Part 12

Those who deal with adolescent boys and girls ought to have some understanding of the facts for and against dancing as it may influence the sexual control of young people, men especially. It is no longer sufficient to say, even to the young members of certain religious denominations, that "good people must not dance because it is wicked," for in this doubting age young people will ask first what we mean by the word "wicked" and then for proof that dancing is wicked. The time has come when young people must be shown the scientific reasons if we want them to avoid dancing or to dance with certain approved movements.

[Sidenote: Dancing a sexual stimulant.]

It seems to be an accepted opinion among physiologists that dancing of any of the types that involve more or less closeness of contact between men and women in pairs is likely to lead to sexual stimulation that at times may be consciously recognized by normal men, but probably is not identified other than as general excitement by most women.

[Sidenote: Danger no reason for condemning dancing.]

The frank admission that dancing may sometimes stimulate sexual emotions is no condemnation of dancing, as many writers seem to think. We must know first whether such emotions lead to good or harm. Sexual emotions are not in themselves wrong from any except a strictly æscetic point of view. The fact that most intelligent men who in general are frankly truthful confess that dancing may sometimes arouse sexual emotion simply raises the question whether such emotions lead directly to immoral relations with women or whether they lead, as does the best social life of men and women together, to a higher æsthetic appreciation of life as it involves the relations of the two sexes. After discussing this with many--yes, with more than a hundred--men and women, I am now convinced that dancing may have both results, depending upon the individuals. Dancing, then, has its dangers, but so have many other things that go to make up the most complete life. Eating may lead to gluttony, mountain-climbing may lead to a broken neck, swimming to drowning, music and art to sensuality, and even love is not without danger of bestial degradation. Life is full of dangers and we are constantly striving to reduce them to a minimum. So we must refuse to condemn dancing because of its admitted sexual dangers for young people, unless it can be shown that the danger is so great and so unconquerable as to outweigh all the physical, social, and æsthetic considerations in favor of the pastime.

[Sidenote: Dancing and immorality.]

That dancing is a strong incentive to immorality is contended by many writers. A prominent physiologist has said that "the dance is the devil's procession so far as the young man is concerned." Others have pointed to the immorality that is connected with the dance halls, and to the fact that waves of immorality of young men have often followed the annual balls given in some high schools and colleges. Contrary to the view which I formerly held, I am now inclined to think that it is not fair to charge such immoral tendencies entirely to dancing, and therefore condemn all dancing as immoral. It is no secret of sociology that similar epidemics of immorality have been known to occur in connection with Sunday-school picnics, camp meetings, expositions, political and other conventions, and religious revivals. Shall we condemn all these along with dancing on the ground that they lead to immorality? We say "no" because immorality is only an incident, not a result in these cases. Likewise, I believe that dancing is but one of several factors that have led to immorality at the time of annual balls in high school and college. These are times of general tendency towards dissipation. Regular duties are cast aside, all the hygienic rules for eating and sleeping are broken, there is unusual freedom of speech and manners, available alcohol is freely used, emotions and not reason rules--these are characteristic of the college festivals that center around grand balls. In short, at such times there is a general let-down of usual standards and a swing back towards the barbaric festival of the ancients. It is not surprising, then, that pent-up sexual instincts assert their force at such times, and dancing, if it occurs under such conditions is, of course, likely to increase the danger of moral collapse because it incites sexual emotions.

[Sidenote: Regulation of dancing needed.]

Our conclusion, then, is that it is unscientific to charge dancing with being the direct cause of immorality, when it has been only one in a series of events. The facts warrant not condemnation of dancing as something utterly bad, but rather of allowing dancing to be associated with conditions that are likely to lead to dissipation and immorality. Unless some argument other than that arising from the coincidence of dancing with dissipation and immorality is brought forward, we must conclude that dancing should be regulated and associated so that the admitted dangers will be reduced to a minimum. Recognition of the dangers will lead mature people to see the importance of supervising and regulating dancing as a phase of the social life of young people. It will lead to dancing that is improved along social and æsthetic lines.

[Sidenote: Self-control necessary.]

