ACADEMY GIRL - Book 5: The Graduate

Chapter 16


Amy Cameron

Social Studies 11

Ms. Kenfield -- 4th Period

PURITY ISLAND

I. THE SETTLING OF PURITY ISLAND

Over a century ago, at the height of the Women's Rights Movement, there was widespread resistance to the movement's goals on the part of a sizeable segment of the male population. There were major protests by men at the time of the repeal of the Gender Identification Law, which had required all job seekers to prove that they were male and were therefore legally entitled to seek gainful employment, and the simultaneous passage of legislation making it legal for women to work for pay. These actions by the government had resulted from pressure by large corporations wishing to hire women for their lowest-paying jobs, once they had determined that this arrangement was cheaper for them than buying the women as slaves. Though the actions of the government were approved by a narrow majority of men, based on the reassurance from the leaders of the Women's Rights Movement that the consumption of women as food was not an issue and would continue as always, a large minority of men were opposed to the new laws, for two reasons:

(1) Many men were afraid that they no longer could count on job security, and that a woman would replace them.

(2) A somewhat larger number of men were philosophically opposed to any change in the relationship between the sexes.

Men in the first of these two groups, over a period of years, came to see that women, in that first wave of hiring following the legalization, were being hired for the type of menial tasks that men, in general, didn't want. It took several decades for women in the work force to approach parity with men at higher levels of job-seeking, a period of time sufficiently long that men were able gradually to come to accept women as natural co-workers rather than competitors.

The men in the second category above, however, remained adamant that it was morally and ethically wrong for a woman to be treated as a man. They held that the ancients had always understood that women exist to serve mankind, both as a vessel of new life (reproduction), and in the maintenance of existing life (consumption as food), and that to erase the distinction between men and women was an affront to the ancients and showed callous disregard for many centuries of inherited wisdom. The most vocal members of this category formed a counter-movement of their own, calling it the Purity of Women Movement (PWM), reflecting their conviction that the highest purposes of feminine existence were being tainted by being mixed with masculine values. Though evidence exists that many of the leaders of the PWM had allowed their slaves to wear clothes up until this time, their conservative resistance to a changing world inspired in them a belief that the wearing of clothes by women, enabling them to hide their feminine characteristics, had led directly to the phenomenon of women pretending to be men, in order to gain access to privileges legally denied them, which had been the reason for the passage of the original Gender Identification Law at the outset of the Women's Rights Movement. The PWM consequently declared that the wearing of clothes by women was an unmitigated evil, a primary reason for the disruption of traditional values, a disruption that they deplored. The act of setting women free of slavery, to pursue goals of their own in life, was an even greater evil, to be fought with all of the energy the PWM possessed.

Members of the PWM staged a number of demonstrations in the decade following the changes in the laws governing women's rights. Generally these remained peaceful, though their leaders were occasionally arrested when the demonstrations went beyond the accepted boundaries of orderly assembly.

At last the highest ranking, and most vocal, members of the PWM saw that the battle to maintain their values in a changing world was being lost, and decided that an exodus was in order. One hundred fifteen years ago, after comparing the advantages and disadvantages of various remote areas, eight hundred PWM members (now calling themselves the "Purists"), and their slaves, embarked to establish a permanent settlement on Parmola Island, renaming it Purity Island.

Bereft of its leadership, the remains of the PWM on the mainland, consisting mainly of the movement's less committed members, gradually withered away, and it ceased to operate as an identifiable organization within a decade of the departure of its leaders.

II. GEOGRAPHY OF PURITY ISLAND

Purity Island, about two hundred miles southwest of the continental coast, was created by earthquake activity many thousands of years ago. It is oval in shape, measuring about fifteen miles west to east, and forty miles north to south. Along its center runs a ridge of rocky hills, north to south, reaching about five hundred feet in altitude, with lower lands on either side sloping gently towards the eastern and western shores.

The climate of the island, due to its location just within the global tropical weather zone, is quite warm and very humid, with measureable rainfall nearly every day, heaviest from early spring through late summer. There is an abundance of fruit trees, particularly those bearing what are now called "Purity peaches" -- similar, though not directly related, to ordinary peaches.

Before being settled by the Purists, Parmola Island was known to be the home of a small native population. Little is known about how they lived, except that they were not far removed from a stone-age society. There was little interaction between the natives of the island and the mainland, because the island was not believed to have anything especially valuable in the way of natural resources, so its inhabitants were left alone by our ancestors.

