The Foundations of Personality - Abraham Myerson (best large ereader .txt) 📗

in the permanent status of marriage.

 

What this is meant to emphasize is the social nature of sexual

modesty. Modesty of other kind rests either on a moderate

self-valuation or a desire to avoid offense by not emphasizing

one’s own value, or it is both. However sexual modesty

originated, practically it consists in the concealing of certain

parts of the body, avoiding certain topics of conversation,

especially in the presence of the other sex, and behaving in such

fashion as to restrict sexual demonstration. There is a natural

coyness in women which has been socially emphasized by

restrictions in dress, conduct and speech to a ridiculous degree.

Thus it was immodest in our civilization for women to show their

legs, and the leg became the symbol of the femaleness of the

woman or girl, as also did the breast.[1] The body became taboo,

and at present, when women are commencing to dress so that the

legs are shown, the arms are bare, and the back and shoulders

visible, the cry of immodesty, immorality and social

demoralization is raised, as if real morality rested in these

ridiculous, barbaric taboos.

 

[1] All the anthropologists, Tyler, McLennan, Ellis and

especially Frazier, deal at length with this fascinating subject.

The psychopathologists relate the most extraordinary stories of

fetich love.

 

But no matter how much one emphasizes the arbitrary nature of

modesty, of the restrictions placed on dress, speech and conduct,

it still remains true that their function is at present to act as

inhibitors. Ridiculous as it is to believe that morality resides

in the length of the skirt or in the degree of paint and powder

on the face, the fact is that usually they who depart too widely

from the conventional in these matters are uninhibited and are as

apt to depart from the conventional in deed as they are in

deportment. There are those who say that we would be far more

moral if we went about naked; that clothes suggest more than

nakedness reveals. This is true of some kinds of clothes—the

half nakedness of the stage or the ballroom, or the coquettish

additions to clothes represented by the dangling tassels —but it

is not true of the riding breeches, or the trim sport clothes, or

the walking suit. The dress of men, though ugly, is useful,

convenient and modest, and there is no doubt that a generation of

free women, determined to become human in appearance, could

evolve a modest and yet decorative costume. All of the

present-day extravagance in female attire, with its ever-changing

fashion, is a medley of commercial intrigues, female competition

and sex excitement. Though the modesty restrictions are absurd,

the motive that obscurely prompts it is not, and the

transgressors either seek notice in a risky way, are foolish, to

speak bluntly, or else are inviting actual sexual advances.

 

Though we may actually restrict the sex life so that some men and

women become pure in the accepted sense, it will always be true

that men and women will be vaguely or definitely attracted to

each other. Like the atmospheric pressure which though fifteen

pounds to the square inch at the sea level is not felt, so there

exists a sex pressure, excited by men and women in each other.

There is a smoldering excitement always ready to leap into flame

whenever the young and attractive of the sexes meet. The

conventions of modesty tend to restrict the excitement, to

neutralize the sex pressure, but they may be swept aside by

immodesty and the suggestive. The explanation of the anger and

condemnation felt by the moral man in the presence of the

“brazen” woman lies in the threat to his purposes of

respectability and faithfulness; he is angered that this creature

can arouse a conflict in him. The bitterness of the “saint”

against the wanton originates in the ease with which she tempts

him, and his natural conclusion is that the fault lies with her

and not with his own passions. The respectable woman inveigles

against her more untrammeled sister, not so much through her

concern for morality, as through the anger felt against an

unscrupulous competitor who is breaking the rules.

 

In so far as women are concerned, the sex pressure on them is

increased in many ways. For two years I examined, mentally, the

girls who were listed as sex offenders by the various social

agencies of Boston. As a result of that experience, plus that of

a physician and citizen of the world, a few facts of importance

stand out in my mind.

 

1. There is a group of men whom one may call sex adventurers.

These are not all of one kind in education, social status and

age, but they seek sex experiences wherever they go and are

always alert for signs that indicate a chance to become intimate.

They take advantage of the widespread tendency to flirt and haunt

the places where the young girls tend to parade up and down

(certain streets in every large city), the public dance halls,

the skating resorts, the crowded public beaches, etc. They regard

themselves as connoisseurs in women and think they know when a

girl is “ripe”; they are ready to spend money and utilize

flattery, gifts and bold wooing, according to their nature and

the way they size up their prey.

 

2. The female sex adventurer is not so common, except in the

higher criminal classes where the effort to ensnare rich men

calls forth the abilities of certain women. In a limited way the

prostitute, professed or clandestine, is a sex adventurer, but

ordinarily she is merely supplying a demand and has only to exert

herself physically, rarely needing to conquer men’s inhibitions.

