many males, but
she only accepts one; it is not the female who is called upon for
erotic self-sacrifice, but the male. That is indeed part of the
divine compensation of Nature, for since the heavier part of the
burden of sex rests on the female, it is fitting that she should
be less called upon for renunciation.

It thus seems probable that the increase of moral responsibility may tend
to make a woman's conduct more intelligible to others;[310] it will in any
case certainly tend to make it less the concern of others. This is
emphatically the case as regards the relations of sex. In the past men
have been invited to excel in many forms of virtue; only one virtue has
been open to women. That is no longer possible. To place upon a woman the
main responsibility for her own sexual conduct is to deprive that conduct
of its conspicuously public character as a virtue or a vice. Sexual union,
for a woman as much as for a man, is a physiological fact; it may also be
a spiritual fact; but it is not a social act. It is, on the contrary, an
act which, beyond all other acts, demands retirement and mystery for its
accomplishment. That indeed is a general human, almost zooelogical, fact.
Moreover, this demand of mystery is more especially made by woman in
virtue of her greater modesty which, we have found reason to believe, has
a biological basis. It is not until a child is born or conceived that the
community has any right to interest itself in the sexual acts of its
members. The sexual act is of no more concern to the community than any
other private physiological act. It is an impertinence, if not an outrage,
to seek to inquire into it. But the birth of a child is a social act. Not
what goes into the womb but what comes out of it concerns society. The
community is invited to receive a new citizen. It is entitled to demand
that that citizen shall be worthy of a place in its midst and that he
shall be properly introduced by a responsible father and a responsible
mother. The whole of sexual morality, as Ellen Key has said, revolves
round the child.

At this final point in our discussion of sexual morality we may perhaps be
able to realize the immensity of the change which has been involved by the
development in women of moral responsibility. So long as responsibility
was denied to women, so long as a father or a husband, backed up by the
community, held himself responsible for a woman's sexual behavior, for
her "vi