"Let us hope that it is not true. Or, if it is true, that it does not become generally known."

So spake the wife of the Bishop of Winchester, on hearing of Darwin's theory of evolution.  And so speaking, she spake not only for the privileged and learned classes of Victorian England, but, more generally, for all women everywhere, in every age, about the "parameters" (as they are called in these latter, darkening, pseudo-mathematical days) of permissible candor upon matters regarding women, or things likely to be understood by women.  There are, in fact, a number of things about 'the Sex,'  in respect of both their physical and their moral natures, which men are not supposed to know; or which, if they know them, they are supposed to ignore; or, if they lack the delicacy to ignore them, they must not speak of them; or, if they speak of them, they must on no account be appalled or disgusted by them, or be contemptuous or derisive of them:

1.   The first item in this Feminarum Arcanum Expurgatorium, concerning the moral character (or the lack thereof) of women, is the fact of the mere existence of the Arcanum.  Few women are as candid, or as unconscious, as the Bishopess of Winchester even to hint at its existence. But note the practised assurance of her Ladyship's (Grace's?) proposal of pious mendacity: She was used to lying, and had no regard whatsoever for the Truth as such.  Now, however funny we may think that, it gives one pause to realize that no one, then or since, male or female, has seriously thought that it redounded to her discredit. 

2.  In further elucidation of the "character" of women, I quote from an article entitled "Role Playing" by one Sarah Pierce in the online magazine hitched, which, according to its masthead, "entertains, educates & inspires marriages":  

"What most people don't realize is that they engage in some sort of role-play every time they have sex...Whether you admit it or not, you've fantasized at one point or another while in the middle of sex, whether it's about another person or that you yourself are experiencing a different situation than what's really going on...."

I am reminded of the time when taking an Italian Culture class in Italy, taught by a nice young Italian woman with kitten-sized clumps of hair in her armpits, I being simply incredulous that people so civilized as the Northern Italians I dealt with daily were in any serious sense superstitious, was assured that I "must have" at least once in my life--perhaps before an important test--"purchased a rabbit's foot, or some such charm, in order to avert bad fortune, or to insure good fortune."  "No," I said, "Mai."  Plainly, she didn't believe me.   

3.  In point of blunt physical fact, women stink of piss, owing to the blubbery, unwashable apparatus provided them by nature for the excretion of urine.  Heterosexual men are sexually aroused by and attracted to this pheromonal odor, which women's perfumes, especially those containing musk or civet, are designed both to conceal and to enhance; in the same manner that lemon-juice both mitigates and enhances the taste of fish, and that the incense used in the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Rite both conceals and to a degree resembles the smell of insanitary peasants and the animal dung that clings to them.   The extent to which heterosexual men are consciously aware of  the urinous substantiation of the "smell of a woman," which so entices them is, perhaps, arguable; but that it is urinous has been verified in clinical tests done the last few years, notably in Sweden, exposing gay and straight men and women to EST, "found in women's urine," and to AND found in men's sweat.  According to one of the women subjects, "EST smells like my sister's old used tampon."