The Slave Market

[KageKamen]

In my case, I'm always excited by the idea of being such an undistinguished slave girl in a group. Things like my individual identity, personality, preferences do not matter as I'm just a property which can be graded and displayed until some one comes to inspect and purchase me off the shelf like I was some bottole of milk.

I suppose it's mainly people with such a fantasy as mine who may find that particular rendering attractive. Some people like to be treated as someone special while others may want the exact opposite. And I guess that's part of the fun with such fantasies.

Indeed - our current society is based around large amounts of identical, interchangeable products after all, and while it might not be possible to standardise slaves as much as sofas or stereos, many are close enough to the same for most purposes, with only minor cosmetic and functional varations.

 

[willowfall]

Again, thank you for your answer. I wanted to get into the mind of a recently captured girl on one of these auction blocks. Are they still in a state of shock, or have they become accustomed to being displayed naked? How much do they struggle with their new situation? That sort of thing.

Well I think I can partially answer that question because I do vividly remember the first time I was paraded topless at our BDSM club.

Now I am an exhibitionist so when I learned the club rules (slaves have to be collared, topless and leashed) I was like no big deal, I've been naked in front of people before.

But then suddenly, as we were leaving the coat check area (where the slaves leave their street cloths) I suddenly was aware I had never been naked in front of STRANGERS before.

I was not ready for that and became acutely aware of all the things I thought weren't "perfect" with my body. I wanted to say no way and back out but then the athlete in me took over and I held my head up high and marched in there. However when I realized that some of the Masters\Mistresses were regarding me as if they were inspecting a horse for sale I became very self-conscious.

And I was there voluntarily.

Now let's move that to a society where public nudity was not uncommon. I don't think the women would have been super shocked by being displayed nude and they all came from societies were slaves (and slave sales) were fairly common place so they were familiar with that. I think their shock would have been more, 'This can't be happening to me' and 'I'm NOT a slave'.

Add to that the fact that they have been torn from their homes and family (in a violent manner) then I think the shock and unreality of the situation is rather numbing and terrifying. I also suspect that if they weren't virgins when captured at least some of them had already been raped before they got to the block. Plus punishment for resistance would have made them rather resigned to their lot.

All this is a guess based on how I would feel in that situation as I imagine it to be.

And yes I was sold once at the club but that was only overnight not for a lifetime.

kisses

willowfall

 

[Zungur]

Well, if we are talking about reality, you should be aware that in mos thistorical societies that practised slavery (and there is an enormously wide field coveres by this term) the sexual aspect that is so prominent for us did not really play a major role.

Slavery was about economy and workers you don't have to pay.
Naturally attractive slaves were used by their owners but this was rather a by product of slavery and, as in the case of ancient Rome, it was seen as tolerable or unavoidable, but it was very bad manners to do it openly.

The noble families during the republican period even tried to hold up the fiction that they didn't buy (household) slaves, but that they just were inherited or passed inside the family ('familia' originally meaning nothing but 'the slaves that belong to a household').

Naturally slaves had to be bought to run the latifundia the family owned but this was done by the caretakers, who most often were freed slaves.

People, especially women, from senatorial families who went to the slave markets and purchased new slaves themselves, such as Fausta or Clodia, were considered scandalous.

 

[Serva]

Well, if we are talking about reality, you should be aware that in mos thistorical societies that practised slavery (and there is an enormously wide field coveres by this term) the sexual aspect that is so prominent for us did not really play a major role.

Slavery was about economy and workers you don't have to pay.
Naturally attractive slaves were used by their owners but this was rather a by product of slavery and, as in the case of ancient Rome, it was seen as tolerable or unavoidable, but it was very bad manners to do it openly.

The noble families during the republican period even tried to hold up the fiction that they didn't buy (household) slaves, but that they just were inherited or passed inside the family ('familia' originally meaning nothing but 'the slaves that belong to a household').

