I was gasping from the beating. My body stung. But I could not, for the moment, take my eyes from the exquisite mark, the brand, in the girl's thigh. It was clear upon her, and beautiful. She wore it in her very flesh. Lola was clearly, decisively and beautifully marked. Anyone who looked upon that mark would know what she was, a female slave. I looked to the thigh of Tela. That same mark, lovely and identical, was burned into her thigh. She, too, was well marked as a female slave.

Suddenly Lola struck me in the belly with her quirt, a vicious, lashing blow. Tela, too, then, hit me with her quirt, though on the left shoulder. I cried out with misery. I looked up, puzzled, at my mistress.

"You looked upon their brands," said the Lady Gina to me. "Do not forget you are only a slave, Jason."

Lola jerked on the chain leash and thrust her quirt under my chin, pressing upwards. I stood. She tapped me on the belly and at the small of the back. I stood straight, frightened.

"Look upon the slaves," commanded the Lady Gina. "See their ankles, their legs, the sweetness of their bellies, the loveliness of their breasts, the beauty of their shoulders, their throats and faces, their hair."

"Yes, Mistress," I said. The hair of slave girls is commonly worn long and loose, unbound. The hair of both Lola and Tela was long, falling well to the small of their backs.

"They are desirable, aren't they?" asked the Lady Gina.

"Yes, Mistress," I said, tensing myself.

"You would like to own them, wouldn't you?" asked the Lady Gina.

"Yes, Mistress," I said, clenching my body against the blow or blows to come.

Then Lola, at a sign from the Lady Gina, struck me with the quirt.

"I am confused, Mistress," I cried. "I do not know what to do! Why are you doing this to me?"

"It is not different from what is done on Earth," she said. "Only there, except for children who can be, and often are, physically abused, the whips are social and verbal"

I looked at her with horror.

"It is the type of conditioning to which a male of Earth is almost certain to have been exposed," she said. "Would you like me now to remove your manacles and give you one of the girls for an hour or so, for your pleasure?" she asked.

"No," I said, honestly, shrinking back.

"Lola?" she asked. "Or Tela?"

"No," I said. "No, Mistress!"

"Suppose that I ordered you to perform with one of them, for my interest?" she asked.

I looked at her, terrified. "I could not do so, Mistress," I said

"A few minutes ago," she said, "you could have used them well."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"And now?" she asked.

"Not now," I said. "Not now."

"I am teaching you, as men of Earth are taught," she said, "to fear and suppress your sexuality. The process is simple. Tantalize and punish. Tantalize and punish. Soon, by natural psychological linkages, an association will be formed between sexuality and punishment. You will come to fear your sexual feelings, as being precursors to pain, physical or mental. This will induce anxiety in sexual situations and impair sexual effectiveness. In children, of course, the punishments are commonly forgotten, at least on conscious levels. Inexplicable anxieties, however, often remain. These anxieties, and the rules that seem associated with them, pertaining to the suppression and inhibition of sexuality, must, of course, by thinking organisms, be rationalized. An entire structure of myths is then raised to protect the individual from the insight that he was, long ago, when defenseless, mutilated and crippled. You are familiar with the nature of such myths, such superstructures and defense mechanisms. They are many and varied. These range from the praising of an idiotic celibacy in the interests of a presumably nonexistent spirit to the genres of dirty jokes and stories, in which a vengeance is taken on the thwarted sexuality by trying to make it appear small and dirty. Between these two madnesses is a variety of more dangerous antisexisms, more pernicious because subtler, recrudescent Puritanisms masking themselves under the garbage of trigger rhetorics, the usage of such expressions as 'persons' and such, designed to suppress thought and enforce social conformity."

"But what would be the point of all this madness and cruelty?" I asked.

"Why do the ugly disparage beauty?" she asked. "Why do the weak belittle strength?"

"I do not understand," I said.

"Masculinity in the male," she said, "is closely allied with sexuality. Masculinity may be best attacked by an attack on male sexuality, and the more pervasive and pernicious it is the better. Men are the natural masters. This is obvious in the study of primate biology. Thus the male must be hobbled, broken and crippled. He must be, as a male, destroyed. Women can then assume their place as his equal, or superior."

"Why do you hate men so?" I asked

"I am not one of them," she said.

"Why do you not carry your cause outside the pens?" I asked.

She laughed. "I am not a fool," she said. "Do you think I want to be branded with a hot iron? Do you think I want to be put in a steel collar and thrown naked to the feet of men beneath their whips? No, my dear Jason, I do not wish that. Those are not men of Earth up there, who will consider the arguments for their own castration with reflective care. Those are Gorean men up there."

"You are afraid of them," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I am afraid of them."

I wished that I was such a man.

"You are then," I said, "trying to make me fear my sexual feelings that I will suppress them, and with them my manhood."

"It is the best way we know," she said, "to reduce a male's effectiveness in all socially competitive situations. He is then crippled, of course, not only sexually, but, often, in many other ways, too. When his sexuality does not give him spine he becomes timid and manipulable. He is then useful to ambitious women who, at another time, might scarcely have dared to speak to him."

"What is the true point of depriving men of their sexuality?" I asked.

"Is it not obvious?" she asked. "It is to make them slaves."

"Can biology be so perfectly eradicated?" I asked.

"Not with mere conditioning techniques," she said, "There is more to be hoped for, eventually, on your world, with punishing implants, chemical alterations, the castration of unsuitable male infants, hormone injections, sex control, genetic engineering, and such. It should not be difficult, with power in the hands of women, presumably an inevitable eventuality in your type of democracy, to bring about the success of these programs."

"Why, then," I asked, "do you not wish to go to Earth and take up your abode there?"

"I am not insane," she said.

"Do you not, truly, wish for the success of such hideous programs?" I asked.

"No," she said, "for, for all practical purposes, it would be the end of the human race."

"You look then," I asked, "beyond your own selfish interests?"

"I cannot help myself," she said. "There is in me left a little bit of the human being."

"I do not think Earth will succumb to such a nightmare as you have outlined," I said.

"It is already on its way to doing so," she said. "Can you not see the signs?"

"Men, and women, will prevent it," I said.

"Earthings," she said, "are manipulated organisms, helpless in the flow of social forces, slobbering to slogans and rhetoric. They will be the first to celebrate their own downfall. They will not discover what has been done to them until it is too late."

"I hope that you are wrong," I said.

She shrugged. "Perhaps I am wrong," she said. "Let us hope so."

"More likely than your scenario for the future," I said, "would be times of great conflict and tumult, the precipitation of horrifying and vast wars."