#title The Issue of Sex
#author Hertha Barwich
#LISTtitle Issue of Sex
#SORTtopics education, marriage, syndicalism
#date 1929
#source Retrieved on 10<sup>th</sup> September 2021 from [[https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/2015/05/02/the-issue-of-sex-by-hertha-barwich/][forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-09-10T13:53:56
#notes Published in <em>Der Frauen-Bund</em>.



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.