Is Sex Necessary? quotes

The French, Dutch, Brazilians, Danes, etc., can proceed in their amours on a basis entirely divorced from the psyche. The Chinese give it no thought at all, and never have given it any thought.

The American would be lost without the psyche, lost and a little scared.

As a result of all this there is more confusion about love in America than in all the other countries put together.

As soon as one gets the psychical mixed up with the physical—a thing which is likely to happen quite easily in a composing-room, but which should not happen anywhere else at all—one is almost certain to get appetite mixed up with worship.

This is a whole lot like trying to play golf with a basketball, and is bound to lead to maladjustments.

The phenomenon of the American male’s worship of the female, which is not so pronounced now as it was, but is still pretty pronounced, is of fairly recent origin.

There was nothing like it in the preceding century. Throughout the nineteenth century the American man’s amatory instincts had been essentially economic. Marriage was basically a patriotic concern, the idea being to have children for the sake of the commonwealth.

This was bad enough, but nevertheless it is far less dangerous to get the commonwealth mixed up with love than to get the infinite mixed up with love.

There was not a single case of nervous breakdown, or neurosis, arising from amatory troubles, in the whole cycle from 1800 to 1900, barring a slight flare-up just before the Mexican and Civil wars.

The process of adjustment in courtship and in marriage became more involved than it had ever been before in the history of the country, if not in the history of the world.

The new outdoors type of American man, with all his strength and impetuosity, was not easily to be put off.

But the female, equipped with a Defense far superior in polymorphous ingenuities to the rather simple Attack of the male, was prepared. She developed and perfected the Diversion Subterfuge. Its purpose was to put Man in his place. Its first manifestation was fudge-making.

But the female, equipped with a Defense far superior in polymorphous ingenuities to the rather simple Attack of the male, was prepared. She developed and perfected the Diversion Subterfuge. Its purpose was to put Man in his place.

Its first manifestation was fudge-making.

“The female, equipped with a Defense far superior in polymorphous ingenuities to the rather simple Attack of the male, developed, and perfected, the Diversion Subterfuge. The first manifestation of this remarkable phenomenon was fudge-making.”

Frustration wrought its inevitable results.

Men began to act jumpy and strange.

They were getting nowhere at all with women. The female gradually assumed, in men’s eyes, as she had in her own, the proportions of an unattainable deity, something too precious to be touched. The seed of Pedestalism was sown.

This produced that separation of the physical and the psychic which causes the adult to remain in a state of suspended love, as if he were holding a bowl of goldfish and had nowhere to put it.

This condition nowadays would lead directly to a neurosis, but in those days men were unable to develop a neurosis because they didn’t know how.

Men withdrew, therefore, quietly and morosely, to their “dens.” It was the epoch of the den in America. Some marvelous ones sprang into being. Their contents were curiously significant.

This condition nowadays would lead directly to a neurosis, but in those days men were unable to develop a neurosis because they didn’t know how. Men withdrew, therefore, quietly and morosely, to their “dens.”

It was the epoch of the den in America.

Some marvelous ones sprang into being. Their contents were curiously significant. Deprived of possessing the female, the male worked off his Possessive Complex by collecting all manner of bibelots and bric-à-brac.

The commonest device was the swastika, whose curiously distorted conformation bears no discernible relationship to any known phallic symbolism. Those years were blank, idle, lost years. Outside affairs of all kinds were neglected. Men retired to their dens and were not seen for days.

The panic of 1907 was a direct result.

It might be interesting to examine into a typical case history of the period.

But when he called in his dog he found, after several experiments, that the dog could not hold the box in either its right or left paw.[5]

Furthermore, the animal was profoundly incurious about the puzzle.

[6]

At a certain point in every person’s amours, the question arises: “Am I in love, or am I merely inflamed by passion?”

It is a disturbing question. Usually it arises at some inopportune moment: at the start of a letter, in the middle of an embrace, at the end of a day in the country.

Likewise, one may define it and then have all kinds of trouble experiencing it, because, once having defined it, one is in too pompous a frame of mind ever again to submit to its sweet illusion.

By and large, love is easier to experience before it has been explained—easier and cleaner.

