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LadyNTrainer -> RE: True Slavery, a delusional roleplay. (9/30/2010 8:39:41 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Bravado
As mentioned in the topic, let's set aside the fact that we're on CollarMe.com and consider the existence of a person from Nigeria who is forced into slavery as a maid in a different country, experiences no sexual pleasure in this, and is eventually killed by accident while the sadistic criminal who owned her was venting his daily rage. Is this person a "true slave," or do you have another word for to describe this person?
That one's easy. Kidnap victim, or oppressed underclass. Because there is under some social circumstances little or no cost associated with acquiring or physically maintaining someone from a generally oppressed underclass to abuse, there is no real economic limitation on abusing them to destruction. This is very different from an institutionalized slavery model, politically and economically speaking.
Generally kinksters use the term "true slave" to refer to internal enslavement as much as external circumstance. I'm not a big fan of prepending the term "true" to any concept that really doesn't have a single correct definition, but there you have it. In BDSM culture, making reference to "true" owners or slaves is usually a form of boasting that one is More Kinkier Than Thou, or that they're doing it right and you're doing it wrong. What they're actually saying is that they are working harder than you to live up to the ideal of keeping human property in a world that doesn't legally support the concept.
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Now, compare this person to one of the partners of any dom who has criticized this thread as being an imperialist threat to their ideology. Their partner chose to be with them, enjoys the experience, and I would argue that they would leave if it became something that was constantly terrible. This, as many here seem to assert, is a "true slave."
I don't think that all of the peeps who have issues with some of the claims made in this thread are dominants who see these notions as a personal threat. There are significant problems with the logic and the semantics, not to mention a failure to comprehend the political, legal and economic differences between legal slavery and the opportunistic exploitation of a systematically oppressed underclass. Huge, huge differences.
It is completely demonstrable that someone can be emotionally, financially and in some cases physically unable to leave their partner even if they become abusive. Overt or consensual kink doesn't even have to be involved. You could arguably state that someone in this condition is in "true" slavery, but then you'd be applying that term to a pretty broad category of people.
One of the logic holes that has repeatedly been pointed out here is that while the test of someone being a "true slave" may well be that they are unable to leave even should their conditions of enslavement become extreme or life threatening, most sane people don't abuse and destroy what they own. Economically that rarely makes sense, except under certain conditions in which the supply of abusable property is effectively limitless and the cost of its acquisition is negligible. That's not the case in societies that actually have institutionalized slavery or indenture. It tends to be a side effect of race and class discrimination and extreme wealth stratification. Actual slaves are valuable property; kidnap victims much less so, members of an oppressed underclass are even more expendable and incur fewer costs when used to destruction.
It is very possible for one individual to be so thoroughly enslaved to another, internally, financially and emotionally, that they would in fact be unable to leave even if their life was in imminent danger. Because most people in the BDSM lifestyle are not insane abusers, the depth of their enslavement will never be put to the test. It doesn't make what they have any less real because most dominants really don't want to cut their submissives in half with a chainsaw or sell them to Nigeria.
Whether it's a good idea to call what they have "True Slavery" is a whole other question, but I would say that it does meet pretty much every definition that has been put forward for the concept.
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