mful Advice
Given to Young Women--Chastity in Men Not Always Due to Moral
Principles--Chaste Men and Satisfactory Husbands--A Statement by
Professor Freud--A Statement by Professor Michels--What a Girl
has a Right to Demand of Her Future Husband--Three Cases Showing
Disastrous Effects of Wrong Teachings.

When a man marries a girl he expects her to be chaste, that is, a
virgin, without any sexual experiences. Of men, the same chastity is
not expected as a general thing. As long as a man is healthy, free
from venereal disease, his previous sexual experiences do not
constitute a barrier to his marriage. This is what is known as the
double or duplex standard of sex morality.

During the past few years a number of high-minded and well-meaning men
and women have been trying to abolish this double standard and to
introduce a single standard of morality. That is, they are demanding
that the man going to the marriage bed should be just as chaste, just
as virginal as his wife is. Whether or no the efforts of these good
men and women will ever be crowned with success we will leave open.
Whether or no it is even desirable that their efforts _should_ be
crowned with success we will also leave open. A complete discussion of
these questions belongs to a more advanced book on sexual ethics. Here
I will merely say that, taking into consideration the fact that the
sexual instinct in boys awakens fully at the age of fifteen or
sixteen, and that marriage at the present time, particularly among the
professional classes, is an impossibility before the age of
twenty-eight, thirty, or thirty-five, it seems to be impossible and
undesirable to expect that men should live a perfectly chaste life
until they enter matrimony, no matter how late that event may take
place.

Those who have made a study of the sex instinct in the male seem to
think that chastity in normal, healthy men up to the age of thirty or
thereabouts is an impossibility, and where it is accomplished it is
accomplished at the expense of the physical, mental, and sexual health
of the individual. But be it as it may, and leaving disputed questions
out of discussion, the fact remains that the vast majority of men of
the present day do indulge in sex relations before marriage. And
people that are urging upon our young women to refuse to marry men who
have not been perfectly chaste are doing our womanhood a very poor
service. As it is now, with all mandom to choose from