Читать книгу A Plea for Monogamy онлайн

37 страница из 53

From the woman’s point of view, she is invited by marriage to a banquet, at which she may reasonably expect to find a variety of comestibles all of adult characteristics. If at this banquet she is served by her husband only with milk or pap she is rightly revolted, and will not eat. Milk alternating with pap in successive courses of marital banquet would be cruelty and adequate cause for separation, if their exclusive presence could be attributed to the voluntarily malevolent choice of the husband. But in most cases it is merely his ignorance for which his parents and teachers are the blameless cause.

ssss1

Is there any clearer truth than that all autoerotic practices in the marital union are unmanly? And is there any statement more incontrovertible than that the average husband who has not taken the trouble to know and control his wife in the erotic sphere is unequivocally autoerotic mentally?

Can it be doubted that the average woman has no possible means of knowing whether her suitor will, after marriage, be an autoerotic boy or virile man? Can we blame her if she is forced by our crazy laws to make this a trial marriage, divorce him if she can, and make another trial? Can we blame anyone for taking food if she is starving and call her act stealing? Not unless we have made it perfectly plain to her how and where she may legitimately obtain food. But we can blame the man, for he is, he always has been, and he always will be the provider of erotic power. A man has no right to undertake the erotic support of any woman, and then proceed to starve her and incontinently to fatten himself upon her. Universally such a man is scorned and always will be, except by women whose erotic instincts have been overgrown and overwhelmed by the egoistic-social impulses of conventionality. These do not scorn a man who resorts to prostitutes to feed his autoerotic appetites, or who keeps mistresses or has other illicit liaisons for the same purposes.