The same holds true of passion. Understanding the principles of passion is like knowing how to drive a car; once mastered, all is smoothed out;

Understanding the principles of passion is like knowing how to drive a car; once mastered, all is smoothed out; no more does one experience the feeling of perilous adventure, the misgivings, the diverting little hesitancies, the wrong turns, the false starts, the glorious insecurity.

All is smoothed out, and all, so to speak, is lost.

The word “love” is used loosely by writers, and they know it. Furthermore, the word “love” is accepted loosely by readers, and they know it.

There are many kinds of love, but for the purposes of this article I shall confine my discussion to the usual hazy interpretation: the strange bewilderment which overtakes one person on account of another person.

Thus, when I say love in this article, you will take it to mean the pleasant confusion which we know exists.

When I say passion, I mean passion.

the strange bewilderment which overtakes one person on account of another person. Thus, when I say love in this article, you will take it to mean the pleasant confusion which we know exists.

When I say passion, I mean passion.

This is the work of Grace McFadden, aged 11, of Bucyrus, Ohio (R. F. D. # 3, Bucyrus 6021, Ring 3), and was drawn on the day that Principal K. L. Mooney, of the Paulding County Concentration Grade Schools, was married.

American men, more than any others, permit the complexities of the psycho-physical world to get them down.

Often, while down, they will pass each other going somewhere, and exchange a small greeting.

“What more is there?” you quietly demand, testing yourself out.

… about her, for the moment, than he does for an old piece of butcher’s twine, which, all in all, is so alarming a discovery that he usually gets a little bit sick thinking about it, and has to go out somewhere and hear some music.

I have seldom met an individual of literary tastes or propensities in whom the writing of love was not directly attributable to the love of writing.

The mood captured in this drawing is a rare one indeed, and Dr. Karl Zaner considers the sketch the finest in his collection. Here the masculine sense of Ironic Detachment rises superior to the Love Urge and can take it or let it alone.

A person of this sort falls terribly in love, but in the end it turns out that he is more bemused by a sheet of white paper than a sheet of white bed linen.

He would rather leap into print with his lady than leap into bed with her.

(This first pleases the lady and then annoys her. She wants him to do both, and with virtually the same impulse.)

His doubts and fears start from this point and there is no end to them. He doesn’t know whether it’s love or passion.

In fact, in the confusion of the moment he’s not quite sure it isn’t something else, like forgery.

He certainly doesn’t see how it can be love.

After a bit he takes her in his arms and kisses her—not once, but several times. It is not a new experience to him; he has had other girls, and he has had plenty of other kisses from this one. This time, however, something happens.

The young man, instead of losing himself in the kiss, finds himself in it.

What’s more, the girl to him loses her identity—she becomes just anyone on whom he is imposing his masculinity. Instead of his soul being full of the ecstasy which is traditionally associated with love’s expression, his soul is just fiddling around.

to go ahead, or whether, as a gentleman, it’s his duty to step out before he further defames a sweet girl and soils her womanhood.

The medical profession recognizes two distinct types of men: first, the type that believes that to love a woman is not to desire her; second, the type that believes that to desire a woman is not to love her.

The medical profession rests.

The medical profession recognizes two distinct types of men: first, the type that believes that to love a woman is not to desire her; second, the type that believes that to desire a woman is not to love her.

The medical profession rests.

This young man whom I’ve just mentioned (the rogue who found himself having a good time in the midst of a kiss) now takes seriously to books. Matters go from bad to worse.

I say this was my intention; but thus far I have been so unsuccessful in explaining the difference between love and passion that to go on would be to lay myself open to criticism.

The fact of the matter is, it’s very difficult to tell love from passion.

My advice to anyone who doesn’t feel sure of the difference between them is either to give them both up or quit trying to split hairs.

Or so it seems to me, and to Zaner, Blifil, Gorley, Peschkar, Rittenhouse, and Matthiessen.

Of much greater importance is a classification of females by actions.

It comes out finally, the nature of a woman, in what she does—her little bag of tricks, as one might say.

I may as well admit here and now that personally I enjoyed at no time any great success with Q.T’s. I think one may go as far as to say that any scientific examination of the Quiet Type, as such, is out of the question.

I know of no psychologist who has ever got one alone long enough to get anywhere.

