Men’s Virtues Versus Women’s Virtues

MANY MEN, still victims of an old prejudice, are very demanding when there is question of the moral life of their wife or their fiancée, yet strangely indulgent with regard to their own moral life. It is taken for granted that the wife must be pure and remain pure; she must come to marriage as a virgin and preserve the chastity of her married state. What of the man?

It is significant that women too seem to expect men to act differently, and to accept this double standard, as the reaction of the young woman in the following incident indicates.

Her husband was guilty of a flagrant betrayal of their love and had been unfaithful almost from the beginning of their marriage. The poor girl was discussing the situation with her father-in-law who was incensed at his son and raged against him saying, “If he carries on like that he is a blackguard, a vile monster!” And the wife had no other comment to make than, “He’s a man!”

Questionable praise, we must confess, for the masculine gender!

Christian morality does not subscribe at all to such standards. There is no double standard: one type of morality for young men and one for young women; one for husbands and one for wives. That man has a stronger pull toward the physical is possible; that he may be bolder and less restricted by delicacy or timidity; that because of his profession he must leave home frequently and consequently have more occasion to forget his wife and as the ugly saying goes “have his fling” is very true. But none of these reasons justifies or authorizes his misconduct.

An author who plays up his native city in his writing does not refrain from criticizing, and justly, those respectable men—the seventeenth century called them persons of quality—who in their own city enjoy an honorable reputation, figure prominently in their parish church, entertain the clergy frequently, but the minute they have left their city, forget their principles, take their morals lightly, read sexy novels that they lay in store at the station if they can do so unobserved and think nothing of sharing their hotel room with a chance woman acquaintance.

Let us allow for the author’s satire and his outlook. But is it all false?

And when the little ragamuffin standing on the station platform heard the woman say to her departing husband, “Take care of yourself and don’t forget me,” wasn’t it just the impudence of the rascal that made him say to her smartly, “Don’t fret ma’am, he just tied a knot in his handkerchief!”

Out of sight, out of mind . . . May that never be true! Likewise may it never be said, “Out of sight, free from duty!”