What Every Girl Should Know

by Margaret Sanger

That the seminal emissions are not harmful and that they grow less frequent as the boy grows older is a fact of which few mothers seem to be aware.

We cannot blame the mothers of the past for not informing their sons of this physical condition, for few of them knew it themselves. Mothers have been as ignorant as the boys of their sex functions as well as other functions of the body.

They accepted sickness, disease, and even death without a question, placing their faith and confidence entirely in the hands of the medical profession, who, like the rabbis and high priests, made a church of their knowledge.

Fortunately this condition of affairs is changing, and the knowledge of the human body, which for ages has been most carefully locked within the medical libraries, is fast taking up its abode in the homes of the people—where it belongs.

It is said that in Japan or China, the duty of a physician is to keep his patients in good health, receiving payment only when they are well.

Certainly this sounds like civilization.

Only a few weeks ago I had occasion to talk to a woman about her oldest son, whom I considered sick from overwork and lack of nourishment. She informed me, however, that this was not so, and whispered confidently that he was 16 years old and “in that age when he needs a woman.” She further remarked that she and “the papa” had talked it over with the result that the father had told the boy, when he had “the desire for a woman,” that he, the father, “would give him money enough to get one.”

Think of that boy's attitude toward women, and the danger to become affected with venereal diseases that he was likely to contract. Yet both parents had the sincerest wish to do their best for that boy; they gave the best advice they knew.

One of the most common errors I have found among people, even those educated in other lines of thought, is that the sexual organs will become useless unless they are used in early manhood. This is considered untrue by the best authorities on the subject, for it is known that the essential organs of reproduction are glands, not unlike the tear glands of the eyes or the milk glands of the breasts. The tear glands do not atrophy even if one does not cry for years, nor the milk glands during the entire period of reproduction. The same can be said of the sexual glands.

Another idea which is fast being uprooted is that the sexual act is an appetite, not unlike that of hunger and thirst, which must be fed by the boy sowing his “wild oats” first before settling down to marriage. It is now a recognized fact that it is no more necessary for a boy to “sow wild oats” than it is for a girl, and women are today demanding of men the same cleanliness of body and mind which men have heretofore considered necessary only in women.