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Simply put, this is a character who has been Made a Slave for the sexual desires of others. This happens especially often in Dystopia, The Empire, and the darker versions of w:c:tvtropesmirror:Fetish Fuel Future. Either to show how much the world sucks, or, well, just because. In the former kind, the Sex Slave is rarely a protagonist. At best she's a Damsel in Distress for the hero to rescue. At worst she only exist as a narrative tool to show the audience that this is indeed a No Woman's Land. In the Abusively Sexy kind, however, she (or he) is usually the protagonist. In that case, expect Property Of Love and Freedom From Choice to come along with Happiness in Slavery.

Of course, it doesn't have to be one or the other. It's interesting to note the tension between Crapsack World|Crapsack World and Fetish Fuel that often comes with the use of this Trope. On the one hand, the Trope wants to say, "Look, that character is a Sex Slave! What a horrible, unjust world this is! Isn't this terrible?" -- but with Stripperiffic clothing, Egregious use of the Male Gaze, and male protagonists who often seem to have no problem "admiring" female Sex Slaves (if not worse), the Trope also seems to whisper -- "That's kinda hot, isn't it?" Unfortunate Implications ensue. In some works, the slavery can develop into a mutual relationship. Expect Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me, Go-Go Enslavement, and/or a Slave Collar.

Unfortunately, this is Truth in Television, although generally quite different from the fetishised fantasy. Forced prostitution in general basically amounts to this. Human trafficking in particular is one of the biggest ways that people are enslaved like this.

ExamplesEdit

Anime & MangaEdit

In w:c:tvtropesmirror:Berserk, this happened to both Guts and Casca in their childhoods. Guts was sold by his adoptive father Gambino to the mercenary Donovan for one night for three silver coins, leading to his traumatic rape. Casca was sold by her parents to a noble who wanted a new serving girl, only for it to turn out that this was what he wanted her for. She was saved by Griffith before the bastard could rape her, but Griffith made her finish him off herself.
Sex slaves are the primary source of income for the Ulfan organization in the w:c:tvtropesmirror:Hentai w:c:tvtropesmirror:Bondage Queen Kate.
What Chaka wanted to do to Yukio in w:c:tvtropesmirror:Black Lagoon, after stripping her of power within the Washimine clan. Ginji, Rock and Revy stop him, though. And Ginji gives him a w:c:tvtropesmirror:Cruel and Unusual Death.

Comic BooksEdit

"The Slavers", a w:c:tvtropesmirror:Punisher arc, has Frank Castle taking on a slave-trafficking ring. The horrible things that the slavers do to the people they've enslaved hits every one of Castle's w:c:tvtropesmirror:Berserk Buttons concerning mistreatment of women and children in general, resulting in one of his most brutal killing sprees.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:The Incredible Hulk features a surprising amount of this. In one story, the Maestro, an insane, evil version of the Hulk, rules the world and keeps a harem of slave girls for this purpose. One of them rapes the present day Hulk while he is paralyzed and helpless.
- In another story featuring the Defenders, Dormammu's sister Umar actually made the Hulk into her sex slave. She wears him out to such an extent that he turns back into Bruce Banner and can't Hulk out for a while. This was played for laughs.
Ninjette of w:c:tvtropesmirror:Empowered was intended as one for her clan. Training her to be a Badass ninja first was probably a bad idea. Emp herself is nearly subject to this in the "Cosmolactic Emperor's" harem.

Fan WorksEdit

Take virtually any pairing where there is w:c:tvtropesmirror:Unresolved Sexual Tension and there will be a story about one of the two involved in the relationship making a bet where if the other loses they have to be their slave, often times a sexual slave. This is a quick and easy way of getting rid of the tension and making them an official couple in the story.
Several w:c:tvtropesmirror:Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfics use this trope liberally.
Among w:c:tvtropesmirror:Harry Potter fan fiction writers, Severus Snape-hating fans tend to believe that he didn't really love Lily Potter, but rather wanted her as one of these.
- There's also a w:c:tvtropesmirror:Fandom Specific Plot in the Potter fandom centered around the fetishized version of this trope. The set-up is as follows: Voldemort has won, Harry and all the "good" characters whom the author doesn't care to write about are dead, and someone (usually Hermione) is made a slave to one of the hotter Death Eaters (most commonly Draco, Snape, or Lucius). It varies whether she is explicitly made into a sex slave or if she's just a slave and the "sex" part is "unofficial". Either way, the set-up is followed by a w:c:tvtropesmirror:Porn Without Plot bondage fantasy, which might as well having nothing to do with w:c:tvtropesmirror:Harry Potter.
According to a majority of fan fiction he's in, many fans believe Fenris of w:c:tvtropesmirror:Dragon Age II was once this.

