The fact that paternity may so easily be doubtful furnishes a strong motive for the attempt to enforce chastity upon women; but that this is not so potent as the idea of male proprietorship is evident from the practice which exists in many primitive societies, and appears formerly to have existed in Europe, of lending wives to visitors, as a mark of hospitality. Adultery thus imposed on a woman by her husband is not only regarded as quite proper, but the children that may result are considered his legitimate offspring. The superstitious notion that a woman’s honour is a matter of sex, and that she can not be considered virtuous if her sex-life is not conducted in accordance with regulations imposed by organized society, also has something to do with the disgrace that attaches to illegitimate motherhood; but of course this superstition itself has its source in masculine dominance. Indeed, there is no need to emphasize the fact that the whole mass of taboo and discrimination arrayed against the unwedded mother and her child is the direct result of the subjection of women; for in a society where women dominated--or even where they were the equals of men--illegitimacy would either not exist at all, or its consequences would be made to bear either upon the father or upon both parents equally. This may seem an extravagant statement in view of the harshness with which women themselves are prone to treat the unmarried mother. But it should not be forgotten that women are what the procrustean adaptations of a factitious morality have made them. They have been taught to believe that motherhood out of wedlock is a cardinal sin, and the value and fragility of reputation have been effective hindrances to any impulse of lenience toward the sinner. Their attitude, moreover, has been tinged with a feeling that may be termed professional. Marriage has been, generally speaking, the only profession open to them; their living and their social position have depended on it, and still do in great measure; therefore the woman who commits a sexual irregularity acts unprofessionally, somewhat as the trader who smuggles wares into a tariff ridden country and undercuts his competitors. The position of the unmarried mother is analogous to that of the married mother in certain societies of which I have already spoken, whose children are considered illegitimate because she has not been bought. Even the prostitute, although she is a social outcast, is sooner tolerated, because while prostitution, like marriage, has been established on a commercial basis, it is a non-competing institution. It does not impair the economic value of the “virtuous” woman’s chief asset. Prostitution is condoned as a protective concession to the postulated sexual needs of men; the prostitute has been justified, and even praised in a back-handed way, as “the most efficient guardian of virtue”;[21] that is to say, of the arbitrary restraints on women which pass for virtue