"To hear many women talk it would appear that the new ideal is a one-sexed world. A great army of women have espoused the task of raising their sex out of subjection. For such a duty the strength and energy of passion is required. Can this task be performed if the woman to any extent indulges in sex—otherwise subjection to man? Sexuality debases, even reproduction and birth are regarded as 'nauseating.' Woman is not free, only because she has been the slave to the primitive cycle of emotions which belong to physical love. The renunciation, the conquest of sex—it is this that must be gained. As for man, he has been shown up, women have found him out; his long-worn garments of authority and his mystery and glamour have been torn into shreds—woman will have none of him.
"Now obviously these are over-statements, yet they are the logical outcome of much of the talk that one hears. It is the visible sign of our incoherence and error, and in the measure of these follies we are sent back to seek the truth. Women need a robuster courage in the face of love, a greater faith in their womanhood, and in the scheme of Life. Nothing can be gained from the child's folly in breaking the toys that have momentarily ceased to please. The misogamist type of woman cannot fail to prove as futile as the misogamist man. Not 'Free from man' is the watch-cry of women's emancipation that surely is to be, but 'Free with man.'"
Sex and intellectualism.
And further on the same author, considering the problem of the women of the common type that are classified as a "third sex," that of temperamental neuter, says:
"Economic conditions are compelling women to enter with men into the fierce competition of our disordered social state. Partly due to this reason, though much more, as I think, to the strong stirring in woman of her newly-discovered self, there has arisen what I should like to call an over-emphasized Intellectualism. Where sex is ignored there is bound to lurk danger. Every one recognizes the significance of the advance in particular cases of women towards a higher intellectual individuation, and the social utility of those women who have been truly the pioneers of the new freedom; but this does not lessen at all the disastrous influence of an ideal which holds up the renunciation of the natural rights of love and activities of women, and thus involves an irreparable loss to the race by the barrenness of many of its finest types. The significance of such Intellectuals must be limited, because for them the possibility of transmission by inheritance of their valuable qualities is cut off, and hence the way is closed to a further progress. And, thus, we are brought back to that simple truth from which we started; there are two sexes, the female and the male, on their specific differences and resemblances blended together in union every true advance in progress depends—on the perfected woman and the perfected man."
Young women misled by sexual pessimists.
One who studies carefully the various aspects of the extreme feministic movement must admit that there are many signs of the dangers which the above quotations point out so clearly. Of course, we cannot believe in the sincerity of all of the numerous women of thirty-five to fifty years who pretend to ignore sex completely. Probably most of them have discovered that they have misunderstood themselves; but it is also probable that they have discovered too late for making a readjustment in their own lives. However, it matters little whether such women have really succeeded in ignoring sex. The real problem for educational attack lies in the fact that such women often succeed in proselyting young women under twenty-five, and these in turn may not come to see the real truth about sex and life until ten or fifteen years later. Clearly, organized education must protect young women against such influences.
The greatest good in sex-education.
The greatest good which may come from the sex-education movement is not prevention or elimination of social diseases, it is not improved health, it is not general acceptance of the moral law of sex, it is not one or all these that are devoutly to be hoped for; but far greater than such possible results from sex-education, it will bring to many a man and woman a deeper, nobler, and purer knowledge of what sex means for the coming race and of what it means now to each individual who realizes life's fullest possibilities in conjugal affection which culminates in new life and new motives for more affection. Such an understanding of sex in relation to home life will help this old world more than anything else which sex-education may accomplish.
The greatest sex problem.