The Pittsburgh Press (February 12, 1944)
Ferguson: Exaggerated sex
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
The term “frustrated old maid” must be dropped from the American vocabulary, says Mrs. Bertha Hess of the Dallas Hygiene Association.
She says:
It’s nothing but male propaganda, and women should take a stand against such arrant nonsense.
Our discussion centered around post-war problems. Everybody had agreed we would have a surplus of women and that the male shortage would force many to live without husbands. So, we may as well consider ways and means for feminine happiness in a world which cannot supply each girl with a mate.
For years, psychologists have built up the idea that continence is bad for people. It sneaked into our thinking via the Freudian wave, and has never been dislodged. Yet it is a damnable doctrine, dangerous to public morals. Many sane people have developed sex obsessions because such a fallacy was foisted upon them.
Every day we meet women who refuted the theory – sweet, sane, sensible, busy, happy women, valuable members of their families and the community. If they sorrow in secret because they lack husbands and children, they do not invite our pity since they are anything but pitiable.
Sex is an alluring subject as well as an importance force, but in our time, it has been exaggerated so that it dominates the social scene. In the future, girls must be taught to realize that men and women can derive satisfaction from intellectual stimulation and through love that encompasses all of humankind.
The single life has never carried any social stigma for men. There is no reason for women to be afraid or ashamed of it.