If this is the price to be paid for an idea, then let us pay. There is no need of being troubled about it, afraid, or ashamed. This is the time to boldly say, “Yes, I believe in the displacement of this system of injustice by a just one; I believe in the end of starvation, exposure, and the crimes caused by them; I believe in the human soul regnant over all laws which man has made or will make; I believe there is no peace now, and there will never be peace, so long as one rules over another; I believe in the total disintegration and dissolution of the principle and practice of authority; I am an Anarchist, and if for this you condemn me, I stand ready to receive your condemnation.

After schooling in the convent de Cleyre began her intellectual involvement in the strongly anti-clerical freethought movement by lecturing and contributing articles to freethought periodicals. The title of the essay refers not to traffic in women for purposes of prostitution although that is also mentioned but rather to marriage laws that allow men to rape their wives without consequences. She was a colleague of Emma Goldman with whom Voltairine de Cleyre maintained a relationship of respectful disagreement on many issues.

Many of her essays were in the Collected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre publiVoltairine de Cleyred posthumously by Mother Earth in 1914. " She believed that any system was acceptable as long as it did not involve force.