The coming of the Purists was a disaster for the native population, who at first outnumbered the Purists, but were far inferior in firepower. There are no reliable records documenting the battle for control of the island, but evidence today suggests that very few of the natives are left. It is possible that they have been absorbed by, and interbred with, the Purists.

At the time of the settling of the island by the Purists, there was abundant wildlife on the island, but over the first decades of occupation by the Purists, nearly all animals the size of a rabbit or larger were hunted and eaten, along with most of the female human natives, as the Purists had not been able to bring with them a sufficient number of slaves to form a significant part of their diet. However, the immediate establishment of breeding farms soon led to a burgeoning female population, which then became the main source of meat just as the supply of animals was running out.

III. INTERACTIONS OF PURITY ISLAND WITH THE MAINLAND

Early expeditions to meet with the settlers on Purity Island were turned away, usually with heavy casualties, until the settlers' supply of ammunition ran low. At that point, it became possible to talk to the Purists and reassure them that no one on the mainland had any intention of evicting them from the island, challenging them for its control, nor in any way interfering with their way of life -- the mainlanders simply wanted to see whether trade relations could be established. In time, negotiations succeeded in inaugurating a regular trade.

Interestingly, though the Purists' weapons were no longer useable, they never expressed interest in restocking their supply of ammunition -- in the absence of large animals, remaining natives, or any contact with the mainland for other than peaceful purposes, the Purists no longer perceived a need for guns.

Eventually a cycle of trade was established, in which the flow of material from the mainland to the island consisted mainly of metalware associated with the control of slaves (chains, etc.) as well as some more mundane metal tools, spices for food preparation unobtainable on the island, and alcoholic beverages -- especially wine, as the settlers had a taste for fruity beverages that could be consumed in relatively large quantities before inebriation set in. In return, the Purists could offer two things to the mainland besides Purity peaches: (1) Girlskin leather, as the Purists skin most of their women prior to cooking them, a practice that has gradually declined on the mainland over recent decades, and (2) the herb that serves as a source of the fertility drugs used today in mainland breeding farms.

Purity girlskin leather is regarded as having higher quality than any girlskin processed on the mainland. As a result, it is very expensive on the mainland, particularly those pieces of leather with a circular discoloration recognizable as an areola and nipple. Its use in jackets, sofas, and automobile seat covers is a symbol of its owner's wealth, or at least a pretention to it.

The fertility drugs, far superior to those in use before their discovery, seem only to grow, in the form of an herb, on Purity Island, where the Purists found that the natives had been using the drugs, to a limited extent, for centuries. Attempts to grow the herbs on the mainland have failed. Scientists have speculated that an interaction with some burrowing insect native to the island must be necessary for the growth of the herb, similar to the way honeybees pollinate flowers.

The distinction of the island as the sole source of modern fertility drugs will likely continue into the indefinite future. The Onderman Corporation, using its early huge profits from the sale of the drugs to line the pockets of legislators, was able to successfully solicit a government-licensed monopoly on trade with Purity Island, subcontracting for the wine, spice, leather, peach, and slaveware trade while handling the drug trade itself. Since the monopoly was established, no company unaffiliated with Onderman can legally trade with Purity Island, without prior consent from the government. For its own part, Onderman has no intention of establishing a factory for production of the drug on the island, since it is much cheaper for them to have the Purists produce the drug in return for items of relatively little market value than it would be to establish a manufacturing operation of their own on the island.

Aside from trade, the island's only other contact with the mainland consists of occasional visits by teams of mainland anthropologists, who are tolerated as long as they come in small numbers, conduct their studies as unobtrusively as possible, and make no attempt to force values of their own on the settlers. While on the island, members of a study team are targets of suspicion and constant vigilance, but not, in recent years, violence.

