There are two cardinal features in the psychology of every masturbator which give us a keynote toward understanding his character, and serve as a starting point for all subsequent changes in his personality. The first is that every masturbator of age knows that he is doing something wrong; that he is committing a shameful act against his manhood and against Nature. As a result, he reproaches and pledges himself to shake off this degrading habit. But his will power is weak and temptation is strong, and he again and again fails in his efforts and falls back in the clutches of his master. This internal conflict gradually unnerves him and puts an indelible stamp of shiftlessness and weakness on his whole being. A feeling of guilt and shame makes him morose, seclusive, depressed, and unsociable. Particularly characteristic it is for an inveterate masturbator to avoid the company of all girls, and those pleasures and games that are so attractive to normal and healthy boys. A masturbator gets bodily weak, flabby, and unfit for any muscular exertion or physical work. The changes in his nervous system and mentality are still more striking. He becomes shiftless and restless, and at the same time shows signs of nervous weakness and irritability. He sleeps bad and feels in the morning more tired and broken up than before going to bed; he is subject to headaches; he gets easily tired, and is unable to concentrate his attention for any sustained mental effort. His personality also changes markedly; he becomes deceitful, self-retired, cowardly, and grouchy. His physical appearance reflects well the internal conflict and the slow sapping of his physical and mental strength; his look is haggard and dejected; the eyes are dull and deeply encircled with blue rings underneath; his hands are cold and clammy; his gait is slow, feeble, and uncertain. In a word, strong, happy, and full of life a boy can in a few years or even months be transformed under a loathsome mastery of the masturbation habit into a wreck and a mere shadow of his former self. There is no more sad and pathetic picture than that of an inveterate masturbator, who wants and cannot break his slavery to the habit. Such cases can be redeemed back to health by a long and tedious treatment. Much easier, and, in fact, the only proper way to fight the scourge of masturbation is by spreading knowledge of its dangers among the boys.
The prevention of the formation of the habit can best be affected thru the same physical training of the boys that has been above recommended to check unnecessary and premature sexual excitement. Give to a boy whom you suspect or know to be in danger of forming the habit of masturbation a friendly help; take him out into the fresh air for games and physical sports; distract his attention by physical and mental pleasures; regulate his diet and mode of life; even bring him into companionship with clean and refined girls, and you may save him from a slow waste and destruction of his physical and mental health and save his manhood for a healthy and happy family life.
Venereal Diseases
Venereal diseases present a unique and most difficult problem of our days. To realize fully the enormous scope and difficulties of the control of venereal peril, several social factors bearing on this problem must be considered. Such are: The attitude of society to the sexual problem; double standard of morality; prevailing ignorance on the subject on the part of the public; self-medication and medical quacks; the sources of venereal infection, and the best methods of its control.
The Conspiracy of Silence.
Medically, venereal diseases belong to the oldest and best worked out class of diseases, tho their treatment only recently, due to the new discoveries, has been put on a definite and secure basis. Socially, their tremendous importance for the health, morals, and happiness of a community is just being disclosed to society, which heretofore, in its prudish and ostrich-like attitude, attempted to solve the problem of venereal peril by ignoring it and suppressing free discussion or preventive education along these lines. Naturally, the evil unchecked, tho driven underground by a prohibition of publicity, has spread to such a monstrous size that society could not any more feign not to see it and to continue the old policy of “conspiracy of silence.”
Double Standard of Morals.
Among factors bearing on the causes of sexual intemperance and venereal peril, possibly none stands out as clearly and prominently as the so-called double standard of morals. We all know that society has adopted and hypocritically approved a double code of sexual morality for men and women. What is considered to be natural and permissible for a man is an offense of morality and a crime punishable by social disgrace for a woman. No man is willing to marry a girl whom he knows or suspects to be of loose sexual morals, and no self-respecting man will tolerate that the fair name and honor of his sister be attacked or ruined even by a word, not to say in fact. And yet the same man, in full sincerity and in accord with his conscience gives to himself a free license of “sowing wild oats” before his marriage. In fact, many men believe that it is not only permissible, but even desirable for a young man to work off a surplus of his physical manhood before he settles down to family life. How a squandering of the best physical and nervous energy in dissipation, how a waste and perversion of the highest spiritual and moral instinct of love by a degrading purchase of the body of a prostitute, how a polluting of the young and pure blood with venereal poisons can make a man a better husband and father is beyond human reason and common sense to comprehend; but the superstitions and barbaric notions of the good old days are dying hard, and thousands of young men sacrifice their manhood to the deep-rooted traditions and to the slavery of established social habits.
How this double code of sexual morality has developed is probably to be explained by a combination of several factors. First, a historically developed subjection of the woman to man naturally has led to the domination of man’s ideas and laws, and to the interpretation of different facts bearing on the relationship between man and woman in favor of the man. To justify his own license of sexual intemperance and deny the same freedom to a woman, it was easy for a man to declare that the sexual necessity for a woman is not as imperative as for a man, and therefore a woman shall be chaste and pure until the marriage, while the man may suit himself in this regard. There is no scientific proof whatsoever that a woman differs in any way from a man in regard to the sexual instinct. It is true that woman, as an average, is purer, more temperate, less attracted by mere animal, brutal passion, and often seeks or tolerates a physical gratification only as the means to get with it a man’s love and affection. On the other hand, a man is more brutal and violent in seeking and satisfying his physical passion, less able to control his sexual impulse, less affectionate and less sentimental in his expression of love. But this comparative moderation, modesty, and better self-control can be more easily explained by woman’s training thru many generations in clean and moral habits of thought and living, by the fewer chances of exposure to evil influences, by less stimulation and intoxication thru liquors and tobacco, and last, but not least, thru fear of public disgrace. The man, being master of the situation, has never tried to develop self-control and will power in subduing his physical passion, and has cloaked his sexual intemperance and indulgence with a fancied natural necessity. The double moral standard as it is practiced to-day has brought untold misery and has ruined lives of millions of young women who were so unfortunate as to make a first misstep and yielded to temptation. While the male seducer goes on unmolested and unnoticed on his gay round of life, the girl, his helpless victim, has to face all the fury of public disgrace and contempt. Many of them commit suicide, others try to hide their disgrace by a criminal operation and die or cripple their health for life. Many more, in despair and revolt against the injustice and hypocrisy of public opinion, enter the gates that swing only one way to slow decay and untimely death, the gates of prostitution.
There is no more miserable existence, no more hopeless, no more body and soul-wrecking life than that of a white slave. It is no accident that practically all of the prostitutes are drinking and smoking, and that the majority of them are also drug fiends. In fact, that should rather be credited in their favor, as it shows that with clear judgment and normal senses they cannot endure this degradation and life-long slavery, and, since they do not see any possibility of breaking their chains and redeeming their lives, they drug themselves to forget their misery. Yet even continual drugging cannot dull the agony of their hopeless existence, and many of them welcome death at their own hands, usually thru poison. There is no other occupation or human walk of life where the suicide rate is as high as among the slaves of prostitution, neither is there any class of population where physical decay and premature death is as common as among the women of the underworld. Let a man or youth who enters a house of prostitution know that by doing so he is not only purchasing a lottery ticket for the prize of a venereal disease, which he seldom misses, but that also with each visit to a fallen woman he drags her down one step lower on the down-grade path of a social abyss. And if he can do this with full knowledge of the social consequences of his act with a clear mind and cool judgment, let him know that he is a man in name only, and that morally he is much more to be despised and branded with social contempt than the painted creature he is ashamed to recognize on the street the morning after.