I was wondering if there is any truth to the stories one hears about blond Caucasian women being kidnapped and kept as sex slaves by powerful Arab men. Is it a widespread occurrence, an infrequent occurrence, or is it an urban myth?
The Sultan of Brunei is famous for his sexual debauchery with foreign women. Except he doesn’t kidnap them, he hires them.
If you’re a fantastically wealthy man, the only reason to kidnap and enslave women is if rape and slavery is what you’re into. There are enough blonde women willing to be sex toys for the right price that there’s not much need to kidnap and enslave them if all you want is to have lots of sex with lots of blonde women.
We discussed a broader version of this question just recently in the What is “white slavery”? thread.
A useful reference that was mentioned there is the study by historian Robert Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800.
It’s definitely the case this sort of thing happened in the time period mentioned in that study Kimstu just linked to. Of course in that time period that kind of thing still happened pretty frequently in a lot of the world.
In Europe it mostly would have been scandalous to keep sex slaves, but in Russia (aka pseudo-Europe) up until the 19th century powerful boyars kept serf harems, which was indistinguishable from the sort of sexual slavery a Arab potentate might engage in.
Nitpick: Well yes, in the sense of maintaining in one’s own household a private harem of women formally designated as concubines. But some high-end commercial brothels and some “mistress maintenance” arrangements were in practice little different from outright sex slavery, and were more or less tolerated.
You might be interested in reading Jillian Lauren’s book (name escapes me, too lazy to Google) or digging up one of the many interviews she did about it recently.
She was a “high class prostitute” who spent a few years as a harem girl in the early 90s, and has recently written a tell-all. Interesting story.
Women have virtually no rights in Saudi Arabia, non-Muslim women even less. Supposedly more than one woman who met some playboy prince on the party scene and accepted his offer to fly back home for the weekend found herself stranded in a foreign country with her passport gone and officials who considered her a whore.
Some Girls: My Life in a Harem
Cite?