Sexual ethics : a study of borderland questions / by Robert Michels.

  • Michels, Robert, 1876-1936.
Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sexual ethics : a study of borderland questions / by Robert Michels. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dose quarters, when serving as dressmakers, ladies’ maids, or as other servants, they show no tendency to follow thè higher-class example in this particular matter—excepting only thè proletarian woman who has become a high-class prostitute, and whose habits of life are naturally assimilated to those of women of thè well-to-do classes. Ordinaril)% proletarian women attend thè numerous pleasure-parties of their class clad in scrupulously high-cut dresses. The reason for this phenomenon is by no means, as some might ingenuously suppose, to be found in thè fact that girls of thè lower classes, for motives of economy, possess no low-cut under linen. The décolleté garment requires less stuff, and can easily be improvised out of some cheap material. Nor is thè reason to be found in thè fact that thè men of their class, owing to their lower sexual morality, would less readily be able to behave decorously in thè presence of sudi nudity than are men of thè upper classes. The plain reason is that thè proletarian woman would not feel it moral or decent to appear in public thus partially clothed. The second example that I bave to adduce in support of my thesis has to do with thè morals of thè state of betrothal. In thè capitalist civilisation of modern Europe virginity possesses a certain capitai value. The loss of virginity represents also a financial loss; a depreciation of thè value of thè woman as a commodity in thè matrimoniai market. By thè re- action of these economie conditions upon moral concepts has arisen thè idea of thè maiden’s “ honour.” The convention—that is to say, thè custom, thè ethic, thè morality—of thè upper classes strictly demands thè physical purity of thè nubile
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