A Cityless and Countryless World
An Outline of Practical Co-Operative Individualism
Henry Olerich
[A condensed and edited version of the book
originally published by Gilmore & Olerich, Holstein, Iowa, 1893 /
CHAPTER 20 - Sex Relation (continued)]
We teach our children all the sex relation we can, so that they may
learn the evil of its abuse. You seem to hide all sexual knowledge
from them. We endeavor to make the evil consequences a deterrent; you
endeavor to make ignorance the safeguard of their virtue. We act on
the assumption that a clear knowledge of sexual abuse will likewise
prevent that also. This is one great point in our favor then. We trust
in knowledge; you, in ignorance.
From historical knowledge and from the conduct of your present
savage, you know that petty tribes are very antagonistic and usually
at war with each other; that an individual of such a tribe, who is
confined to his limited tribal territory, has little, if any, lofty
humanitarian feelings for his fellowmen out side of his own tribe.
Your small families have much the same effect on an adult, and even
more so on children. The child is thrown in social contact only with a
few brothers and sisters, if it has any, and with a few of its very
nearest neighbors. This state of things gives a feeble opportunity for
the development of broad and deep social feelings, and a lack of these
feelings produces these petty antagonisms, strifes, negligence and
jealousies, of which there still exists so much on earth. A large
family, wide and close association and co-operation, aided by splendid
intercommunication, as we have them, unfold these higher and nobler
faculties of man, but especially of the child. Thus the pettiness,
engendered by man on earth, is, no doubt, largely due to your jealous
marriage system and your small families; these have, in my opinion,
also been the cause of your parental narrowness and jealousy; for, as
a rule, a parent here, from what I can see, finds as yet little
pleasure in helping to nurse and care for your helpless children,
unless they happen to be their parents.
All the woman wants is freedom and equal opportunity with the man.
She should be free and should receive all the money she actually earns
and handle it herself. That is justice and nothing more. That is what
justly belongs to her, and if she does not get it she is un justly
robbed of it.
Under your marriage system, in which the man largely runs the sexual
affairs, a wife often is the mother of from six to twelve children,
and not infrequently a number of them are unwelcome and would not have
been born if the mother had been free and independent in all
directions.
Our women, who are all perfectly free and independent in every sense
of the word, have now, in an average, between two and three children.
In this manner a high state of civilization, mental culture and sexual
freedom have at last established an almost complete equilibrium
between births and deaths. Our population is now nearly stationary. A
family or community, in an average, increases or decreases very
little, if any, in population. Every child that is born has an abode
ready to receive it when born. It receives parental care, and it in
turn gives parental care when older, whether it be a parent or not.
It, thereby, simply pays during the age of youth and manhood for what
it received during its infancy. And every day that it labors it is
paying for its abode.
"Have you ever considered what causes your in- te^nse blind
jealousy, and how shallow and silly it is? If your women, like ours,
were free in every sense of the word free financially, socially,
industrially and sexually they would rely on the natural
attractiveness of a healthy, handsome face and body, on a graceful
form and intrinsic worth; instead of relying, as they now do, on gaudy
outward attire, twisted hair, small, uncomfortable shoes, tightly
laced corsets, and a long, trailing dress. All this display of
unnatural costumes and continuous change of fashion requires an
immense amount of labor, which has to be performed by the man as well
as by the woman. In this manner, by uncomfortable costumes, by sexual
intemperance and by the burdens of labor resulting from them, your
men, as well as your women, enslave themselves.
During the last few centuries thousands of political enthusiasts have
been murdered, legally and other wise, for proposing and advocating
the principles of a republican government, something like the present
one of the United States. The masses of the people a few centuries ago
believed that such a government would produce nothing but social and
civil chaos; but the masses of your contemporaries believe that it is
just the government, and will do all they can to suppress all who are
now proposing a better one, one that will furnish more individual
freedom and equality, one that will mete out justice instead of
charity.
No non-invasive person can be truly happy without being absolutely
free. The individual must be the ultimate judge of his own acts, likes
and dislikes, and the testimony of history confirms the fact that the
more freedom the individual has been allowed or has asked for, the
better has been his conduct. The more he has been constrained, the
fiercer he has been. All aggressiveness must be banished from the
human mind before there can be complete social, industrial and sexual
harmony. Vice perishes under freedom and true virtue can not flourish
under slavery.
CONTENTS
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