Women are denied sexual reciprocity because dependency, not reproduction, still motivates control.

Evidence

We have seen the primary reasons for this severity: women’s adultery risks introducing the child of a stranger into a family, dispossessing legitimate heirs; the husband is master, the wife his property. Social changes and the practice of birth control have taken much of the force out of these motives. But the will to keep woman in a state of dependency perpetuates the proscriptions that still surround her. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1630

Categorization

• QUESTION: Beauvoir claims birth control weakened the heir-dispossession motive, yet control persists purely from dependency — worth cross-checking against modern adultery-punishment disparities.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier thread on small acts of decorum/decorum toward bodies and patriarchal surveillance over female mobility. — connects to: Control of women’s sexuality intensifies when communities feel they are losing control — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 325

Broader Connections

• Control of women’s sexuality intensifies when communities feel they are losing control #expands (0.82) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 325