Dorothy Day's letter to Forster Batterham. What can I say, it's just so beautiful. عتاب جمل: 10 Dec, 1932.

Dear Forster.

I got your letter Friday afternoon and I’ve been pondering since whether or not to answer it. It doesn’t seem much use, but still I can’t let some of your statements go without telling you what I feel.

As to my feeling about sex, I do indeed now feel that sex is taboo outside of marriage. The institution of marriage has been built up by society as well as the Church to safeguard the home and children as well as people who don’t know how to take care of themselves. Of course anyone who is sane and sound mentally will agree that promiscuity and looseness in sex is an ugly and inharmonious thing. You have always in the past treated me most casually, and I see no special difference between our affair and any other casual affair I have had in the past. You avoided, as you admitted yourself, all responsibility. You would not marry me then because you preferred the slight casual contact with me to any other. And last spring when my love and physical desire for you overcame me, you were quite willing for the affair to go on, on a weekend basis.

Sex is not at all taboo with me except outside of marriage. I am as free and unsuppressed as I ever was about it. I think the human body a beautiful thing, and the joys that a healthy body have are perfectly legitimate joys. I see no immediate difference between enjoying sex and enjoying a symphony concert, but sex having such a part in life, as producing children, has been restricted as society and the Church have felt best for the children.

I believe that in breaking these laws one is letting the flesh get an upper hand over the spirit, so I do not want to break these laws.

St. Augustine says, “If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them.” And I feel no sorrow for all the joys we have had in the past together.

When I laughingly spoke about many a young girl holding out—you should have understood what I meant. You seem to think that one should always succumb immediately to any promptings of the flesh, and you think of it as unnatural and unhealthy to restrain oneself on account of the promptings of the spirit. What I meant was that many people in the past have observed the conventions and rules, for the sake not only of convention but of principle. It is hard for me to talk to you seriously,—you despise so utterly the things which mean so much to me. I wish you’d read more of Aldous Huxley, and imbibe a little of his rational tolerance.

You think all this is only hard on you. But I am suffering too. The ache in my heart is intolerable at times, and sometimes for days I can feel your lips upon me, waking and sleeping. It is because I love you so much that I want you to marry me. I want to be in your arms every night, as I used to be, and be with you always. I always loved you more than you did me. That is why I made up with you so many times, and went after you after we had had some quarrel. We always differed on principle, and now that I am getting older I cannot any longer always give way to you just because flesh has such power over me.

Of course I understand your allusion to smoking and drinking and such indulgences, and as I said before, I do agree with you and would give them all up for you. I really don’t think I over-indulge very often. I consider drink only sinful inasmuch as it affects one’s health, and I’m most ashamed for every time I do over-indulge. Sex and eating and drinking may easily be put in the same class since they are both physical gratifications. Still, even the slightest sexual lapse may have terrible and far-reaching consequences and so these laws have been built up. Of course all intelligent people can say—Oh, I’m so smart this doesn’t apply to me, but I think that such laws, whether one considers them human or divine, have to be obeyed by all. It all is hopeless of course, tho it has often seemed to me a simple thing. Imaginatively I can understand your hatred and rebellion against my beliefs and I can’t blame you. I have really given up hope now, so I won’t try to persuade you any more.

Dorothy

Her words are so alive, so honest. (Usher 2016)

From: “Marcel Proust to Jacques Porel”

“I envy people who are capable of uttering such cries that, at first, I thought someone was being murdered, but I realized what was happening when the woman’s cries quickly resumed an octave below the man’s, and was reassured.”

Relatable.