or less desirable existence in a more or less comfortable world. In the other case it is assuming to thrust unasked upon helpless children a living death, an inheritance of pollution which must, and does, develop itself in one or another form as the years go by. Which is the greater, more awful responsibility, to give or to take life? The law says the latter.

Is it certain that heredity—nature's surest and least heeded voice—does not in many cases say the former? When society is wiser it will be a bit more like the Spartans. It will say: Far better that they be "on the island" than that they lay their fatal curse upon the world to expand and blight to the third and fourth generation, and, I believe, it was to be the "sin of the fathers" which was thus to follow the children, was it not? What was that sin? Are not its roots to be found in the very soil advocated as good by believers in State regulation and in a double standard of morals, and in the ignorance which they say is desirable for "our wives and daughters." Ignorance that such things exist as the secret, legalized, regulated slaughter (social, moral, and actually physical) of hundreds and thousands of one sex at the demands and for the gratification of the other?

Are there not sex maniacs in more directions than one?

Is not this very double standard theory in itself a sex mania?