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Title: The Issue of Sex
Author: Hertha Barwich
Date: 1929
Language: en
Topics: education, marriage, syndicalism
Source: Retrieved on 10th September 2021 from https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/2015/05/02/the-issue-of-sex-by-hertha-barwich/
Notes: Published in Der Frauen-Bund.

Hertha Barwich

The Issue of Sex

At the centre of a truly socialist education will be sexual education,

the prevention of sexual debauchery and the development of sensual love.

On all these issues, bourgeois education answers with a great silence.

The attitude towards gender in the current social order has until now

prevented the development of any more emancipated ideas. Women are in

every relationship subservient to men. In contrast, men are the lords

and owners of women. In this sense, bourgeois education works towards

making girls good housewives and maids, and to educate me to be real

men. Girls’ games, girls’ company and girls’ tasks are degrading for

them. Consciously and unconsciously, the ruling instinct over the female

sex is developed in boys. With such an education, marriage can have no

meaning for men, they look for their satisfaction in alcohol and

brothels. Capitalist exploitation has destroyed not only proletarian

marriage, but also petty bourgeois marriage. Socialism demands the

equality of the sexes, and workers understand this demand the fastest.

Necessity and class interest force them to recognise women as colleagues

and comrades. Such comradeship will only be possible if we totally get

rid of the bourgeois moral lies about intercourse. The liberation of

sexual life holds the danger of unrestrained intercourse. We don’t want

to and can’t fight this danger with another system of constraint,

complete education will prevent any misunderstanding and any wandering

off from the natural way of morality. We refuse the current bourgeois

concepts of morality. Natural morality is an egalitarian relationship

between the sexes which finds its expression in companionate marriage.

Maturing youths find in the anarcho-syndicalist youth movement a

community of joyous comradeship, ideal enthusiasm, and serious work. The

blooms which flourish in a decaying society cannot thrive in them. The

class-struggle organisation is the best system of defence against

youthful excesses. The love between man and wife is no longer a

forbidden fruit for the socialist youth, it is the fulfilment of true

comradeship. The solution to the issue of sex is true community between

the sexes on the same work, the same worries, the same fights, joys and

victories. Marriage is no longer legally-sanctioned prostitution, but a

bond of friendship which is agreed upon with full conscience. In the

anarcho-syndicalist youth movement, young men and women find the way to

class struggle, to the liberation of their minds and the solution to the

issue of sex. Through social revolution, in which men and women stand

side by side in true comradeship, we will achieve the economic, moral

and mental liberation of everyone and start to build a world of freedom,

love and prosperity in common solidarity.