FilmEdit

w:c:tvtropesmirror:Blue Velvet: Dorothy Vallens is forced into this role after her child and husband are kidnapped by a local crime-boss Frank. Eventually, she develops a sort of w:c:tvtropesmirror:Stockholm Syndrome and seems to take a twisted pleasure in Frank's rape at one point.
In w:c:tvtropesmirror:Don Juan Demarco, the titular mental patient relates a yarn about spending a year in the 'service' of a lusty Sultana. Not that he seems to have minded much. It probably helped that she kept him hidden in the Sultan's harem (apparently she didn't mind sharing.)
w:c:tvtropesmirror:The Street Fighter: Because the guy who hired him didn't have enough money to pay him for the job he did for him, Terry sent the guy out the window and then sold the guy's sister into sexual slavery. It's quite the dick move on Terry's part, cementing him as a very dark antihero, and when the sister gets out of this, she is very much pissed at Terry and goes after him for revenge.
In w:c:tvtropesmirror:Manos: The Hands of Fate, this is the sickening fate of the hero's wife and his child.
Some of the replicants in w:c:tvtropesmirror:Blade Runner.
The "Furniture Girls" in w:c:tvtropesmirror:Soylent Green. The one owned by the murder victim even becomes the love interest of Ty Thorn.
In w:c:tvtropesmirror:Taken, the w:c:tvtropesmirror:Papa Wolf main character must pretty much race against the clock to make sure his kidnapped daughter won't be sold into sex slavery. He's too late to save the daughter's best friend, but does manage to save his child.
Three or four unfortunate young blondes are locked in an attic as forced prostitutes in w:c:tvtropesmirror:The Sinful Dwarf.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:Deadgirl. The titular zombie girl is used as a sex slave after a pair of teens discover her chained in the basement of an abandoned mental hospital. The discovery that she is undead only provokes her captors into even further depravity.
This is the whole premise of the film w:c:tvtropesmirror:Human Trafficking... the trafficking happens only to get sex slaves.

LiteratureEdit

In Anne Bishop's w:c:tvtropesmirror:Black Jewels Trilogy, two of the three main male good guys were pleasure slaves in Courts in Tereille. Jaenelle and the Briarwood girls also count, being kept in a secure facility, drugged, and used for sex on a regular basis.
The Imperium in w:c:tvtropesmirror:Dune allows the possession of sex slaves. The Emperor is allowed to have slave-concubines, Baron Harkonnen uses a slave boy as one, and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen spends a lot of his time with the women in the Baron's slave quarters.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:The Handmaid's Tale has a main character who is the sex slave of a military commander, though it would be more strictly accurate to say that she is a breeding slave.
Is a main plot point of the w:c:tvtropesmirror:John Ringo Paladin of Shadow series, an extremely guilty pleasure for both the reader and the writer.
Romanticized in John Norman's w:c:tvtropesmirror:Gor series.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:Robert E. Howard's w:c:tvtropesmirror:Conan has rescued his share of slave girls in his day, such as Olivia from Shah Amurath in "Iron Shadows in the Moon."
w:c:tvtropesmirror:A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows. A major character is sold into prostitution by her political enemies.
The White Court's human thralls in w:c:tvtropesmirror:The Dresden Files. It should be noted that most of them are essentially brainwashed.
Several female characters, most notably Susan Stern and Dayna Jurgens, share this origin story in w:c:tvtropesmirror:The Stand.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:The Draka revel in this trope, with "bedwenches" and "prettybucks" (male serfs "for men so inclined"). At the same time, sex between female Draka and male serfs is forbidden, as are homosexual relations between male Draka. Instead female Draka get it on with other female Draka or female serfs.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:Piers Anthony invokes this in Bio of a Space Tyrant, where the hero's older sister Faith gives herself up to pirates as a sex slave in order to save her fellow refugees from being destroyed. Even more dispiriting than it sounds, since the family had fled the planet to protect Faith from being raped in the first place.
Manpower Incorporated's c-line genetic slaves in the w:c:tvtropesmirror:Honor Harrington books, which was the origin of a handful of secondary characters including Virginia Usher and Elaine Kormandorski, (otherwise known as Lady Georgia Young, Countess North Hollow).
In Nora Keller's w:c:tvtropesmirror:Comfort Woman, Akiko was forced to serve as a military "comfort woman," a sex slave provided to troops during the Japanese occupation of Korea in w:c:tvtropesmirror:World War II. Her daughter Beccah does not know of this history, and as she learns of it, she comes to understand her mother's apparently strange ways.
In w:c:tvtropesmirror:The Count of Monte Cristo, this is the Count's cover story for Haydee's presence. It also helps him to justify why a man of his standing isn't courting women.
This turns out to be common in w:c:tvtropesmirror:The Hunger Games as the fate of physically attractive winners of the Hunger Games. The money made from renting them out goes straight to President Snow, but they typically cooperate anyways so as to avoid "accidents" happening to their families. Finnick manages to use this to collect information from the powerful people who purchase him, and after joining the rebels he reveals all the Capitol's dirty laundry in a television broadcast.
The Beauty series by A.N. Roquelaure (a pen-name of w:c:tvtropesmirror:Anne Rice) features more of a sexual indentured servitude. Before they're permitted to take rulership, young nobility and royalty are sent into training as sexual slaves. It's also a means a social mobility, as commoners and lesser nobles may also submit themselves for the same treatment. Slaves may also beg to remain so for life.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:Horus Heresy shows us that this wasn't unheard of even in the "Golden Age Of Humanity", with a woman noble has a male guardian and sex slave with his tongue cut out, to be an w:c:tvtropesmirror:Asshole Villain all the way. Horus himself has his eye on him after gaining his respect for his w:c:tvtropesmirror:Badass Normal fighting skill and courage, and assassinates the slave's mistress that is, Horus does it with his own hands as a sort of reward but also because She Knew Too Much. Later w:c:tvtropesmirror:Warhammer 40000 novels strongly imply that in the 41st century, sexual slavery is condoned and living flesh trafficking is a legal thing (though mostly for slave labour).

