The whole story of the comfort women, the system of forced sexual slavery, the medical experiments of Unit 731, is not something that is in the US psyche. That is changing because many books are coming out.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.
In traditional societies, we have a long legacy of men controlling the body and mind of women. Such societies have valorised motherhood and fabricated concepts like chastity. Women have been the victims of these notions for thousands of years.
When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.
I said I thought female labour of the sort exacted from these slaves, and corporal chastisement such as they endure, must be abhorrent to any manly or humane man.
The middle of 'America's Women' is about the Civil War, and how women, black and white, confronted slavery and abolition. As in every other period of crisis, the rules of sexual decorum were suspended due to emergency.
Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not with any theory of it.
I am amazed at the facility with which some men follow in the wake of slavery.
It is very frightening to see a resurgence of the old mores, or lack thereof, regarding women's rights to their own bodies.
Women were once considered chattel, and slavery was regarded as sanctioned in the Bible. However, western society grew to recognize that neither was just.
This is the fantasy of every woman - to hold at our feet servile and tame slaves, like in Roman times. And the worse we treat them, the more passionate they become.