Preventing the Spread of Venereal Diseases : Part 5

Women's Wild Oats: Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards
by C. Gasquoine Hartley

(Page 9 of 13)

Those - again I must add especially women - opposed to State interference in these matters must ask themselves on what grounds their opposition is based: should we not consider the health of society in the present and the future well-being of the race as more important than our personal distaste and intellectual dislike of interference? Even

liberty must not take up a disproportionate amount of space in our view. My own belief in the efficacy of making right doing as simple as is possible by lessening temptation, is based on what life has taught me, that the fundamental character of people is not greatly alterable, but that the alteration of their circumstances will certainly influence the effect and working of their capacities and instincts. The buttercup which is tall with a flower at the end of a high firm stalk and leaves with slender spike fingers, if it grows in an open meadow, becomes a stunted flower on a short stem, and its leaves form squat webs, in order to force its growth on a close-cropped lawn. The experience of the American Army shows us that to cut off opportunity and suggestion of temptation, the incentives to libidinous imagination, is to alter character more than everyone recognizes. When I think of this achievement, gained in so short a time and with so simple means, I confess I lose patience with the opposition raised by the women of this country against every attempt at legislative interference with prostitution. Nothing can be done thoroughly because of this hindering folly. There really is no limit to women's sentimental egoism and their blindness in turning from facts.

We pray in our churches "lead us not into temptation," but we leave our streets crowded with temptations. Surely this is stupid negligence and worse. Remove the temptations, and as a nation we shall be delivered from evil.

VI

Now, a friend who has read this chapter up to this point, objects that I am laying too great stress on one aspect of the problem, bringing forward with undue insistence the importance of restricting prostitution - the removal of the woman tempter as the only practical way to prevent the spread of sexual diseases. She does not, I think, like my dismissal of conscious moral striving from a principal place in my scheme of reformation. That, at least, I gather from what she has said to me. Stronger, however, than this feeling, is, I am sure, an unconscious, or at any rate an unacknowledged, irritation at what she feels to be a failure on my part to blame men; I say too little about their weakness and their lust.

I grant this. In the first place I am convinced of the folly of preaching to anyone. Then, as I am always asserting, I believe in the continuous responsibility of woman, and, therefore, if I am to be honest, I must accept here as in all relations between the sexes, the validity of the man's plea that rings - yes, and will continue to ring - through the centuries: "The woman tempted me." We are dealing with forces that I do not believe can be set aside, forces active long before human relations were established, which press on women back and back through the ages. Woman possesses the sacred right of protecting man, it is a duty imposed upon her by nature, and one that she cannot safely escape. Let me assert that this is no sentimental statement. The essential fact in every relationship of the sexes is the woman's power over the man, and it is the misuse of that power that leads to all prostitution.

VII

I want now, in a final section of this chapter, to consider, as fully as the limits of my space will allow, the outside facts of prostitution - that is, the popular view on the subject.

Externally, prostitution exhibits two factors: lust in men and a dependent condition among women, which makes them surrender themselves as victims to this lust. This is the accepted, sentimental, and picturesque description: a sort of compound of sinfulness and pathos, making a draught, if the truth is faced, not always altogether unpleasing to women, a fact which surely accounts for the excitement and veiled pleasurable curiosity with which the subject usually is approached. For the lust, men are held responsible, and the chaste characters of women are held up in contrast. Now, it is this view of the matter which affords prostitution one of its most certain opportunities of permanency: also it gives women, when they attack it, all the pleasing satisfaction of virtue that is realized without effort. At the same time, it explains why they object to repressive measures that are framed to end it.

During the agitation, for instance, for the repeal of the 40 D Act, women and women-like men wallowed in righteousness. Never did I hear more nonsense talked than at the meetings I attended on this subject. Women's instinctive attitude had a unique chance of displaying itself, and one wondered at the combined prudery and sentiment with which the subject was approached, while the most offensive part of their conventionalism was the sex-obsession, which was clotted, like cream turned sour, on all their judgments.

Consider again the controversy that has raged with regard to the providing of prophylactic outfits to our men in the Army and Navy. One would think this was a simple matter. Precautions taken before, or within a short time after contact, enormously lessen the dangers of infection. And yet prophylaxis is objected to on the grounds that it is immoral: that it invites to sexual indulgence by providing immunity from infection. It is also held to give rise to a false security.

Really, it is difficult to have patience. Huge sums are being spent in treating these diseases after they have been contracted, but we must not give our young men the means whereby they may be prevented from being contracted. Such miserable prejudice would be funny, unless one remembers the unconscious cause which gives it so burning a strength.

Some months ago, during the war, I attended a conference to protest against the giving of prophylactic outfits to the overseas troops. It was called and conducted by ladies, the incarnation of all the virtues, effervescing in the most appalling sentimentality I have ever come across, even at meetings of women met to discuss the morals of men. Interminable floods of gush! They talked of nothing but purity, its beauty, its healthfulness, its moral uplifting to the soul of the young man - its Devil knows what. Venereal diseases were nature's punishment for impurity; to provide prophylaxis was to insult the pure youth, to hurry on to sin the youth who was not pure. Such was the pleasing doctrine slowly and solidly defended, while the real problem of how to prevent the spread of venereal diseases - especially how to stop the birth of infected children, was lost in white clouds of virtue. And many of these women themselves were mothers!

Copyright, 1920 by Frederick A. Stokes Company.
All Rights Reserved.