Education and Expression
"Civilization is bound up with the success of that movement.
The man who rejoices in it and strives to further it is alive;
the man who shudders and raises impotent hands against it is
merely dead, even though the grave yet yawns for him in vain.
He may make dead laws and preach dead sermons and his sermons
may be great and his laws may be rigid. But as the wisest of
men saw twenty-five centuries ago, the things that are great
and strong and rigid are the things that stay below in the grave.
It is the things that are delicate and tender and supple that
stay above. At no point is life so tender and delicate and
supple as at the point of sex. There is the triumph of life."
—Havelock Ellis
Our approach opens to us a fresh scale of values, a new and effective
method of testing the merits and demerits of current policies and
programs. It redirects our attention to the great source and
fountainhead of human life. It offers us the most strategic point of
view from which to observe and study the unending drama of humanity,—
how the past, the present and the future of the human race are all
organically bound up together. It coordinates heredity and
environment. Most important of all, it frees the mind of sexual
prejudice and taboo, by demanding the frankest and most unflinching
reexamination of sex in its relation to human nature and the bases of
human society. In aiding to establish this mental liberation, quite
apart from any of the tangible results that might please the
statistically-minded, the study of Birth Control is performing an
invaluable task. Without complete mental freedom, it is impossible to
approach any fundamental human problem. Failure to face the great
central facts of sex in an impartial and scientific spirit lies at the
root of the blind opposition to Birth Control.
Our bitterest opponents must agree that the problem of Birth Control
is one of the most important that humanity to-day has to face. The
interests of the entire world, of humanity, of the future of mankind
itself are more at stake in this than wars, political institutions,
or industrial reorganization. All other projects of reform, of
revolution or reconstruction, are of secondary importance, even
trivial, when we compare them to the wholesale regeneration—or
disintegration—that is bound up with the control, the direction and
the release of one of the greatest forces in nature. The great
danger at present does not lie with the bitter opponents of the idea
of Birth Control, nor with those who are attempting to suppress our
program of enlightenment and education. Such opposition is always
stimulating. It wins new adherents. It reveals its own weakness and
lack of insight. The greater danger is to be found in the flaccid,
undiscriminating interest of "sympathizers" who are "for it"—as
an accessory to their own particular panacea. "It even seems,
sometimes," wrote the late William Graham Sumner, "as if the
primitive people were working along better lines of effort in this
direction than we are...when our public organs of instruction taboo
all that pertains to reproduction as improper; and when public
authority, ready enough to interfere with personal liberty everywhere
else, feels bound to act as if there were no societal interest at
stake in the begetting of the next generation."[1]
Slowly but surely we are breaking down the taboos that surround sex;
but we are breaking them down out of sheer necessity. The codes that
have surrounded sexual behavior in the so-called Christian
communities, the teachings of the churches concerning chastity and
sexual purity, the prohibitions of the laws, and the hypocritical
conventions of society, have all demonstrated their failure as
safeguards against the chaos produced and the havoc wrought by the
failure to recognize sex as a driving force in human nature,—as great
as, if indeed not greater than, hunger. Its dynamic energy is
indestructible. It may be transmuted, refined, directed, even
sublimated, but to ignore, to neglect, to refuse to recognize this
great elemental force is nothing less than foolhardy.
Out of the unchallenged policies of continence, abstinence,
"chastity" and "purity," we have reaped the harvests of
prostitution, venereal scourges and innumerable other evils.
Traditional moralists have failed to recognize that chastity and
purity must be the outward symptoms of awakened intelligence, of
satisfied desires, and fulfilled love. They cannot be taught by "sex
education." They cannot be imposed from without by a denial of the
might and the right of sexual expression. Nevertheless, even in the
contemporary teaching of sex hygiene and social prophylaxis, nothing
constructive is offered to young men and young women who seek aid
through the trying period of adolescence.
At the Lambeth Conference of 1920, the Bishops of the Church of
England stated in their report on their considerations of sexual
morality: "Men should regard all women as they do their mothers,
sisters, and daughters; and women should dress only in such a manner
as to command respect from every man. All right-minded persons should
unite in the suppression of pernicious literature, plays and
films...." Could lack of psychological insight and understanding be
more completely indicated? Yet, like these bishops, most of those who
are undertaking the education of the young are as ignorant themselves
of psychology and physiology. Indeed, those who are speaking
belatedly of the need of "sexual hygiene" seem to be unaware that
they themselves are most in need of it. "We must give up the futile
attempt to keep young people in the dark," cries Rev. James Marchant
in "Birth-Rate and Empire," "and the assumption that they are
ignorant of notorious facts. We cannot, if we would, stop the spread
of sexual knowledge; and if we could do so, we would only make matters
infinitely worse. This is the second decade of the twentieth century,
not the early Victorian period.... It is no longer a question of
knowing or not knowing. We have to disabuse our middle-aged minds of
that fond delusion. Our young people know more than we did when we
began our married lives, and sometimes as much as we know, ourselves,
even now. So that we need not continue to shake our few remaining
hairs in simulating feelings of surprise or horror. It might have
been better for us if we had been more enlightened. And if our
discussion of this problem is to be of any real use, we must at the
outset reconcile ourselves to the fact that the birth-rate is
voluntarily controlled....Certain persons who instruct us in these
matter, hold up their pious hands and whiten their frightened faces as
they cry out in the public squares against `this vice,' but they can
only make themselves ridiculous."
