PERVERTS AND PIETY

Finery, Frivolity, and Frailty.

 The " Will of God" and Wilful Women.

The judicial strictures lately passed on the marked increase in the number of sexual offences in this State, aroused but a passing interest in the public mind. The citizen of to-day recognises—consciously or sub-consciously —that sexual depravity is inseparable from the conditions under which modern society exists. It is also beyond dispute that the vast majority of sexual offences remain undiscovered, and that the offenders who are detected—and punished—are invariably the "bottom dogs" of society. Yet statistics compiled in more congested centres than any existing in this State show that while the so-called "liberal professions" furnish 5 per cent. of ordinary criminals, no less than 12 per cent. of those sentenced for child-violation belong to the professional class. Criminals belonging to this section of society possess, as a rule, ample means and have more facilities for concealing their crimes. Even when a case comes to light the social "pull" of the offender, and the soporific influence of wisely-placed cash, prevents his punishment. Within the past decade more than one clergyman in West Australia has been accused of tampering with female children, and although one of the degenerate men of God was "biffed" severely by an infuriated father, the Law, beyond a burlesque inquiry, took no cognisance of the prurient pranks of the pietistic perverts. Moderation is quite as necessary in sexual enjoyment as it is in the gratification of other human requirements. Yet no more intolerant section of society than the clerical exists to-day. The lack of self-control exhibited daily by pulpitpounders—it is only reasonable to suppose—is not confined to their utterances or actions in public. When the Lord leadeth a man beside still waters and maketh him lie down in green pastures, his lines are mostly cast in pleasant places. Few, if any, have so much idle time, or are thrown so much in the

SOCIETY OF FEMALES

as the practitioners of piety. And the parson is always a privileged person. At Sunday schools, church services, bun-banquets, gingerbeer jollifications, and other wowser festivities, he is, to use a colloquialism, "the white-headed boy." Can it be wondered if, surfeited and palled by superfluity, the sexual provocative offered by the charms of mature womanhood should be replaced by a desire for keener stimulation? Leading authorities on the psychology of sex assert that the man who is a universal favorite with women is invariably a sexual pervert. And, apart from the dictum of science, it is asking too much of the credulity of the average man to ask him to believe that spiritual satisfaction is the only solace sought in the circles of wowserdom.
 A more striking proof of the perverted morality of modern Christians is afforded by the universal recognition that the present form of marriage is inadequate. While it is piously proclaimed that "the sacred tie" is divinely ordained, no social stigma is attached to men who seek illegitimate gratification of their sexual impulses. Yet the intuitive reaching out for the fulfilment of her being—if it is sanctified by a marriage ceremony—is regarded as a sign of inborn depravity in a woman. This peculiar delusion that an ecclesiastical anathema tends to subdue the natural instinct known as sexual impulse, is undoubtedly inherited from

THE PRIESTLY BIGOTRY

of the Middle Ages. It is the purpose of sex to propagate the race. The sex-instinct is a law which Nature demands that every individual must fulfil if his development is to be healthy and normal. Modern Christianity, while providing marriage as a means by which the natural desires may find expression, vaguely recognises the shortcomings of "the sacred tie" by tacitly approving of prostitution. It is, the Biblebanging boneheads deprecatingly declare, a necessary evil. Why it is imperative that, in a community that boasts of its Christian principles, its culture, and its civilisation, a woman should be forced to barter the supreme expression of the sacred passion the wowsers never attempt to explain. Possibly they imagine it is the will of God. Yet it is an irrational Deity if, in bygone ages, He willed that woman should be mastered, violated, and beaten into submission by the stronger animal— man. Was it His will that the natural, healthy, sex-nature of woman should become distorted and stunted by starvation until she was forced to offer her body to her master? Of course, should such be the case, the Divine will, naturally enough, was modified considerably by the march of Occidental conceptions of sexual relationship. He let it be known that modern woman was to be coaxed, flattered, and humored, until she consented to become a pleasant plaything. It is a humbling reflection, but nevertheless a bald and brutal truth, that precisely the same feeling animates the Kimberley aboriginal, who stuns his gin with a waddy, as animates the cultured gentleman of modern civilisation, who places his divinity on a pedestal and worships her. In neither case is she regarded as a comrade, a willing lover, or an individual standing on the same footing as man. She is the slave, or the idol, as the case may be, but ever and always the sexual appendage to man.
It is not to be wondered at that women to-day are not as sweet, as generous, or as wholesome as Nature would have had them. Although the welfare of future generations depends on the purity and intelligence of woman, modern conditions have kept her as ignorant of the great social evils which

MENACE THE NATIONAL HEALTH 

as was her mediaeval sister. Her want of training, and the absence of any decent outlet for the tyrannical insistence of the sex instinct, has left her a sentiment-swamped creature whose outlook on existence is circumscribed by the narrow limits of the ring-fetter of a wife. Should the appalling monotony of work and a little sleep, which is the best bargain of ninetenths of married women, deter her from matrimony, she is looked upon as a naturally vicious woman and, denounced by her own sex for drawing worthy and innocent masculinity down into the depths of iniquity. Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan, in her book, "The Truth About Woman," says: "Idleness, frivolity, and the love of finery are the chief causes of a girl's downfall. The last is a far more frequent and stronger factor in determining towards prostitution than actual want, and one moreover, that is very deeply seated in the feminine character. Women must remember that, if they suffer through men's passion, men suffer no less through women's greed. We have got to remember that if many of our fallen sisters have been seduced by men, at least an equal number of men have received their sexual initiation at the hands of our sex. The seduction of young men by women is often the starting point of a young man's association with courtesans. The majority of prostitutes are simply doing for money what they originally did of their own free will for the excitement and the gain of some small personal gift. A chief cause of prostitution, which has not been sufficiently recognised, is sexual frigidity. This is the clearest explanation of the moral insensibility of the prostitute. I am certain that many of the courtesans I have known have never experienced passion. I believe that the traffic of love's supreme rite means less to them than it would do to me to shake hands with a man I disliked."
 Being a woman, Mrs. Gillichan looks upon "the social evil"

FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE

to the mere male. Yet despite the inside knowledge inseparable from her sex, few indeed will believe that a healthy, well-poised girl deliberately chooses a life of shameful barter. Few, very few women reach the brothel in one step, and take that step from choice. Yet although the fair writer will not admit that women instinctively shrink from sex-expression unless it is sanctified by love, she does not hold with any platitudinous piffle about the will of God. In fact, she insists that the ways of wilful woman are the determining factor.

Truth (Perth, WA : 1903 - 1931), Saturday 13 October 1917, page 5