Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free

by Wednesday Martin

Separation of the sexes, a widespread practice in the Middle East by 2000 BC, kept women out of public view and allowed high-ranking men to demonstrate to the world that they were so rich their wives and daughters not only didn’t have to work; they didn’t even need to leave the house. This, like their ornamentation, was an explicit demonstration of their surplus value and shored up the idea that they were property rather than people or producers, costly objects to maintain by men wealthy and powerful enough to do so. Conveniently and not coincidentally, literal containment and separation from men—as in a zenana, or “women’s quarters,” of a household, inner areas where no men were allowed—was also a way to ensure women could not stray sexually. Beware, everything from laws, moral beliefs, and literature now suggested to men, “lest the seeds of others be sown on your soil.”