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Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 4:08:57 PM

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I have been reading the Arabian Nights lately.

There are so many stories about the emperor taking a common girl to be his consort. The girls submit entirely to emperor and feel lucky that he chose to take her from her old life and allow her to be his slave.

There is never one second in these where it occurs to either of them to ask the girls consent, rather the girl is living the dream all girls in her country dream of, she is overjoyed to have her freedom taken away. She feels blessed that the emperor enslaved her.

The man has omnipotent power over the women in these stories. The women totally accept their fate and accept that the empeorar can and should do whatever he wants to her.

This is so amazing to me.

All my life had this mantra of "equality" drilled into my head, so Dominance and submission became a forbidden taboo a "kinky" thing that must be hidden.

But in the Arabian Nights, a story well over 1000 years old, submission is such a natural thing for women that it does not occur to anyone to question it.

I long for that kind of intimacy. I long to be able to fully live out my desire to utterly strip a woman of her freedom, and to feel no guilt for it, but know that she adores being my slave.

In the modern world, is such a thing posible? I think not. Not in the same way at least.

I live by a strict moral code, my morality utterly forbids me to enslave a woman who wants to be free instead. I could not live with myself if I did that, I'd feel terrible. I enjoy so much utterly dominating a woman, yet I am always so careful to hold back, especially when I am in public. The restraint is maddening.

But the escape in this story... the idea of being able to take and break a free woman, without any guilt or worry, to fully embrace the idea that all women would want to be slaves... wow. It takes me away to a wondrous mythic world that probably never existed. But its peaceful there. And its beautiful.

Has anyone else read the Arabian Nights?

RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 4:16:46 PM

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Are you serious?

The versions of the Arabian Nights I've read are all full of women who have been taken against their will and who resort to trickery and manipulation to outwit their captors because they have no choice. The story about the girl imprisoned by a djin springs to mind. She forced princes and emirs to make love to her as revenge while the djin slept next to her, threatening to cry rape and wake him up if they refused. She took their sygnet rings as trophies, and she had hundreds of the these rings knotted on a silken cloth

Does that sound like a woman embracing slavery? I think not.

edited to add: it's also bad form to copy and paste your journal entries into the forum like this.

< Message edited by VaguelyCurious -- 4/12/2010 4:20:28 PM >

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 4:23:05 PM

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Fiction written by a man from a man's viewpoint. If a woman had written it, it would have been very different.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that how women are represented in porn is how they really are. We aren't and approaching us as if we were acting in a bad movie will get you a reputation as a HNG.

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 4:34:05 PM

OrpheusAgonistes

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quote:

ORIGINAL: VaguelyCurious

Are you serious?

The versions of the Arabian Nights I've read are all full of women who have been taken against their will and who resort to trickery and manipulation to outwit their captors because they have no choice. The story about the girl imprisoned by a djin springs to mind. She forced princes and emirs to make love to her as revenge while the djin slept next to her, threatening to cry rape and wake him up if they refused. She took their sygnet rings as trophies, and she had hundreds of the these rings knotted on a silken cloth

Does that sound like a woman embracing slavery? I think not.

edited to add: it's also bad form to copy and paste your journal entries into the forum like this.

I don't want to derail a thread (not even one that was never all the way on its own rickety rails to start with) but you might be interested in an erudite but charmingly playful essay Borges wrote on the various translations of The Arabian Nights called, fittingly enough, The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights. The premise is (on the off chance you don't have the time to drop everything and hunt down the essay) that the original story is so vast and labyrinthine that all translations have contained glaring omissions, jaw dropping insertions, howling gaffes, and vagrant twists added to suit the translator's own sensibilities. Added fact: No version was ever quite smutty enough for Borges, the prim and proper blind Argentinian librarian (whom I love). The tale and its adaptations serve as an illustration of the point of view that every translation of merit is, in and of itself, an act of creative genius.

Anyway, to get back on track, I agree with you but there's not much else to say. The OP's reading is one of the most vexing and bewildering misreadings I've ever seen on the internet, which ranks it high on the list of most baffling misreadings of all time.

Edit:

I meant to insert this in the paragraph on Borges, but then I reached to answer my phone and spilled cous cous on my floor and got semi-flustered for a moment. Anyway, of course the idea that the translations of a book as big and old and rich as The Thousand Nights and One Night would vary markedly according to the agendas of the translators is trite and self-evident. The pleasure is in the details.

