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

intact hymen more highly than the courageous solution of their love problems. The majority of men believe that their masculinity is jeopardized if they are not the sole breadwinners in their homes. The'average man still believes that woman’s place is in the home, and harbours a lurking suspicion that women are second-rate men. Ignorance of sexual and personal hygiene is still wide¬ spread. Men and women who think nothing of taking lessons in bridge, golf, or lampshade making, are content to leave love to nature despite the fact that literature is full of instances of unhappiness because of ignorance in the art of lovemaking. Because of the prevailing taboo against sexual intercourse with girls of one’s own class, young men are forced by the traditions of a patriarchal civilization to find sexual solace with prostitutes. When they marry a “ nice, respectable ” girl they know only the furtive and obscene technique of the brothel, with the result that their own impotence or the inexcusable humiliation of their wives results. Other men and women who take the taboos of society seriously, wait until they have attained the age of thirty or thirty-five, and then marry without any previous sexual experience, often ruin their married lives by their own clumsiness, self-consciousness, and ignorance of the simple mechanics of sexual intercourse. Marriage as a Task The situation in our civilization is as if a man were told from the earliest days of his youth that if he wished ever to attain social significance he would some day have to build a bridge across the Mersey, only to have all information about bridges, materials, engineering, and architecture hidden from him until the day that he was to begin building his bridge. We may well understand the perplexed quandary of young people who are either forced into marriage by their parents, or assume marriage voluntarily in complete ignorance of its implications. Misuse of marriage as an institution is simply another