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This is an interesting article from One magazine... SEX IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW by George Weaver This article originally appeared in Progressive World magazine, and reprints of the article can be obtained for ten cents from Progressive World, Box 27, Clifton, New Jersey. George Weaver has edited two forthcoming hooks, The Sexual Problem and The Courtesan in Modern Life, which contains selections from the untranslated volumes of Guyon’s Studies in Sexual Ethics. It is an amazing story that I have to tell. A story that will remind you of the curious case of Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, who quite independently formulated the theory of evolution by natural selection, in almost identical terms, Darwin in England and Wallace in a tropical outpost on the other side of the world. It is a story that will remind you, from another viewpoint, of the case of Gregor Mendel, whose researches in heredity, destined to be the very foundation of the future science of Genetics, remained unknown to the leading biologists for many years after their publication. For eight years, a biological expert named Alfred Charles Kinsey traveled through certain sections of the United States, interviewing thousands of Americans of various ages concerning the details of their actual sexual behavior. For thirty years, a legislative expert named René Charles Guyon, during travels throughout Europe and Asia and Oceania, observed and questioned people of all races and various ages concerning the details of their sexual behavior. In 1947, in an American college town, when he was 53 years of age, Dr. Kinsey completed the first volume of a projected nine-volume work on human sex relations. In 1928, in far-off Siam, when he was 52 years of age, Dr. Guyon completed the first volume of a nine-volume work on human sex relations. The title of Dr. Kinsey’s book was Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, The comprehensive title of Dr. Guyon’s nine-volume work to be published in France, was Etudes d'Ethique Sexuelle, or Studies in Sexual Ethics, and the title of the first volume was La Legitimité des Actes Sexuels, which means, The Legitimate Nature of Sexual Acts. In the years that followed, five more volumes of Guyon’s work appeared in France; and their titles may be thus expressed in English. Sexual Freedom. Marriage and the Family. Rational Human Reproduction. Rational Sex Life. The Persecution of the Courtesan. The Sixth volume was published in 1938. The seventh volume, The Persecution of Sexual Acts, was in corrected proofs when the World War put a stop to publication. While global conflict raged, Guyon continued with the writing of his monumental work. He completed the last two volumes, The Puritan Terror and The Sexual Civilization of Tomorrow. Not content with that, he undertook a comprehensive criticism of the present laws regarding sex behavior, and formulated a new legal code for the world of tomorrow; this he embodied in a book entitled Necessite d'Abolir les Infractions Sexuelles en Droit Penal, which we may shorten to Sexual Behavior and the Law, And as a by-product of the documentation of his work on the persecution of courtesans and sexual acts in general, he wrote still another volume, World Freedom and Puritan Power, an Historical Account of the League of Nations in Sexual Matters. When the war finally ended, and communication was again established between Bangkok and Paris, Guyon found that his printer had disappeared, presumably assassinated, and that the cost of book publishing had risen to such fantastic heights in France as to render further publication of his volumes impossible, for the time being. Meanwhile, La Legitimité des Actes Sexuels had been translated into English, and published in England under the title of Sex Life and Sex Ethics. In 1934 it was published in the United States under the title of The Ethics of Sexual Acts. The book was almost unnoticed. One writer, Professor Howard M. Parshley, the biologist, did recognize the significance of the Guyon volume. Reviewing it in Mental Hygiene, he wrote: “This is an important book, equally important for those who regard sex primarily from the biological point of view and for those who accept the moralistic conception as fundamental. It is in essence philosophical and ethical as well as scientific, for its purpose is to present logically the theoretical basis and the broad outlines of an attitude toward sex acts and sex ethics that is intended to be rational, humane and at the same time in accord with modern psychological and biological knowledge. This attitude, as developed by the author, is in almost entire disagreement with the conventional moralistic view of Western institutionalized religion; yet it is essentially ethical, the author's conception of the legitimacy of