Taught upon the basis of conventional and traditional morality and
middle-class respectability, based on current dogma, and handed down
to the populace with benign condescension, sex education is a waste of
time and effort. Such education cannot in any true sense set up as a
standard the ideal morality and behavior of the respectable middle-class and then make the effort to induce all other members of society,
especially the working classes, to conform to their taboos. Such a
method is not only confusing, but, in the creation of strain and
hysteria and an unhealthy concentration upon moral conduct, results in
positive injury. To preach a negative and colorless ideal of chastity
to young men and women is to neglect the primary duty of awakening
their intelligence, their responsibility, their self-reliance and
independence. Once this is accomplished, the matter of chastity will
take care of itself. The teaching of "etiquette" must be
superseded by the teaching of hygiene. Hygienic habits are built up
upon a sound knowledge of bodily needs and functions. It is only in
the sphere of sex that there remains an unfounded fear of presenting
without the gratuitous introduction of non-essential taboos and
prejudice, unbiased and unvarnished facts.
As an instrument of education, the doctrine of Birth Control
approaches the whole problem in another manner. Instead of laying
down hard and fast laws of sexual conduct, instead of attempting to
inculcate rules and regulations, of pointing out the rewards of virtue
and the penalties of "sin" (as is usually attempted in relation to
the venereal diseases), the teacher of Birth Control seeks to meet the
needs of the people. Upon the basis of their interests, their
demands, their problems, Birth Control education attempts to develop
their intelligence and show them how they may help themselves; how to
guide and control this deep-rooted instinct.
The objection has been raised that Birth Control only reaches the
already enlightened, the men and women who have already attained a
degree of self-respect and self-reliance. Such an objection could not
be based on fact. Even in the most unenlightened sections of the
community, among mothers crushed by poverty and economic enslavement,
there is the realization of the evils of the too-large family, of the
rapid succession of pregnancy after pregnancy, of the hopelessness of
bringing too many children into the world. Not merely in the evidence
presented in an earlier chapter but in other ways, is this crying need
expressed. The investigators of the Children's Bureau who collected
the data of the infant mortality reports, noted the willingness and
the eagerness with which these down-trodden mothers told the truth
about themselves. So great is their hope of relief from that
meaningless and deadening submission to unproductive reproduction,
that only a society pruriently devoted to hypocrisy could refuse to
listen to the voices of these mothers. Respectfully we lend our ears
to dithyrambs about the sacredness of motherhood and the value of
"better babies"—but we shut our eyes and our ears to the unpleasant
reality and the cries of pain that come from women who are to-day
dying by the thousands because this power is withheld from them.
This situation is rendered more bitterly ironic because the self-righteous opponents of Birth Control practise themselves the doctrine
they condemn. The birth-rate among conservative opponents indicates
that they restrict the numbers of their own children by the methods of
Birth Control, or are of such feeble procreative energy as to be
thereby unfitted to dictate moral laws for other people. They prefer
that we should think their small number of children is accidental,
rather than publicly admit the successful practice of intelligent
foresight. Or else they hold themselves up as paragons of virtue and
self-control, and would have us believe that they have brought their
children into the world solely from a high, stern sense of public
duty—an attitude which is about as convincing as it would be to
declare that they found them under gooseberry bushes. How else can we
explain the widespread tolerance and smug approval of the clerical
idea of sex, now reenforced by floods of crude and vulgar sentiment,
which is promulgated by the press, motion-pictures and popular plays?
Like all other education, that of sex can be rendered effective and
valuable only as it meets and satisfies the interests and demands of
the pupil himself. It cannot be imposed from without, handed down
from above, superimposed upon the intelligence of the person taught.
It must find a response within him, give him the power and the
instrument wherewith he may exercise his own growing intelligence,
bring into action his own judgment and discrimination and thus
contribute to the growth of his intelligence. The civilized world is
coming to see that education cannot consist merely in the assimilation
of external information and knowledge, but rather in the awakening and
development of innate powers of discrimination and judgment. The
great disaster of "sex education" lies in the fact that it fails to
direct the awakened interests of the pupils into the proper channels
of exercise and development. Instead, it blunts them, restricts them,
hinders them, and even attempts to eradicate them.
