Bastard Children--A Sexist Assumption?

My boyfriend, Danny, recently finished a book about European sexualities from 1400-1800. From it, he discovered that much like the Aristotelian concept of women as the reverse of men (who are considered the only sex), women are the would be, should be bodies of men who probably didn't develop properly. With this in mind, let me turn to this morning's sermon.

Reverend Richard discussed the four weeks of advent, describing them as such: Week One, the End Times; Weeks Two and Three, John the Baptist; and Week Four, Mary. Of Mary he focused on the difficulty of her accepting a child as an unmarried woman (I call her a woman because she would have probably been considered such at that time). He went on to interpret her experiences as an "unwed, pregnant girl" with a future, "illegitimate child."

I thought this interpretation interesting, and culturally (for us) appropriate, though I do not think the problem for Mary would have been a modern judgment of unwed pregnancy, but a different (though maybe similar, but probably for different reasons)dilemma. Maybe Mary did not suffer the Aristotelian understanding of her sex, but I do believe later Christians (and others) did, and I think that understanding created the idea of the bastard child, a child who, only born of a woman, a nothing but an empty vessel which to carry children, a child whose acceptance and identity is based solely upon a family (father's) name, a father's blood, a father's line (though that an abandoned, pregnant woman only became so because of some kind of "father" goes neglected).

That Aristotelian understanding of women seems out of place in our culture; no, women and men are not treated equally, woman are violently and often abused, etc., and there are some communities that don't think of women as much other than child bearers, but there does seem to be a contemporary social "acceptance," or at least ideal, of women as "people, like men." Why then does the stigma attached to unwed, pregnant women (usually younger women or "girls") persist? Why the shame, when these children are born of "equal" women? Perhaps we are not still thought of as "equal" in these regards; but why?