I believe that prejudice against what seems to me so debased a vice, is justifiable. But I am equally sure that to punish such offences by criminal law has no shred of justification, except when the act is done in public so as to be openly indecent. No physical or moral harm can be done to the animal. And were it not tragic, the idea of sentencing the offenders to penal servitude would be itself a travesty.
The practice, which is not so uncommon as many people imagine, is not so much immoral as unnatural. I mean that this can hardly ever be a variety of sex-temperament. Although the love of women for pet dogs is probably a form of perverted sex-outlet, it seems impossible to discover here any actual love going out towards animals rather than to humans. Therefore, the act is almost always due to a desire for mere physical expression, when this happens to have been chosen as the most convenient.
The true remedy, therefore, can only be to take the individual and educate him. He must be shown that it is immoral for man to devolve back to the animal level. He is superior to the beast. He must be reminded that sex must be a result of love, and that sex-love between man and animal would only be possible if it were moral for man to cease to reason, to go down on all fours, and to eat and drink and live like an animal. Even the most primitive man would not wish to do that. And if he feels any sense of abhorrence at such a proposal, then he must learn to extend his abhorrence to any attempt at a similar equality in sex.
IV
The strange and almost endless forms of sex-association need not be considered, since they have no moral problem of their own. The man whose sex-force is stirred into energy by the sight of some inanimate physical object is obviously the victim of a sex-repression. And such diseases must be treated as any other repressions should be. These general considerations must suffice here for all forms of sex perversions, such as sadism and its converse. And it is not difficult to distinguish between the unnaturalness of such practices and the natural character of the main sex-types which we have already mentioned.
Chapter XI: Sex Education
It is becoming evident to all students of the sex-problem that the remedy for many of the difficulties arising therefrom is a wholesome and efficient sex-education.
In many cases the parents are not the persons most fitted to give this education. They may not possess the art of imparting knowledge, and often there is a certain reticence between parent and child, which when present creates a bar to the proper handling of this question. The child goes to school to learn, and the school must take its share of this responsibility. Where this is not done the effect is deplorable. In the preparatory school sex has hardly appeared. But in any school where there are older boys or girls, and where sex-education is not given, knowledge is rapidly obtained. Officially sex is ignored until, on rare occasions, it is detected. Severe punishment is then meted out, and perhaps the offender is even expelled, although the school is really penalizing the results of its own system.