The Transferability of Ownership

Posted by Tanos on Thu 25 Jan 07, 12:32 AM to the Internal Enslavement blog

The sale of slaves is one of the recurring themes of BDSM fiction and many people's fantasies, and it's raised from time to time in the ownership subculture: How can the ownership of slaves be transferred? Can they be sold? And even, where can they be bought? I don't believe this is really possible, and I'd like to explain my reasoning about the issue.

The most theatrical and erotically charged way of selling a slave is by public auction, and there has been a whole string of ways in which people have attempted to capture some of that: eroticised slave auctions have repeatedly appeared in Victorian paintings, travellers' accounts of slave owning-societies, 1950s Roman film epics, John Norman's Gor series, the Marketplace books, and even episodes of TV series like Xena, with slaves in skimpy fur bikinis. Students at many universities stage charity slave auctions in which a set period of time is sold, and a similar type of event is sometimes held within BDSM: often by the selling of a fixed length play scene with a bottom or even a top.

But none of these claim to be transfers of ownership.

There have been attempts to genuinely sell slaves online on BDSM forums and websites. There was a notable case in December 1996 when an "Amanda" apparently sold herself on the internet this way, in the newsgroup alt.personals.bondage. A follow up post in February 1997 appeared to confirm the sale.

In a similar vein, an auction area was run on SlaveFarm.com until 2006 to allow slave sales, but was always plagued by unrealistic fake bids and was eventually closed for this reason.

However, both of these cases (if genuine) only constitute free submissives selling themselves into slavery: that is, entering a relationship with the intention of pursuing M/s, with an element of a "blind date" mixed in due to the auction process. They do not involve the sale of a slave from one owner to another, in a way the slave cannot back out of themselves.

Vi Johnson's account of her experiences as a slave in the 1980s Leather scene, "To Love, To Obey, To Serve", includes three offers to buy her in the first few pages. None are successful despite figures in excess of $100,000 being mentioned. Johnson is also lent by her mistress Jill to Mistress Katherine, but again, the bond is provided by her original (and still surving) relationship with Jill: "By pleasing Katherine I am pleasing Jill."

Why is the idea of selling property so attractive? One possible answer is that being able to sell a possession is frequently part of the definition of property. The idea that you don't really own something unless you can sell it is implicit in a lot of economic thinking. On that basis, even considering the possibility of selling a slave provides some psychological proof of ownership to the people involved. The tendency for slaves and submissives to be loaned out may also provide this kind of reinforcement.

However, whilst I agree that submissives who have been internally enslaved could be loaned, I do not believe outright selling or giving away slaves is an option. In these examples, it must be imagined that the slave would not desire the change of ownership before it is happens: cases where the slave desires a new owner do not provide a proper test of the transfer mechanism.

First, let's put aside the case of external enslavement, where slavery is enforced by some force outside of the slave's psyche. For example, by a system of laws and police; by your connections to the Albanian Mafia and their ability to track down and return property to you; or your possession of incrimating photographs of your enslaved politician licking cocaine off a pink dildo These cases are straightforward if an owner happens to find themself in such a situation, but are not what we're talking about.

The second possibility is a form of slavery based on the slave's word of honour or oath, and these are only applicable to slaves who have a deep and implacable inability to break their word. In today's world, such people are rare in the extreme, and rarer still when their undertaking is not to an individual they love and devote themselves to, but to an unnamed and unknown person to which they may be sold in the future. And yet that is what would be required to tranfer ownership based on an oath if the slave would not have desired their new owner if given the choice.

The final possibility is purely in terms of Internal Enslavement, and would require the tranfer of the enslavement to a new owner. I do not see how such a process could be undertaken without a period of freedom for the slave between owners, and a large risk that the slave will remove themselves from the process during that freedom. If the first owner sends the slave to live with the prospective owner to whom they have been sold, in the hope that the owner is capable of enslaving that particular slave, then I believe the first owner's enslavement would be destroyed by neglect before that point was reached. It may be possible for two co-resident owners to achieve such a transfer: for example from an initial master to joint ownership with his wife, who then leaves the wife as mistress of the slave. But that involves a long process and the creation of a single domain of authority administered by two owners. As such, it is more akin to dividing property on divorce, than the selling off of a slave to another owner.

For these reasons, I do not believe transfers of ownership to be possible in the types of slavery relevant to the ownership subculture, even though it is a hugely attractive fantasy for a great many people.

Edited Thu 24 Dec 09, 8:32 PM by Tanos