While improvement of dancing will reduce its dangers, it will not eliminate the problem of self-control for normal young men. They must learn to understand their own emotions. They should be forewarned that others have found danger in dancing. They should know that some strong-willed men have given up dancing when they found that it made more intense the problem of sexual self-control, both mentally and physically. They should know the increased danger if dancing is associated with alcohol, vicious women, immodest dress, extreme freedom of conduct, and other morally depressing influences. Such knowledge along with general sex-education will do much to make dancing not only safe for average young men, but also helpful along social and æsthetic lines.

[Sidenote: Extreme dances.]

With regard to the extreme dances of the past five years, those who are well informed concerning sexual problems know that many of these dances which polite society has copied from the dens of the underworld are vastly more dangerous than the standard dances.

§ 36. _Dress of Women as a Sex Problem for Men_

[Sidenote: Dress and immorality.]

Some of the students of sex problems assert with great emphasis that dress is the responsible factor in the sexual immorality of many men. Accepting the probability that there is some truth in the assertion, what is the solution of the problem? Should women in general adopt a style of dress which in lines and color is as repellently ugly as the official garb of women devotees of certain religious organizations? In short, should women make their dress decidedly unobtrusive and unattractive in order that the sexual temptations of _some_ men may be reduced? The answer must be an emphatic negative. We need more beauty in this life of ours, and we cannot afford to omit any beauty which women express in dress. The pity is that economic conditions so often set a limit to such expression. We must believe in making every possible application of the beauty of nature and art to human life; and beautiful dress on all women, and especially beautiful dress on attractive women, is the most important of such relations of beauty and life.

[Sidenote: Dress and sexual appeal.]

Accepting, then, beauty of dress as worthy of encouragement, what shall be done about its sexual attractiveness? This is a difficult question in these days with ever-changing fashions whose novelty makes extreme modes more dangerously attractive than they would be if universally adopted for a long term of years. But permanency of extreme styles or general adaptation of modest ones are absolutely impossible for the average woman of to-day. Hence, we must look forward to one extreme style following another. Young men must face the problem and fight their own battles. Like certain widespread diseases, there is constant danger of infection, and the only hope for young men is in special education as a kind of protective inoculation against temptation. This means that young men should be taught to see beauty in woman's form, face, and dress without allowing themselves to get into habits of sensual or physical emotions. Of course, for the normal young man there is sure to be more or less consciousness of emotions stimulated by the beautiful associated with women, but the individual man may train himself to turn such emotions into æsthetic or psychical lines instead of into those which are sensual, animalistic, or physical. In this connection, I have long been of the opinion that training in art appreciation, especially of sculpture, may help many men to an æsthetic attitude towards the human form.

It is well known that beauty of woman's face or form or dress has sometimes led men into immorality; but I often wonder whether such men of weak control would not have fallen sooner or later at the command of some other form of stimulation. At any rate, such men do not lead us to general conclusions, for there are many more men who have been led upward and not downward by the combined beauty of form, face, and dress of women.

[Sidenote: Duty of women.]

While we refuse to excuse men who allow the sexual suggestiveness of women's dress to overcome their self-control, we should at the same time recognize that women have themselves to blame for much of the existing situation. I believe it is true that the average woman does not understand how dress that makes unusual exposure of the body may make a sexual appeal to men; but there is no such innocence on the part of the demi-mondes by whom many of the most dangerous styles are introduced. Perhaps women of intelligence and good standing may some day come to realize their responsibility for wearing clothing that means unusual temptation for men. However, this seems Utopian in these years when even women of the best groups are wearing equivocal dress; and so men must learn to fight their own battles against natural instincts stirred to greater intensity by dress invented to increase the trade of the women of the underworld.

§ 37. _The Problem of Self-control for Young Men_

[Sidenote: Difference between sexes.]

[Sidenote: Automatic arousing of boys' instincts.]