sexual acts demanding throughout the fullest respect for the liberty of others and the free consent of the sexual partner, uncomplicated by any element of violence or deceit. The treatment is based upon Guyon’s intimate acquaintances with sex customs throughout the world in contemporary and past cultures, viewed in the light of modern psychology and the Freudian theory of neurosis arising from repression. This book will stand as a classical formulation of the belief that is taking an important place in modern thought— namely, that sex behavior, as such, should be removed from the sphere of morals.” One could hardly expect such a book to be showered with praise in the ascetic columns of the journals of Puritan organizations like the American Social Hygiene Association, and it was not. As for the popular book reviews, the only comment I ever saw consisted of two unsigned paragraphs which dismissed the work as merely the ideas of a Frenchman who had traveled in the Orient. Fourteen years later, Guyon's assertions were to be confirmed by the objective statistics of an American biologist who had traveled in the United States. In 1939 the second volume of Guyon's work, La Liberté Sexuelle, was translated into English and published in England under the title of Sexual Freedom. Like the previous British volume, it appeared in the International Library of Psychology and Sexology. But if an American citizen ordered the book from England, it was seized by the customs officials who censor our reading from abroad, as the Post Office officials censor our reading at home; and thus few Americans saw the book. During the war, Sexual Freedom was allowed to go out of print, and the publisher abandoned the idea of having the rest of Guyon's volumes translated. Such was the situation in respect to the most monumental sexological work of our time when an unprecedented torrent of publicity was suddenly released upon the American public concerning a book that was soon to appear in print, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred C. Kinsey. Immediately upon publication this book became one of the leading non-fiction best sellers in the country. It is unnecessary for me to stress the immense importance of the Kinsey book. That has already been adequately done by the various commentators from Morris Ernst to Albert Deutsch, even though some of these writers have misinterpreted the nature of that importance—which is physiological and sociological, and not ethical or legal. But although we have had scores of experts commenting on the significance of the Kinsey Report, biologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, sociologists, jurists, eminent authorities in many fields of knowledge, this initial flood of comment was completely devoid of the slightest reference to Guyon's Studies in Sexual Ethics. Now the curious thing is that the principal claim made by the proponents of the Kinsey Report was that it demonstrated the need for a drastic revision of our ethical and legal codes. Yet none of these enthusiasts were apparently aware of the fact that such a revision in complete detail, already exists in the eleven volumes written by René Guyon, For the remarkable thing is that, although Guyon’s work was completed before the appearance of the Kinsey Report, there is not a single element in Guyon's blueprint for a future world that will need to be revised because of any of Kinsey's findings. Fortunately, the comments of the initial popularizers of the Report (who must nevertheless be commended for bringing a tremendously important and valuable scientific work to the notice of the general public) are now being followed by the more deliberate comments of experts with wider and more profound knowledge of sexology. Dr, David Cauldwell's recent booklet on the Kinsey Report takes account of Guyon's Studies in Sexual Ethics. Joseph McCabe's new Encyclopedia of Essential Knowledge mentions Guyon's work prominently in the article on Sexology. A recent statement signed by Dr. Harry Benjamin, Prof. Howard M. Parshley, Prof. Harry Elmer Barnes, Dr. Albert Wiggam, and Dr. Robert L. Dickinson, asserts: “We consider that the major writings of René Guyon are of considerable importance to social science, and should be made widely available to research workers in this country.” The statement adds that The Ethics of Sexual Acts “should be in every public library and college library that already contains a copy of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin.” Let us return now to the claim made by the proponents of the Kinsey Report: that it demonstrates the need for a drastic revision of our ethical and legal codes.[...] CONTINUE READING/DOWNLOAD ONE magazine Vol 3 No 1 (1955 January): https://archive.org/details/one-magazine/ONE%20magazine%20Vol%201%20No%201%20%281953%20January%29/ [@nonymouse] [Guardster] [Proxify] [Anonymisierungsdienst] |