Woman | Page 6

Possible-- Eternal
Loves--When Sex Relationships May Be Beneficial-- Purchasable Sex
Relations and Their Value--The Broken Engagement--The Terrible
Effects on the Young Man--The Young Streetwalker--Sex Relations
with Fiancé--Inundating Sense of Shame--Collapse--Attempts at
Suicide--An Active Sex Life--The Results--The Prevention of Jealousy.
LIII. CONCLUDING WORDS 409

WOMAN: HER SEX AND LOVE LIFE
CHAPTER ONE
THE PARAMOUNT NEED OF SEX KNOWLEDGE FOR GIRLS
AND WOMEN
Why Sex Knowledge is of Paramount Importance to Girls and
Women--Reasons Why a Misstep in a Girl Has More Serious
Consequences than a Misstep in a Boy--The Place Love Occupies in
Woman's Life--Woman's Physical Disabilities.
All are agreed--I mean all who are capable of thinking and have given

the subject some thought--that for the welfare of the race and for his
own physical and mental welfare it is important that the boy be given
some sex instruction. All are 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