This guy really knows about my vagina!

Second wave feminism, brought to you by a white man!
Originally uploaded by flinkerfairynuts.

I found these fantastic little books in Boardtown Trading Post while I was looking for old lighters to give as Christmas presents, because smoking parafanalia is the gift that keeps on giving. There are over 1700 of these booklets, all edited by E. Haldeman-Julius.

The content both impresses and terrifies me. For example, in "Confidential Chats with Wives" by Gloria Goddard the Chatterer says, "Women are gaining in mental, physical, and economic strength. It remains for her to improve the state of human relationships, especially those of matrimony.

"When women learn not to marry for economic reasons; when they marry because of love and love alone; and, being independant of any man's support, they choose whether or not they shall bear children, then, and then only will marriage be lifted from the mire into which it has been thrust and rise to the high free happiness which should be the ultimate end of every human relationship."

A mouthful, yes, but impressive.

On the other hand, in "Woman--The Eternal Primitive" the lovely William J. Fielding (while adamently identifying himself as an advocate of women's rights, having no quarrel even with the ultra-feminist Lucy Stone League) asserts in a list of charactaristics specific to women:

"4. She is more conservative, more routine in her conduct, more influenced by the formulae and fetishes of tradition. As Will Durant has said somewhere, in the Latin countries religion has become a secondary sexual characteristic of the female."

I think I hate him. I hope he lived a long impotent life.

My favorite part of the books so far is the list of books about sex education that are available for the very reasonable price of 7 for $1! The list is transcribed here:

SEX EDUCATION

74 Physiology of Sex Life
91 Manhood
98 How to Love
163 Sex Life in Greece and Rome
172 Evolution of Sex
228 Plain Talks with Husbands and Wives
372 Problems of Birth Control
692 Homosexual Life
904 Sex Symbolism
964 How to be Happy Though Married
988 Art of Courtship
1148 Sexual Crimes and American Law
1342 Typical Love Problems
1343 Sex Relation in the Southern States
1428 Curous and Unusual Love Affairs
1496 Sexual Factor in Divorce
1498 Missouri University Sex Questionaire
1546 Encyclopedia of Sex
1564 Homosexuality in the Lives of the Great
1709 The White Slave Traffic
1713 Sexual Impotence
1736 Dictionary of Sexual Terms
1737 Sex and Blackmail Rackets Exposed
1823 Art of Intimacy in Marriage
1854 Confessions of a Transvestite
Any 7 for $1, PREPAID, or 15c each.

The one link I bothered to click through when I Googled this shit said these were published around 1927. But that really couldn't be considered quality research. Anyone who wants to know more is just going to have to Google it their own damn selves, cause I'm tired from all this typing.