"The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries. ...The same invidious distinction adds force to the current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of women, minors, and inferiors. ...The greater abstinence of women is in some part due to an imperative conventionality... strongest where the patriarchal tradition—the tradition that the woman is a chattel—has retained its hold in greatest vigor."
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p.70-71
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class
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The Theory of the Leisure Class
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