(3) The young man should know that the great majority of prostitutes do not willingly undertake the shameful business of selling their virtue. He should know that the majority have gone downward for such reasons as follows: Many a woman has been betrayed by some detestable man who pretended to love her. Poverty has forced many other women to the first downward step. Many are easy victims because they belong to the feeble-minded class. Others have been driven into immoral life by parents and even husbands. Still others have been drugged, and raped while insensible. A limited number have begun prostitution as "white slaves" kept as prisoners until all hope of a better life has vanished. A few have deliberately begun to accept the attentions of lewd men in order to get money for luxurious dress and finery. And relatively very few have started downward because of sexual passion such as commonly influences men. In short, every young man should be informed that most women living by prostitution have begun innocently or unwillingly; but having made one false step, society has shunned them, even near relatives have cast them off, and a career of prostitution has appeared the only way of making a living, vulgar and unspeakably sordid though it be. It is evident that the responsibility for prostitution rests almost entirely upon men. Unfortunately, society does not recognize this fact and has no way of dealing legally with both men and women found associated in houses of prostitution. At present the women arrested for prostitution are treated as criminals, while their male associates in vice are allowed to depart as if they were respectable citizens.
Appeal to men.
Tell young men these facts as to why women become prostitutes. Help them to realize that most of these women are pitiful victims of man's worse than brutal sexual passions. Then add the astounding fact that very many of the women of the underworld have short lives, their health being undermined rapidly by dissipation, by alcohol used to bury their shame or to stimulate their flagging energies, and by the two loathsome diseases, gonorrhea and syphilis, which relatively few prostitutes escape—tell young men such facts which eminent physicians and sociologists have often verified, and there are good chances of striking sympathetic notes in their young manhood.
Danger of social disease.
(4) And there is one other line of facts concerning prostitution that the developing young man should know well, namely, that every prostitute is likely at any time to be infected with the social diseases, and that no ordinary medical examination can prove that she will not transmit these awful diseases to men who consort with her. In fact, within an hour after most careful medical examination she may become infected by some diseased man, and then she is capable of inoculating other men. Such facts, for which the greatest of special physicians vouch, will eradicate from the young man's mind the widespread notions that prostitutes are safe if they carry a physician's certificate, or one of the official cards given in some European cities. Many a young man of sixteen to twenty has not heard that prostitutes as a class are universally dangerous as distributors of the most terrible diseases, and his education is incomplete until he knows the exact truth from reliable sources.
Limited reading.
(5) It is not desirable that the young man should be set to read the numerous books packed with more or less sensational reports on the social evil, for these may sometimes tend toward morbidity. Any young man who is not effectively appealed to by the above facts will not be influenced by the most voluminous reports on prostitution ever published. Such reports are not useful for young men. They serve a good purpose by informing mature men and women and awakening them to the necessity of legislation, education, and other weapons with which we may fight the great black plague of social vice. For the average young man the books recommended in § 8 will give sufficient information and viewpoint.
Liaisons.
(6) Finally, the young man of adolescent years should be made to understand his responsibility for immorality that is not prostitution, that is, extra-marital relations with his girl friends and without pecuniary considerations. He should know the probability that he will ruin a girl's life, either because illegitimacy occurs or because her reputation suffers. Even if such immoral liaisons are kept private, both persons concerned are likely in after years to regret their illicit intimacy, especially if either marries another person.
§ 34. Need of More Refinement in Men