I guess it comes down to trust in the end - a successful prosecution is unlikely unless the person on the receiving end chooses to go with it, and it's very much not in society's interest to allow people to forfeit such protections.
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The emergence of legal slavery
- Thread starter connoisseurs
- Start date
jacksjg89
PROCRASTINATOR
If you want to go alternate though, there’s something fun to think about.
foreignpolicy.com
so imagine if you will the early 70’s. Mao offers to send 10 millions Chinese Women he doesn’t want to feed to the United States, and Kissinger instead accepts. Initially the adoption fee is $15,000 (current inflation), but finding the buying slow they drop it down to 10, then five, until you can buy a 24 year old former university student for $2,000. The women volunteer, particularly the young ones who don’t feel valued in Chinese society and are also starving, and they are shipped over at insane speed, during Watergate, so that the feds are not prepared to vet them for spies and sabateurs. So many American households have a new member that is there to make things easier. They are to be treated as employees and as family, and after all isn’t that what a slave is?
(for the record, I don’t think that Chinese or East Asian women are naturally submissive and definitely not the target audience for a story like this. It’s a stereotype unless you use it in literature. Then it’s an archetype, which sounds better.)
Mao offered Kissinger 10 million Chinese women
USAToday's "OnDeadline" blog finds some choice morsels from newly released transcripts of Henry Kissinger's 1973 meeting with Mao:You know, China is a very poor country,"…
foreignpolicy.com
so imagine if you will the early 70’s. Mao offers to send 10 millions Chinese Women he doesn’t want to feed to the United States, and Kissinger instead accepts. Initially the adoption fee is $15,000 (current inflation), but finding the buying slow they drop it down to 10, then five, until you can buy a 24 year old former university student for $2,000. The women volunteer, particularly the young ones who don’t feel valued in Chinese society and are also starving, and they are shipped over at insane speed, during Watergate, so that the feds are not prepared to vet them for spies and sabateurs. So many American households have a new member that is there to make things easier. They are to be treated as employees and as family, and after all isn’t that what a slave is?
(for the record, I don’t think that Chinese or East Asian women are naturally submissive and definitely not the target audience for a story like this. It’s a stereotype unless you use it in literature. Then it’s an archetype, which sounds better.)
I don't know much about them, but I understand there were settlements in Argentina and Chile where groups of ex-Nazis who'd made it across there after WW II ran things pretty much as they thought they should be run - which included treating their women and kids pretty much as slaves - and no-one, least of all the governments of those countries, interfered for many years.
Refugees are in great danger of ending up as slaves, there've been a good many cases in Europe, including UK, where people who thought they were coming to peace and freedom found the gangsters who'd got them there simply handed them over - the men to gang-masters supplying 'no questions asked' labour on industrialised farms, the women to pimps as sex-slaves.
Only a few 'naturally' so, I dare say, just as among western women,
but (sweeping generalisation) they are brought up to be submissive,
but also to be tough, and to put up with hardship and harsh treatment
without whingeing.
connoisseurs
Senator
Barb, have you read that?!
Well that's another "benefit" of the idea - the government cutting out the criminals' market and running (and profiting) from the whole business itself. Why should all that lucre go into some gang leader's pocket when it could
(Then again that might be my leftist showing - under the current government, the whole thing would surely be farmed out to private firms n the name of "growing the economy" with only an understaffed Department of Human Chattels to "oversee" them.)
jacksjg89
PROCRASTINATOR
the gangsters would switch from the business of owning slaves to freeing slaves who’s family paid them. Go from villains to outlaw folk heroes.
jacksjg89
PROCRASTINATOR
Do you think it won’t be too politically charged to have a discussion of ethnicity and sexuality on the forum? Tempers seem to flare up with politics is discussed, and we have a diverse array of perspectives here, but I feel like it goes un-discussed.
Free them and send them where? They wouldn't have come to a coountry that enslaved them if there were better options, after all.
jacksjg89
PROCRASTINATOR
Neverland. The Peter Pan one. Not the other one.
It's a sensitive topic, I agree, and not easy to discuss without it becoming political (especially in the USA I think),
but we ought to be able to talk about such matters without being offensive or taking offence -
what sorts of questions are you wanting to raise?
windar
Teller of Tales
I recall that I mentioned on another thread the fact that the vast majority of "victims" (for lack of a better term) depicted on CF, whether in stories or art, are white. Certainly, the Roman world included many black and brown people and I'm sure they were crucified in proportionate numbers. And of course plenty of African slaves were flogged throughout the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade. Yet, there are surprisingly few stories set in slave times in the US or the Caribbean or Brazil. I wrote one "Visiting the Jackson Plantation" and I can't think of many others.
I believe this is less for political reasons than because the vast majority of the members are white and perhaps don't identify as easily with characters of other races. But then, many male writers, myself included, write about female victims. I have generally tried to put characters of a variety of ethnic backgrounds in my stories, though they are generally US born and raised and culturally American. For what it's worth, our Chinese members seem generally to depict Chinese victims.