The problem of control of the insistent passions of normal young men has been unscientifically minimized by numerous writers and lecturers. It should be noted that many of these are men who have long since forgotten the storms and stresses of their early manhood, and others are women who do not know the facts indicating that the sexual instincts young men are characteristically active, aggressive, spontaneous, and automatic, while those of women _as a rule_ are passive and subject to awakening by external stimuli, especially in connection with affection. Such forgetful men and uninformed women are prone to regard the lack of control of many young men as simply due to "original sin," "innate viciousness," "bad companions," or "irresistible temptations"; and they overlook the great fact that maintaining perfect sexual control in his pre-marital years is for the average healthy young man a problem compared with which all others, including the alcoholic temptation, are of little significance. Such being the truth about young men, nothing is to be gained and much is to be lost if older people fail to take an understanding and sympathetic attitude. I question whether any young man has ever been helped through his adolescent crises by such oft-repeated assertions as that "there is no more reason that a young man should go astray than that his sister should," or, in other words, that "continence is as easy for a young man as for a girl of similar age." An observing young man will doubt such statements, and if he has had access to scientific information, he will feel sure that there has been an attempt to influence him by the kind of exaggeration commonly adopted by specialists in moral preachments. The plain truth is that there is a physiological "reason" or explanation, although not a justification for failure of self-control. Even if we accept the improbable statement of some writers that boys and girls are in early adolescence potentially equal in sexual instincts and assuming that they may be protected equally against vicious habits, we must not forget that every normal boy passes in early puberty through peculiar physiological changes that arouse his deepest instincts. I refer especially to the frequent occurrence of involuntary sexual tumescence and to the occasional nocturnal emissions, which processes leave the boy in no doubt whatever as to the nature, source, and desirability of sexual pleasure. Especially is this true of the automatic emissions that usually follow continence of healthy young men, for in connection with such relief of seminal pressure every nerve center of the sexual mechanism seems to be involved in the culminating nerve storm of which the awakening individual is often quite pleasurably conscious. In short, as men looking backward to their early manhood well understand, the physical sensations that come into the normal sexual experience of the adolescent boy are different only in degree of intensity from those which later are concomitants of sexual union. Such, in brief, is the physiological history of the normal adolescent boy, and one who has fallen into even most limited masturbation will probably be still more conscious of the fact that the ordinary sequence of events in the activity of the sexual organs leads to intense excitement that has almost irresistible attractiveness.

[Sidenote: Average young women different.]

Now, most scientifically-trained women seem to agree that there are no corresponding phenomena in the early pubertal life of the normal young woman who has good health. A limited number of mature women, some of them physicians, report having experienced in the pubertal years localized tumescence and other disturbances which made them definitely conscious of sexual instincts. However, it should be noted that most of these are known to have had a personal history including one or more such abnormalities as dysmenorrhea, uterine displacement, pathological ovaries, leucorrhea, tuberculosis, masturbation, neurasthenia, nymphomania, or other disturbances which are sufficient to account for local sexual stimulation. In short, such women are not normal. Such facts have led many physicians to the generalization that the average healthy adolescent girl does not undergo normal spontaneous changes which make her definitely conscious of the nature, source, and desirability of localized sexual pleasure. On the contrary, such consciousness commonly comes to many only as the result of stimuli arising in connection with affection.[18] Clearly it is nonsense to claim that the sexual temptations arising within the individual are equal for the two sexes. Potentially, girls may have passions as strong as boys, but they do not become so definitely and spontaneously conscious of their latent instincts.

[Sidenote: Helping the young man.]

Thus considering the available facts regarding the physiological reasons for the sexual tendencies of men, it seems to me that we gain nothing in trying to minimize the young man's sexual problems, for he is quite conscious that they are insistent. Far better it is that mature men who know life in its completeness should make the young man feel that his problems are not new, not insignificant, and that many another man has met and solved them in such a way as to make life more full of real happiness. Such sympathetic helpfulness will mean something to a young man, but he cannot be led far by one who in his own early experience has not learned both the strength and the mastery of the sexual instincts.

[Sidenote: Women should know.]

In another lecture I have discussed the proposition that it would be better for all concerned if women could have scientific understanding of the physiological facts concerning the sexual tendencies of men, not to make women more lenient or forgiving towards the mistakes of men, but rather to enable women to play an important part in the necessary adjustments through helpful comradeship. This last phrase will mean nothing to many people, but in many a modern home a well-informed wife has been able to lead the way to the satisfactory solution of the fundamental problems of life.

[Sidenote: Self-control in marriage.]

There is another and an all-important phase of the problem of teaching self-control which is commonly overlooked by those who are trying to help young men solve their greatest problems. I have in mind the need of self-control in marriage. Most writers and lecturers who emphasize the arguments for absolute self-control or continence before marriage, omit all reference to marital life. The natural inference, and one widely followed, is that the only moral duty of a young man is to control his intense desires and avoid illicit relations until sexual abandon is permitted under the license of the law and the benediction of the church. Such, I submit, is a fair conclusion for young men to draw from at least ninety per cent of the sex-education literature that is current to-day.

