Diana Trilling
MEN, WOM EN AND SEX *
The broad outlines of the cultural history of the last forty
or fifty years are perhaps nowhere revealed more clearly than in our
explicit writing about sex. Until the beginning of this century sex was, of
course, presumed to be under the jurisdiction of religion. There was no
literature directed particularly to the sexual education of the general
public. But in part because of the implications of late nineteenth-century
science, in part because of the weakening of traditional family life at this
time, the turn of the century produced something called sexology, the
science of sexual matters. Our first sexologies were usually very simple,
biologically-oriented statements of the facts of life for children or adults.
They stayed wholly with the study and guidance of our primary erotic
conduct, and their avenue to morality was hygiene. The chief concern
of these early sex books was the danger of sexual disease, by which they
meant not only venereal infection but also the disordered mind and
body which were supposed to be the penalty of masturbation and
"excess." Although its facts were on most scores wrong and its attitudes
often unbelievably cruel, this early sexual literature was on all scores
utterly sure of itself-as sure, indeed, as religion once had been.
This certainty largely derived from the conviction of our peril, and
when, with the new sexual dispensation of the first world war, much
of the overt pressure of fear was removed from our sexual lives, some
of our certainty also disappeared. By now the findings of Freud had
begun to penetrate our sexual thought, producing a significant shift of
emphasis from sex as an evil to sex as a conscious good, and as an
instrument of personal expansion. We still retained the sense of sexual
duty; but it became our duty to express rather than repress our physical
drives-and sexology undertook the happy work of implementing desire
with "technique." A human activity which for untold generations had
been accepted as instinctual was suddenly transformed into a con–
scientious operation of pleasure, and not only for men but also for
women-all at once women were given the gift of full status in the animal
*
Male and Female.
By
Margaret Mead. William Morrow
&
Company.
$5.00.
