Slavery plays into a lot of the BDSM fantasies of today, but they do have a connection to a rather u
Slavery plays into a lot of the BDSM fantasies of today, but they do have a connection to a rather ugly past. The African slave trade, for example, is a well documented example of the horrors of real-world slavery. African slaves were largely traded as laborers. But there was a vibrant sex trade well into the 19th century when European powers finally put a stop to it. Some of the more known incidence are the Barbary Pirates, who would raid European coasts as far north as Ireland in search of beautiful women to sell in North African and Middle Eastern slave markets. However, the most prized sex slaves were from the Caucasus, the noted “Circadian Beauties”. Turkish and Persian privateers would raid across the Black Sea into what is today Georgia, Russia and the Ukraine in search of prized blonde and black-eyed women to be sold into the harems of Sheikhs and Caliphs. More enterprising slavers would form gangs of up to a hundred men who would raid into the Baltic countries in search of nubile Slav girls, taking them from what is today Serbia, Croatia, Romania and as far north as the Hungary. This wasn’t a new development for the Slavic people; already centuries before Romans had attacked, conquered and bore off their people to work throughout the Empire. So prolific was the taking of Slavic people that it’s believed that word “slave” comes from the Latin name for the Slavs. In some ways, you could say that the BDSM fantasy of slavery is so poignant because of it’s connection to reality; the appeal of many fantasies is how they can be realistic but at the same time unreal. Be that as it may; playing at slavery is just that: play. We should all be thankful we were born in a period of history in which real slavery is so far removed from us that we can use it for entertainment. -- source link