MusicEdit

The video for w:c:tvtropesmirror:Bad Romance depicts w:c:tvtropesmirror:Lady Gaga as one of these. She burns the man who buys her to death at the end of the video.

Tabletop GamesEdit

w:c:tvtropesmirror:Earthdawn. The Theran Empire designated some of its slaves as "Pleasure Slaves".
w:c:tvtropesmirror:Warhammer 40000: Dark Eldar and followers of Slaanesh practice sexual slavery.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:Exalted. In addition to the "regular" form, some populations have been raised, trained, and even bred (or worse yet, genetically engineered!) for this. A particularly disturbing case of the "regular" variety is found in the Djala, who are slender, delicately built pygmies. True pygmies; as adults, they do not exceed 4'10". Don't think about it too much.
The Batraeans of w:c:tvtropesmirror:Talislanta has this as their hat: the males, who are grossly ugly, systematically sells their female relatives, who are all incredibly beautiful and sensual, as slaves and concubines to their more civilised neighbours, and treat them very much as chattle before they do. Batraean females has pheromones that makes men lustful, but for some reason their own males are immune, which they often use to be relatively well-treated slaves. Other forms of sex slavery exist as well -- Thaecians and Sawilans are preyed upon by slavers for that reason, for instance.

TelevisionEdit

The plot of Season Two of w:c:tvtropesmirror:The Wire kicks off when a shipping container full of dead Eastern European sex slaves are found on the Baltimore docks.
Orion slave girls from w:c:tvtropesmirror:Star Trek. They were w:c:tvtropesmirror:Retconned in w:c:tvtropesmirror:Star Trek: Enterprise into secretly being the rulers of their race. They used the pretense of being sex-slaves to infiltrate enemy organizations, and then used powerful pheromones to control any males they wished, as they did with the males of their own species. The whole set-up came across as a bit of an awkward plot device, though, and some argue that this situation carries more w:c:tvtropesmirror:Unfortunate Implications than just playing the trope straight.
- Another interesting Trek example: In one episode of the Original Series, Kirk is the well-treated prisoner of the ruler of an Ancient Rome Planet. A female slave is sent to his quarters by his captor. The slave makes it clear (quite suggestively) that she was ordered to please Kirk. It's left unclear whether Kirk actually has sex with her, but it is clearly at least a possibility.
- In w:c:tvtropesmirror:Deep Space Nine, Bajoran women were kept as "comfort women" during the Cardassian occupation.
Warren's ex-girlfriend Katrina in w:c:tvtropesmirror:Buffy the Vampire Slayer almost became this when the Trio (a trio of villainous college-aged nerds turned w:c:tvtropesmirror:Mad Scientists) tested their mind control ray on her. She fought off the mind control before anything could happen, and Warren killed her in the ensuing struggle.
Zev (or Xev) of w:c:tvtropesmirror:Lexx was going to be made one of these, but she broke free before the mental reconditioning was implemented. This conditioning was inflicted instead on 790, the robot drone overseeing the operation. Since the conditioning resulted in the victim falling hopelessly in love with the first person s/he saw next, 790 became obsessed with Zev, devoting himself to her completely.
In w:c:tvtropesmirror:DantesCove Dante's Cove, Ambrosius w:c:tvtropesmirror:IHaveYourWife holds Toby hostage to force Kevin to become his sex slave. Later, Griff uses his influence with the Tresum Council to try to get Grace to submit to him similarly, but she outwits him.
Every Active in w:c:tvtropesmirror:Dollhouse is used for this frequently.
In w:c:tvtropesmirror:Battlestar Galactica, one of the many signs that the Pegasus crew have crossed the w:c:tvtropesmirror:Moral Event Horizon is their use of a captured Number Six Cylon as a sex slave.
