Having then in mind this most lofty and compassionate of moralists, let us
turn to the problem of to-day. Here are nearly 2,000,000 women who, if the
austere demands of faithful monogamy are to be obeyed, will never know
the satisfaction of a certain physical need. Now it is the desire of every
normal human being to satisfy all his instincts. And this is as true of
women as of men. What I have to say applies indeed to many men to-day, for
many men are unable to marry because they have been so broken by war--or
otherwise--so shattered or maimed or impoverished that they do not feel
justified in marrying. But I want to emphasize with all my power that the
hardness of enforced celibacy presses as cruelly on women as on men. Women,
difficult as some people find it to believe, are human beings; and because
women are so, they want work, and interest, and love--both given and
received--and children, and, in short, the satisfaction of every _human_
need. The idea that existence is enough for them--that they need not work,
and do not suffer if their sex instincts are repressed or starved--is a
convenient but most cruel illusion. People often tell me, and nearly always
unconsciously _assume_, that women have no sex hunger--no sex needs at all
until they marry, and that even then their need is not at all so imperious
as men's, or so hard to repress. Such people are nearly always either men,
or women who have married young and happily and borne many children, and
had a very full and interesting outside life as well! Such women will
assure me with the utmost complacency that the sex-instincts of a woman are
very easily controllable, and that it is preposterous to speak as if their
repression really cost very much. I think with bitterness of that age-long
repression, of its unmeasured cost; of the gibe contained in the phrase
"old maid," with all its implication of a narrowed life, a prudish mind,
an acrid tongue, an embittered disposition. I think of the imbecilities in
which the repressed instinct has sought its pitiful baffled release, of
the adulation lavished on a parrot, a cat, a lap-dog; or of the emotional
"religion," the parson-worship, on which every fool is clever enough