It seems to me most unfortunate that the majority of people hope to improve matters through an extension of the feminine ideals of the past. In the established scheme of things one finds a peculiarly gross form of immorality, an immorality incommensurably greater than the dreaded evil of promiscuity; and it is only as an element in this total scheme that woman’s ideals have any significance. The fact that they have always constituted one side of a “double standard” is not merely something which may be said about their relation to other elements after their essential characteristics have been considered. These characteristics can be described only in terms of the double standard and of its attendant evils. It would be as impossible, then, to destroy the double standard and still keep the feminine ideal intact as it would be to preserve the convex nature of a mathematical curve while destroying the concave. According to the present system there is a standard of conduct set up for women which is to constitute virtue. This standard is a combination of specific positive commands and, more especially, of specific prohibitions. There are certain things which no nice woman will do--a great many things, in fact. She must learn them by heart and accept them on faith as the Pythagoreans must have had to learn their curious list of taboos, a list running from the taboo against eating beans to that against sitting on a quart measure. This ideal of virtue does not apply with equal rigidity to men; quite different things are expected of them and accepted for them. It is obvious that two such conflicting ideals by the very nature of their combination will produce a class of women who do not live up to the standard of virtue set them as members of their sex. This class is not merely an excrescence but an integral part of the situation created by the total sex ideal of society. The function of women of this class is to make possible for men the way of life commonly considered as suited to their sex and to make possible a virtuous life for the remainder of womankind. In fulfilling this function such women lose, in the eyes of society, their moral nature and forfeit the right to live within the pale of social morality. They are considered unfit for normal social intercourse and are denied those relationships and responsibilities which ordinarily serve as the basis for moral growth. From all normal responsibility toward them society regards itself as released. That which is personal, the inner life, the character, the soul--whatever one prefers to call it--having been sacrificed in the service of the social scheme, one is to treat what is left as of no value in itself, but merely as an instrument to be used in the service of man’s pleasure or woman’s virtue. The prostitute is to society that one thing, defined by the purpose which she serves, and that is all she is, all she is allowed to be. The depersonalization, the moral non-existence, one