# Consensual relationship between a slaveowner and a slave **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 11, 2011, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553 "2011-05-11T19:03:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/21 "2011-05-12T00:46:33Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > It’s abstract morality, so you’re not qualified to participate in the thread. Go ahead and participate anyway if you need to, though. Ah ok. Well, you are perfectly free to like or dislike anything you please, so there’s really nothing to discuss here. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/22 "2011-05-12T01:39:00Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I would think X would be pretty small for people who actually want to be on the slave side of a real slave/master relationship. The X for the master side may be quite large. You need to get out more. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/23 "2011-05-12T02:01:26Z")
Because slaves could not lawfully disobey their slaveowners, then I think it’s safer to assume most sexual encounters between slaves and slaveowners were not consensual. However, there are more than a few examples of slaves using their sexuality as a leverage to gain freedom. Brazil’s female [Horatio Alger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chica_da_Silva) gained her freedom and wealth this way. So while I still think the power differential muddies the “consensual” waters and her slaveowner could have legally had sex with her regardless of any deal or not, the line between “rape” and “selling yourself out of slavery” is also not clear. ---
**Author:** ![margin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/65b543/32.png) [@margin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/margin)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/24 "2011-05-12T02:04:10Z")
I think a lot of people are underestimating the complete and total degree of power slaveowners had over slaves, who were legally their _possessions._ Slaves were also feared, which amounts to unconscious endorsement of the idea that slavery is horrible. If it was such a great deal, why would anybody rebel? At the end of the day, the owner had the power of life and death. What if they had a bad day one day? That slave was totally vulnerable. That had to always be there. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/25 "2011-05-12T02:12:16Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > However, there are more than a few examples of slaves using their sexuality as a leverage to gain freedom. Brazil’s female [Horatio Alger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chica_da_Silva) gained her freedom and wealth this way. So while I still think the power differential muddies the “consensual” waters and her slaveowner could have legally had sex with her regardless of any deal or not, the line between “rape” and “selling yourself out of slavery” is also not clear. That’s an excellent point. In such a case, it’d be meaningless to call it rape. Certainly the slavery itself is a moral ill, but if the slave is using the sex for direct benefit, it doesn’t make sense to call it nonconsensual. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/26 "2011-05-12T02:24:04Z")
I think you’re looking at it backwards. It’s not that a slave couldn’t voluntarily enter into a sexual relationship with their master. It’s that a slave couldn’t refuse to enter into a sexual relationship with their master. The slave can give consent, but the slave isn’t, in general, free to refuse consent. And, I think a lot of it comes down to the will of the master, and whether or not the master is willing to take the slave’s wishes into account. Some were, and some weren’t. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/27 "2011-05-12T02:41:29Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I think you’re looking at it backwards. It’s not that a slave couldn’t voluntarily enter into a sexual relationship with their master. It’s that a slave couldn’t refuse to enter into a sexual relationship with their master. The slave can give consent, but the slave isn’t, in general, free to refuse consent. And, I think a lot of it comes down to the will of the master, and whether or not the master is willing to take the slave’s wishes into account. Some were, and some weren’t. I’m not sure how meaningful consent is if it cannot be withheld, is the thing. But **Lemur** is also right that as recently as a quarter-century ago, marital rape was not criminalized in parts of the United States (I remember in the early 90s when the law was finally changed in North Carolina), but the inability of a wife to withhold consent from her husband didn’t make all marital sex rape in the state. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/28 "2011-05-12T05:11:58Z")