Naturally slaves had to be bought to run the latifundia the family owned but this was done by the caretakers, who most often were freed slaves.

People, especially women, from senatorial families who went to the slave markets and purchased new slaves themselves, such as Fausta or Clodia, were considered scandalous.

Yeah the Romans were fairly moralistic, but their morals have to be understood in the way they viewed sexuality as well.

I'm actually currently reading a paper about the "master's gaze" in some Pompeian frescoes found in lavish domi (houses):

The way Roman notions of sexuality intersect with slavery reinforces this positioning
of the viewer as master. In the same way that a male or female slave’s body
was treated as penetrable by stick or lash, it was considered open to the master for
sexual use as well. Slave boys were kept in part as sexual pets. The law did not
allow a woman dressed as a slave to be considered a rape victim, while a freeborn male
citizen was able to sue someone for outrage if that person treated him like a slave in
any way, including striking or flogging him, invading his home, preventing him from
enjoying public amenities such as baths and theatres, dishonouring his wife, children or
slaves or sexually penetrating his person. Freeborn citizen children wore a protective
amulet, called a bulla, which among other things helped visibly mark them as sexually
off-limits, unlike slave children.

This assumed sexual use of male and female slaves by their master put slaves
into a specific sexual category in Roman society, and masters in another, regardless
of the slave’s gender. Holt Parker and Skinner have articulated how the Romans who
left our surviving literature understood sexuality in ways that do not involve our
contemporary notions of heterosexual and homosexual, or attraction to the same or
opposite sex. In dominant Roman ideology, sexual activity was considered someone
penetrating someone else, and the operative categories which arose from this were
active and passive, penetrator and penetrated. This was a hierarchical distinction
which intersected with other statuses, including gender and age. ‘Doers’ tended to
be adult, freeborn citizen men; ‘doees’ were women, but also male slaves, children
and non-citizens. To ‘be done’ carried some degree of shame. As Ellen Oliensis
writes, ‘Penetration is the prerogative of free men, penetrability the characteristic
condition of slaves and women; sexual intercourse is an enactment and reflection of
social hierarchy, and conversely, social subordination always implies the possibility of
sexual submission’. Moses Finley first noted the implications of the Roman habit
of referring to even an adult male slave as a puer, ‘boy’; it reinforces on many levels
a male slave’s lack of manhood, bodily integrity and independent standing in the
community. In turn, to be a master was to be a doer, to have the capacity to penetrate
male and female bodies at will.

The paper is Master Narratives and the Wall Painting of the House of the Vettii, Pompeii, by Beth Severy-Hoven.

Slaves in Ancient Rome were sexualized to a degree by virtue of being slaves. It was assumed that slaves were sexually vulnerable, that their bodies were the opposite of sacred and immaculate. It wasn't merely tolerable to use slaves for pleasure. Tolerable implies there was negativity around it. There was not. Well, at least during the Late Republic and then the Empire, because if you're talking about the very first years of the Roman state, then yeah maybe the morals were different.

For more context the above paper deals with murals found in a lavish Pompeiian house which depict eroticized scenes of punishment from mythology. There have also been finds of erotic and explicit frescoes found in other lavish houses, and indications of a "suite of pleasure" which included a sex room in the so-called House of the Centennial. This sex room had wall paintings depicting a variety of explicit sexual positions, and even a peeping window for voyeurs. It was adjacent a secondary, inner triclinum and baths. There have also been finds of ornate artistic depictions of male-on-male penetrative sex, on silver cups (like the Warren Cup), glass and gemstone cameos. Since being penetrated was dishonorable and defeating, it can be safely assumed the bottoms on these scenes were meant to be slaves.

There was also an epitaph dedicated to a young slave girl who passed away, whom, from the eroticized words the epitaph contains, can be assumed to have been her owner's private sex toy.