< Message edited by OrpheusAgonistes -- 4/12/2010 4:37:55 PM >

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 4:42:35 PM

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quote:

ORIGINAL: OrpheusAgonistes

I don't want to derail a thread (not even one that was never all the way on its own rickety rails to start with) but you might be interested in an erudite but charmingly playful essay Borges wrote on the various translations of The Arabian Nights called, fittingly enough, The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights.

The book it's in (forgotten which book it is, but I've definitely seen that essay title) is in my parents' house somewhere-it's on the 'stuff dad bitches at me to read until I finally get round to reading it' list. I'll get round to Borges eventually, I promise :-)

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 5:03:35 PM

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Besides the other answers you have been given, let's look at another point of view. At one time the rich were very rich and everyone else was poor. If I'd never had a good meal or been sated in my whole life I might consider being enslaved by a rich man as a blessing. It would mean not being hungry. Does that mean I would be happy to give up my freedom? Probably not, however, if it comes down to slowly starving to death and being enslaved but getting good meals, I'd probably choose eating. The will to live is very strong.

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 6:11:58 PM

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As you noted, the Arabian Nights stories are fantasy stories. In the modern society where a woman is not dependent on a man for food and shelter, such a thing is impossible.

None of that, however, requires that you have restraint or hold back. What it DOES mean is that you are not a prince and she is not a helpless woman. Therefor, you're going to have to find some other way to enslave her. But yes, it is possible to do so. Even better, done without threat, what you have is willingly given... an astonishingly wonderful thing.

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 6:15:02 PM

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quote:

There are so many stories about the emperor taking a common girl to be his consort. The girls submit entirely to emperor and feel lucky that he chose to take her from her old life and allow her to be his slave.

Don't forget the part about the Sultan killing her in the morning.

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 6:56:26 PM

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They are not exactly 1000 years old. IIRC, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton translated them from the original Arabic in the mid-1800s and did a considerable amount of embellishment.

Even today in many Arabic countries, women are regarded as being property to a degree.

If you really dig that lifestyle get a Burton translation and feast upon his notes.

< Message edited by DarkSteven -- 4/12/2010 6:57:00 PM >

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 7:25:00 PM

OrpheusAgonistes

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quote:

ORIGINAL: DarkSteven

They are not exactly 1000 years old. IIRC, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton translated them from the original Arabic in the mid-1800s and did a considerable amount of embellishment.

Even today in many Arabic countries, women are regarded as being property to a degree.

If you really dig that lifestyle get a Burton translation and feast upon his notes.

Burton was pretty fascinating. He was ferociously antisemitic, had an unapologetic fixation on Byron (his translation was the next best thing to Byron rewriting the tales himself), and his favorite hobby was spreading scandalous rumors about himself (cannibalism, the heroic profanation of Islamic holy ground, sexual conquests) and much of his free time was spent denying other rumors (homosexuality, that he'd once murdered a boy who'd watched him take a leak). He still somehow had time to produce what is, apparently (I'm not a competent judge) an audaciously unfaithful, but undeniably thrilling, translation of the work he venerated more than Byron and the Bible put together.

You probably know all this. But I enjoy repeating it. You're completely right though--in many ways Burton's footnotes form a more entertaining picaresque than the tales he translates.

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 7:32:15 PM

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Actually a literary criticism view of the op's take would be that a man was afraid of his mother, sought to overcome her view of him by having a false sense of power gained by forcing sex on women who were barely pubescent. The age at which adolescent males become traumatized for life by forgetting to lock the door when their mother walks in on them masterbating.

At least, that's the best I can do without first digging up my old textbook on lit crit. Basically a psychological analysis of it from what my professor spent most of the semester on.

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 8:31:10 PM

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You know what I like to read? Bodice rippers.

Those stories about a chick in historical times who gets her bodice/tunic/ballgown ripped off her by some some incredibly handsome man (never a fat dude who smells with a lot of warts) who ravages her and always falls completely in love with her, brings her roses, decides to marry her and have a family with her.

It's a story. Fun to read but we shouldn't take it seriously. The reality of slavery isn't glamarous and happy and it never was.

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 8:33:05 PM

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quote:

ORIGINAL: ZenSpace

... The man has omnipotent power over the women in these stories. The women totally accept their fate and accept that the empeorar can and should do whatever he wants to her.

