Et quando natura non potest perducere ad maiorem
perfectionem, inducit ad minorem, sicut quando non potest
facere masculum, facit feminam, quae est "mas occasionatus"
[And when Nature cannot attain the greatest perfection,
it brings forth a lesser; just as when it is not able to produce
the masculine, it produces the feminine, which is a defective
male].

-- Thomas Acquinas, Summa theologica

The reason is that the female is as it were a deformed male;
and the menstrual discharge is semen, though in an impure
condition; i.e., it lacks one constituent, and one only, the
principle of soul.

-- Aristotle, Generation of Animals

The Oneida Community presented a social alternative that com-
prised a unique religious position, the abolition of the family, free
sexual association, birth control, eugenics, and the abolition of
private property. As the elements of a voluntary society, all these changes
in the social structure involved a reconsideration of the position and
rights of women both as sexual and as social beings. Most contemporary
observers concurred in the belief that the power and liberty of women
had been greatly expanded at Oneida, but they differed as to whether
such changes had increased the felicity of either the society or the women
themselves. The indefatigable English traveler William Hepworth Dixon,
for instance, who vacillated between admiration for the social system of
the community and disgust with their sexual practices, believed that "the

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