[toyg]

The disgust is very much in the eye of the beholder, I guess. The reality is that priority n.1 for a woman pre-1960s was to get married and priority n.2 was to bear kids; otherwise, men-dominated society would see her as “useless” and ostracise or abuse her, consider her inferior and unworthy, and effectively condemn her to a life of poverty (unless she had an inheritance to manage). That was the case for centuries, or rather millennia; the further back you go, the more violence was so widespread that a single woman (outside the elites) could not practically defend herself in everyday situations, hence making it basically impossible to have an independent life. Being disgusted by the strategies devised to survive this situation is like being disgusted at animals evolving to escape their predators.

We now see the vestigial remains of this “natural state” in western countries, thanks to the changes brought by mass-industrialization and consumerism (both forces being constantly hungry for bodies, and hence working as Great Levellers between sex, race, age, culture, etc) but it’s still very much present all over the world - the problems in Afghanistan or Pakistan are well-reported, for example, but hardly unique.