SEXIS WRONG

thought of. The very language shows this idea
even at the present time, for a married woman is
called a bride when she becomes pregnant and
gives birth to a child and only then is she called a
wife, and with the word wife is so often associated
the word house that the common name for a
married woman with children is house-wife which
speaks plainly of the connection of home, wife and
children.
When this connection is lost sight of society is in
danger.
Keller will hammer this point home again and again and again
throughout the series. In the next volume, he wrote, even
more forcefully and succinctly: “Happiness is the ultimate desire
of every human being, and, no matter what happens to a
man and a woman, they cannot be happy without children.”
You must reproduce, understand? Breeding is not only your
biological imperative but your duty to your race, God, and the
State. That is what sex is all about. As a man, you are allowed
to have fun while you’re doing it (with your wife only), but
only because that makes you more likely to get it on, which
ups your chances of conceiving.
Keller believed that the federal government
should give money in the form of pensions to
young married couples, in order to encourage
people to get hitched early in life. “The present
social habits render early marriage difficult,
and when a man marries at thirty or thirty-five he has
spent the best years of his life in illicit sex relations, not only
harming himself, but helping to degrade and ruin many young
women, who, had they the chance, might have been happy
mothers and contented housewives.”
Yet pinning down Keller is not an easy task. He constantly
chides male-supremacist attitudes, even while expressing
various forms of them. When he speaks of the raw deal that
prostitutes have gotten through the ages, he says: “It was
simply the ageless habit men had of blaming the woman for
everything bad and taking the credit for everything good.”
Then he turns right around and chillingly refers to the existence
of mixed-race children as a “disgrace” and a “problem.”
In volume two, Sexual Diseases and Abnormalities of Adult
Life, Keller laments that one of the chief causes of unhappiness
is ignorance regarding “sexual hygiene.” Luckily, the
good doctor is here to straighten us out! His info about syphilis
and gonorrhea is pretty straightforward and unremarkable
(and obviously very dated. Luckily, it no longer takes three to
four years of intensive therapy to threat syph). He rails against
abortion, “one of the great disgraces of our modern civilization.”
Then we get to the long chapter on masturbation, and,
boy, is it weird. To his great credit, Keller pooh-poohs the idea
that whacking off leads to insanity or other mental problems.
The deeply conflicted shrink calls the activity “abnormal,”
then immediately discusses its universality among humans
and its appearance among other primates. But the best part
is when he presents the most bizarre yet intriguing theory of
jerking off that has ever assaulted my gray matter. He starts
by noting that the masturbator is fantasizing about getting it
on with another person (of the opposite sex, of course):
In other words, the actual physical body of one
sex has intercourse with a mental body of another
sex, but both of these sexes are contained within
the same body. That body for the time being is
bisexual. During that time, in its combination of a
physical and spiritual duality, it is hermaphrodite.
The ego of that person goes back to a previous
stage of existence where the two sexes existed in
one body and were able to reproduce without the
aid of another animal.
Sure thing, Doc. So what’s the problem with spanking it?
“It must never be forgotten that the
urge in women is for reproduction
and the act of sexual intercourse is
only a means to that end.”
Once the habit is established, a complete cure in
adult life is doubtful. It is a poison as dangerous
and insidious to the soul as opium is. It weakens
the powers of resistance, destroys the best of
the personality and leaves the habitue satisfied
to remain in his world of dreams. In many ways
there is a deadly resemblance between the two
conditions of the opium habit and auto-eroticism.
One can imagine Atlas nodding his beefy head as he reads
the manuscript he eagerly wants to publish.
Keller then tut-tuts those “unfortunates” who are attracted to
the same sex. These “homosexualists” simply cannot achieve
happiness, he argues, because they can’t marry and start a
family, which is the one and only path to contentment.
But there are even worse things, “the dark corners of life.”
The only two that Keller can bring himself to discuss, even to
name, are male prostitution and bestiality. “Others that are
worse are deliberately omitted.”
In the next chapter, Doc looks at some practices that aren’t
strictly abnormal—because they don’t interfere with spawn-
THE SEX LIT YOU PROBABLY HAVEN’T READ 261