We omit here the schemes of conquest of girls and women seeking

marriage as too complex for any one but a novelist, and also

because the moral code regards them as legitimate. Women who are

ready to accept sexual advances are common enough in the

uninhibited girl, the dissatisfied married woman, the young

widow, the drug habitue; but aside from the woman who has

capitalized her sex, the sex adventurer is largely male.

 

What attracts him? For he rarely pesters the good woman, and

ordinarily the average woman is not solicited.

 

The girl usually “picked up” dresses immodestly or in the extreme

of style, even though she is essentially shabby and poorly clad.

To-day business sees to it that fripperies are within the reach

of every purse.

 

She usually corresponds to a type of prettiness favored in the

community, often what is nowadays called the chicken type. Plump

legs and fairly prominent bosom and hips are symbols of those

desired among all grades of men, together with a pretty face. The

homely girl finds it much easier to walk unmolested.

 

If she appears intelligent and firm, the above qualities will

only entitle her to glances, respectful and otherwise. The sex

adventurer hates to be rebuffed, and he is not desperately in

love, so that he will not risk his vanity. If she appears of that

port vivacious type just above the moron level—in other words if

she is neither bright nor really feebleminded—then sex pressure

is increased. The feebleminded girl of the moron type, or the

over-innocent and unenlightened girl, is always in danger.

 

There is further the sexually excited or the uninhibited girl. We

must differentiate between those who attempt no control, and

those whose surge of desire is beyond the normal limits. The

uninhibited of both sexes are a large group, and the bulk of the

prostitutes are deficient in this respect rather than in

intelligence. Sometimes inhibition arrives late, after sexual

immorality has commenced. In men this is common, but

unfortunately for women, society stands in their way when this

occurs with them. “Youth must have its fling” is a masculine

privilege denied to feminine offenders.

 

The desire for a good time plays havoc with the uninhibited girl.

Unable to find interest in her work, which too often is

uninteresting, desiring good clothes and excitement, she

discovers that these are within her reach if she follows her

instincts. What starts out as a flirtation ends in social

disaster, and a girl finds out that some men who give good times

expect to be paid for them.

 

Since our study is not a pathological treatise, we must omit

further consideration of the offender and dismiss without more

comment the whole range of the perverter. It suffices to say that

the perverted are often such congenitally, in which case nothing

can be done for them, and others are the results of certain

environments, which range all the way from girls’

boarding-schools to the palaces of kings.

 

In ancient times, and in many countries to-day, certain

perversions were so common as to defy belief, and we are

compelled to associate with some of the greatest names,

practices[1] that shock us. These same ancients would denounce as

unnatural in as hearty terms the increasing practices of

child-limitation among us.

 

[1] I pass over as out of the range of this book the question

raised by Freud, whether or not we are all of us homosexual as

well as heterosexual.

 

The sex desires and instincts struggle with, overcome or

harmonize with the social instincts. It would be impossible to

portray even the simplest sex life from the mental standpoint.

The chastest woman who is unconscious of sex desire is motivated

by romance and the sex feelings and customs of others in her

ideas of happiness and right behavior. The cynical profligate,

indulging every sensual urge, in so far as he can, must guide

himself by the resistance of society, by the necessity of

camouflage, the fear of public opinion and often the impediment

of his own early training. Men and women start out perhaps as

romantic idealists, enter marriage, and in the course of their

experiences become almost frankly sensual. And in the opposite

direction, men and women wildly passionate in youth develop

counter tendencies that swing them into restraint and serene

self-control. There are those to whom sex is mere appetite, to be

indulged and put out of the way, so as not to interfere with the

great purposes of success; there are those to whom it is a

religion, carried on with ceremonials and rites; there are those

to whom it is an obsession, and their minds are in a sexual stew

at all times. There are the under-inhibited, spoken of above, and

there are the over-inhibited, Puritanical, rebelling at the flesh

as such, disguising all their emotions, reluctant to admit their

humanness and the validity of pleasure.

 

The romantic ideal, glorifying a sort of asexual love of perfect

men and women, asceticism which permits sex only as a sort of

necessary evil and sensuality which proclaims the pleasure of sex

as the only joy and scoffs at inhibition influence the lives of

us all. The effect of the forbidden, the tantalizing curiosity

aroused and the longing to rise above the level of lust make the

sex adjustment the most difficult of all and produce the queerest

results. Sex is a road to power and to failure, a road to health

and sickness. As in all adjustments, there are some who are

conscious of but few difficulties, who are moral or immoral

without struggle or discontent. Contrasted with these are the

ones who find morality a great burden, and those who, yielding to

desire, find continuous inner conflict and dissatisfaction and

lowered self-valuation as a result.

 

Our society is organized on chastity and continence prior to

marriage, purity and constancy after marriage. That noble ideal

has never been realized; the stories of Pagan times, of the

Middle Ages and of the present day, as well as everyday human

experience, show that the male certainly has not lived up to his

part of the bargain. Legalized prostitution in