Prostitution, What’s to be Done? – Unknown, 6/3/1887

Republished from our predecessor publication Lucifer the Light Bearer

There are 500,000 more women than men in Great Britain. There is a like disparity in Germany and in some
of the United States. Whether this should be accounted a deficiency of the male or a surplus of the female
population is a matter more difficult to deal with than the surpluses and deficiencies which puzzle the heads
of financiers and economists. The statesman or philosopher who shall restore a proper balance of the sexes
will add immensely to the sum of human happiness. — Exchange. A few years ago a noted metropolitan preacher,
when asked what should or could be done to cure the “social evil” in his metropolis, is reported as replying in
language like this: “Put all the prostitutes on board an old worthless ship, tow them out to sea, and then scuttle
the ship.” Some such plan as this would perhaps furnish the speediest way of getting rid of the “surplus female
population,” and thereby “restore a proper balance of the sexes.” Another way, not quite so speedy but equally
effective, would be to adopt the Chinese method of strangling surplus female infants. The writer of the above very
suggestive paragraph appeals to the statesmen and philosophers of the land to “restore a proper balance of the
sexes,” and thereby “add immensely to the sum of human happiness.” But where is the statesman, where the
philosopher, who is bold enough to treat this problem with the same plainness of speech and the same honesty
of logic that he would use in treating of the labor question, the money question, or any other practical issue of
the day or of the age? To inquire honestly and earnestly into the causes of our social ills is to open the question
as to whether monogamy—by which is meant the legal ownership of the sexhood of woman and man by each
other and by the state—is the true and only solution, the only basis of morality in the sex relations of men and
women. Skepticism or doubt, if expressed, in regard to this fundamental dogma is flat blasphemy against the
deity known as St. Custom, a sin never to be forgiven by the worshipers at that sacred shrine; and hence it is
not strange that but few men, and still fewer women, are brave enough to imperil their chances of success in
life by the avowal of heretical notions in regard to this cardinal article of faith and practice.

Among the few “philosophers”—philanthropists—who are brave and honest enough to challenge time-honored
prejudices on this subject is Dr. McLaury, President of the Board of Trustees of the Society of Medical Jurisprudence
(N.Y.). In a paper read before a meeting of that organization on the “Social Evil,” Dr. McLaury says: “I fancy I hear
some one say, well, let all men and women marry. So far as our society is concerned all men may marry—all
women cannot, for the simple reason that in New York City alone there are forty to fifty thousand more women
than men. Taking our State and the New England States, there are 150,000 more women than men. Then there
are 150,000 men who won’t marry, and there is no law to compel them. That leaves 300,000 women, in this small
geographical circle, without the possibility of getting married.” The Doctor might have added with equal truth that,
in the states named, there are at least 150,000 more men who, while they are willing enough to marry, ought never
to become fathers: men who are physically diseased or mentally deformed or imbecile to such a degree that no
woman, with proper regard for the natural rights of offspring to a sound mind in a healthy body, would ever choose
one of them as the father of her prospective child. This would make, say, 450,000 women in that limited area who
either cannot marry at all, or who cannot marry with due regard to the physical and mental endowment of their
prospective offspring. Continuing, Dr. McLaury says: “Can we say that all these 300,000 women are implacably
wicked if they have ardent love natures and sometimes yield to them? Does not God’s law give them emotions,
passions, and rights equally with their married sisters? Some of the most affectionate, loving girls ever born into
life have gone down to despair and suicide through remorse and self-condemnation at their inability to control
their love for men perhaps wholly unworthy.”

While this is all too sadly true, is it any the less true and any the less deplorable that thousands of good, affectionate
girls have lived lives filled with remorse and self-condemnation, and have withered away and died untimely because
of their inability to control their love for men wholly worthy? The cast-iron rules of artificial society do not allow girls
to make known their love to the object of their affection, and, of course, under the reign of monogamic laws it is a
crime for a man, however worthy, to respond to the love of more than one woman during her lifetime, even though that
chosen one should afterward become, and for long years remain, a physical or mental wreck. Quoting from eminent
writers, our essayist says: Miss Phelps says no man can realize the agonies women suffer from fifteen to thirty,
that is, from the nubile age to marriage. Maudsley, in Body and Mind, says: “Although women bear sexual excesses
better than men do, yet they suffer more than men by the entire deprivation of sexual intercourse. Sexual starvation
is a condition in which either men or women may reach a state when they will sacrifice everything dear in life to
them to appease that appetite—money, property, friends, family, reputation, and even the hopes of eternal bliss.”
Byron says: “Love is of man’s life a thing apart; ’tis woman’s whole existence.” I think that statistics show that there
are more women in insane asylums today from some perversion of the love nature, or sexual aberration, than from
all other causes put together.