CHAPTER I.

Introduction.

A number of "private treatises" have been written "to women exclusively," by men physicians. This was before women were regular M.D's., or before any woman had many years' practice in the profession.

If women generally can be benefited by such books, it is but fair to suppose that men generally may be benefited by women physicians writing "private treatises" to men, embodying advice, facts, observations, discoveries, etc., that are all important for men to learn in a pure way as matters of science, instead of acquiring with the most degraded ideas of life, and only such parts as are demoralizing and filled with the grossest errors.

It is very evident that the great need of light among men has not been properly met by men; no man has elaborated on important points in the direction that is most vital, and hence it becomes the duty of whomsoever can peer into the darkness with a light, to do so with all speed, even if such light be no larger than a glow-worm, it may be the humble means of guiding many a weary one into a lost path, and of preventing myriads from losing the path of rectitude who are now approaching man-

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hood, to say nothing about those in the great future, whose need for light shall be as great as those now traveling in the bewildering paths of existence.

Knowledge must ever be the basic principle upon which the purest morals are founded. It is upon this corner stone of life's monumental building that grand towers of soul reach the zenith of human excellence in middle age, and are crowned with the beautiful verdure of ripe years' real worth.

With all the strides that have been made in art and science for the past one hundred years, the philanthropist must view with the deepest sorrow that but little progress has been made in morals, so little, that the man who even make pretensions to purity of manhood are conspicuously few. The majority of men have no high moral standard, but without shame assert that they are as good as any other men, and carry the idea, that, as they have become self-complacent, women ought to be satisfied with whatever standard of morals men choose to be reconciled to for themselves.

Men would be amazed if women should assert that such a standard was a low one and did not correspond with a true woman's ideas of noble manhood, and that it was just as good a standard for woman's morale as it is for men's, (a position that it just as fair for women to take as for men, as any one with logic must admit.)

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Women feel this inequality most poignantly, and deplore the low position taken by men, as few men can ever understand. Woman's silence upon the subject mislead men into the idea that they are indifferent to man's morals. Men never hear the eloquent speeches of women of all ages when this subject is discussed in the homes of all grades of women, and the despair that settles over their faces as the want of pure manhood is felt by them with no hope of ever having the general ideas of men any better, and women being compelled to marry such men if they ever marry at all. While men are so ignorant of the real aspirations of women they will continue to wrong them.

Men assume a right to have all relationships with women outside of marriage because they are men , and then assume the right to desert such women as beneath their contempt, and illogically reasoning both ways, assert that such women were not equals with them, because they yielded when unable either mentally or physically or financially to resist them.

Every art, often not at all understood by woman, is used to entrap her into such relationship when she does not fully understand the strength of her won passions and certainly not of men's, and she is placed in a position where she cannot possible be forewarned; if not forewarned in a manner to make her disrespect all manhood, in a word, to be constantly

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on the alert believing every man a seducer. If he is not such, it is not for want of encouragement from the great masses of men in the following way: The arts and traps of seduction are talked over by men before boys, and so the youths grow up in the belief that there is something mart in taking advantage of women, and that it is the most telling evidence of manhood possible. Brought up in such a school it is more a misfortune than a fault that men as a mass have so little moral conscience, for there is little or no direct influence to counteract such schooling, and the lessons in defective conscience and low ebb of soul are so often given, that the most poisonous and deleterious stuff becomes a part of the man.

It is true that pernicious teachings are graded to some extent among men and boys in the different classes of society, but the same ideas of their immoral rights that men believe to be their prerogatives as men , that all other men are called upon to respect as rights and women to tolerate, are the bases of jokes, good-natured slanders and pleasantry.

The thieves of woman's self respect have wide ranges of "codes of honor." Such men call those

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who live better lives than themselves, fools, and those who live worse ones, brutes, which is an insult to the brute creation, since no animal can be found that is as bad as some men.

