Odalisques in India

Code d’ Odalisque seeks to establish a viable codification of consensual odalisque slave-play in the modern world. It is important to understand that in this it is not a historical reconstruction. The odalisque was an institution in several historical empires, and especially the classical Ottoman culture, and Code d’ O. looks back to these historical models. But it makes no claims to be an authentic rendering of those models – it is a creative re-imagining of a fictitious past made to suit the tastes and conditions of the present. Specifically, it is a hard-core fully sexualized version of odalisque slavery: it is a sex game for consenting adults. You will find critics of Code d’ O. writing on-line who object to it because, they claim, “odalisque slavery was not like that” and they cite some historical sources. This misses the point. The people who enjoy consensual odalisque slave play in the contemporary world are not historians. They are not interested in what is and is not a faithful rendering of the historical institution. Their interests are sexual, not academic. They are interested in using a re-imagined odalisque slavery as a platform for extended sexual exploration – that’s all.

All the same, the historical models are inherently interesting, and it remains a fact that many – if not most – sophisticated cultures in the past knew vocations (other than prostitution) for women dedicated to providing sexual enjoyment for men. Prostitution is age-old and virtually universal, of course, but many cultures had other institutions aside from prostitution. Most history books will refer to such women as “courtesans” but in fact this is a blanket term covering a wide array of quite different professions. Some of those professions were specifically sexual, and some – like the geisha in Japan – demanded many more skills beyond sex. All of them sought to move the provision of sexual service beyond the sordid transactions of whoredom. Sensible cultures know that marriage cannot cater to all sexual needs in a society. But prostitution is tawdry, prone to crime, and, like gambling, often socially destructive - it draws money out of the domestic economy and leaves wives and mothers struggling to run a household and feed children because the husband has wasted his wages at the whorehouse. Such cultures permit other sexual professions to flourish instead. In slavekeeping cultures this will include a class of female slave specifically devoted to providing sexual service.

In traditional India, especially in the Moghul north, there was the institution of the tawaif. These were women ‘courtesans’ highly trained in the arts of etiquette. Very often they also performed sexual duties. When the British conquered India, however, the institution degenerated into nothing more than prostitution. After the British, regrettably, India has come to be dominated by the puritanism of the sexually repressed Mahatma Gandhi and a strongly conservative social culture. Only slowly is contemporary India rediscovering the extraordinary erotic heritage of its past. This is the people who wrote the kama sutra! This is the people who have the lingam and the yoni as their central religious symbols! There are no people on Earth who should better understand phallic worship than the Indians!

We know of numerous couples in India who have adopted the odalisque lifestyle. But India is a nation of nearly 2 billion people! It has a culture in which women are accustomed to the submissive role and in which men are anxious to demonstrate their virility and sexual prowess. More and more modern Indians are looking to shed the puritanical restrictions of the past and to embrace the sex-positive ideals of modernity. We see this increasingly in Bollywood movies and in the growth of underground ‘swingers’ scenes in cosmopolitan cities like Mumbai. Online, Indians are among the world’s most enthusiastic purveyors of porn. Beneath the veneer of puritan respectability, these are horny people!

We believe that Code d’ Odalisque has a great future in India – especially in the north where the Moghul and Turkoman heritage has a long tradition of ‘courtesans’ dedicated to providing sexual service to men. We understand that the Indian underworld is full of human trafficking and child exploitation and other unsavory practices. Code d’ Ode seeks to create a fully legal, consensual and safe alternative that sex-loving Indians can explore. We’d love to hear from Indians who might be interested in the odalisque lifestyle. Please write to us at: bedroomslaves@yahoo.com