Not to say it wasn't dishonorable for respectable women to sexually engage with slaves. It absolutely was. But not for men, as long as they were the penetrators. It shouldn't surprise us that the Romans associated sexual penetration with conquest and dominance. Don't we still do that?

 

[KageKamen]

Not to say it wasn't dishonorable for respectable women to sexually engage with slaves. It absolutely was. But not for men, as long as they were the penetrators. It shouldn't surprise us that the Romans associated sexual penetration with conquest and dominance. Don't we still do that?

So the involvement of respectable women and male slaves would be scandalous because it carried the risk of an inferior penetrating his superior?

 

[Serva]

I'm extremely taken by the idea of an entire village being raided and all the women taken. I know that in reality the men would be most desirable for slave labor, but for our purposes let's focus on the women. They get captured, they arrive at the docks, and then does the captain evaluate each girl and go, "You look like a pleasure slave, you go to the fields, you look strong and attractive, so gladiators school for you, and you will be used for medical experiments." Is that how it goes down, or are their slave traders who specialize in certain fields, and browse the selection?

You guys are very helpful on the matter. Curious if there are any sources on the matter. Not sure first century pirates and raiders kept records, but it would be interesting to know.

In the Islamic world, females were most sought after as slaves. They never had need to intensive usage of forced labor, save for select times and periods. The sugar plantations in southern Iraq during the 9th century, the cotton plantations in Fergana (Uzbekistan) in the 19th century, the spice plantations in Zanzibar. You also had Timur the Lame forcing thousands of enslaved artisans and masons from Delhi to build his grandiose buildings in Samarqand. But throughout the centuries, across all the varied lands and peoples of the Islamic world, slavery was predominantly either domestic, sexual or military. An adults were useless as military slaves. Only boys would've been wanted for that, so they could be properly trained and indoctrinated.

Islamic slavery is without a doubt the historic slavery system that was most sexualized. They had generic words for a slave girl, mamluka and ama, while the term jariya exclusively refered to a female sex slave. Jariya literally means "young woman" or "girl", but it has servile connotations, so it might be closer to "maid".

Hell you had the formative jurists of the Sunni fiqh schools arguing that if a man bought a jariya, and the jariya told him when he had her home, that she was married, the sale was to be annuled. Because a married slave girl would've been sexually barred from him.

 

[Serva]

So the involvement of respectable women and male slaves would be scandalous because it carried the risk of an inferior penetrating his superior?

It can be boiled down to that, yes.

 

[Serva]

Apparently, it was considered normal and healthy for slaves in Rome to be sexually active. Only if the master did not know about it or disapproved of the encounter was sex considered something that might damage the value of a slave. This might have had more to do with the trustworthiness or obedience of the slave, more than the fact that she had been sexually active. Some Romans did, it seems, prefer virgin girls - Augustus, for all his apparent simplicity and humility (he liked walking rather than riding through the streets, and was known for his devotion to his third wife, Livia), enjoyed deflowering virgin slave girls, many of whom would be procured for him by Livia.

And the great Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius prided himself in the fact that he owned a pair of gorgeous twin slave girls whom he had never taken sexual advantage of. The fact that he was so proud in this only indicates that most men would've not been so restrained.

But the shame was not in violating slaves in any case, it was more related to sexual restraint. It was "unmanly" for a proper Roman to be having constant sex. They were supposed to temper and control their impulses. It was about self-discipline, not compassion for the slaves.

 

[Serva]

Asked this before, and wondering if anyone here knows. What's the usual turn around time for a girl being captured and then ending up on the auction block? Any era you know of. Do they send them straight to the block as raw talent? Do the captured girls get sold to professional slavers who give them a little conditioning? Curious to know.

During the Abbasid Caliphate (and even before, during the Umayyad Caliphate) there existed a fashion for the qiyan (singular qayna), musical slave girls, trained to dance, play instruments, sing and recite poetry, and these were trained from an early age to be sold at steep prices to the elites of the Caliphate. Mecca was a center for training qiyan. Naturally, these slaves were sexualized, so they weren't merely entertainers. But this was a niche, as has been said here already. Yet it was a very well documented niche.