The very first such expedition, some fifty years ago, funded by three universities, made the serious error of including among its members a female undergraduate, Sherry Patton, the student of one of the anthropology professors leading the expedition. The settlers did not, at the beginning, realize Miss Patton was a woman, as it did not occur to them that a woman might be seen acting as an equal with men, nor that a woman might be clothed. When, at last, Miss Patton was identified as female, perhaps by her voice, or by the settlers' belated recognition of the shape of breasts under her blouse, the settlers became immediately upset, charged that she was "pretending to be a man," separated her from the men of the university team as she cried out for help, and took her away, detailing a rear guard to fight off the rest of the party when they attempted to follow. The men of the team did eventually manage to advance far enough in pursuit to find the shredded remains of Miss Patton's clothes discarded in a clearing nearby, but were soon forced by angry settlers to leave the island. Since that first team had made very little progress, at that point, in its study of Purity Island settlers and their traditions, their original mistake in including Miss Patton as part of the team was compounded by their assumption that any female "criminal" would, as in mainland society, be quickly executed, and that Miss Patton must therefore be dead. No further search was attempted. In light of current knowledge of Purity society, it is almost certain that Miss Patton, 21 at the time of her capture, spent the next fifteen to twenty years on the island, either as a work slave or a breeding slave (see below) before being eaten. It was twenty years before another team of anthropologists was allowed on the island -- all men, this time.

IV. PURITY ISLAND TODAY

The society of modern day Purity Island is very much modeled on the ideals brought to the island by the founding Purist settlers. It is a purely agricultural economy, operating mainly through a barter system, with limited trade with the mainland as detailed above. Most of the settlement has been on the eastern side of the central mountain ridge (the side of the island that faces the mainland), and there are small towns surrounding the handful of trading posts located at intervals along the eastern shore, which are the only parts of the island visited by mainland traders. Further inland there are small farming cooperatives, each forming a nearly self-sufficient enclave, producing food for itself and skins and herbs to trade for its few remaining necessities. The western half of the island, rarely visited by anthropologists once its culture had been determined to be identical to that on the eastern half (but far less trusting of outsiders), is sparsely populated in comparison with the east, with a small number of farming cooperatives and no known town-like settlements.

All women on the island are slaves, some owned by individual farmers, some collectively owned by a farm coop or a trading post. In keeping with the founding tradition and attitudes handed down by the original PWM settlers, women are not allowed to wear clothing of any form, other than the chains and metal fetters needed to keep them secured in service to their owners. Most slaves are (i) work slaves or (ii) breeding slaves. There is a special category of slaves (iii) called doggirls. With no known exceptions, other than the doggirls, all slaves who are not secured to an immovable object are hobbled by a short chain running between their ankle cuffs, rendering them unable to run, making escape from their masters all but impossible.

(i) Work slaves lead a very strenuous life, most of them involved in farm work, using either bare hands or the most rudimentary of farm implements -- none of them motorized, of course. At night, the work slaves sleep outdoors, usually in groups with chains connecting their collars, the chains circling a tree or similar fixed object. They are not given fertility drugs, but at any moment a number of them may be pregnant. They are expected to continue working in that condition until they give birth. The resulting female babies are raised on breeding farms (see below). The smaller number of male offspring grow up with their fathers.

(ii) The life of a breeding slave, or breeder as they are usually called, involves less work, but is appallingly empty in comparison with modern breeding farm practices on the mainland. On first being selected for breeding duty, a new breeder is secured, stomach down, on a "breeding hill," constructed by burying a five-foot long, foot-thick log under a layer of dirt. The breeder's knees and wrists are held by chains at ground level on either side of the hill, and she is fed, and eliminates her wastes, without being freed from that position, until she is found to be pregnant. The design of the hill holds the breeder's legs spread, with her vagina at a convenient height for a male kneeling behind her. There she is subjected to several attempts at impregnation each day, by breeding farm staff and visiting farmers, until her pregnancy shows, usually within about two months. Following each insemination, a portion of the semen is collected from her vagina and distributed, via swabs, to the vaginas of several non-pregnant breeders who have previously conceived -- the effectiveness of the fertility drugs makes this efficient use of semen practical. Once pregnant, the new breeder is released from the hill and moved to a pen, where she is secured at the collar and ankles by chains sufficiently long to enable her to move to all parts of the pen. Small cradles for the babies occupy most of the space in the pen.

After the breeder has served about fifteen years, giving birth to seventy to a hundred babies, the fertility drugs lose their effectiveness. The breeder is then snuffed, skinned, and cooked. At no time does the breeder leave her pen. Work slaves bring her food to the pen, and clean up her wastes.

Once a breeder throws a litter, she keeps the babies with her in her pen for about the first two years of their lives -- at most two different litters at any one time. The fertility drugs, aided by her own frequent feeding, allow her breasts to keep up with the demands of nursing as many as a dozen babies, while another litter begins growing within her womb. Between eating sufficient food to maintain both milk production and gestation, and nursing the babies, the breeder has no time for anything else, and in any case, there are no other activities available to her.

