In controlling her own sexual life, and in realizing that her responsibility for such control can no longer be shifted on to the shoulders of the other sex, women will also indirectly affect the sexual lives of men, much as men already affect the sexual lives of women.  In what ways that influence will in the main be exerted it is still premature to say.  According to some, just as formerly men bought their wives and demanded prenuptial virginity in the article thus purchased, so nowadays, among the better classes, women are able to buy their husbands, and in their turn are disposed to demand continence.[305] That, however, is too simple-minded a way of viewing the question.  It is enough to refer to the fact that women are not attracted to virginal innocence in men and that they frequently have good ground for viewing such innocence with suspicion.[306] Yet it may well be believed that women will more and more prefer to exert a certain discrimination in the approval of their husbands’ past lives.  However instinctively a woman may desire that her husband shall be initiated in the art of making love to her, she may often well doubt whether the finest initiation is to be secured from the average prostitute.  Prostitution, as we have seen, is ultimately as incompatible with complete sexual responsibility as is the patriarchal marriage system with which it has been so closely associated.  It is an arrangement mainly determined by the demands of men, to whatever extent it may have incidentally subserved various needs of women.  Men arranged that one group of women should be set apart to minister exclusively to their sexual necessities, while another group should be brought up in asceticism as candidates for the privilege of ministering to their household and family necessities.  That this has been in many respects a most excellent arrangement is sufficiently proved by the fact that it has nourished for so long a period, notwithstanding the influences that are antagonistic to it.  But it is obviously only possible during a certain stage of civilization and in association with a certain social organization.  It is not completely congruous with a democratic stage of civilization involving the economic independence and the sexual responsibility of both sexes alike in all social classes.  It is possible that women may begin to realize this fact earlier than men.

It is also believed by many that women will realize that a high degree of moral responsibility is not easily compatible with the practice of dissimulation and that economic independence will deprive deceit—­which is always the resort of the weak—­of whatever moral justification it may possess.  Here, however, it is necessary to speak with caution or we may be unjust to women.  It must be remarked that in the sphere of sex men also are often the weak, and are therefore apt to resort to the refuge of the weak.  With the recognition of that fact we may also recognize that deception in women has been the cause of much