d
women pitied me--as a matter of fact, one speaker said frankly that she
was very sorry for my son; plainly they were very doubtful of my virtue.
Since that day I have noted that very few invitations to attend Women's
Conferences have been sent to me.

This shelving of the real facts, of course, is unconscious on the part
of women. The lust of men as the true cause of evil is the one popular
and accepted view of the situation, and from this it follows that the
prostitute is the man's victim, and as such must be protected. This is
highly pleasing; a view depending, as it does, on the moral superiority
of women, which stands them as Amazons of purity on the glorious
mountain heights of virtue, from where they must send down climbing
ropes and ladders, in the form of moral warnings and carefully edited
sexual instruction, possibly made pleasing by cinemas and theater
illustrations, to pull men up out of the deep valleys of vice.

Yet this view is singularly untrue; for if we inquire into this question
of men's lust, it is obvious that not they, but women, are the more
responsible. How often it is woman who awakens this male lust, fans it
to flame, feeds it to keep it at fever heat. Woman indeed must so act,
since nature urges behind; but the prostitute uses this power without
rest, she lives, not indeed sacrificed by men's lust, but kept alive by
it. Always there is the invitation--"Come and find me." To be
provocative is the one fixed simple rule of her life. Men's lust is a
necessity to her very existence. Starving nations do not so eagerly
await the coming of the food-laden ships which will keep them alive as
the prostitute watches for the rising of the male desire. The dismay
when it is reluctant to quicken is as sincere as it is disquieting to
acknowledge. In the final result the woman may be the victim, but at the
start she is the controller of the assault. She directs a continuous
attack; her relation to men is comparable to that of a magnet to a heap
of iron filings.

Most men, it is true, are not only tolerant of women's wiles; they like
them. But most men succumb, I believe, against their will, and often
against their inclination to this tyranny of lust. Men's chivalry as
well as their pride has woven a cloak of silence around this question;
this silence has protected women--even the worst.

There is such a thing as too much temptation for a man; temptation that
a woman has no right to give unless she knows