The Social Emergency | Page 4

a cry of protest--and rightly.
Here mistakes will not do: here incompetent teachers cannot be trusted.
Ill-advised efforts to teach sex hygiene may aggravate the very evils we
are trying to assuage. Because the subject is of vital importance,
education in sexual hygiene and morals must proceed cautiously and
conservatively; according to tried methods, psychologically sound;
always under the control of men and women of maturity, who see the
present emergency in its many phases, who know how to teach, whose
character is in keeping with the highest ideals of their work, and who
approach their subject with reverence and their pupils with the joy and

inspiration which come from a large opportunity to serve mankind.
Unhappily, not all of those who have been stimulated by the new
freedom of speech to thrust themselves forward as teachers of sex
hygiene, and as social reformers, are safe leaders. Some are ignorant
and unaware that enthusiasm is not a satisfactory substitute for
knowledge. Some are hysterical. At a recent purity convention, a
woman said, "I know little about the facts, but it is wonderful how
much ignorance can accomplish when accompanied by devotion and
persistence." That declaration was applauded. Some people appear to
believe that they will arrive safely if they go rapidly enough and far
enough, even though they may be going in the wrong direction. Many
retard the movement for social hygiene by making statements they do
not know to be true, especially in respect to the extent of sexual
immorality, the number of prostitutes, and the prevalence of venereal
disease. Young people of opposite sexes, finding evidence on every
hand that the traditional taboo is removed, discuss the subject for
personal pleasure.
The books in the field of social hygiene which have most scrupulously
and successfully avoided everything that might be sexually stimulating
are not the ones bought by the largest numbers. The demand for erotic
publications is so great as to warn us in advance that the new freedom
will prove dangerous for many whose minds are already unclean. The
propaganda for social purity is unlike many others, in that there is
special danger of doing injury to the very ones in special need of help.
The fact that the young, the ignorant, the hysterical, and the sexually
abnormal, as well as commercialized agencies, are using the newfound
license in dangerous ways is reason enough for the liberal and
whole-hearted support of the American Social Hygiene Association and
affiliated societies.
These private organizations are striving to meet the present social
emergency. They are temporary expedients. Their chief aim is public
education. They should frustrate the efforts of all dangerous agencies
and hasten the day when the home, the church, and the school shall
meet their full responsibilities in the teaching of sexual hygiene and

morals.
CHAPTER II
VARIOUS PHASES OF THE QUESTION
By William Trufant Foster
It is necessary to take into account all phases of the social emergency.
The question is not merely one of physiology, or pathology, or diseases,
or wages, or industrial education, or recreation, or knowledge, or
commercial organization, or legal regulation, or lust, or social customs,
or cultivation of will power, or religion. It is all of this and more. The
danger is that we shall see only one or two sides of a many-sided
problem. A solution may appear adequate because it leaves essential
factors out of consideration.
One physiological factor in the situation is of fundamental importance,
namely, the discrepancy between the age of sexual maturity and the
prevailing age of marriage,--an artificial condition largely determined
by social customs, by modern educational systems, and by standards of
living. While society has set forward, generation after generation, the
age at which marriage seems feasible, the age of puberty has remained
virtually the same. This unnatural condition--as artificial as the clothes
we wear--is a phase of the emergency which should be considered by
those who condemn as unnatural and forced the education of adolescent
boys and girls in sexual hygiene and morals. Partly as a result of this
has come the general acceptance of the double standard of chastity
which has bitterly condemned the girl--made her an outcast of
society--and excused the boy for the same offense, on the false plea of
physiological necessity.
With the sanction of this double standard, tacitly accepted by society,
thousands of prostitutes have been harbored and protected. What shall
we do with them? We may drive them out of certain districts and
certain houses, and even certain cities, but they are still with us, and we
are responsible for them. If they are denied resorts where men seek
them, they will seek men. Most of them are unable, without special

training, to earn a living in any other way, and many of them would not
if they could. A majority