 

[KageKamen]

But the shame was not in violating slaves in any case, it was more related to sexual restraint. It was "unmanly" for a proper Roman to be having constant sex. They were supposed to temper and control their impulses. It was about self-discipline, not compassion for the slaves.

So while slaves were there to be used, using them was still a bit shameful, or at least vulgar or crass. Especially to excess.

 

[Serva]

So while slaves were there to be used, using them was still a bit shameful, or at least vulgar or crass. Especially to excess.

Using them was not vulgar. Having too much sex, with ANYONE, was vulgar. Pompey Magnus was decried for being too fond of his wife! Too much sex with one's wife was weak, unmanly and un-Roman. Again, too much of any sex.

Slaves were there to be used, with moderation. The two cultural bogeymen for Roman men were sex and food.

This is from a paper titled Witnesses and Participants in the Shadows: The Sexual Lives of Enslaved Women and Boys by F. Mira Green:

Latin writers portrayed slaves as willing and sensual partners, even
while performing household labors. For example, Apuleius’s character
Lucius sees the slave girl Fotis’s ability to give sexual pleasure even in the
most mundane tasks. As Fotis prepares a stew, her actions seduce Lucius
and he flirts with her. Fotis responds suggestively and then directly to his
flirtation: “Depart poor boy,” she said, “far from my oven, depart! For if
my little flame should even slightly blow on you, you will burn deeply,
nor can anyone extinguish your fire, except me, who sweetly seasons, and
I know how to shake softly both the pot and the bed (Met. 2.7).” From
this encounter, it is clear that some Roman men envisioned enslaved
persons not only as objects of a man’s desires but also as seekers of sexual
pleasure (Fitzgerald 2000, 107). Fotis’s response to his flirtation
marks her as a willing and knowledgeable recipient of his attention. She
happily mixes her work as a slave and her role as an available sexual
partner (Fitzgerald 2000, 108). Notably, Fotis is preparing food when
Lucius begins his flirtations, which aligns the two somatic functions that
many Roman authors feared prompted degenerative and destructive
overindulgence. Fotis’s knowledge of making sweet stew and sweetsweet
love hints at elite men’s desires to revel in both, despite other
society members’ constant calls for moderate and restrained behavior. By
imagining that the enslaved seeks sexual and physical pleasures, Roman
men were saved from the consequences of their overindulgence; the
slave’s ‘agency’ serves his desire. In this case, it is Fotis, not Lucius, who
acts and speaks the connection between sex and food. He then does not
need to take responsibility for the association and his own intemperance.
Additionally, this exchange between the lusty Fotis and Lucius hints
that, at least in the Roman male’s mind, the slave was unrestrained by
the sexual mores of free, especially elite, women. In a society that based
status upon social connections, free relationships were often tarnished by
tradition, ulterior motives, ambitions, and desires for profit. As Fitzgerald
(2007, 127) notes, relationships with slaves granted some escape for
slave owners from all that had gone wrong with relations between the
free. With enslaved individuals, the free were motivated not by ambition
but rather by personal desires and needs, and it seems they wanted to
imagine that slaves were willing participants in these relationships.

 

[KageKamen]

Using them was not vulgar. Having too much sex, with ANYONE, was vulgar. Pompey Magnus was decried for being too fond of his wife! Too much sex with one's wife was weak, unmanly and un-Roman. Again, too much of any sex.

Slaves were there to be used, with moderation. The two cultural bogeymen for Roman men were sex and food.

So moderate indulgence was properly manly, but overindulgence the mark of an immature boy? (While women were expected to be naturally moderate.)

 

[Jollyrei]

So while slaves were there to be used, using them was still a bit shameful, or at least vulgar or crass. Especially to excess.

