The Master/slave (or Owner/ property) relationship is consensual, without the legal force of historical or modern non-consensual slavery, which is forbidden by the laws of most countries.

The institution of slavery in North America existed from the earliest years of the colonial history of the United States until 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States except as punishment for a crime. It was also abolished among the sovereign Indian tribes in Indian Territory by new peace treaties which the US required after the Civil War. Addington, Deborah (1993), Fantasy Made Flesh: The Essential Guide to Erotic Roleplay (1sted.), Greenery Press, ISBN 978-1-890159-47-4 Camp, Stephanie M. H. Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (U of North Carolina Press, 2004). Some Masters/Mistresses adopt a holistic approach to the maintenance and long-term development of their slave by using such models as Maslow's hierarchy of needs.Ellen Craft (1826–1897) was a slave from Macon, Georgia who posed as a white male planter to escape from slavery. She escaped to the North in December 1848 by traveling openly by train and steamboat with her husband, who acted as her slave servant; they reached Philadelphia and freedom on Christmas Day. A Master/slave "relationship" is often a long-term relationship, comparable in duration to vanilla relationships, whereas a Dominant/submissive "relationship" could also be of the same duration or shorter - even lasting only the duration of a scene, for example, which may range from a number of minutes to hours. Depending on their contract and if the slave is willing to not be monogamous, a slave may be traded by their Master/Mistress, facilitated by sex club events, personals in BDSM interest magazines, or internet based social networks. [8] Commonly, a slave is also said to be "collared" if the relationship has become serious enough to the point where the slave has earned a collar in the eyes of their Master or Mistress. Though not every slave wears a physical slave collar, other jewelry may be worn as a token of their dedication and servitude to their Master/Mistress. Martin, Joan. More than chains and toil: A Christian work ethic of enslaved women (John Knox Press, 2000). The term "slave" is used rather than "sex slave" because sex is not a necessary component of consensual slavery. In BDSM, a slave is a specific type of submissive. Not all submissives are slaves, though all slaves would normally be considered submissive in the relationship.

Some people draw up a slave contract that defines the relationship in explicit detail. These contracts may also deal with domestic arrangements (such as cleanliness, home duties) and interpersonal relationship matters (such as issues of deference, language, etc.), besides the sexual arrangements. Typically, they would provide that the Master or Mistress has the exclusive authority in all matters relating to the body and behavior of the slave, including underwear and other clothing, social relations outside of the arrangement, etc. Although such contracts are not enforceable in the ways legal contracts are, they can be useful for defining in written form the limits of the arrangement between the signatories, and for documenting the consensual nature of the relationships they define between them. [6] Hudson Jr, Larry E., ed. Working toward freedom: Slave society and domestic economy in the American South (U of Rochester Press, 1994). slave, Grateful; Baldwin, Guy; Bean, Joseph W (2002), SlaveCraft: roadmaps for consensual erotic servitude: principles, skills, and tools, Daedalus Pub. Co, ISBN 978-1-881943-14-3, OCLC 50758803 Nunley, Tamika Y. At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, DC (UNC Press Books, 2021). excerptPargas, Damian Alan. "'Various means of providing for their own tables': Comparing Slave Family Economies in the Antebellum South." American Nineteenth Century History 7.3 (2006): 361–387. Schwartz, Marie Jenkins. Born in bondage: Growing up enslaved in the antebellum South (Harvard UP, 2009). Harriet Jacobs (1813 or 1815 – March 7, 1897), author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, now considered an "American classic".

Schwalm, Leslie. A Hard Fight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (U of Illinois Press, 1997). Fraser, Rebecca J. Courtship and Love among the Enslaved in North Carolina (U Press of Mississippi, 2007). Girls and young women were likely disoriented when they first arrived in the Americas. Not only were they outsiders stripped of their identity through an absence of their culture, language, and family, in a process called social death, but they were also suddenly stripped of their human rights. We are familiar with this story as history has attempted to retell the horrific dehumanization that occurred as a result of the institution of slavery. Images of male slaves working in plantations to the point of death are often found in textbooks illustrating the dark past of economic prosperity during this time. Guy Baldwin (2002). SlaveCraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude– Principles, Skills and Tools. Daedelus Publishing Co. pp. 57–62. ISBN 1-881943-14-3. Snitow, Ann Barr; Stansell, Christine; Thompson, Sharon (1983), Powers of desire: the politics of sexuality, New feminist library, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 978-0-85345-610-0

Nature of the relationship [ edit ] A mistress and her male slave perform for the audience at a 2009 sex show in Austria. Slave girls in North America often worked within the domestic sphere, providing household help. White families sought the help of a "girl", an "all-purpose tool" in family life. [25] Although the word "girl" applied to any working female without children, slaves were preferred because in the long run, they cost less. These enslaved girls were usually very young, anywhere from nine years of age to their mid-teens. Heavy household work was assigned to the "girl" and was therefore stigmatized as "negroes '" work. A "girl" was an essential source of help to white families, rural and urban, middle class, and aspiring. She provided freedom for daughters to devote themselves to their self-development and relieved mothers from exhausting labor while requiring no financial or emotional maintenance, "no empathy". [25] Malone, Ann Patton. Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth Century Louisiana (U of North Carolina Press, 1992). Sexual slavery in a BDSM context is both a sexual fantasy and sexual roleplay. [2] The slave master or mistress might be any person or group, though the majority of such relationships are usually either one dominant, or a committed dominant couple, owning one or more slaves. A slave and the owner, and others involved in the relationship, can be of any gender, sexual identity, or orientation. [3] Historically, the most vulnerable populations in any given community are those that are marginalized. Social status can be determined by a number of factors, including but not limited to one’s family, race, gender, wealth, and occupation. With that in mind, who could be more vulnerable than those individuals ripped from their homes and forced into enslavement in a foreign country?

a b c d White, Deborah Gray (1999). Ar'n't I a Woman?: female slaves in the plantation South (Reviseded.). New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0393314812. Archived from the original on August 18, 2020 . Retrieved December 17, 2019. Mary Bell was hired out by the year to take care of three children starting when she was seven. John Mullanphy noted that he had lived with him a four-year-old mulatto girl, whom he willed to the Sisters of Charity in the event of his death. George Morton sold his daughter Ellen 'a certain Mulatto girl a slave about fourteen years of age named Sally, being the child of a certain Negro woman named Ann'." [22] In 1854 Georgia was the first and only state to pass a law that put conditions of sales that separated mothers and their children. Children under five could not be sold away from their mothers, "unless such division cannot in any wise be [e]ffected without such separation. '" [22] In 1848 Ellen Craft, of mixed race, posed as a white man to escape from slavery. Slave training is a BDSM activity usually involving a consensual power exchange between two people taking on the roles of a Master or Mistress and a slave. The objective is to change the slave's behavior in a manner that is pleasing to the Master or Mistress, for example to train the slave to follow a set of rules or commands that the Master or Mistress has provided. White, Deborah Gray. Ar'n't I a woman?: Female slaves in the plantation South (WW Norton & Company, 1999).White, Deborah Gray. "Female Slaves: Sex Roles and Status in the Antebellum Plantation South." Journal of Family History 8#3 (1983): 48–61.