"Sex Service--Ethics of Trust"

by Angela T. Heywood

[Reprinted from The Word, October 1889, p.2.]

As a Girl I used to say, in myself, 'When I grow up I shall deal with men's penises, write books about them; I
mean to and I will do it.' The sacred impulse so to do was well locked up in my body-mind, --Locked, my
mother-name, and Tiltoned, my father-name. The what of it was in me; the art of it; the how it was to be done
I did not so fully sense; but here I am working away at this specific, foreordained task, a challenged woman in
before of Free Speech on this very fact of sex. In again and again raiding my home to kidnap and blackmail the
sire of my children both the United States and Massachusetts invite; command me to speak; I accept, the
request. This pre-destined work is none of my choosing,

"But seeing thou falls't on me so luckily

I will assay thee; so defend thyself."

O heistic state! A chemical assayer in the mint of generative forces, an elect student to analyze sex-function,
the fact of man under woman or woman under man, a physical identity is here on my dissecting, coining
table.That I be explicit is in the order, fate and pleasure of things:--

"It is neither an amiable nor a virtuous, but a foolish and a pernicious thing, not to call things by their right
names."--William Lloyd Garrison

Thanks to rude, state-intrusion the doors are open; quietly we go in, take our seats with the rest in the lively
laboratory, and by clear sense of facts before us in close-fitted acuracy bespoken will we lift, etherize the Race
to nobler service. That, not a he-tongue, but spokeswoman-ship voices the situation does not so much alarm
men and need not frighten women; for, at home in ourselves, entrapment is law in open knowledge. The claim
of impotency as a basis of man's virtue, and sterile women are tie votes in disability. Rather I enjoy seeing and
dealing with man well charged in his peculiar self-hood; I like to meet man who discerns a pathway of use for
himself, rather than of abuse. The fact noted by old philosophers that 'man must expend himself in
masturbation, of beasts of the field, or woman, shows male power ready towards feminine ability to
receive,--such is impelling force to recreate the Race. Animals rise on the back, mount from behind; the arrival
of human intelligence appears in face to face meeting, coiltion front-wise. Ox-yoked in side-wise
hindrance...we must not longer be; shedding the Adam-and-Eve rib-story of woman's subjection to man,
coming up on opposite sides of the hill of Progress we, hes and shes now meet, in beneficent saluation.

...It is insipid falsehood for woman to pretend to man that the sex-fact is not as much to her, as it is to him; of
the confluent contracting parties she is an equal unit, able to give, as to receive, good. Clear ideas in
well-defined flesh-and-blood, use of the best in us and for us, electric minds in robust bodies beget Society. In
trusting man I, no-wise, subvert my person in his, but enlist Integrity in mutual service. In business the word
trust is forced to forbid enterprise prostituted to invasive robberty; in domestic economy trust means liberating
purpose, not restrictive monopoly. Since mental attention to physical blendment is so imperatively needful,
Mrs. Slenker's acceptance of the Presidency of the Fucking Trust shows womanly discretion, intelligent
strength as richly servicable to others as they are grandly notable in her. Alone among freethinkers she
suffered arrest and imprisonement for explicit intellectual expression, sex-wise; in taking the office to which
Union Reformers deliberately elect her, she steps to the front in progressive Conscience....

Return to Home Page