Sounds a bit like sex dolls today. They are there, they are getting more and more sophisticated, but you don't brag about having one in public.

 

[Serva]

Sounds a bit like sex dolls today. They are there, they are getting more and more sophisticated, but you don't brag about having one in public.

It wasn't like that though. The stigma was for overindulging in sex, not for having a sex slave. They could brag about having one, just not about having her every single day.

 

[Eulalia]

Going back to Jacks question at the top of this page, there is pretty good evidence that slave-markets in Rome - and in major cities in the Islamic world - did have several sections ranging from knock-down auction blocks for the cheapest grades up to private salons for the wealthiest and most discerning customers. In more barbaric contexts, I dare say the process was more rough and ready, but traders would have been looking out for livestock that would be worth buying to transport to the markets where a good profit could be made.

Islamic slavery has been mentioned - a classic source is the chapter 'On the Purchase of Slaves' in Qabus nama, 'Mirror for Princes' written to instruct his son by the 11th ct CE ruler Kai Kaus/ Keikavus, ruler of a kingdom in what is now NE Iran and Azerbaijan, as a tributary of the Seljuks. Although hardly known in the West, the book regarded as one of the classics of Persian literature.

This is only the first part of the chapter, but it gives a good taste of its style: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/flesh/market-research

 

[Serva]

Going back to Jacks question at the top of this page, there is pretty good evidence that slave-markets in Rome - and in major cities in the Islamic world - did have several sections ranging from knock-down auction blocks for the cheapest grades up to private salons for the wealthiest and most discerning customers. In more barbaric contexts, I dare say the process was more rough and ready, but traders would have been looking out for livestock that would be worth buying to transport to the markets where a good profit could be made.

Islamic slavery has been mentioned - a classic source is the chapter 'On the Purchase of Slaves' in Qabus nama, 'Mirror for Princes' written to instruct his son by the 11th ct CE ruler Kai Kaus/ Keikavus, ruler of a kingdom in what is now NE Iran and Azerbaijan, as a tributary of the Seljuks. Although hardly known in the West, the book regarded as one of the classics of Persian literature.

This is only the first part of the chapter, but it gives a good taste of its style: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/flesh/market-research

Thank you for sharing this! I had not come across this particular work before, but slave-buying manuals were quite common in the Islamic world. Another famous one was a guide by the Christian Arab physician Ibn Butlan.

Their advice centered on the medical knowledge necessary to inspect a
slave’s body for signs of poor health. Most were written by practicing doctors
or scholars with medical expertise. The authors often supplemented their medical
advice with ethnographic information (qualities associated with slaves from
various places), ethical and political commentary (how to control the behavior
of slaves and integrate them into the household), and general recommendations
presented as common sense (shop around rather than buying the first available
slave). The kinds of service required of these slaves were spelled out most clearly
in the ethnographic chapters, which used stereotypes to classify slaves for domestic
work, military service, sexual exploitation, hard labor, household or business
management, and creative endeavors such as music.
Within these genre conventions, no two slave-buying advice texts are exactly
alike. This article focuses on the distinctive features of one Mamluk-era slavebuying
advice manual, The Book of Observation and Inspection in the Examination of
Slaves by Ibn al-Akfānī.

Interestingly, the ulama (the Islamic scholars) were against the public displaying and inspection of naked slaves and wrote normative texts meant to guide the muhtasib (a kind of morality sheriff) in his supervision of the slave markets.

