In the servant-class in the country, as an example, pre-marital sexual intercourse, and even pre-marital motherhood, is far from having the seriousness which attaches to these things among the old peasant families firmly rooted to the soil. Among the servant-class in towns, the matter has a more critical side than amongst the same class in the country. But in these circumstances the term ‘voice’ is inappropriate; the more correct expression would be ‘sound’. In such instances we might even find that women who on other occasions are unable adequately to precise their hatred and contempt for prostitutes and related unlucky beings, will yet be happy with their friendship with such a girl, and will boast of it in public. The school could even be the perfect place for sexual enlightenment concerning the sexual life of human beings, at the least in the case of the older pupils. Enlightenment concerning the earliest manifestations of the sexual life, whether or not concerning the emotions or concerning the peripheral processes, calls for such a degree of individualisation, that a schoolmaster or a schoolmistress, who has to teach from thirty to fifty pupils at once, and even a bigger number than this, is kind of unable to undertake something of the kind.
It is possible to show youngsters that self-abuse is a harmful apply, without giving them any account of the physiological processes of reproduction; and, conversely, these processes may be described, without any special reference to the bearings of the matter on the person life. I find solely reference to the well-known pigmental response of the chameleon. Lloyd Morgan has pointed out that the parts of an intuition may be regarded as 4: first, the internal messages giving rise to the impulse; secondly, the exterior stimuli which co-function with the impulse to affect the nervous centers; thirdly, the energetic response because of the co-ordinate outgoing discharges; and, fourthly, the message from the organs concerned in the behavior by which the central nervous system is further affected. For many feminist lesbians, it was also essential that lesbian be named first, to keep away from the implication that ladies were secondary to males, or an afterthought.
The sooner assumption, that the secretion of semen competent to impact fertilisation influenced the development of the secondary sexual characters, has of late been more and more usually abandoned. It may, certainly, be requested whether it would not be preferable that in the case additionally of the subjective processes, the little one needs to be instructed earlier than they actually make their look in the kid’s own consciousness, to render potential the adoption on the kid’s a part of a more goal attitude in direction of these phenomena. When the child’s improvement has gone far enough, will probably be effectively to dispense with the stork story. The kid’s confidence could be gained only by an individual confidant. I’ll now briefly report a case during which a youthful brother made a confidant of his elder brother, and will show how unwise it would be to lay down any common rule as to who’s the particular person finest fitted to undertake the sexual enlightenment of a baby. Within the presence of such a confidant, a child loses all sense of false disgrace, and this is an indispensable precondition for effecting a very helpful enlightenment.
Allow us to suppose that a baby has been found to masturbate, and that it is spoken to very earnestly in order to interrupt it off the habit. But as regards enlightenment as to the private sexual life within the case of a child of thirteen or so, I am compelled to differ. In the case of girls, for whom a warning towards dangers of impregnation and against prostitution are especially in query, we have now also, as far as sexual enlightenment in the college is underneath consideration, to advocate the time when they’re about to leave school. But we should not forget what has previously been pointed out, that the puberal development could start at a time when nothing of the kind is apparent to the eye of the observer; and we must additionally bear in thoughts that the first seminal emission and the primary menstruation are on no account so essential, as marks of the puberal improvement, as is commonly believed. Enlightenment of this kind must be given in a purely individual method, and because of this the school is right here out of the query. The primary consideration here is the danger of venereal infection, and it is that this hazard, in close association with the opposite prophylactic efforts of our time, which has given rise to the latest movement in favour of sexual enlightenment.