Is Sex Necessary/Forward
Forward
During the past year, two factors in our civilization have been greatly overemphasized. One is aviation, the other is sex. Looked at calmly, neither diversion is entitled to the space it has been accorded. Each has been deliberately promoted.
In the case of aviation, persons interested in the sport saw that the problem was to simplify it and make it seem safer. They introduced stabilizers and emergency landing fields. Even so, the plain fact remained that very few people were fitted for flying.
With sex, the opposite was true. Everybody was fitted for it, but there was a lack of general interest. The problem in this case was to make sex seem more complex and dangerous. This task was taken up by sociologists, analysts, gynecologists, psychologists, and authors; they approached it with a good deal of scientific knowledge and an immense zeal. They joined forces and made the whole matter of sex complicated beyond the wildest dreams of our fathers. The country became flooded with books. Sex, which had hitherto been a physical expression, became largely mental. The whole order of things changed. To prepare for marriage, young girls no longer assembled a hope chest—they read books on abnormal psychology. If they finally did marry, they found themselves with a large number of sex books on hand, but almost no pretty underwear. Most of them, luckily, never married at all—just continued to read.
It was because we observed how things were going with marriage and love that we set out, ourselves, to prepare a sex book of a different kind. In this venture we were greatly encouraged by our many friends of both sexes, most of whom never thought we could do it. Our method was the opposite of that used by other writers on sex: we saw clearly in what respect they failed, and we profited by their example. We saw, chiefly, that these writers expended their entire emotional energy in their writing and never had time for anything else. The great length of their books (some of them ran into two volumes and came in a cardboard box) testified to their absorption with the sheer business of writing. They clearly hadn't been out much. They had been home writing; and meanwhile what was sex doing? Not standing still, you can better believe. So we determined that our procedure would be to approach sex bravely, and frequently. "Approach the subject in a lively spirit," we told ourselves, "and the writing will take care of itself." (It is only fair to say that the writing didn't take care of itself; the writing was a lot of work and gave us the usual pain in the neck while we were doing it.)
At any rate we gathered about us a host of congenial people of all types, mostly girls. Gay, somber, petulant, all kinds. We also got a lot of dogs, mostly Scotch terriers, a breed noted for stoicism, bravery, and humor. Thus equipped, we set about the work with a good spirit, and by dint of a rather unusual energy were able to prepare the book for publication and see it through the press without giving up any social engagements or isolating ourselves from the sexual world. Furthermore, all the time we were writing the book, we continued to earn our living—in itself no easy matter.
We early resolved to keep alive our curiosity about things. Wherever we went we asked questions. Aware of the tangled sexual thread running through the pattern of people's lives, we continually asked the question: "Why is it that you never got straightened out?" The answers we got to this question helped us immeasurably.
Although most of our research was in life's laboratory, so to speak, we wish also to express our indebtedness to those authors whose writings on the subject inspired us. How can we forget, in this connection, such men as Will Durant, Samuel D. Schmalhausen, Dr. Joseph Collins, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Gardner Murphy?
Most aprticularly are we desirious of acknowledging a debt to those two remarkable men, who, more than any others, gave us the courage to go on; two men without whose example we never could have found in sex a daily inspiration; those two geniuses whom it is our pleasure to call the "deans of American sex,"—Walter Tigthridge and Karl Zaner.