The normative genre of ḥisbah manuals, manuals for market inspectors, set forth guidelines for the sale of slaves
based on legal rather than medical principles. Ḥisbah manuals were written by
jurists to help the market inspector (muḥtasib), a state official, carry out his legal
and moral duty “to enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong” in the marketplace
and other public spaces. In contrast, the descriptive genre of the travel
narrative recorded the observations of Mamluk society made by visitors from
other parts of the world for the entertainment and edification of their readers.
The comparison between slave-buying advice manuals and ḥisbah manuals
quickly reveals that although both were normative genres, they were not always
in agreement about what the norms for slave-buying were. The two most important
surviving Mamluk ḥisbah manuals, The Utmost Authority in the Pursuit
of Ḥisbah by Ibn Bassām and The Guideposts of Piety in the Principles of Ḥisbah by
Ibn al-Ukhūwah, date from the first half of the fourteenth century.
.
Ḥisbah manuals tended to focus on different aspects of slave market procedure
than slave-buying advice manuals. In keeping with their legal and moral aims,
ḥisbah manuals emphasized the enforcement of the law governing slave sales.
Muslims were not to be sold as slaves. Children and slave converts to Islam were
not to be sold to non-Muslims. Young children were not to be separated from
their mothers. Slave brokers were to check the terms of previous sale contracts for
each slave in case any conditions had been placed on his or her resale. They were
also to keep a register of their transactions in case of dispute. All of these areas
were outside the purview of the slave-buying advice manuals, which tended to
assume that the slaves available in the market were legal to buy. Likewise, ḥisbah
manuals did not concern themselves with common sense advice, ethnography, or
ethical and political commentary because choosing and training the right slave
for the right purpose had no bearing on the legality of the sale.

The area where the two genres overlapped and contradicted one another was
the physical inspection process. Ḥisbah manuals expected that brokers would assist
the slave buyer in carrying out the physical inspection. Either the broker
himself “must be well acquainted with faults and experienced in incipient illnesses
and diseases,” or else “let him turn concerning that to those who know
about temperaments and constitutions.” According to the shurū ṭ manuals which
provided scribes with model documents and legal formulas, if a slave was sold
with known faults, “it is important that he [the scribe drawing up the contract]
enumerate [each] fault, and that the doctors testify concerning it that is a fault.”
Inspection of the shame zones of male slaves—the area between the navel and
the knees—was entirely forbidden. The shame zones of female slaves—the entire
body except for the face, hands, and sometimes the feet and forearms—could
not be inspected in public. However, because male ownership of a female slave
included the right to have sex with her, the condition of her shame zones was
considered relevant to the sale. Therefore a male buyer was permitted to inspect a
female slave’s entire body in a private space and in the presence of other women.
Doctors were allowed to examine the shame zones of men and women in private
as part of their medical practice, and they may have done so on behalf of the slave
buyer as well, although there is no definite evidence for this.

Slave-buying manuals contradicted ḥisbah manuals by advising slave buyers
to inspect the shame zones of both male and female slaves publicly. The Book
of Observation specifically recommended examining male slaves for hardness or
roughness in the area between the navel and the penis, a direct violation of the
ḥisbah guidelines. It also advised against buying a slave woman except during
her menstrual period.

But in practice, despite the injunctions of the ulama, slaves were shamelessly exhibited:

In practice, did Mamluk slave buyers publicly inspect the shame zones of slaves
(in accordance with slave-buying advice) or not (in accordance with the ḥisbah
manuals)? Travel narratives indicate that the slave-buying advice prevailed.
Detailed descriptions of slave inspections are rare in Arabic travel narratives,
perhaps because they were too ordinary to be noted. The best description was
composed by Ibn al-Mujāwir, who visited the slave market of Aden in the early
thirteenth century, around the same time as the anonymous slave-buying advice
manual Inspection in Slave-Buying was written. According to Ibn al-Mujāwir:

The slave girl is fumigated with an aromatic smoke, perfumed,
adorned and a waist-wrapper fastened round her middle. The seller
takes her by the hand and walks around the souk with her; he calls
out that she is for sale. The wicked merchants appear, examining
her hands, feet, calves, thighs, navel, chest and breasts. He examines
her back and measures her buttocks in spans. He examines her
tongue, teeth, hair and spares no effort. If she is wearing clothes,
he takes them off; he examines and looks. Finally he casts a direct
eye over her vagina and anus, without her having on any covering
or veil.

