Slave auction

What is a slave auction?

A slave auction is a game at a BDSM party where participants auction themselves off: the highest bidder gets their company or a scene for an agreed length of time. The proceeds usually go to charity. What gets auctioned is time, not a person, and the one being auctioned sets in advance what is allowed within that time.

How a slave auction goes

Back to front: the terms first, then the bidding.

A common setup: whoever puts themselves up fills in a card beforehand with how much time, which acts yes and which no. That card is read out during the bidding, so the room knows what it is bidding on. The money goes to charity, and once the block is over the arrangement is done.

Then comes the part that actually matters: the negotiation. Buyer and auctioned talk through once more, after the bidding, what is going to happen, because the card is a frame and not a script. At a well-run auction someone from the organization sits in on that, for the same reason a dungeon monitor stands on the play floor: the two don’t know each other.

Where the Dutch word comes from

From the colonial newspaper, not from the scene. The dictionary is no help here, the Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek has no entry for slavenveiling and not even slavenmarkt, but the newspaper archive of the Royal Library does: 63 hits for slavenveiling and 27 for slavenveilingen.

The oldest is from 2 August 1847, in the Algemeen Handelsblad, under the headline “De hardvochtige broeders” and with the word spelled slaven-veiling. The story is set in Weltevreden on Java. A Frenchman, Duval, had four sons by one of his enslaved women; three were freed, the youngest, Philogène, was not. On his death the father charged the other three to do it anyway. They promised, and then sold their brother at an auction. When his turn came the boy began to cry and reminded them of that promise. The bystanders were outraged, the paper writes, “but the brothers had the right to sell the brother; the law protected them.” He fetched 900 guilders.

The second trail runs to America: in December 1854 the Opregte Haarlemsche Courant advertises a volume containing the chapter “A Slave Auction in Virginia. From the Diary of an English Traveler”. So the Dutch word is older than the scene, and in its earliest sources it describes exactly what a game is not: a sale where the one being sold had no say.

Why people take part in a slave auction

For the audience. A room full of people watches you while nothing happens that should stay private, and for many people that is exactly the right dose.

• For the one being auctioned, the appeal is being wanted in public while you decided yourself what for.
• For the bidder, the usual hurdle drops away: you don’t have to approach anyone, only raise your hand.
• For the organizers, it brings in money and an evening people talk about afterward.

Bidding is not an introduction. The highest bidder still knows nothing about what the other one likes, and the amount does not widen the arrangement.

The problem is in the name

And that is not new and not exclusive to BDSM. In Sitka, Alaska, the Pioneer Bar ran an auction for thirty-one years where volunteers sold their labor, mowing lawns, cleaning gutters, with the proceeds going to charity. In 2015, 3,000 dollars went to the volunteer fire department.

That year Wanda Laws, president of the NAACP chapter in Anchorage, publicly flagged the name: “extremely inflammatory and insensitive”, she told the AP. “You do not glorify the selling of another human being. You just don’t do that.” The organization reacted resentfully, a bar employee called it “a word that just means squat now”, but the name did change, to Alaska Day Auction.

Both arguments hold. The form is harmless and the money goes to the fire department; the name borrows weight from something no one chose. At a play party it is no different. Anyone who wants to keep the form and take the objection seriously calls it a service or time auction.

Misconceptions about the slave auction

“The buyer may do whatever they want.” No. What is allowed is on the card that was read out before the bidding, and the auctioned can stop at any moment. The amount buys time, not consent.

“It’s a disguised paid session.” Also no: the money goes to a charity or to the organizers and not to the auctioned.

“Anyone who puts themselves up is submissive.” Often, but it is not a given. On many evenings dominants get auctioned too, and there is just as much bidding on an hour of rope class or a massage.

“An auction like this is an old scene ritual.” There is no evidence for that. The word is Dutch and nineteenth-century, the game is young, and no dictionary knows it.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, at home in BDSM for more than twenty-five years and trained as a psychotherapist. I don’t take part in auctions, I work by appointment and not by the highest bid, but I do hear about them, usually from someone who let themselves be auctioned and tells me afterward that it went differently than expected.

What goes wrong there is not the bidding but the hour after. The card has been read out, everyone has clapped, and then you’re standing in a corner of the room with a stranger where the mood says something has to happen now. My advice is unspectacular: agree that the first quarter of an hour is talking only. Whoever says that in advance keeps the control exactly where it is worth the most.

What you can do yourself

• Fill in the card as if you were handing it to a stranger, because you are. Names of acts, no mood words.
• Put an end time on it and have it read out. A block of thirty or sixty minutes is checkable; “an evening” is not.
• Agree that the conversation comes before the scene, with a quarter of an hour where nothing happens.
• Stay at the party’s location. Going along to another address is a different arrangement from the one that was auctioned.
• Ask who from the organization is watching and where they stand. You don’t know your counterpart, and that is what a dungeon monitor is there for.
• Arrange a safe call if you are going to the party alone.

More reading on the slave auction

On this site, play party describes the evening where such an auction takes place, and pick-up play is about the risk that comes with it: playing with someone you don’t know.

Beyond this site you can follow the word itself in the newspaper archive of the Royal Library; the 1847 source reads in five minutes. The report from Sitka gives both sides of the name debate in ten paragraphs.

Where this fits on this site

An auction is a party form, and I work by appointment with a time and a price set in advance. How such an evening is prepared and what we talk through beforehand is on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

• Newspaper archive of the Royal Library. Consulted through the SRU service on the DDD_artikel collection, 4 August 2026. Gives the counts of 63 hits for slavenveiling and 27 for slavenveilingen, and the two oldest sources. The oldest is Algemeen Handelsblad, 2 August 1847, “De hardvochtige broeders”, where the word is spelled slaven-veiling; the OCR has been read word for word and gives the story from Weltevreden on Java about the Frenchman Duval, his four sons by one of his enslaved women, the promise to the dying father, the sale of the youngest brother Philogène by his three brothers, the line “but the brothers had the right to sell the brother; the law protected them” and the proceeds of 900 guilders. The second is an advertisement in the Opregte Haarlemsche Courant of 26 December 1854 for a volume with the chapter “A Slave Auction in Virginia. From the Diary of an English Traveler”.
• Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek. Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, requested 4 August 2026. Gives a negative result used on this page: there is no entry for slavenveiling, and none for slavenmarkt either. The word does exist in use, but has no dictionary entry.
• Alaska ‘slave auction’ fundraiser to be renamed. Mark Thiessen, Associated Press, via Peninsula Clarion, 20 October 2015; raw page read so the quotes land on the right speakers. Gives the setup of the Sitka auction (bidding on volunteers’ time for chores like mowing lawns and cleaning gutters), the thirty-one years the Pioneer Bar ran it, the 3,000 dollars for the volunteer fire department, the objection of Wanda Laws, president of the NAACP chapter in Anchorage. “Extremely inflammatory and insensitive” and “You do not glorify the selling of another human being. You just don’t do that.”. The counter-reaction of bar employee Rita Ledbetter about “a word that just means squat now”, and the new name Alaska Day Auction.

Related terms

• Play party. The evening where such an auction is usually held.
• Fetish party. The other kind of evening where the form turns up, with clothing as the subject.
• Dungeon monitor. Who watches when two strangers start to play.
• Pick-up play. Playing with someone you met that evening, and what that asks.
• Negotiation. The conversation that still has to happen after the bidding.
• Safe call. The arrangement you make before you go to an evening like this alone.
• Objectification. The feeling the form plays with, explained without an auction.
• Slave. The word in the name, and why it sits heavy in the Netherlands.
• Munch. The counterpart without play, for anyone who wants to meet first.