Sexual property, under patriarchy, is what wives are recognized as. Adultery is a crime against sexual property.[1] In the Jewish faith, women were seen as man's sexual property, but equal in comradeship, homemaking and parenthood (e.g. Fiddler on the Roof).

Carole Pateman notes, "The patriarchal construction of sexuality, what it means to be a sexual being, is to possess and to have access to sexual property. . . . In modern patriarchy, masculinity provides the paradigm for sexuality; and sexuality means sexual mastery. The 'individual is a man who makes use of a woman's body (sexual property); the converse is much harder to imagine."[2]

Stanford M. Lyman writes, "A nearly unbounded wrath is sometimes aroused by the appropriation of another's sexual property. Treated in the classic sociological essay by Kingsley Davis as jealousy, this emotional state and its attendant response are also understandable as an angry reaction to lost self-esteem. . . . Of all the types of properties over which dominion is sought, sexual property seems to evoke the most intimate connection to self-worth. The bonds of love or affection express not only one's own feelings toward the other, but also an implicit reciprocal image of these feelings toward oneself. . . . Sexual property above all others is likely to engender vanity and pride in, and satisfy a fundamental need of, its possessor. Accordingly, an attack on one's sexual property usually cuts a deep wound in one's self-esteem. . . . A jealous regard for one's own dearly purchased prize in the marketplace of love may arouse the most intense fears, deepest insecurities, and ultimately his most ferocious wrath as a threatened possessor fights to preserve his pride, passion, and property. And precisely because jealousy arises out of the most significant elements of self-esteem, its fury might know no bounds."[3]

Thus, it should come as no surprise that when wives refuse to fulfill their proper roles as sexual property, their husbands sometimes get angry, as she is essentially appropriating herself.