(Tithridge has averred that he began too late in life; Zaner that he does not concur in the major premise.)

Indeed, it is one of the unfortunate handicaps to psychological experimentation that many types of women do not lend themselves readily to purposeful study.

As one woman said to me, “It all seems so mapped out, kind of.”

I am a little reluctant to report one other adventure with the Quiet Type, and that is why I seem to have summed up in the preceding paragraph without mentioning it.

Being got by this special type, or even being laid in wait for, would seem to me in some cases not without its pleasurable compensations. Wherein, exactly, the menace lies, I have no means of knowing.

I have my moments when I think I see what it is, but I have other moments when I think I don’t.

The Buttonhole-twister Type is much easier to come at. A girl of this persuasion works quite openly.

His masculine appearance not only failed to excite Woman, but in many cases it only served to bore her. The result was that Man found it necessary to develop attractive personal traits to offset his dull appearance.

He learned to say funny things.

He learned to smoke, and blow smoke rings. He learned to earn money.

The sexual revolution began with Man’s discovery that he was not attractive to Woman, as such.

The lion had his mane, the peacock his gorgeous plumage, but Man found himself in a three-button sack suit.

His masculine appearance not only failed to excite Woman, but in many cases it only served to bore her. The result was that Man found it necessary to develop attractive personal traits to offset his dull appearance. He learned to say funny things.

So matters went. Man, we have seen, had begun to develop himself so that he would be attractive to Woman, and in doing so had made Woman of doubtful attraction to him.

He had become independent. He had become critical.

He had become scared. Sex was awakening and it was all Man could do to keep from laughing.

So matters went. Man, we have seen, had begun to develop himself so that he would be attractive to Woman, and in doing so had made Woman of doubtful attraction to him. He had become independent. He had become critical. He had become scared.

Sex was awakening and it was all Man could do to keep from laughing.

Woman, on her part, saw dimly what was going on in the world. She saw it through the sweet haze of Dream. She caught glimpses of it in the mirror of her Narcissistic soul.[8] Woman was at the crossroads.

She attained to a certain independence, a cringing independence, a wistful, half-regretful state. Men and women both became slightly regretful: men regretted that they had no purple tail to begin with, women that they had ever been fools enough to go to work.

Women now “understood life,” but life had been so much more agreeable in its original mystery.

[8] This is the first mention in this article of Narcissism. You’ll hear more about it, don’t worry.

Convinced that sex was not sin, she set out joyously to study it. How hard she studied has recently been apparent, even to persons who read only a few books a year.

New York became the capital of the sexual revolution.

It was conveniently located, had a magnificent harbor,[11] a high mortality rate, and some of the queerest-shaped apartments to be found anywhere. There are apartments in New York in which one must step across an open bathtub in going from the kitchen to the bedroom;

There has never, to my knowledge, been a case of a young lady telling her mother that she wanted to go to New York because she was seeking an outlet for her erotic eagerness. It was always concerts that she wanted.

Often it turned out to be concerts that she got.

When she arrived in New York and secured her unfurnished apartment (usually in West Fourth Street), her mental elation was so great and her activity in making parchment lamp shades so unabating that for the first couple of weeks she let sex go.

Furthermore, she was beginning to have Schmalhausen trouble. Schmalhausen trouble is a common ailment among girls in their twenties. It usually attacks girls who have taken a small apartment (schmalhausen) and are reading the behaviorism essays of Samuel D. Schmalhausen.

The effect of sitting within narrow walls and absorbing a wide viewpoint breaks down their health.

The pain that they suffer during this period is caused by their discovery of the lyrical duality, or two-sidedness, of life—a discovery that unbalances all sensitive young ladies in whom sex cries for expression.

… lemon skins and gin stoppers in the wash-basin and talking freely of exhibitionism and voyeurism, or whether it meant being the recipient of some overwhelmingly beautiful passion which her poetical soul still prescribed but which she knew couldn’t exist because she was so widely read.

To stall for time she would make another lamp shade.

[13] See Tithridge’s “Poetry,” but don’t read it.

She now held a good job and was earning well. Candor and nudity, with an occasional bit of exhibitionism, began to satisfy her completely. She was growing older.

The apartment was nicely decorated now and teeming with lamp shades.

