The religious community is even more demeaning toward women who refuse marriage and take religious orders. Buddhist classics describe such women as "like dead dogs or dead snakes, filthy and rotting." During the Qing Dynasty, in order to pre-empt the alleged danger of licentiousness among young nuns, it was decreed that women could only join religious orders after age 40.
宗教界對於拒婚的出家女尼，更是多所貶抑，佛教經典形容女人「如死狗死蛇，穢惡而壞爛」；清朝時為了防止出家女性情慾流弊，規定女子要四十歲以上才能出家。