The OP seems to imply that a boss and an employee can’t have consensual sex. There are only three ways to rape someone: 1. Physically overpowering them. 2. Threatening pain or suffering. 3. By having sex with someone who isn’t mentally developed enough to give consent in any meaningful way. 1 and 3 are irrelevant to this discussion. The OP seems to be using number 2 and saying that because the owner _could_ punish the slave in some form, there’s no way for the slave to consent that isn’t blackened by this. But an employer _could_ fire his employee. A man _could_ beat up his spouse of 20 years. But what a person could do has nothing to do with anything. It’s only what he would do or what the recipients thinks that he would do that matters. If the slave has zero fear of her master and is attracted to her master, and in return the master has zero intention of forcing himself on the slave and is attracted to her, well the result of that pairing would be consensual. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/29 "2011-05-12T06:17:50Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > And I’m bothered by anything that denies the agency of anyone, whether or not they’re a slave. The answer is trivially obvious: slavery denies the agency of the slave. Acknowledging that this has occured isn’t the same as causing it yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/30 "2011-05-12T06:28:44Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > The other day I was thinking about the number of folks whose ancestors include a slaveowner and a slave, part of America’s weird cultural heritage. In passing I thought about how those offspring were all the products of rape. Why do you think this is particular to the USA or unusual in any way? This is common to the whole world. Everybody on the Faroe Islands and Iceland can trace their ancestry back to Norse Vikings on the male side and Irish on the female side – that is the Norsemen would stock up on the Irish girls before heading north. Later on the same islands were raided by Muslim slave traders that sold the slave girls (& sometimes boys) to Arab harems in Africa. I hardly think there were more consensuality in harems than in American plantations. It’s still going on in many places today. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/31 "2011-05-12T06:50:38Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I’m not sure how meaningful consent is if it cannot be withheld, is the thing. But **Lemur** is also right that as recently as a quarter-century ago, marital rape was not criminalized in parts of the United States (I remember in the early 90s when the law was finally changed in North Carolina), but the inability of a wife to withhold consent from her husband didn’t make all marital sex rape in the state. Let’s do a thought experiment here. Let’s assume, for some reason, you have a slave. You’re exactly the same person you are now. You just own a slave, and for whatever reason, you can’t free her (if you’re gay, invert the pronouns). You’re sexually attracted to her. Do you have sex with her without her consent? I’m assuming your answer is no, because I’m assuming you’re not the type of person who wants have sex with somebody without their consent, and she knows that about you…she knows what type of person you are. So you ask her for sex and she consents. Is that rape? I have to think that it’s not. And I have to think that must have happened sometimes. And complicating things is that in some societies, the children of a slave and a free person could be born free. So there’s incentive to the slave tod do it.From an ancient Cretan law code: > [@](#): > > If a slave going to a free woman shall wed her, the children shall be free; but if the free woman to a slave, the children shall be slaves; and if from the same mother free and slave children be born, if the mother die and there be property, the free children shall have it; otherwise her free relatives shall succeed to it. In a lot of societies, the child had the slave status of the mother. So if you’re talking about a slave man and his mistress, there’s incentive to him there, so he can make sure his children are free. ---
**Author:** ![Sandwich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/22d042/32.png) [@Sandwich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sandwich)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/32 "2011-05-12T07:14:31Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The OP seems to imply that a boss and an employee can’t have consensual sex. > > There are only three ways to rape someone: > > 1. Physically overpowering them. > 2. Threatening pain or suffering. > 3. By having sex with someone who isn’t mentally developed enough to give consent in any meaningful way. > > 1 and 3 are irrelevant to this discussion. > > The OP seems to be using number 2 and saying that because the owner _could_ punish the slave in some form, there’s no way for the slave to consent that isn’t blackened by this. But an employer _could_ fire his employee. A man _could_ beat up his spouse of 20 years. But what a person could do has nothing to do with anything. It’s only what he would do or what the recipients thinks that he would do that matters. If the slave has zero fear of her master and is attracted to her master, and in return the master has zero intention of forcing himself on the slave and is attracted to her, well the result of that pairing would be consensual. Your argument is that being a slave is much the same as being an employee? Really? