idarity and
consciousness of kind. The separate living and lack of club activity of
women has had much to do with a delay in the development of a sex
consciousness and loyalty. The development of women's organizations
along the lines of the men's clubs has been a powerful factor in
enabling them to overcome the force of the taboos which have lingered on
in social life. Only through united resistance could woman ever hope to
break down the barriers with which she was shut off from the fullness of
life.

Perhaps the property taboo has been as persistent as any other of the
restrictions which have continued to surround woman through the ages.
Before marriage, the girl who is "well brought up" is still carefully
protected from contact with any male. The modern system of chaperonage
is the substitute for the old seclusion and isolation of the pubescent
girl. Even science was influenced by the old sympathetic magic view that
woman could be contaminated by the touch of any other man than her
husband, for the principle of telegony, that the father of one child
could pass on his characteristics to offspring by other fathers,
lingered in biological teaching until the very recent discoveries of the
physical basis of heredity in the chromosomes. Law-making was also
influenced by the idea of woman as property. For a long time there was a
hesitancy to prohibit wife-beating on account of the feeling that the
wife was the husband's possession, to be dealt with as he desired. The
laws of coverture also perpetuated the old property taboos, and gave to
the husband the right to dispose of his wife's property.

The general attitude towards such sexual crises as menstruation and
pregnancy is still strongly reminiscent of the primitive belief that
woman is unclean at those times. Mothers still hesitate to enlighten
their daughters concerning these natural biological functions, and as a
result girls are unconsciously imbued with a feeling of shame concerning
them. Modern psychology has given many instances of the rebellion of
girls at the inception of menstruation, for which they have been ill
prepared. There is little doubt that this attitude has wrought untold
harm in the case of nervous and delicately balanced temperaments, and
has even been one of the predisposing factors of neurosis.[3]

The old seclusion and avoidance of the pregnant woman still persists.
The embarrassment of any public appearance when pregnancy is evident,
the jokes