The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    62/546 page 32
    and neglect and quite deface their naturall Beauties, by inflicting wounds and scarres upon their faces, to make them more de formed, for feare lest others should be infatuated and insnared with them.” 1 The attitude behind these passages has coloured our culture much more than most people recognize, and owing, as we shall see, to the profound relation between beauty and health, and between beauty and desirable qualities of body and mind, it represents a dangerous perversion of the truth. Thirdly, Christian sex-phobia has so poisoned the art of life that for the first time in history a generation of men has arisen which, by its lack of sex-mastery, has weaned woman from her primary and fundamental pastime. Getting no “ kick ” out of sex (a fact they will admit in private), they naturally turn to other interests. Fourthly, in Anglo-Saxon countries, which have suffered most from Christianity, there has been no attempt to organize suitable conditions to enable young men of all classes to enjoy safe sex- experience before marriage. 1 2 Most young men consequently postpone their first normal hetero-sexual intercourse much too long, sometimes until marriage. This has a threefold effect. (a) It rears monsters who may be guaranteed to alienate the most passionate girl from sex after their first twenty-four hours of clumsy, ignorant experimentation upon her. In fact, it makes sexual congress as unattractive as the most rabid Puritan could wish to have it. (i b ) It leads to an enormous amount of auto-eroticism, which again causes much matrimonial misery. For the girl, who gets one of these chaste young men, usually marries an habitual masturbator. 3 ( c ) It makes healthy young men too eager in love, so that they grossly exaggerate the desirability of a particular sexual object. 1 Ibid., p. 57. 2 See W.V., p. 172. 3 See S.E., pp. 156-157, where Prof. Michels says : “ We have to ask ourselves, when the interests of a pure young girl have to be considered, whether a man who has had a tender and passionate love experience is not after all preferable to the habitual masturbator ... it must honestly be recognized that sexually abstinent young men, as they present themselves to-day, cannot offer to girls any guarantee of a happy marriage. . . . Generally speaking, the men who remain chaste are men of little worth.” See also M.M. and M.A.R. (pp. 458-459, and 496). See also Tal. (Qiddusin, 29b), where Rabbi Hisda declares that “ he who is 20 years old and unmarried [without heterosexual experience is implied] lives in sin.”
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