How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
320/400

fallacy that sex is something vaguely sinful and bestial, concerning which we should be decently mysterious and silent. Even in the best circumstances there is an air of solemn pedantry about telling young children the so-called “ facts of life ”. Parents who are objective in nearly every other way hesitate to explain the simple mechanics of love and reproduction to their children, and teachers who could fulfil this function are constrained from being objective by fear of hurting the parents’ feelings, while doctors, who are perhaps the best suited, after parents, to enlighten the young as to the nature of sex and love, are either too busy or too inarticulate to do so. We are taught how to walk, speak, shake hands, dress ourselves properly, from the beginning of life. Soon we complete the first stage in our school education and are taught social graces, manners, the art of driving a car or playing golf. Technical information in the complicated business of earning a living is given us without stint, and usually with a great deal of skill. But there is hardly a man or a woman to be found who has ever been taught how to be a good lover, a good husband, an effective wife, or an amorous sweetheart by an expert teacher. The paradox of our modern life is that we swamp our children with sexual misinformation, with a veritable torrent of pseudo-sexual novels, pornographic newspaper articles, and more or less lascivious films and plays, which serve only to stimulate normal sexuality to an exaggeratedly high pitch. At the same time, we with¬ hold really valuable information on sexual subjects from young and old alike by investing the whole theme of sex with a cloak of mystery, secrecy, and filth. At the time a girl is led to believe that her only salvation in life is to be found in marriage and the building of a home, most useful information about sex is withheld from her and all experimental preparation for this task is made taboo. Ancient and outworn concepts still obtain a strangle-hold on the mental processes of the average man. The great majority of “ nice ” girls still value an