Female chastity norms arise from inheritance, not from natural morality

Evidence

On the contrary, when woman becomes man’s property, he wants a virgin, and he demands total fidelity at the risk of severe penalty; it would be the worst of crimes to risk giving heritage rights to a foreign offspring: this is why the paterfamilias has the right to put a guilty wife to death. As long as private property lasts, conjugal infidelity on the part of a woman is considered a crime of high treason. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 182

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s ADDENDUM article on immodesty moral panics as class/identity signaling — here the double standard is causally traced to property rather than morality. — connects to: The institution of inheritance causally produced woman’s subordination to man’s property — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 182; Women’s exclusion from authority stems from learned passivity, not innate inferiority — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 673; Parentage certainty drives why females, not males, typically provide parental care — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 684 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes Beauvoir’s causal account of the double standard as inheritance-protection rather than moral principle.

Broader Connections

• Women’s exclusion from authority stems from learned passivity, not innate inferiority #corroborates (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 673
• Parentage certainty drives why females, not males, typically provide parental care #corroborates (0.72) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 684