Ibn al-Mujāwir’s description suggests that the slave-buying manuals which advised
public examination of the shame zones were closer to the reality of inspection
than the ḥisbah manuals.

 

[Paul1969]

Well I think I can partially answer that question because I do vividly remember the first time I was paraded topless at our BDSM club.

Now I am an exhibitionist so when I learned the club rules (slaves have to be collared, topless and leashed) I was like no big deal, I've been naked in front of people before.

But then suddenly, as we were leaving the coat check area (where the slaves leave their street cloths) I suddenly was aware I had never been naked in front of STRANGERS before.

I was not ready for that and became acutely aware of all the things I thought weren't "perfect" with my body. I wanted to say no way and back out but then the athlete in me took over and I held my head up high and marched in there. However when I realized that some of the Masters\Mistresses were regarding me as if they were inspecting a horse for sale I became very self-conscious.

And I was there voluntarily.

Now let's move that to a society where public nudity was not uncommon. I don't think the women would have been super shocked by being displayed nude and they all came from societies were slaves (and slave sales) were fairly common place so they were familiar with that. I think their shock would have been more, 'This can't be happening to me' and 'I'm NOT a slave'.

Add to that the fact that they have been torn from their homes and family (in a violent manner) then I think the shock and unreality of the situation is rather numbing and terrifying. I also suspect that if they weren't virgins when captured at least some of them had already been raped before they got to the block. Plus punishment for resistance would have made them rather resigned to their lot.

All this is a guess based on how I would feel in that situation as I imagine it to be.

And yes I was sold once at the club but that was only overnight not for a lifetime.

kisses

willowfall

You sound brave&uninhibited. Being an athlete probably prepared you for being nude in front of others.

 

[Paul1969]

a nice slave-sale that I don't think I've seen before,
at least not on one of our slavegirl threads -
it's Nandez, posted today on another thread by Yupar

View attachment 132459

they look a well-trained trio
displaying their bodies attractively,
even if their expressions are a bit glum.
The fine brand-mark - right on the womb, a painful spot,
(it's making me wet to imagine it )
shows the seller's proud of his stock,
as well he might be!​

Really like that one

 

[willowfall]

Islamic slavery is without a doubt the historic slavery system that was most sexualized. They had generic words for a slave girl, mamluka and ama, while the term jariya exclusively refered to a female sex slave. Jariya literally means "young woman" or "girl", but it has servile connotations, so it might be closer to "maid".

Well don't forget children by slave women can be considered legitimate heirs in Islamic society (and in fact many societies which featured "harem" type situations, Even in the bible when Hagar the Egyptian slave of Sarah, Abraham's wife, was given the Abraham because Sarah was barren) because acceptance by society comes down the paternal not maternal lines.

By the time the Ottoman Empire fell the Sultan was probably (generically) not very "Turkish".

So different mores by different societies lead to different outcomes.

kisses

willowfall

 

[willowfall]

Being an athlete probably prepared you for being nude in front of others.

I'm not sure athletics had much to do with me being comfortable nude (girls' locker rooms are not like guys') in front of people but I does give me a certain amount of confidence that I can handle any situation and taught me that losing isn't fatal.

So in the back of my head I thought 'Ok you said you would do this now get out there and do this.' And sticking with athletics did mean (at the time) my body was in lot better shape than a lot of younger women.

And honestly the crowd has a lot to do with it. I would NEVER had done that at Spring break or in a college bar in front of a lot of drunken frat boys but the crowd at my club is a bunch of economically upper end professionals who have reputations they have to maintain.

After the first time, for a while, I did find it erotically stimulating. Now it really is no different than wearing a bathing suit at the beach. It is expected.

And is suspect psychologically it was the same for slaves (and all of us) 'This is my life and I'm used to it.' But that addresses a question down the line.

kisses

willowfall