This is not due to any especially feminine trait but rather to the difficulties which women encounter when they endeavor to secure positive information on tabooed sexual topics. They expect, therefore, their initiators to be conversant with the subject which is kept carefully shrouded in morbid mystery. The majority of men, on the other hand, when marrying a woman who is neither a widow nor a divorcée, expect her to be absolutely pure, that is, not to have had any sexual relations with any other man. =Ethical Prostitution.= In certain parts of the world, on the other hand, males appear rather indifferent to the female's past. In some parts of Japan and among certain Arab tribes, comely girls may go to larger centers of the population and devote themselves for a period of years to prostitution. After which, they return to their native place sometimes with a dowry they have accumulated thriftily, find a husband and settle down as wives and mothers, in no way disqualified by their promiscuous past. In certain parts of Central Europe, "window courting," as it is sometimes called, leads to unofficial trial marriages which do not arouse the jealousy of the final winner of a girl's favours. Among the Western nations, it is rather the very young, the stupidly conservative, the unsophisticated and the senile, who consider virginity as a great attraction and in some cases as a powerful sexual stimulant. The reasons for that are to be sought in the egotistical component of the masculine attitude. The strong and powerful male who has frequently proved his virility is not obsessed by the fear of defeat in love's intimacies. The innocent young man, on the other hand, who is full of misgivings and of diffidence, the elderly man whose sexual powers are on the wane and who is no longer sure of himself, prefer a woman who is totally ignorant of physical love. Their embarrassment or their shortcomings may escape a virgin but would not escape a woman of the world, a widow or a divorcée. There is, therefore, in the search for virginity, a slightly neurotic factor, the fear of defeat, the line of least effort, the search for ego safety. It must be noticed that it was during the great neurotic ages, the Middle Ages, which witnessed the bursting forth of so many hysterical epidemics, that both the cult of the Virgin and the belief in witches spread over Europe. =The Fear of Woman.= Man has always tried to protect himself against woman. In his fear of sex equality he has either made her an angel or a beast. The witch, perverse and filthy, was lowered to the level of hell. The virgin, on the other hand, unsexed and raised to heaven, was removed far enough from the world for perfect safety.