Men’s lack of respect for the female gender justified their self-indulgent sexual behaviors. For instance, in Thomas Dekker’s The Honest Whore, Bellafront protests, “Men hunt to get the flesh, but care not for’t…And even of such base use do men make whores” [9]. Bellafront objects to the idea that men believe they are entitled to women, so they enchant desperate women only to use them for their own pleasure and then deem them repulsive. However, it is the men and the sex they require that makes women unchaste. Gail Kern Paster describes how a woman becomes “corrupted” after having sex with a man in her book The Body Embarrassed. Paster writes, “…once her privities are widened, by whatever thing it might be, she will piss like a corrupted woman and will have lost this beautiful mark of maidenhood …” [25]. Men tainted pure women by having sex with them to suffice their own pleasures; thus, they cared little about the women besides whether they were pure or not, and once a male has taken a woman’s purity from her, he finds no more use for her.

However, some men used a woman’s body and sexuality to benefit them financially as opposed to satisfying their pleasures. Robert Greene’s “A Notable Discovery of Cozenage” depicts crossbiting men who fail in other trades and thus, “used the benefit of their wives or friends to the cross-biting of such as lust after their filthy enormities” [14]. In other words, men found themselves selling their wives as prostitutes to make money. In Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Allwit enjoys financial stability by prostituting his wife to Sir Walter. He reveals his appreciation for such a trade, “Oh two miraculous blessings; ‘tis the knight/ Hath took that labour all out of my hands;/ I may sit still and play; he’s jealous of me--/ Watches her steps, sets spies—I live at ease;/ He has both cost and torment…” [22]. Allwit’s wife is considered a whore for having sex with Sir Walter; however, she is not adulterous because of her own desires, rather she is submitting herself to another man to benefit her husband. Thus, men are the corrupt ones who use the female body to satisfy their desires and needs either sexually or financially.

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