Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the ways in which women's sexual and reproductive capabilities have been regarded as societal and patriarchal property and not as the possessions of the individual woman. It examines the centuries-old culture of oppression that women have suffered even as that suffering has been but a footnote to history. The book discusses the sexual subjugation of women as it exists in a rape culture, rape being a universal in all societies. It addresses the so-called sexual freedom as it continues to exploit women and finally the LGBTQ movement as it has ironically drawn from the feminist movement and yet rejected the feminine as inferior. The book explains issues of motherhood, again not from the perspective of the child, but from the subjective experience of the mother as she makes decisions about adoption and remaining childfree.