I do frequent a few other sites and I would say the same is true there also.
I don't think that makes us or the site racist. Perhaps just comfortable closer to home and maybe in need of thinking about branching out a bit.
Melissa's 'Hartley House' is another:
Hartley House
Rose and Hyacinth Marcus Godbehere was one of the overseers on the Hartley House Plantation. He always considered himself to be a good Christian and believed in the “welfare” of the slaves under him..especially the female ones. On a Sunday morning before Church he liked to inspect the daughters...
www.cruxforums.com
Yes, it's a point I too raised a long time ago, when I was first active here -
along with the observation that the executioners/ Flagellators/ Torturers
are so often portrayed as non-white, especially Arabic, or otherwise stereotyped Muslims,
or else Black - something which troubles me rather more than the whiteness of the victims.
Indeed, who gets villainised can be more troublesome than who gets victimised in this sort of situation. Sometimes it depends on the "feel" you're going for, but still...
(The scenario I described above would likely see mostly Middle Eastern slaves to mostly white Europeans - dunno if that's better, per se.)
old slave
FELIS RESPICIENS
I try to write stories a little different to the mainstream, and in Angela And The Savages the two main 'victims' are one white and one black girl. The latter becoming the dominant one of the pair.
I wondered if the racial card would provoke any response, but all was quiet on that front.
I suspect there is some lingering guilt among those of us living in slave-trading and slave=owning countries about depicting ex-African slaves. In the UK we are constantly reminded of the wealth created from those two activities, with the subtle message that it is tainted, and so we should never get any pleasure, even artistically, depicting them.
markus
Tribune
I have always been an anti-racist. I also drew some black women in my comics (as Silvio Dante did) but it is sure that FOR ME to draw a dark skin is more difficult (mainly for the expressions of the faces) Also I like women with VERY light skin. ...and I draw mainly for my pleasure.
connoisseurs
Senator
I think everyone of us is societal and cultural shaped a bit different. So, the skin color has varying meaning and importance. Where slave-owning countries may have lingering guilt about black people, in Germany it is about jewish people. You have to steadily proof every word about them, to not be seen as a Nazi.
When torturer, executioner are not depicted as Caucasian, you can read two different signification behind it. One, that it is a revenge on history, changed parts, the other is the frame in which the pic/story is made. In Africa it would be normal that a torturer is black or arabic. If you want, you could also say that not only caucasoid, but all people are capable of doing evil things (a conclusion, that while pessimistic, is absolutely anti-racist).
When torturer, executioner are not depicted as Caucasian, you can read two different signification behind it. One, that it is a revenge on history, changed parts, the other is the frame in which the pic/story is made. In Africa it would be normal that a torturer is black or arabic. If you want, you could also say that not only caucasoid, but all people are capable of doing evil things (a conclusion, that while pessimistic, is absolutely anti-racist).
jacksjg89
PROCRASTINATOR
I was a fan of “Visiting Jackson Plantation”, their you had the main heroine being a white woman who was given away in a card game. And I thought it was interesting how you gave power to the black slaves to administer punishment to her, which in a strange way used race to put the girl on the lowest rung of the totem pole.
I don’t like having black female victims in my stories, but because they are not aesthetic victims for me. Where as whites and Asian women might have been brought up to be dutiful daughters and become dutiful wives, I think Africans, and Latinos, are raised to be mothers and protectors, to be strong and authoritative and have responsibilities.
For me, I often find myself focusing on the vulnerable girl, in a story will try to get a victim away from her family, either by making her an orphan or immigrant or runaway. I think their are some people’s that have stronger, more protective family cores than others. This is a guess, and here I’m allowed to be wrongs, but I think in some communities that attraction is based on genes and birth giving, so that woman with wide hips and big breast are attracted to males, and men who seem like they would be strong dads are attractive to females. And I think those of use who fetishize death and institutionalized slavery don’t. We tend to write our girls small and skinny, and for me, it’s what I’m attracted to. And it is also about finding the girl who doesn’t feel valued, and in a lot of East Asian societies, particularly the ones trying to cut back on their birthdate, Their daughters aren’t valued as highly.
I’m sorry to say this, but I love using Nazi’s as villains, because in terms of their organization and cruelty, (not to rub it in) they feel like the closest thing to the Ancient Romans in recent memory, with the persecuted Jews fulfilling the role as persecuted Christians.
connoisseurs
Senator
Don´t trouble yourself on my account. I don´t believe in hereditary sin and don´t feel personally responsible for things my ancestors have done. As the Nazis have reached a sad height in massmurder and inhumanly, they are perfectly suitable as villains.
Whereas I, as a Jew, would find the idea of Nazis in my fetish stories way too uncomfortable. Likewise I can go with a lot of execution methods, but the gas chamber isn't one of them.
Interesting theories on different ways of raisng women there - can't comment on their accuracy, but it has helped make clear that I don't have much of a particular preference for a girl's race, build, family status or personality.