E. Wardlaw Best, "Women Are Divided Into Two Sets"
From the Article "Our Troops in India," The Adult, vol. 1, 1897-1898, p. 30.

As a woman, I am often amazaed that women should have allowed a sex which has from time immemorial claimed to be "morally inferior," and claimed it with pride, to arrange all moral, or so-called moral, laws between the sexes.  In England, what voice has the female portion of the community in these sexual arrangements, which are arbitrarily managed by two large bodies of men, calling themselves by the names of Church and State.  Nowhere is this shown more outrageously than in the Indian Cantonment Acts (C.D. Acts, Women) which, in plain English, are Acts for serving up a certain number of women, ticketed and certified, for sexual use of our soldiers, these women having to submit to the brutal embraces of as many men as desire them, at any time that may be convenient to these men, a private paying the sum of four annas and a sergeant one rupee.   This infamous arrangement is the work of the State -- an assemblage of men -- a work that practically asserts that men must have intercourse with the opposite sexl whilst the same State upholds laws in direct contradiction for a sex not represented on its body, keeping thousands of women in enforced celibacy ...

The whole subject is disgraceful in the extreme, and our marriage system is at the root of the whole matter.  Women are divided into two sets, trained to detest each other; sets whose interests are diametrically opposed.  The prostitute, the backleg of the marriage system; while marriage, on the other hand, is held up as the market price of women.  These sets are kept apart -- by interest, and by the man who has created that interest.  The one set used as a public harem by men, whilst the second set is starved of its natural sexual rights, excepting those chosen in marriage by the man for breeding purposes, to produce a family which is to belong primarily to him, and whose mother is to be kept handy for his sexual desires.  This is the plain truth.  Those not chosen, or who refuse to be used under this system, or to help to degrade their sex, are sexually starved, whilst their unfortunate sisters of the public harem are so disgusted and replete with the horrible life they lead, that suicide is common amongst them.  Other women just manage to hang, like Mahomed's coffin, between the two principal sets, and lead, as best they can, something resembling a free life.  The Church, meanwhile, continues to prate of "sin"; the State to oppress women; and the medical priesthood to reap a rich harvest.

Contained in Eleanor S. Riemer and John C. Fout, eds., European Women: A Documentary History, 1789-1945, (New York: Schocken Books, 1980), pp. 229-230.