A number of organizations on the mainland have petitioned the government and the Onderman Corporation to help make the lives of breeders on Purity Island more tolerable. So far these organizations have met with government indifference to a problem outside its jurisdiction, since Purity Island is regarded as an independent state, and with disregard from the corporation, which is resistant to any attempt to alter its profitable relationship with the island. At least one team of anthropologists suggested, to a group of settlers, ways that a breeder's life might be made more comfortable, but their efforts were met with immediate hostility, to the point that the team canceled its research program and left the island immediately.

At age two, the babies are weaned, and are removed to a pen with a near-equal number of ten-year-old girls -- the older girls having reached the age when maternal instincts allow them to act as caregivers for the babies, feeding them until they can feed themselves, teaching them games, nurturing them. None of the girls are chained, but the pen's unclimbable walls, with a single door, locked except when food is brought in or wastes removed, keep them confined. The babies and adolescents remain together in the pen for eight years, at which point the older girls (now 18) are removed from the pen, collared, and chain-hobbled. Some are selected at random to stay on as breeders, and the rest are distributed as work slaves. The group of younger girls in the pen, now ten, are given their own cohort of two-year-olds to care for. What passes for inherited knowledge, whose original source was adult slaves from several generations in the past, is passed down to younger girls by the older ones. Again, anthropological teams have tried suggesting that the offspring of the breeders would benefit from a greater degree of contact with adults, even if it is impractical to approach the level of care given in mainland breeding farms, with their schools staffed by professional teachers and counselors, but any such attempts have been rebuffed.

The newly chained slaves, at 18, have only a rudimentary idea of what will be demanded of them, either physically or sexually, but they quickly learn that unacceptable performance has severe consequences.

The rare males (about one in fifty live births in the breeding farms are male, under the influence of the fertility drugs), at age 2, are taken to a separate facility with adult (slave and male) supervision, given a modest amount of education, and are adopted individually by farmers.

(iii) The remaining class of slaves, doggirls, are the sole example of body modification practiced on the island. The term "doggirl" was coined by anthropologists (the island's inhabitants simply call them "dogs"), to distinguish them from the puppygirls familiar on the mainland. They are selected, at about twelve months in age, from among the babies born at breeding farms (usually the more aggressive babies are chosen), and raised separately from the rest of the slave population, in kennels, where a work slave feeds them for a short time until they can obtain their own food and drink from bowls. Doggirls have none of the sweet-tempered, eager submissiveness of puppygirls -- nor the tail, which is far beyond the surgical capability of the island settlers. They do, like puppygirls, have the standard shortened limbs (arms ending in mid-forearm, legs just above the knee). The original doggirls, raised on the mainland before the Purists left for the island, grew up living with real dogs, believing themselves to be dogs as well. Modern-day doggirls grow up with older doggirls, on whom they model their behavior. Unaware of their humanity, unaware of their potential for communicating by speech, fully-grown doggirls patrol the periphery of the farm or establishment that owns them, growling and barking to warn back slaves who approach too near the boundaries -- usually the warning is enough, but doggirls will attack if necessary. Though they lack some of the abilities of real dogs (including, obviously, dogs' superhuman sense of smell), they are completely loyal to their masters, they can, even on their shortened legs, outrun any full-bodied-but-chain-hobbled slave, and they are superior to real dogs in being able to learn and follow complex commands, despite their underdeveloped language skills. A small farm may have two or three doggirls, a larger one a half-dozen or more. While doggirls have slave collars (in this case, leather) and may occasionally be secured by chains to their collars, or walked by a farmer using a leash, they alone among slavegirls on the island are generally free to move at will. Such is their attachment to, and dependence on, their masters, that no farmer has been known to cite an example of a doggirl running away.

V. THE FUTURE OF PURITY ISLAND

While the inhabitants of Purity Island have clung to their core values for more than a century, it is always possible that the lives of women on the island could someday more closely resemble our own here on the mainland. In our present enlightened society, we often forget that things were not always the way they are now, and that the most long-standing traditions may sometimes give way to new values. We can hope that such a change lies in the future of Purity Island.



Click Here to Go To Chapter 17


Go to Academy Girl Table of Contents page


MAIN STORY PAGE        HOME