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From: toml@oliveb.UUCP (Dave Long)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: That boring matter of controlled women
Message-ID: <259@oliveb.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Feb-84 16:39:11 EST
Article-I.D.: oliveb.259
Posted: Fri Feb  3 16:39:11 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 8-Feb-84 09:26:13 EST
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[]
	I support Sophie's assertion that most societies have strict customs,
or even laws, to ensure that women copulate only with their husbands.
	Jeff does not believe this is true, and challenges us to cite chapter
and verse.
	Jeff's challenge is really unfair because laws and customs appear,
on the face of them, to be fair to everyone.  As an example, the Jim Crow laws
in the American South did not appear to discriminate against blacks.  It was
just as serious an offense for a white to drink out of a black fountain as it
was for a black to drink out of a white fountain.
	To see the truth of Sophie's assertion, you have to look at the intent
of the law.  The intent of segregation in the South was to keep blacks in their
place, and you'd have to be pretty dumb (sorry, Jeff) to be unaware of this.
	The custom over most of the world is for a wife to live in the husband's
village, frequently in his parents' house or next door.  The intent of this
custom is that the husband's female relatives can monitor his wife's sexual
activities.  If women work outside the home, they work in exclusively female
groups.  They never hang around the plaza watching the men go by.
	Laws only exist to get us to do something we would prefer not to (or to
forbid things we want to do) when custom is not strong enough to enforce correct
behvior.  Few men want to get married, for instance, but custom bullies most of
them into "doing the right thing".  Even custom won't keep men from transferring
their affections to other women, however, and we need laws to regulate divorce.
       In general there haven't had to be laws controlling the movement of
wives because custom (and the vast army of women who keep track of the behavior
of other women in support of custom) is sufficient.  I understand that women are
not allowed to drive cars in Saudi Arabia, but that is a society in a state of
rapid change.
						    Tom Long