Excerpt from my novella, “The Wagon Train Master”

From the journal of Angus McLeod, M.D.:

I was sorry for women. Through history, most had been able to survive only by submitting to men’s sexual desires.

 Some women rented their bodies: the prostitutes. Some leased themselves: the mistresses. Some sold themselves into what for many was slavery: the wives, who relinquished all rights to their bodies, labor, and property. Their owners’ names were slapped on them. Marriage, the choice most men respected, was preferred by most women because their only alternatives were even worse.

A few women could avoid surrendering themselves to men by becoming vestal virgins or nuns–– thus depriving themselves for life of one of mankind’s greatest joys.

 A few women with the aptitude and opportunity could support themselves in an enterprise, and choose not to be male property.

 Saddest, for women, sexual relations often meant excruciating pain nine months later, inevitably followed by one of three hard fates: death in childbirth, the sorrow of losing a child, or years of responsibility for a helpless dependent.

 Too many men saw seduction as a game, and rape as a sport.