The masses of men do not believe that one man ever lived, except Christ, who did not exercise what he deemed "manhood rights in degrading some woman," and there are men who even doubt Christ's pure life in this regard.

There are many restraining influences with men, but the greatest is fear, without which the exercise of the basest passions (or rather the violation of the natural laws) would be so great that the race would soon become extinct. But the "fear" is not concerning the results on the soul or body of their victims, but that their own bodies may suffer from some law that shall be enforced in the shape of disease, or of some human law that is administered by individuals in the shape of cold lead globes, or sharp pointed steel if not in prison cells, or in hemp circles.

Where no common law prevails, men treat women as though they had not a single right of existence, and but for their living, adding to men's sexual gratification, they would not be allowed to live at all.

Where common law does prevail, women are constantly writhing under the inequality of law as regards sex, and men are so annoyed that to have peace,

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more and more just laws are enacted by them. Laws are made by men who have not a remote idea of living up to them, believing themselves clever enough to infringe them without publicity, and thus pass for much better men than they really are, while the selfish making of protection laws is for the double purpose of protecting their victims for their own use, whether such women be wives or mistresses.

And yet men have failed to enact laws of this character that are sufficiently potential to do away with the necessity for individual administration of bullet or knife law. A certain class of man are restrained by nothing less potent than this kind of law, and but for such law being occasionally administered by the relatives of women or by the victimized women themselves, there would be much more of iniquity than there is at present, although one is almost led to exclaim, how can the world be much worse than it is?

There is a fearful moral confusion that certainly appalls one who looks upon every grade of society as it really is.

While every man has his code of honor in relation to women, nearly all of these codes can be summed up in the following list.

1. The code of a pure life, where no sexual wrongs to himself or to a woman have ever existed, but where every woman is treated with the same deference

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as though she was his honored mother or sister, where his wife is treated with all the acknowledged rights as though she were physically stronger than himself, and perfectly independent of him in all regards.

That there are so few with this code, is why there is so much of contention, strife, rapes, seductions, and murders. There can be none of these evils where men live up to the noble standard of true manhood.

2. The code of "sowing wild oats" and then marrying a pure girl and settling down, and priding himself of being one of the very best of men, never once dreaming that there can be any better specimens of manhood, or thinking that he has any obligations to that pure girl, in keeping himself pure for her, as she has been keeping herself for him.

3. The code of living life No.2, being equally careful not to have any slanders in the shape of illegitimate children, and like No. 2, boasting that they "never visited a public woman, or seduced a girt." --But all through life having relationship sexual with so-called respectable women, married and single. Sometimes men with this code marry and sometimes do not, but always living the same life, making their marriage a convenience, if they ever do conclude to marry, and with their associates talk jocosely over the convenience of having a wife, when there are reasons why it is not policy or pleasure to go elsewhere. They use every art to keep their wives in the belief of their

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faithfulness to them, and laugh at the idea of a jealous thought in them, or frown and become angry at such a suspicion.

4. The code of this class is to visit reputable houses, talk up marriage, court several different girls, (taking precaution to have them in different places, or in different circles of society,) seduce under promise of marriage through force or fear, help them out of enceinte condition, carry on the game until he wearies of his victim, or she finding he will not marry discards him. Those of this class boast that they are "as good as any men" among their chums. They boast of their conquests and get rid of some of their victims by getting some other fellow to play the same game and then twit the girl with unfaithfulness to them as a cause for desertion.

5. The code of this class is to visit disreputable houses, make bargains and sales, and would despise seducing girls, or invading other men's families -- pure sexual gratification is the one idea, and the quality is little to be considered. More married men than single ones patronize such houses. We shall give the reasons therefore hereafter.

This class treat respectful women with much more deference than the seducers who boast of never going to a bad house.

6. The code of this class is to be constantly on the alert for victims, and their thirst for variety leads

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them into the most dishonorable means to accomplish ends. Rapes are committed by them and even small girls are victims.