"So, in Osirion, most women will only lie with a man if he's married her. There are prostitutes, they're not illegal, but there's not many, and you certainly can't bring them to parties, and they're not a very appealing substitute for a long-term romantic relationship. So if a man wants a serious relationship, and regular access to a woman's bed, he'd better make himself a good candidate for marriage and then go persuade someone to marry him. 

Marriage is a lifelong commitment. A man promises to provide for his wife and for any children she bears him, to pay for treatment if she's sick within whatever his abilities are, to provide her with a home and protect her and her children from danger, and to greet her with love. In return, a woman promises to obey her husband, to steward his money wisely and raise his children well, to be faithful to him and to greet him with love. 

Some marriages break down, and the couple ends up living separately or barely speaking to each other. But still, they are bound by these promises; and a woman can go to the Osirian state if her husband isn't providing for her family, and get money drawn out of his bank account if he has one, and get him prevented from remarrying. 

Because of all this, it's actually very rare, for even a girl-child to be left outside to die of exposure when she's born. You marry someone who can provide for your children, and then your children don't starve; that is the whole promise, here, that if you refrain from recklessly having sex without the safety of marriage then you won't have to watch your children starve.

In Avistan they don't do any of that very much. Some girls will have sex with you even when you haven't married them. Because some girls can do that, no girls can hold out for a lifelong promise to provide for them; why would a man offer them that, when he could just go have sex with all the girls who'll offer it for free? No one would get married, so they made a sort of fake marriage that you can break at any time, and they all do that. Women are, in a sense, freer. They aren't chaperoned. Because no man will provide from them, it's more important for their families to figure out how they'll provide for themselves, so more of them are financially independent, though also many, many more of them starve, or are killed by a man they trusted and shouldn't have, or die of an abortion. Many of them feel that there's something wrong, something missing, that things shouldn't be like this, but those ones simply don't lie with anyone at all; they can't find any men who'd be worth trusting. 

Our society demands virtue of men and virtue of women, and constrains them so that they can't do whatever they like but they won't go hungry. Avistan demands no virtue of anyone, and they do as they like, and they kill the babies that result and then they go to Hell, or Abaddon, or the Abyss, and it just doesn't sound like a very good trade, really. If you say the wrong things about women's liberation people think you're proposing they raise their girls into Avistani whores -- by which I don't mean they pay for sex, just that they offer it outside of marriage -- and they'll hate that idea and stop listening to you."

"So, in Osirion, most women will only lie with a man if he's married her. There are prostitutes, they're not illegal, but there's not many, and you certainly can't bring them to parties, and they're not a very appealing substitute for a long-term romantic relationship. So if a man wants a serious relationship, and regular access to a woman's bed, he'd better make himself a good candidate for marriage and then go persuade someone to marry him. 

Marriage is a lifelong commitment. A man promises to provide for his wife and for any children she bears him, to pay for treatment if she's sick within whatever his abilities are, to provide her with a home and protect her and her children from danger, and to greet her with love. In return, a woman promises to obey her husband, to steward his money wisely and raise his children well, to be faithful to him and to greet him with love. 

Some marriages break down, and the couple ends up living separately or barely speaking to each other. But still, they are bound by these promises; and a woman can go to the Osirian state if her husband isn't providing for her family, and get money drawn out of his bank account if he has one, and get him prevented from remarrying. 

Because of all this, it's actually very rare, for even a girl-child to be left outside to die of exposure when she's born. You marry someone who can provide for your children, and then your children don't starve; that is the whole promise, here, that if you refrain from recklessly having sex without the safety of marriage then you won't have to watch your children starve.

In Avistan they don't do any of that very much. Some girls will have sex with you even when you haven't married them. Because some girls can do that, no girls can hold out for a lifelong promise to provide for them; why would a man offer them that, when he could just go have sex with all the girls who'll offer it for free? No one would get married, so they made a sort of fake marriage that you can break at any time, and they all do that. Women are, in a sense, freer. They aren't chaperoned. Because no man will provide from them, it's more important for their families to figure out how they'll provide for themselves, so more of them are financially independent, though also many, many more of them starve, or are killed by a man they trusted and shouldn't have, or die of an abortion. Many of them feel that there's something wrong, something missing, that things shouldn't be like this, but those ones simply don't lie with anyone at all; they can't find any men who'd be worth trusting. 

Our society demands virtue of men and virtue of women, and constrains them so that they can't do whatever they like but they won't go hungry. Avistan demands no virtue of anyone, and they do as they like, and they kill the babies that result and then they go to Hell, or Abaddon, or the Abyss, and it just doesn't sound like a very good trade, really. If you say the wrong things about women's liberation people think you're proposing they raise their girls into Avistani whores -- by which I don't even mean they pay for sex, just that they offer it outside of marriage -- and they'll hate that idea and stop listening to you."

"So, in Osirion, most women will only lie with a man if he's married her. There are prostitutes, they're not illegal, but there's not many, and you certainly can't bring them to parties, and they're not a very appealing substitute for a long-term romantic relationship. So if a man wants a serious relationship, and regular access to a woman's bed, he'd better make himself a good candidate for marriage and then go persuade someone to marry him. 

Marriage is a lifelong commitment. A man promises to provide for his wife and for any children she bears him, to pay for treatment if she's sick within whatever his abilities are, to provide her with a home and protect her and her children from danger, and to greet her with love. In return, a woman promises to obey her husband, to steward his money wisely and raise his children well, to be faithful to him and to greet him with love. 

Some marriages break down, and the couple ends up living separately or barely speaking to each other. But still, they are bound by these promises; and a woman can go to the Osirian state if her husband isn't providing for her family, and get money drawn out of his bank account if he has one, and get him prevented from remarrying. 

Because of all this, it's actually very rare, for even a girl-child to be left outside to die of exposure when she's born. You marry someone who can provide for your children, and then your children don't starve; that is the whole promise, here, that if you refrain from recklessly having sex without the safety of marriage then you won't have to watch your children starve.

In Avistan they don't do any of that very much. Some girls will have sex with you even when you haven't married them. Because some girls can do that, no girls can hold out for a lifelong promise to provide for them; why would a man offer them that, when he could just go have sex with all the girls who'll offer it for free? No one would get married, so they made a sort of fake marriage that you can break at any time, and they all do that. Women are, in a sense, freer. They aren't chaperoned. Because no man will provide for them, it's more important for their families to figure out how they'll provide for themselves, so more of them are financially independent, though also many, many more of them starve, or are killed by a man they trusted and shouldn't have, or die of an abortion. Many of them feel that there's something wrong, something missing, that things shouldn't be like this, but those ones simply don't lie with anyone at all; they can't find any men who'd be worth trusting. 

Our society demands virtue of men and virtue of women, and constrains them so that they can't do whatever they like but they won't go hungry. Avistan demands no virtue of anyone, and they do as they like, and they kill the babies that result and then they go to Hell, or Abaddon, or the Abyss, and it just doesn't sound like a very good trade, really. If you say the wrong things about women's liberation people think you're proposing they raise their girls into Avistani whores -- by which I don't even mean they pay for sex, just that they offer it outside of marriage -- and they'll hate that idea and stop listening to you."