Sexual slavery
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Sexual slavery is a special case of slavery which includes various different practices:
- forced prostitution
- single-owner sexual slavery
- ritual slavery, sometimes associated with traditional religious practices
- slavery for primarily non-sexual purposes where sex is common or permissible
In general, the nature of slavery means that the slave is de facto available for sex, and ordinary social conventions and legal protections that would otherwise constrain an owner's actions are not effective. Female slaves are at highest risk of sexual abuse and sexual slavery.
The term "sex slave" and "consensual sexual slavery" are sometimes used in BDSM to refer to a consensual agreement between sexual partners (see also total power exchange). This should not be confused with the meaning of the term as defined in this article, which refers specifically to unwilling slavery.
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[edit] Modern-day sexual slavery
[edit] Forced prostitution
Forced prostitution is a form of sexual slavery that is often directed at immigrants to Western and Asian countries. Often the "owners" of these people will confiscate passports and/or money in order to make them completely dependent. This practice, also known as sex trafficking or human trafficking, is illegal in most countries.
Human trafficking is the same as people smuggling. A smuggler will facilitate illegal entry into a country for a fee, but on arrival at their destination, the smuggled person is free; the trafficking victim is enslaved. Traffickers use coercive tactics including deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat and use of physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs to control their victims. Women are typically recruited with promises of good, legal jobs in other countries or provinces, or are tricked into a false 'marriage', and, lacking better options at home, agree to migrate. Traffickers arrange the travel and job placements, the women are escorted to their destinations and delivered to the employers. Upon reaching their destinations, some women learn that they have been deceived about the nature of the work they will do; most have been lied to about the financial arrangements and conditions of their employment; and all find themselves in coercive and abusive situations and kept in a financial situation that they are stuck in a form of debt bondage from which escape is both difficult and dangerous.
A US Government report[1] published in 2003, estimates that 800,000-900,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year, the majority to Southeast Asia, Japan, Europe and North America. The trafficking of women has also been recorded (in lower numbers) in South Asia and the Middle East and from Latin America into the United States. Since the mid 1990s, with the opening up of the former Soviet Union, the end of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the opening up of East and South East Asia, there has been an increase in the trafficking of human beings. See the main article on the trafficking of human beings.
A recent development should be noted that proponents of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in the United States, and Sweden's Act On Prohibiting The Purchase Of Sexual Services seek to define all forms of prostitution as exploitive or de facto slavery, and place emphasis on suppressing the demand for sex services, by prosecuting profiteers and customers. While this effort is advanced as a means to protect trafficked children and women, that are variously estimated at 20,000-100,000 annually in the United States, who have issued numerous critiques of these laws as another form of prohibition and stigmatization, that serve mainly to marginalize sex workers.[2] Prostitute rights organizations argue that decriminalization and extension of labor rights to sex workers is more effective in ensuring their economic, mental and medical health than any form of prohibition.[3]
The term "sex worker" itself is rejected by the advocates of anti-slavery laws, who argue that women cannot choose sex as an economic activity, and claim it is the criminal networks and customer demand that are the driving forces, not economic necessity.
[edit] Sexual slavery in the United States
In 2002, the US Department of State repeated an earlier CIA estimate[4] that each year, about 50,000 women and children are brought against their will to the United States for sexual exploitation.[5]. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that "Here and abroad, the victims of trafficking toil under inhuman conditions -- in brothels, sweatshops, fields and even in private homes."[6]
[edit] Sexual slavery in Africa
Sex slavery is a problem in some parts of Africa. The colonial powers abolished slavery in the nineteenth century, but in areas outside their jurisdiction, such as the Mahdist empire in Sudan, the practice continued to thrive. Nowadays, institutional slavery has been banned worldwide, but there are numerous reports of women sex slaves in areas without an effective government control, such as until recently, Sudan[citation needed], Liberia[citation needed], Sierra Leone[citation needed], northern Uganda[citation needed] and Kongo[citation needed]. In Zimbabwe, the government is believed to train its youth militia, the Border Gezi Youth, in the use of rape as a tactic.
In Niger[7] and Mauritania[citation needed], sexual slavery also exists.
In Ghana, Togo, and Benin, a form of religious prostitution known as trokosi or ritual servitude keeps thousands of girls and women in traditional shrines against their will, forcing them to act as "wives of the gods," the shrine priests performing the sexual function in place of the gods. (The Trokosi System, Mark Wisdom, FESLIM--Fetish Slaves Liberation Movement, PO Box 21, Adidome, Ghana, 2001.) This can be compared with the devadasi system in India.
[edit] Sexual slavery in the Middle East
In the contemporary Middle East, sexual slavery is uncommon. However, transportation and trafficking of these women does exist there. Iran, Israel, and Turkey have a significant sex trade-much of it involving women from Eastern Europe and poor areas of Northern India.
[edit] Sexual slavery in the past
[edit] Sexual slavery in North America
In the mid-19th century in the U.S., there was a white slavery scare which suggested that large numbers of white women were being kidnapped and forced into prostitution. The prevalence of this practice was greatly exaggerated due to xenophobia, and this phenomenon is generally regarded today as having been an example of a moral panic.
In fact, at that time, the US victims of sexual slavery were overwhelmingly women of African descent, held as slaves, often purchased primarily for sexual exploitation. One related, but unverified story tells of one such girl, purchased as a sexual slave when she was fourteen, is told in "Celia, A Slave," by Melton A. Mclaurin, and such practice is also widely referred to in other literature discussing the era, for instance Roots by Alex Haley. Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography, described the sale of female slaves openly advertised for sexual purposes at slave auctions in the nineteenth century United States. According to John A. Morone's book Hellfire Nation, slaveowners in the American South openly admitted to practicing sexual slavery, while Southern diarist, Frances Kemble famously wrote that
| “ | Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines; and the mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from the clouds.[8] | ” |
[edit] Sexual slavery in East and Southeast Asia during World War II
"Comfort women" is a euphemism for the up to 200,000 women who served in the Japanese army's brothels during World War II. Historians and researchers into the subject have stated that the majority were from Korea, China and other occupied territories and were recruited by force or deception to serve as sex slaves.[1][2][3]
[edit] Sexual slavery in the Middle East
Slave trade, including trade of sex slaves, occurred fluctuatingly in certain regions in the Middle East up until the twentieth century. These slaves came largely from Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caucasus, and often from parts of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
[edit] References
- ^ Fackler, Martin. "No Apology for Sex Slavery, Japan’s Prime Minister Says", The New York Times, 2007-03-06. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
- ^ "Abe questions sex slave 'coercion'", BBC News, 2007-03-02. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
- ^ "Japan party probes sex slave use", BBC News, 2007-03-08. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
[edit] Further reading
- Lal, K. S. Muslim Slave System in Medieval India (1994), chapter XII: "Sex Slavery" [9] ISBN 81-85689-67-9
