utually working for the advancement of the world. Our progress is,
however, seriously impeded by what we may call the masculine
tradition, the unconscious dominance of a race habit based on this long
androcentric period; and it is well worth while, in the interests of
both sexes, to show the mischievous effects of the predominance of one.

We have in our ethics not only a "double standard" in one special line,
but in nearly all. Man, as a sex, has quite naturally deified his own
qualities rather than those of his opposite. In his codes of manners, of
morals, of laws, in his early concepts of God, his ancient religions, we
see masculinity written large on every side. Confining women wholly to
their feminine functions, he has required of them only what he called
feminine virtues, and the one virtue he has demanded, to the
complete overshadowing of all others, is measured by wholly masculine
requirements.

In the interests of health and happiness, monogamous marriage proves its
superiority in our race as it has in others. It is essential to the
best growth of humanity that we practice the virtue of chastity; it is a
human virtue, not a feminine one. But in masculine hands this virtue
was enforced upon women under penalties of hideous cruelty, and quite
ignored by men. Masculine ethics, colored by masculine instincts, always
dominated by sex, has at once recognized the value of chastity in the
woman, which is right; punished its absence unfairly, which is wrong;
and then reversed the whole matter when applied to men, which is
ridiculous.

Ethical laws are laws--not idle notions. Chastity is a virtue because it
promotes human welfare--not because men happen to prize it in women and
ignore it themselves. The underlying reason for the whole thing is the
benefit of the child; and to that end a pure and noble fatherhood is
requisite, as well as such a motherhood. Under the limitations of a too
masculine ethics, we have developed on this one line social conditions
which would be absurdly funny if they were not so horrible.

Religion, be it noticed, does not bear out this attitude. The immense
human need of religion, the noble human character of the great religious
teachers, has always set its standards, when first established, ahead of
human conduct.

Some there are, men of learning and authority, who hold that the
deadening immobility of our religions, their resistance to progress and
relentless preservation of primitive id