Woman | Page 6

not agreed as to the character of the instruction, its extent, the age at which it should be begun and as to who the teacher should be--the father, the family physician, the school teacher or a specially prepared book--but as to the necessity of sex knowledge for the boy there is now substantial agreement--among the conservatives as well as among the radicals.
No such agreement exists concerning sex knowledge for the girl. Many still are the men and women--and not among the conservatives only--who are strongly opposed to girls receiving any instruction in sex matters. Some say that such instruction--except a few hygienic rules about menstruation--is unnecessary, because the sex instinct awakens in girls comparatively late, and it is time enough for them to learn about such matters after they are married. Others fear that sex knowledge would destroy the mystery and romance of sex, and would rob our maidens of their greatest charms--modesty and innocence. Still others fear that sex instruction would tend to awaken the sex instinct in our girls prematurely; would direct their thoughts to matters about which they would not think otherwise; and they argue that the warnings about venereal disease, prostitution, etc., which are an integral part of sex instruction, tend to create a cynical, inimical attitude towards the male sex, which may even result in hypochondriac ideas and antagonism to marriage.
I do not deny that there is a grain of truth in all the above objections. Sex instruction does cause some girls to think of sex matters earlier than they otherwise would, and some girls have been made bitter and hypochondriac, and disgusted with the male sex. But it would not be difficult to demonstrate that it was not sex instruction per se that was responsible for these deplorable results; it was the wrong kind of instruction that was to blame--it was the wrong emphasis, the lurid exaggerations that caused the mischief, and not the truth. In other words, it is not sex information, it is sex misinformation, that is pernicious. And, of course, to this everybody will agree: rather than false information, better no information at all.
But if the information to be imparted be sane, honest and truthful, without exaggerating the evils and without laying undue emphasis on the dark shadows of our sex life, then the results can be only beneficent. And the task I have put before myself in this book is to give our girls and women sane, square and honest information about their sex organs and sex nature, information absolutely free from luridness, on the one hand, and maudlin sentimentality, on the other. The female sex is in need of such information, much more so than is the male sex. Yes, if boys, as is now universally agreed, are in need of sex instruction, then girls are much more in need of it. Why? For several important reasons.
The first reason why sex instruction is even more important for girls than it is for boys is because a misstep in a girl has much more disastrous consequences than it has in a boy. The disastrous results of a misstep in a boy are only physical in character; the results of the same misstep in a girl may be physical, moral, social and economic. To speak more plainly. If a boy, through ignorance, rashly indulges in illicit sexual relations, the worst consequence to him may be infection with a venereal disease. But he is not considered immoral, he is not despised, he is not ostracized, he does not lose his social standing in the slightest degree, and when he is cured of his venereal disease he has no difficulty in getting married. He does not even have to conceal his past sexual history from his wife. But if a girl makes a misstep the consequences to her are terrible indeed; it may not only cost her her health and social standing, she may have to pay with her very life. She runs the risk of venereal infection the same as the boy does, but in addition she runs the risk of becoming pregnant, which in our present social system is a catastrophe indeed. To save herself from the disgrace of an illegitimate child she may have an abortion produced; the abortion may have no bad results, but it may, if performed bunglingly, leave her an invalid for life, or it may kill her outright. If she is so unfortunate as to be unable to get anybody to produce an abortion, she gives birth to an illegitimate child, which she is forced in most cases to put away in an institution of some sort where she hopes and prays it may die soon--and, in general, it does. If it does not die, she has for the rest of her life a Damocles' sword