The Body Taboo: Its Origin, Effect, and Modern Denial
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THE BODY TABOO: ITS ORIGIN, EFFECT, AND MODERN DENIAL Other Books by Elton Raymond Shaw The Curse of Drink or Stories of Hell's Commerce Patriotic Temperance Songs At the Parting of the Ways (Prohibition) The Man of Galilee Brains, Dollars and Progress The Love Affairs of Washington and Lincoln The Conquest of the Southwest Prohibition: Going or Coming? The Life Insurance of Tomorrow Beer and Prosperity Hold That Line (Prohibition) Nearly a million copies sold THE BODY TABOO: ITS ORIGIN, EFFECT, AND MODERN DENIAL BY ELTON RAYMOND SHAW, M.A. Reason teaches us that those who are truly pious and philo- sophical honor and love truth alone, refusing to follow the opinions of the ancients if they are worthless. —Justin Martyr, 1. Apol. 1. According to the word it is much more desirable to give assent to doctrines by reason and wisdom than by mere faith. —Origen, Contra Celsum, 1.13. J^PUBLISHIKJ ^COMPANY [\Th e£h auu"Pre^ OVER TWO MILLION HOMES HAVE OUR PUBLICATIONS ESTABLISHED 1893 SHAW PUBLISHING COMPANY WASHINGTON, D. C. Copyright 1937 BY ELTON RAYMOND SHAW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHERS, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y. CONTENTS Publisher's Preface 9 I. The Universality of the Body Taboo and the Present Challenge . 13 II. Religion and the Cultivation of a Damaging Myth 28 III. The Myth Modified but Damage Con- tinued 57 IV. The Modesty Concept not Innate but Conventional and Variable . 88 V. Modern Psychology Studies Social Nudism and the Body Taboo . .113 VI. Combating the Superstition of the Obscenity of the Human Body . 140 VII. The Witchcraft Persecutions of 1692 Reenacted in Our Time . 156 VIII. A Movement Noble in Purpose Hand- icapped by the Superstition of the Body's Obscenity 195 IX. A Great Social Worker Is Perse- cuted 267 X. Anthony Comstock, Congress, and the Post Office Ban .... 273 XI. What Shall We Do with Comstock- ERY AND THE POST OFFICE CENSOR- SHIP Power? 325 Notes and References .... 353 Bibliography 358 Index 363 5 "The truth is always safe, and nothing else is safe." —Max Muller "He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool, and he that dares not reason is a slave." —Henry Drummond "Error in opinion may be tolerated when reason is left free to combat it." —Thomas Jefferson "Let us be free from all fear of the world or of consequences, in a manly purpose to find and follow the truth as we see it." —Hugh 0. Pentecost "The truth is that in the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only when our articulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favor of the same conclusion." —William James "We all believe in intellectual and moral progress. Therefore, what- ever may be the character or subject of a man's opinions, others have the right to express their judgments upon them, to censure them, if deemed censurable or turn them to ridicule, if deemed ridiculous. If such a right is not protected by law, we should have no security against the exposition or perpetuity of error, and therefore we should hamper progress." —Theodore Schroeder "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression, for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." —Thomas Paine "Those powers of the people which are reserved as a check upon the sovereign can be effectual only so far as they are brought into action by private individuals. Sometimes a citizen by the force and perse- verance of his complaints, opens the eyes of a nation." —Jean Louis Delolme "I will be harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard." —William Lloyd Garrison "The man of rational mind considers all evidence, for the love of truth, but never loves any statement of alleged truth before it is fairly demonstrated to be true, and even then, he accepts it as only a conditional truth, for the correction of which all new evidence will ever be welcomed." —Theodore Schroeder TRUTH Search for truth began with our arboreal ancestors who first faced daily problems involving factual experience. When age-long experience discovered no fluctuation in the relation of the two facts A and B, that relation could be formulated into a simple statement of "truth." As a conse- quence of this rather simple method of arriving at "truth," the majority of philosophers have been content to accept as "truth" any statement that is in harmony with known "facts." But in this definition the terms "truth" and "facts" are synonymous and the definition ceases to be a real defini- tion, for "facts" are by their nature indeterminable, variable and unpredictable. It is no defense of the pseudo-definition to retort that in such case the so-called "facts" have ceased to be "facts." That fact must be fact, that truth cannot suffer variation any more than can simple mathematics—this is an old concept but a most unsatisfying one if we are to relate truth to life. For life is a changing, throbbing, moving thing, forever leaving its present status in discontent and finding realization only in reaching out for hitherto un- gained goals. In such an environment truth cannot remain static; it, too, must become a progressive disclosure of re- lationships between men, things and events. For the individual, therefore, truth ceases to be a fixed body of factual statement and becomes, instead, a glorious adventure along the highway of the years, an unending search for the good and the beautiful in every compartment of life, refusing to accept the findings of yesterday as suf- ficient for the tasks of tomorrow. Did not Lowell have this in mind when he struck off those scintillating lines: 8 TRUTH New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth. They must upward still and onward Who would keep abreast of truth. Truth is in the forefront of all progress. She leads on from the known to the unknown, opens ever new doorways in the halls of achievement, despises not the past but knows no satisfaction save that of fresh conquest over ignorance, fear and superstition. No life committed to this concept of truth and lived in alliance with it, can be a barren or un- fruitful life. This kind of truth is infinitely richer, vastly more dynamic than all the merely factual truth that the world has ever known or ever will know. This is the only truth through which mankind can hope for real liberty; it is that truth of which the Galilean Teacher remarked: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." If your feet be set upon the highway of this living, vital truth, the ultimate issues of life will possess a surpassing glory. Ilsley Boone PUBLISHER'S PREFACE Elton Raymond Shaw has been active in social welfare work since graduation from college in 1907. He is the author of eleven books. Six of these are on various phases of the beverage alco- hol problem and have had a sale of nearly a million copies, said to be a record since T. S. Arthur wrote "Ten Nights in a Bar Room" in the eighties. He has been active for many years in move- ments for higher moral ethics, for better movies, against gambling and in other human betterment movements and has delivered more than four thousand addresses in thirty states on various themes of social progress. In these connections, he served for several years as Chairman of the Prohibition State Committee of Ohio, Executive Secretary and National Lecturer for the Inter- collegiate Prohibition Association, and Director of College Life Service Conferences and Older Boys' Conferences for the Methodist Episcopal 9 10 PUBLISHER'S PREFACE Church. He was also, for some time, a Trustee of the International Reform Federation and was asked to become its Superintendent. For several years he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Better Government Association of Cicero, Berwyn, Lyons, Stickney and Argo,—five west suburban cities and villages of the Chicago area. This was the organization made famous by em- ploying secret investigators who secured evidence which padlocked more than fifty of Al Capone's infamous dives by Federal injunction. He de- clined the presidency of that organization. Mr. Shaw admits frankly that he was preju- diced against the movement to abolish the body taboo, but study and investigation convinced him that it is necessary to destroy the superstition of the obscenity of the human body. This investiga- tion has included extensive historical research, a study of the complete book and magazine litera- ture of the movement, records of hearings before committees of various legislatures, reports of court trials and briefs of attorneys in lower courts and appeals to Supreme Courts, interviews with many of the attorneys and judges who prose- cuted, pleaded and presided in the various trials PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 11 in which the practice of social nudism or the sale of magazines on news-stands was attacked. Mr. Shaw resolved to study the movement first hand with an open mind and have the benefits of actual observation and experience in the camps. He and his wife became members of two of the leading camps and five other camps were visited on week ends and during vacation periods, mak- ing a total of seven clubs and camps included in the investigation.