It is certain that women have a very low opinion of the unmarried. It is, in fact, the one female condition which has a negative value for woman. Women only respect a woman when she is married; even if she is unhappily married to a hideous, weak, poor, common, tyrannical, “impossible” man, she is, nevertheless, married, has received value, existence. Even if a woman has had a short experience of the freedom of a courtesan’s life, even if she has been on the streets, she still stands higher in a woman’s estimation than the old maid, who works and toils alone in her room, without ever having known lawful or unlawful union with a man, the enduring or fleeting ecstasy of love.
Even a young and beautiful girl is never valued by a woman for her attractions as such (the sense of the beautiful is wanting in woman since they have no standard in themselves to measure it by), but merely because she has more prospect of enslaving a man. The more beautiful a young girl is, the more promising she appears to other women, the greater her value to woman as the match-maker in her mission as guardian of the race; it is only this unconscious feeling which makes it possible for a woman to take pleasure in the beauty of a young girl. It goes without saying that this can only happen when the woman in question has already achieved her own end (because, otherwise, envy of a contemporary, and the fear of having her own chances jeopardised by others, would overcome other considerations). She must first of all attain her own union, and then she is ready to help others.
Women are altogether to blame for the unpleasant associations which are so unfortunately connected with “old maids.” One often hears men talking respectfully of an elderly woman; but every woman and girl, whether married or single, has nothing but contempt for such a one, even when, as is often the case, they are unconscious that it is so with them. I once heard a married woman, whose talents and beauty put jealousy quite out of the question, making fun of her plain and elderly Italian governess for repeatedly saying that: “Io sono ancora una virgine” (that she was still a virgin). The interpretation put on the words was that the speaker wished to admit she had made a virtue of necessity, and would have been very glad to get rid of her virginity if she could have done so without detriment to her position in life.
This is the most important point of all: women not only disparage and despise the virginity of other women, but they set no value on their own state of virginity (except that men prize it so highly). This is why they look upon every married woman as a sort of superior being. The deep impression made on women by the sexual act can be most plainly seen by the respect which girls pay to a married woman, of however short a standing; which points to their idea of their existence being the attainment of the same zenith themselves. They look upon other young girls, on the contrary, as being, like themselves, still imperfect beings awaiting consummation.
I think I have said enough to show that experience confirms the deduction I made from the importance of the pairing instinct in women, the deduction that virgin worship is of male, not female origin.
A man demands chastity in himself and others, most of all from the being he loves; a woman wants the man with most experience and sensuality, not virtue. Woman has no comprehension of paragons. On the contrary, it is well known that a woman is most ready to fly to the arms of the man with the widest reputation for being a Don Juan.
Woman requires man to be sexual, because she only gains existence through his sexuality. Women have no sense of a man’s love, as a superior phenomenon, they only perceive that side of him which unceasingly desires and appropriates the object of his affections, and men who have none or very little of the instinct of brutality developed in them have no influence on them.
As for the higher, platonic love of man, they do not want it; it flatters and pleases them, but it has no significance for them, and if the homage on bended knees lasts too long, Beatrice becomes just as impatient as Messalina.
In coitus lies woman’s greatest humiliation, in love her supremest exaltation. Since woman desires coitus and not love, she proves that she wishes to be humiliated and not worshipped. The ultimate opponent of the emancipation of women is woman.
It is not because sexual union is voluptuous, not because it is the typical example of all the pleasures of the lower life, that it is immoral. Asceticism, which would regard pleasure in itself as immoral, is itself immoral, inasmuch it attributes immorality to an action because of the external consequences of it, not because of immorality in the thing itself; it is the imposition of an alien, not an inherent law. A man may seek pleasure, he may strive to make his life easier and more pleasant; but he must not sacrifice a moral law. Asceticism attempts to make man moral by self-repression and will give him credit and praise for morality simply because he has denied himself certain things. Asceticism must be rejected from the point of view of ethics and of psychology inasmuch as it makes virtue the effect of a cause, and not the thing itself. Asceticism is a dangerous although attractive guide; since pleasure is one of the chief things that beguile men from the higher path, it is easy to suppose that its mere abandonment is meritorious.