Now, I believe this is all wrong. In fact, I am so radical as to believe that the intelligent women of the world would gain more from temperance and unselfishness and delicacy of men in sexual functioning in marriage than from sexual continence before marriage. Of course, I do not propose that ideal sexual conditions in marriage may justify pre-marital incontinence, but I make this sharp contrast simply to emphasize the belief that sexual intemperance and selfishness of men in marriage causes more mental and physical suffering of women than does sexual incontinence of men before marriage, and I am not forgetting the vast problem of social diseases and prostitution.

I urge, then, that those who attempt to direct young men through the mazes of sexual life should hold up ideals not only of pre-marital continence, but also of post-nuptial temperance and harmonious adjustment between husband and wife. This post-nuptial problem is far more difficult to solve, for the intimacy of married life, especially in the earlier years, is sure to offer stimuli that are likely to make sexual instincts more insistent than those that come from celibate repression. However, self-control and temperance in marriage is no new and unattainable ideal, and harmonious adjustment of men and women in marriage is far more common than the pessimists would have us believe.

§ 38. _The Mental Side of the Young Man's Sexual Life_

[Sidenote: Effect of mental imagery.]

Most of the discussions of the education of young men for moral living have centered around the problem of keeping him from physical sexual activity. So far as society is concerned, this is the great desideratum. So far as the individual life is concerned, it is important that self-control should extend to mental imagery. Professors Geddes and Thomson have well said, in "Sex," that "while anatomical chastity is a moral achievement, it is not the deepest virtue. The incisive declaration: 'Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart' expresses an even more searching standard, and modern science brings home to us the radical importance of our reflex thought and deep-down impulses, which appear to bulk largely in molding our lives and the lives of those who may spring from us." In language adapted to the understanding of average young men, this idea should be emphasized.

In the opinion of some physiologists the greatest harm done to the individual who has long been a victim of masturbation is in the centering of the attention on imaginary sexual situations. This is especially true of mental masturbation. Hence, the relation of masturbation to the possible establishment of a disordered mental state should be known by adolescent boys and young men.

[Sidenote: Control of thoughts.]

It appears from the experience of many men that strenuous work and play are the only efficient weapons for driving sexual images into the background of the mind. This applies not only to sordid and lewd thoughts of unchaste sexual situations, but also to the mental images that are inevitably associated with the purest affection and which should be trained to obey when calm reason so orders.

The following literature will be especially helpful to young men: W.S. Hall's "Sexual Hygiene for Men," or his "Sexual Knowledge"; Exner's "The Rational Sex Life for Men"; Morrow's "The Young Man's Problem," and "Health and Hygiene of Sex for College Students"; King's "Fight for Character" (Y.M.C.A.); and the chapter on Ethics of Sex in "Sex" by Geddes and Thomson.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] The first three pamphlets are published by the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis (New York); the Exner pamphlets by the Association Press (New York).

[18] This is really not surprising if we remember the peculiarities of human instincts mentioned in an earlier lecture (§ 3).

IX

SPECIAL SEX-INSTRUCTION FOR MATURING YOUNG WOMEN

[Sidenote: Parents would limit knowledge of daughters.]

It was my original plan to make this lecture parallel with the preceding one for young men, but much discussion with parents and with scientifically trained women whose suggestions and criticisms I value has shown me that there is no consensus of opinion as to what should be taught to young women between eighteen and twenty-two years of age. I have found many fathers and mothers who think that their boys of fourteen or fifteen should be informed as suggested in the preceding lecture; but concerning some of the facts for boys these same parents were doubtful whether their daughters ought to know before twenty, and some of them have said twenty-five and even thirty. Some of them have said that they see no reason why an unmarried young woman of the protected group should know much more than a very limited amount of personal hygiene; but most of these people were decidedly hazy as to how the young woman about to marry may be sure of getting belated knowledge. In short, all along the line I have found intelligent parents and others who believe in very thorough sex-instruction for boys, but that "nice" girls should be kept as ignorant and innocent as possible. With such disagreement existing, it is evidently not possible to make such specific recommendations as have been made for boys.

§ 39. _The Young Woman's Attitude towards Manhood_

[Sidenote: Women should have ideals.]