Moreover, her chastity and her ignorance are translated by men themselves into an abstraction of artificial purity and reverenced as their ideal of womanhood. An ideal of womanhood cherished in men’s States, which has for its essential elements ignorance of life and a debased conception of sex, can be regarded with scepticism. It is noteworthy that intellectual ignorance does not have the same prestige, and therefore cannot be so important. Even an “educated” woman is conventionally more acceptable than a woman who is shocked at nothing. The conventionally pure good woman is shocked at a great many things: that is to say, she does not merely condemn certain phases of conduct, which would be at least a forthright attitude, she is uncomfortable and timid when they are brought to her notice. Now if man’s reverence for women is an acknowledgment of her vaguely realised power, at the same time in that very reverence, conventionalised into an ideal, he obviously safeguards himself against her power. Apparently, women can be kept in a subordinate position if ignorance of human conduct is imposed upon them as a necessary condition of social approval. It can be inferred that a fearless attitude towards human life is the first essential quality of a free woman, and that conventional morality is imposed with such emphasis upon women because the creation of moral values is their own peculiar vocation. Men are more concerned to prevent women from having untrammelled judgment and action in affairs of morality than from having access to the possession of wealth. In other words, women are hindered not only from external power, but from the inward power of creating independent moral and religious values. It is precisely this power which is exercised by creative women in their treatment of others, and the conventionalised ideal of the ignorant good woman is the deepest disability laid upon women in a men’s State. The conventionally good woman helps to perpetuate the formal traditions created by man, traditions which harden into empty shells unless they are continuously vitalised by the independent judgments of women. She accepts the masculine standpoint that human conduct is to be judged entirely by the values of consciously organised life, which are devised for the preservation of existing systems, and are not necessarily humane. She acquiesces in repression and punishment instead of seeking to understand and cherish. Men praise her for this subserviency and unconsciously despise her.