The final series of the w:c:tvtropesmirror:Murphy's Law revolves around the search for a missing police officer who has been caught up in a sex slave ring. Does a very good job at describing just how brutal and terrifying the real thing can actually be.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:The Commish also has an episode where a 15 years old girl (who used to be the babysitter of Commisioner's son) is foced into doing porno films. And pleasing the boss.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:Lost Girl plays with this: the closest anyone comes to using the word "slave" to describe Lauren is when she refers to herself as the Ash's property, even though she clearly is a slave, even to the point of wearing a w:c:tvtropesmirror:Slave Collar. She nevertheless enjoys a great deal of prestige within the fae community, and is primarily valuable as a slave for her medical expertise. All the same, when it suits his purpose, the Ash orders her to seduce and sleep with Bo, even though it ends up wrecking her relationship with Bo when she finds out that that was why Lauren slept with her.
Though we don't see it directly in w:c:tvtropesmirror:Firefly, it is implied that the sexual slave trade is around. When Mal discovers River in Simon's cryobox, the first thing he assumes is that Simon is smuggling her to be sold to a border-world baron.

Video GamesEdit

w:c:tvtropesmirror:Fallout 3. Alejandra, one of the Temple Of The Union residents, is a former sex slave. Crimson and Clover are current sex slaves (the Lone Wanderer can even buy the latter, but nothing sexual comes out of it), and Red becomes a sex slave if you send her to Paradise Falls.
After you are invited to Davik's estate in w:c:tvtropesmirror:Knights of the Old Republic you are encouraged to enjoy a relaxing bath at the hands of his slaves. This being BioWare, there are male and female slaves...
This is the entire point of the w:c:tvtropesmirror:Slave Maker flash game series.
Keristrasza becomes Malygos's unwilling consort in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, which is essentially this, but said in a more Safe For Work kind of way.
The implication of what Ser Alrik intends to do with Ella by threatening to make her Tranquil in the w:c:tvtropesmirror:Dragon Age II quest "Dissent".

WebcomicsEdit

Alisin from w:c:tvtropesmirror:Fans was kept as a sex slave, which led to her refusing to let Feddyg go after they had sex, which led to him... well... doing a lot of things.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:Collar 6 has the main character as one of these in a future where BDSM lesbian harems seem to be the norm.
Implied in w:c:tvtropesmirror:Last Res0rt, or at least feared enough by Jigsaw that she snaps and kicks her Vampire Sire out a hotel window... thirty stories up!
w:c:tvtropesmirror:Tea House has a full cast of these (insistently called "courtesans") and their clients
In w:c:tvtropesmirror:Endstone, they think they can enslave Kyri because she's a higher animal and one customer doesn't want her slaughtered yet.

Web OriginalEdit

A very common backstory in the w:c:tvtropesmirror:Furry Fandom. Usually furries are created by humans as a w:c:tvtropesmirror:Slave Race, then they run away or rebel.
w:c:tvtropesmirror:Orion's Arm has Erotogini, which range from humanoids to living carpets. Though the Sapient Rights accords means that in most civilized regions they are illegal unless designed to be nonsapient (like an animal). Of course, descendants of Erotogini are fairly common.
This is the worst-case scenario for the titular creatures in w:c:tvtropesmirror:Pokegirls. Since they're neither fully human nor fully inhuman, [[w:c:tvtropesmirror:Not Even Human|applies and w:c:tvtropesmirror:But You Screw One Goat doesn't -- but since many of them used to be human, characters outside the Amethyst League still tend to be appropriately horrified.

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