If the social evil is a necessity and the immoral woman protects the virtue of the innocent girls and virtuous wives, is she not a benefactor? Who is engaged in a more commendable, philanthropic or Christian service? Then why should she be treated as an outcast? Should she not be invited as a guest of honor at our social functions? Should she not sing in the choir, or sit in a front pew in the most aristocratic church?
The pugilist and athlete, in their training for special tests of strength, endurance, and skill, abstain for long periods from all sexual gratification.
It is by living a continent life that the lower animals, unmolested by man, reach a state of physical perfection.
Effects of incontinence upon the married life.—An incontinent single life will naturally lead to excesses in the married life. Such young men get the idea that marriage means unlimited gratification. With these perverted views they enter and soil the sacred precincts of marriage and parentage. By marital excess, indulged in by no other animal or savage, their health is injured, their lives are shortened and their children are poorly born. This is a very common harvest reaped in the married life. Back of this harvest, and back of the sowing is ignorance.
From these facts and many others that could be had we see that absolute continence is not unnatural, but it is the only sane solution to a young man’s sex problems.
CHAPTER XXXVII
PROSTITUTION
We have talked over many of the problems of boys and young men. You are now sixteen and new problems are constantly coming up in your life for solution. I would like to speak with you on this occasion about the very vital problem of illicit intercourse with women. By this expression is meant all sexual intercourse with women outside of holy wedlock.
Men are as fallen as women.—When this sin occurs among single people it is fornication, when among the married, it is adultery. Whether this occurs among the single or the married, it is prostitution. In this sin there is no difference, in character, between the male and the female, the married and the single prostitute; in either case, the priceless gem of virtue has been forfeited.
Men think less of their virtue than women.—Partly due to a bad heredity and largely due to a false training and the existence of a double standard of morals, boys and men are more willing to sacrifice their virtue than are girls and women. There are a few degenerate girls and some who have been reared in immoral homes who willingly sacrifice their virtue. But these represent only a very small part of the girls who annually fall. Most of those who are known as fallen women were induced to fall by designing men. Many methods are used to accomplish the fall of girls. Lady clerks, stenographers and servants in homes and hotels receive such meager wages that they are often unable to meet their necessary expenses. Men have taken advantage of their financial need and by skillful advances, artful entreaties and by offering to supplement their income for special favors, they succeed in ruining many girls.
Few women go wrong from choice.—Some men use the dance, the theater, alcoholic drinks, certain stimulating drugs, buggy rides and late hours at night as means of accomplishing their fiendish purposes. Victory once won, clandestine relations are continued until the girl finds that she is to be a mother, or her guilt becoming known, being often forced from her own home, ostracized by society, shunned by professing Christians, she now becomes an outcast. Few girls ever go wrong from choice. Great as her sin is, it is small compared with his. There is not greater sin and crime than his. Possessed of one spark of manhood, he would marry the girl; instead, he is more likely to boast of his achievement.