... In the modern world, is such a thing posible? I think not. Not in the same way at least.

I read Arabian Nights.

Yes, such things are possible in this modern world, being wealthy really helps! Living in Dearborne MI (or the Middle East) might help as well.

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/12/2010 8:38:04 PM

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Some stories are better left in the realm of fantasy, rather than trying to make them reality. You'll get a lot more mileage that way.....

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/13/2010 4:26:48 AM

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In the romance novels I read, the Duke of Hawkcliff (know to his friends as Hawk) rescues the commoner from her poor fate as his eyes 'rove' over her full bosom that's spilling all over the place. He buys her gowns and diamonds while barely controlling his cheap animal like lust for this vixen who's brought the famous bachelor to his knees. She's opinionated, tossing her raven locks and batting her thick lashes, while her green eyes 'flash' in defiance.

Hawk: You have opinions. I've never known a woman who had them before. I love you.

Vixen: You are brooding and handsome, with a dark secret. The death of your wife/friend/momma/baby chimp wasn't really your fault. I love you.

Ah...the good old days.

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/13/2010 4:31:32 AM

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submit or die is what you're really talking about.
Not much of a choice...

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/13/2010 4:43:47 AM

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quote:

ORIGINAL: VaguelyCurious

Are you serious?

The versions of the Arabian Nights I've read are all full of women who have been taken against their will and who resort to trickery and manipulation to outwit their captors because they have no choice. The story about the girl imprisoned by a djin springs to mind. She forced princes and emirs to make love to her as revenge while the djin slept next to her, threatening to cry rape and wake him up if they refused. She took their sygnet rings as trophies, and she had hundreds of the these rings knotted on a silken cloth

Does that sound like a woman embracing slavery? I think not.

edited to add: it's also bad form to copy and paste your journal entries into the forum like this.

The Thousand and One Nights contain both sorts of stories, no matter what political spin we personally wish to place upon them (wan smile). Your quoting other types of stories does not magically negate the existence of the stories the thread starter has mentioned. Why the need to deny their existence? There is beauty and power in those tales if you are of a power-exhange bent. :)

The stories he's describing exist in that corpus. Similar tales can be found in the Bible. The stories roughly mirror realities that existed at one time. Harems were common, arranged marriages and treating women like property was the rule, abject poverty was the norm for most people. We seem to have come a long way since then, but in modern times you could say that certain materialistic women "sell themselves" to the highest bidder.

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/13/2010 4:46:46 AM

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quote:

ORIGINAL: leadership527

As you noted, the Arabian Nights stories are fantasy stories. In the modern society where a woman is not dependent on a man for food and shelter, such a thing is impossible.

None of that, however, requires that you have restraint or hold back. What it DOES mean is that you are not a prince and she is not a helpless woman. Therefor, you're going to have to find some other way to enslave her. But yes, it is possible to do so. Even better, done without threat, what you have is willingly given... an astonishingly wonderful thing.

Agree! Good way of putting it. :)

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/13/2010 5:37:13 AM

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quote:

ORIGINAL: CaringandReal

The stories he's describing exist in that corpus. Similar tales can be found in the Bible. The stories roughly mirror realities that existed at one time. Harems were common, arranged marriages and treating women like property was the rule, abject poverty was the norm for most people. We seem to have come a long way since then, but in modern times you could say that certain materialistic women "sell themselves" to the highest bidder.

Actually the Old Testament makes it clear that women had the right to refuse marriages arranged for them. Doesn't mean they had much alternative since there weren't any good professions for women.

The only women who were not given a choice were those captured in war. However a man who did take a woman prisoner in war was not allowed to have his way with her. He had to give her into his mother's protection for a month during which time he should reflect if he really wanted to marry her. If so, married they were.

The option of sex slave did not exist under ancient Israelite law.

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RE: Arabian Nights - 4/13/2010 5:41:37 AM

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quote:

ORIGINAL: AquaticSub

You know what I like to read? Bodice rippers.

Those stories about a chick in historical times who gets her bodice/tunic/ballgown ripped off her by some some incredibly handsome man (never a fat dude who smells with a lot of warts) who ravages her and always falls completely in love with her, brings her roses, decides to marry her and have a family with her.

It's a story. Fun to read but we shouldn't take it seriously. The reality of slavery isn't glamarous and happy and it never was.

Ohhh I love those. Especially the ones set in Scotland. Have you met the Frasers?

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