She held some good industrial stocks and had developed an ambition to write. She became content to be literary rather than sexual. She became, in other words, that most dangerous of all by-products of the Sexual Revolution—a biologico-cultural type.

In short, New York was now home to this girl, this biologico-cultural lady, and she was in a fair way to step placidly into a good old-fashioned marriage when the right man came along.

And he usually did, the poor yap.

“

Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.

”

“What are those for?” she demanded, suspiciously, for the notion had now formed in her own mind (Dr. Tithridge feels, and I agree) that she very likely had married a dementia præcox case.

These mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage, but rarely are they aggravated by factors so clearly calculated to upset the mental equilibrium as bluebirds at midnight and blankets in June.

This husband and wife were drifting farther and farther apart. The solution to their problem was becoming more and more remote, what with this setting up of involved artificial barriers, this almost fantastical beclouding of the issue. Dr.

“All right,” he responded. “Now, tu as quelque chose, tu as ... toi.”

“I just don’t know enough words,” said the bridegroom, wretchedly.

The bride put her hand on his arm.

There is much reason to be hopeful, however. The future parents of the land will doubtless come straight to the point in matters of this sort, when talking with their children.

The children of today will be the parents of tomorrow, and you know how the children of today are.

Actually, middle age (and even senescence) is marked by a great curiosity about life. There is a feeling that life is slipping away quickly, and that it would be terrible to have the end come before everything in life has been revealed.

The beauty of life, always apparent, implies a mystery which is disturbing right up to the bitter end.

The spectacle of old men wistfully attending sex lectures (as they frequently do) suggests that the strong suspicion exists in them that somewhere they will hear the magic word by which human affairs will become clarified, somewhere they will glimpse the ultimate ecstasy.

The fact that children are embarrassed to have their parents along when they are attending certain movies or plays is indicative of how hard it is to overcome the old fear of allowing one’s elders to learn anything.

A child never knows at what point in a play his uninformed old father will start to giggle.

It is hard for children to break through and really come in touch with their elders. “Nice people don’t talk about such things!” is the defense which old people put up against life itself, when they feel it crowding in all around their heads.

Yet it is hard to say to whom. A child should think twice before sending his father around to public school to secure sex information from his teacher. Women teachers, to borrow a phrase, are apt to be “emotionally illiterate.”

Many teachers have had no sex life and are just waiting for somebody like your father to show up.

One’s father and mother are never too old to be told facts. Indeed, it is most unkind to keep them in ignorance and allow them to nourish the doubts and horrors of their imagination.

In the absence of specific information to the contrary, we would say that the snail in your aquarium had been going around a good deal with other snails before you got him (her).

Some molluscs (not many) can have children merely by sitting around and thinking about it.

Others can have children by living in a state of reciprocity with other hermaphrodites. Still others are like us, diœcious, possessed of only one sexual nature but thankful for small favors.

The shellfish and the snails are a great group, though it is a pose with many people to consider them dull.

Usually the people who find molluscs dull are dull themselves.

We have met molluscs in many parts of the world: in gardens in France, on the rocks at low tide on Long Island Sound, in household aquaria, on the sidewalks of suburban towns in the early mornings, in restaurants, and in forests.

Everywhere we found them to be sensitive creatures, imaginative and possessed of a lively sense of earth’s pleasant rhythm.

Snails have a kind of nobility.

Zoölogists will tell you that they occupy, in the animal kingdom, a position of enviable isolation. They go their own way.

Everywhere we found them to be sensitive creatures, imaginative and possessed of a lively sense of earth’s pleasant rhythm. Snails have a kind of nobility. Zoölogists will tell you that they occupy, in the animal kingdom, a position of enviable isolation.

They go their own way.

We can understand your curiosity about sex in snails. Molluscs are infinitely varied in their loves, their hates, and their predilections. They have a way of carrying out ideas they get in their head. They are far from cold, as many people suppose them;

Another kind of mollusc, having laid her eggs upon a stone, amuses herself by arranging them like the petals of a rose, and hatches them by holding her foot on them.

Molluscs tend to business.

Sometimes different species intermarry, but this is rare. The interesting point about it is that such unions generally take place when the air is heavily charged with electricity, as before a storm, or when great rains have made the earth wet.