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/33 "2011-05-12T08:37:36Z")
> [@Sandwich](#): > > Your argument is that being a slave is much the same as being an employee? Really? Do you disagree that “slave master” and “employer” are both positions which can be abused? I didn’t link these two things in any other way. Anyone can abuse their position. A large man can rape a smaller man. A pretty woman can ask for gifts from a variety of men and give nothing in return. The ability to be nefarious and evil is something that everyone has in every relationship dynamic. If that sheer potential is the criteria for calling someone evil, then we are all evil. There’s no reason to assume that every slave master who had sex with a slave forced himself on her. There’s no reason to assume that every slave who had sex with her master did it because she felt like she had to. I can easily imagine a case of say a young white boy who grew up on a farm alongside a young black girl – he is the son of the slave master, she is the daughter of one of the slaves. They two fall in love, both hating the prejudice in their nation. When the boy reaches maturity, he purchases her from his parents and they move off to their own farm where they happily live out the rest of their lives raising their children, hiding their relationship from the rest of the world. I’ll bet you I could write that story up as a great Hollywood romance and only the most rabid loonies would be decrying it as a story of rape. It doesn’t matter if he does or doesn’t own her if neither of them care one jot, and they both consider themselves to be equals. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/34 "2011-05-12T11:15:34Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The OP seems to imply that a boss and an employee can’t have consensual sex. > > There are only three ways to rape someone: > > 1. Physically overpowering them. > 2. Threatening pain or suffering. > 3. By having sex with someone who isn’t mentally developed enough to give consent in any meaningful way. > > 1 and 3 are irrelevant to this discussion. > > The OP seems to be using number 2 and saying that because the owner _could_ punish the slave in some form, there’s no way for the slave to consent that isn’t blackened by this. But an employer _could_ fire his employee. A man _could_ beat up his spouse of 20 years. But what a person could do has nothing to do with anything. It’s only what he would do or what the recipients thinks that he would do that matters. If the slave has zero fear of her master and is attracted to her master, and in return the master has zero intention of forcing himself on the slave and is attracted to her, well the result of that pairing would be consensual. An employees or a battered wife has the ability to seek redress if that happens. A slave does not\*. I am absolutely sure that throughout human history we have had cases of relationship between slaves and masters which were totally based upon love and affection. But that was in spite of slavery not because of it. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/35 "2011-05-12T11:51:26Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The OP seems to imply that a boss and an employee can’t have consensual sex. > > There are only three ways to rape someone: > > 1. Physically overpowering them. > 2. Threatening pain or suffering. > 3. By having sex with someone who isn’t mentally developed enough to give consent in any meaningful way. Or in my state, being a prison employee and having sex with an inmate , who is deemed incapable of consent due to his/her status as an inmate , among other ways. The inmate issue , like the slave issue , is not so much about whether the inmate or slave can or cannot consent as it is about the fact that the no one ( including those involved ) can know if there was real consent, untainted by the coercion inherent in the situation. consenting ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/36 "2011-05-12T13:30:11Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The OP seems to imply that a boss and an employee can’t have consensual sex. > > There are only three ways to rape someone: > > 1. Physically overpowering them. > 2. Threatening pain or suffering. > 3. By having sex with someone who isn’t mentally developed enough to give consent in any meaningful way. > > 1 and 3 are irrelevant to this discussion. Or by having sex with someone who can’t say no for any other reason. You can coerce (without a physical threat) someone into having sex. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/37 "2011-05-12T15:03:30Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > Or by having sex with someone who can’t say no for any other reason. You can coerce (without a physical threat) someone into having sex. What do you mean by this? What form of non-physical coercion constitutes rape? ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/38 "2011-05-12T15:48:24Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > What do you mean by this? What form of non-physical coercion constitutes rape? “Have sex with me or I’ll fire you,” “Have sex with me or I’ll expose \_\_\_\_\_ about you.” In the case of a slave, it could be any number of things. “Have sex with me or I won’t let you see your children/family,” etc. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2011, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553/39 "2011-05-12T17:01:35Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > “Have sex with me or I’ll fire you,” “Have sex with me or I’ll expose \_\_\_\_\_ about you.” In the case of a slave, it could be any number of things. “Have sex with me or I won’t let you see your children/family,” etc. That’s falls under threat of suffering (#2). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consensual-relationship-between-a-slaveowner-and-a-slave/581553.md?page=1)