Sex – Avoided Subjects Discussed in Plain English – chapter-2

Henry Stanton was appalled at the shocking lack of information given to young people about sex and reproduction in his time. He felt this was a crime that needed to be fixed and so he wrote this book explaining sex for young and old. Ignorance of basic reproductive processes he felt led to experimentation that then led to sin, crime and prostitution. While this book is definitely not written in what I would call Plain English, contains some very questionable ‘facts’ about masturbation and menstruation and might seem very moralistic and dogmatic to our current society, he does hold out high ideas for all in affairs of self respect, love and marriage. If nothing else, this is a delightful peek into the thoughts of almost all people our very recent country’s

SEX The happiness of all human beings, men and women, depends largely on their rational solution of the sexual problem. Sex and the part it plays in human life cannot be ignored. In the case of animals sex plays a simpler and less complex rôle. It is a purely natural and instinctive function whose underlying purpose is the perpetuation of the species. It is not complicated by the many incidental phenomena which result, in man’s case, from psychologic, economic, moral and religious causes. Climate, social conditions, individual modes of life and work, alcohol, wealth and poverty, and other factors affect sexual activity in human beings. Sexual love, which is practically unknown to the animals, is a special development of the sex urge in the human soul. The deeper purpose of the sex function in human beings, likewise, is procreation, the reproduction of species. The average man, woman and child should know the essential sex facts in order to be able to deal with the sex problems of life. Of late years there has been a greater diffusion of such knowledge. To a large extent, however, children and adolescents are still taught to look on all that pertains to sex as something shameful and immodest, something not to be discussed.