How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.

of sexual aberration. The knight who divided all women into Madonnas and whores, and considered as a witch any woman who desired to raise herself out of the slough of man-imposed parasitism by developing her mind, still has his counterpart in the “ sexual athletes ” of our day, whose technique may be more refined, but whose essential psychological attitudes are still those of the Middle Ages. There are still men to-day who divide all women into those who are “ bad ” and those who are “ good ”— usually reserving the latter epithet for their mothers, sisters, and wives, and the former for all other women. . Such an attitude is inconsistent with a normal sexual life. These are the men who are potent with prostitutes and impotent with their wives because they believe that sex is a bestial, degrading form of animalism. The so-called double standard is a relic of the Middle Ages and a decrepit patriarchalism. Anyone who makes these dialectic divisions of women finds himself inextricably involved in one of the most common of all the sexual side-shows. That happiness is not to be found in this degrading practice goes without saying. A word should be said about the increasingly common type of sexual “ athlete ” who attempts by the demonstra¬ tion of sexual virtuosity to indicate his universal human validity. There are men who sleep with a different woman every night in the year, so eager are they to prove that they are men, and so deep and profound is their doubt that they are not. These men become masters in the strategy of approaching and besieging the female, but they are the veriest tyros at the finer art of holding the love of one woman for any length of time. The same may be said of women who see in every man a challenge to their sexual power. They develop a belligerent sex appeal, an aggressive and predatory “ it ” that enmeshes every stray male who comes within their reach. One contact, one conquest, and they have proved that the man can be made to fall, that he can be had. To all these men and women sex is a form of legitimate warfare in which the prize is one’s sexual validity, to be measured by the