Sexual Abstinence

A comedic reductio by Bertrand Russell regarding the sexual abstinence of women (I am posting this thinking of those who propose sexual abstinence as the only effective form of birth control still today): "The only thing that will suffice is to remove from young women all opportunity of being alone with men: girls must be forbidden to earn their living by work outside the home; they must never be allowed an outing unless accompanied by their mother or an aunt; the regrettable practice of going to dances without a chaperon must be sternly stamped out. It must be illegal for an unmarried woman under fifty to possess a motor car, and perhaps it would be wise to subject all unmarried women once a month to a medical examination by police doctors, and to send to a penitentiary all such as were found to be not virgins. The use of contraceptives must, of course, be eradicated, and it must be illegal in conversation with unmarried women to throw doubt upon the dogma of eternal damnation. These measures, if carried out vigorously for a hundred years or more, may perhaps do something to stem the rising tide of immorality. I think, however, that in order to avoid the risk of certain abuses, it would be necessary that all policemen and all medical men should be castrated. Perhaps it would be wise to carry this policy a step farther, in view of the inherent depravity of the male character: I am inclined to think that moralists would be well advised to advocate that all men should be castrated, with the exception of ministers of religion. (note: Since reading Elmer Gantry, I have begun to feel that even this exception is perhaps not quite wise.)"