Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Family Values 491fathers and brothers) have controlled women's sexuality. They haveused chaperones, veils, wigs, chadors, segregation by sex, confinement,foot-binding, genital mutilation, and the many ingenious designs forchastity belts. Despots not only kept harems but kept them guarded. Intraditional societies, "protecting a woman" was a euphemism for keepingher chaste. (Mae West observed, "Men always say they're protectingyou, but they never say from what.") Only fertile women werecontrolled in these ways; children and postmenopausal women hadmore freedom.The word adultery is related to the word adulterate and refers to makinga woman impure by introducing an improper substance. The infamousdouble standard, in which a married woman's philandering ispunished more severely than a married man's, is common in legal andmoral codes in all kinds of societies. Its rationale was succinctly capturedwhen James Boswell remarked, "There is a great differencebetween the offence of infidelity in a man and that of his wife," andSamuel Johnson replied, "The difference is boundless. The manimposes no bastards on his wife." Both the married woman and herlover are commonly punishable (often by death), but the symmetry isillusory, because it is the woman's marital status, not the man's, thatmakes it a crime, specifically, a crime against her husband. Untilrecently most of the world's legal systems treated adultery as a propertyviolation or tort. The husband was entitled to damages, a refund of thebride-price, a divorce, or the right to violent revenge. Rape was anoffense against the woman's husband, not against the woman. Elopementwas considered an abduction of a daughter from her father. Untilvery recently, the rape of a woman by her husband was not a crime, oreven a coherent concept: husbands were entitled to sex with theirwives.Throughout the English-speaking world, the common law recognizesthree circumstances that reduce murder to manslaughter: self-defense,the defense of close relatives, and sexual contact with the man's wife.(Wilson and Daly observe that they are the three main threats to Darwinianfitness.) In several American states, including Texas as recently as1974, a man who discovered his wife in flagrante delicto and killed herlover was not guilty of a crime. Even today, in many places those homicidesare not prosecuted or the killer is treated leniently. Jealous rage atthe sight of a wife's adultery is cited as one of the ways a "reasonableman" can be expected to behave.