This has been the great defect of sex education as it has been
practised in recent years. Based on a superficial and shameful view of
the sexual instinct, it has sought the inculcation of negative virtues
by pointing out the sinister penalties of promiscuity, and by
advocating strict adherence to virtue and morality, not on the basis
of intelligence or the outcome of experience, not even for the
attainment of rewards, but merely to avoid punishment in the form of
painful and malignant disease. Education so conceived carries with it
its own refutation. True education cannot tolerate the inculcation of
fear. Fear is the soil in which are implanted inhibitions and morbid
compulsions. Fear restrains, restricts, hinders human expression. It
strikes at the very roots of joy and happiness. It should therefore
be the aim of sex education to avoid above all the implanting of fear
in the mind of the pupil.
Restriction means placing in the hands of external authority the power
over behavior. Birth Control, on the contrary, implies voluntary
action, the decision for one's self how many children one shall or
shall not bring into the world. Birth Control is educational in the
real sense of the word, in that it asserts this power of decision,
reinstates this power in the people themselves.
We are not seeking to introduce new restrictions but greater freedom.
As far as sex is concerned, the impulse has been more thoroughly
subject to restriction than any other human instinct. "Thou shalt
not!" meets us at every turn. Some of these restrictions are
justified; some of them are not. We may have but one wife or one
husband at a time; we must attain a certain age before we may marry.
Children born out of wedlock are deemed "illegitimate"—even healthy
children. The newspapers every day are filled with the scandals of
those who have leaped over the restrictions or limitations society has
written in her sexual code. Yet the voluntary control of the
procreative powers, the rational regulation of the number of children
we bring into the world—this is the one type of restriction frowned
upon and prohibited by law!
In a more definite, a much more realistic and concrete manner, Birth
Control reveals itself as the most effective weapon in the spread of
hygienic and prophylactic knowledge among women of the less fortunate
classes. It carries with it a thorough training in bodily
cleanliness and physiology, a definite knowledge of the physiology and
function of sex. In refusing to teach both sides of the subject, in
failing to respond to the universal demand among women for such
instruction and information, maternity centers limit their own efforts
and fail to fulfil what should be their true mission. They are
concerned merely with pregnancy, maternity, child-bearing, the problem
of keeping the baby alive. But any effective work in this field must
go further back. We have gradually come to see, as Havelock Ellis has
pointed out, that comparatively little can be done by improving merely
the living conditions of adults; that improving conditions for
children and babies is not enough. To combat the evils of infant
mortality, natal and pre-natal care is not sufficient. Even to
improve the conditions for the pregnant woman, is insufficient.
Necessarily and inevitably, we are led further and further back, to
the point of procreation; beyond that, into the regulation of sexual
selection. The problem becomes a circle. We cannot solve one part of
it without a consideration of the entirety. But it is especially at
the point of creation where all the various forces are concentrated.
Conception must be controlled by reason, by intelligence, by science,
or we lose control of all its consequences.
Birth Control is essentially an education for women. It is women who,
directly and by their very nature, bear the burden of that blindness,
ignorance and lack of foresight concerning sex which is now enforced
by law and custom. Birth Control places in the hands of women the
only effective instrument whereby they may reestablish the balance in
society, and assert, not only theoretically but practically as well,
the primary importance of the woman and the child in civilization.
Birth Control is thus the stimulus to education. Its exercise awakens
and develops the sense of self-reliance and responsibility, and
illuminates the relation of the individual to society and to the race
in a manner that otherwise remains vague and academic. It reveals sex
not merely as an untamed and insatiable natural force to which men and
women must submit hopelessly and inertly, as it sweeps through them,
and then accept it with abject humility the hopeless and heavy
consequences. Instead, it places in their hands the power to control
this great force; to use it, to direct it into channels in which it
becomes the energy enhancing their lives and increasing self-expression and self-development. It awakens in women the
consciousness of new glories and new possibilities in motherhood. No
longer the prostrate victim of the blind play of instinct but the
self-reliant mistress of her body and her own will, the new mother
finds in her child the fulfilment of her own desires. In free instead
of compulsory motherhood she finds the avenue of her own development
and expression. No longer bound by an unending series of pregnancies,
at liberty to safeguard the development of her own children, she may
now extend her beneficent influence beyond her own home. In becoming
thus intensified, motherhood may also broaden and become more
extensive as well. The mother sees that the welfare of her own
children is bound up with the welfare of all others. Not upon the
basis of sentimental charity or gratuitous "welfare-work" but upon
that of enlightened self-interest, such a mother may exert her
influence among the less fortunate and less enlightened.
Unless based upon this central knowledge of and power over her own
body and her own instincts, education for woman is valueless. As long
as she remains the plaything of strong, uncontrolled natural forces,
as long as she must docilely and humbly submit to the decisions of
others, how can woman every lay the foundations of self-respect, self-reliance and independence? How can she make her own choice, exercise
her own discrimination, her own foresight?
In the exercise of these powers, in the building up and integration of
her own experience, in mastering her own environment the true
education of woman must be sought. And in the sphere of sex, the
great source and root of all human experience, it is upon the basis of
Birth Control—the voluntary direction of her own sexual expression—
that woman must take her first step in the assertion of freedom and
self-respect.
