IS IT REASONABLE TO EXPECT THE SAME MORAL STANDARD FROM MEN AS FROM WOMEN?

White Ribbon, Volume 24, Issue 283, 18 January 1919, Page 11

IS IT REASONABLE TO EXPECT THE SAME MORAL STANDARD FROM MEN AS FROM WOMEN?

(Extracts from a speech delivered at the Conference of the British Dominions \\ oman Suffrage Union, London, June, iq«B, by l)r. Edward Beadon Turner, E.R.C.S., Chairman of Representative Body, British Medical Association; Chairman of Medical Committee, National Council for Combating Venereal Disease; Member of Advisory Board to Ministry of National Service).

1 presume that you have asked me to speak to you on this subject because 1 am a physician, and 1 am going to give the view of a doctor in the matter. 1 shall also touch on the point of view of a man of the world who has been intimately mixed up with young men, and who has taken a great interest in these subjects for a long time.

1 will begin at once by telling you th.it it is absolutely reasonable and possible to expect the same moral standard from men as from women. Of this 1 am certain. 1 am sure that it is quite possible that both sexes should attain the same ideal standard. 1 have never known any healthy man, an absolutely healthy man, go wrong in health because he has lived a perfectly dean life.

Some of you may have known me ' who have been in hard training for some athletic contest for six months or more, during which time they have kept their bodies in temperance, soberness, and chastity. They are not broken-down men by any means, but come out of training in the pink of health and condition. Therefore, if they can live a pure life for six months, there is no rq»ison why they should not do so indefinitely.

There are some persons to whom this does not apply. I have known a very few men who have practically been almost sexually insane, and the results have been disastrous; but it is an extremely small minority in which this obtains Such conditions are abnormal, and do not affect the great mass of ordinary men.

Perhaps, on the whole, it may be rather more difficult for men to keep straight than for women for various reasons. Ido not think, however, that there is really a very great difference in this matter between the two sexes. I presume that in speaking of an equal standard for men as for women, you are expecting that the standard for men shall be at least as high as that for women. If you mean to approximate the two standards by degrading that of woman to the level of that of the ordinary man, then I am “right off it”; but provided your aim is to raise the man’s standard so that it shall be the same, then I am entirely with you.

If it be possible these things should be altered, both men and women should demand equal morality the one of the other. How are you going to set about it.’' It will take generations to accomplish, for it is hard to eradicate that which is bred in the bone. Legislation is of no use. If every woman had every vote in the world you could not accomplish it by any law that might be passed. Unless caught in the act, it is impossible to prove that a man is immoral. There is no physical change in him, as in a woman. But though law can do nothing, I believe that the solution lies entirely in your own hands. But you must begin at the very beginning. You must begin with the mother, who must take her sons and teach them; discuss with them these matters; discuss them healthily and cleanly, reverently and devoutly, teaching them to reverence both themselves and the other sex. Then you must alter the sentiments of an enormous number of women towards immoral men a man who is notoriously immoral should not Ik* allowed to be the honoured guest in any drawing-room—and you have finally to convince the mothers in this Kingdom, and the Empire, and also an exceedingly large proportion of their daughters, that chocolates, diamonds, furs, and motor-cars are not the “be-all and the end-all” here, and that a coroneted millionaire with a lurid past and a dozen discarded mistresses is by no means the most fitting mate for a pure young girl, and that she probably would be much better with a clean young man as a husband, w’ho may have his way to mnke in the world