From distortion came devastation. If the first anomaly turned sex into a transaction of power and survival, the next descent was even darker: the outright ownership of another human being for sexual use. History bears the grim record—across continents, empires, and centuries—of men and women reduced to property, their bodies no longer their own, their consent irrelevant. While both men and women have been victimized, the imbalance has leaned heavily toward female victims, not because women are inherently weaker, but because predatory power has historically been concentrated in male hands, and physical strength became a weapon of domination. What began as a departure from God’s covenant design—multiple partners, transactional intimacy—now metastasized into outright enslavement. A human being made in the image of God, destined for the dignity of free, mutual, covenantal love, was instead treated as a tool, a toy, or a trophy. This is not merely a violation of human rights; it is a blasphemy against the Creator who stamped His image on that body and soul.

Understand the gravity: God’s design for sex was always “one another and no other person involved,” but it was also predicated on the freedom and full consent of both parties. Marriage in Scripture is a covenant entered by mature, independent adults—not a transaction where one person purchases access to another’s body. Sexual slavery, whether in the ancient form of chattel slavery or in modern forms of trafficking, coercion, and systemic exploitation, is the absolute antithesis of this design. It says: your body exists for my pleasure. Your will is irrelevant. Your humanity is secondary to my desire. This is not a minor deviation from the path; it is a headlong rush into a ditch of dehumanization. The prophets thundered against such exploitation. When God condemned the nations surrounding Israel, their sexual violence and exploitation were among the charges. When Paul wrote about the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, he was directly countering a culture where masters had sexual access to slaves as a matter of course. The gospel’s message of freedom and dignity was revolutionary because it declared that no human being—free or slave, male or female—could be legitimately treated as an object.

The record may be stronger on the end of men as perpetrators, but that does not excuse or diminish the reality of female perpetrators or male victims. Sexual slavery and coercion know no single gender script. Women in positions of power have exploited men; boys have been trafficked and abused; same-gender sexual slavery has existed throughout history. The common thread is not gender but the abuse of power and the reduction of another person to a body. This further fracture of God’s order has left deep wounds in the collective human psyche. It has taught generations that sex is something one takes, not something one receives as a gift. It has created survivors who struggle to separate intimacy from violation, pleasure from shame, and touch from trauma. It has normalized the idea that some people’s bodies are justifiably available to those with more power, more money, or more strength. This is the lie at the heart of sexual slavery, and it is a lie that continues to echo in subtler forms—in relationships where consent is coerced, in workplaces where advancement requires sexual favors, in cultures where a spouse’s body is treated as an entitlement rather than a gift.

What does this mean for you, young adult navigating your own desires and relationships? First, recognize that the broken world you inherited has shaped many of the messages you have received about sex—that it is about dominance, that it can be taken, that some desires must be satisfied at others’ expense. These messages are lies that flow from centuries of distortion. Second, understand that your own healing may require acknowledging how these patterns have touched your life—whether you have been victimized, or whether you have, in smaller ways, adopted the mindset of treating another person as an object for your gratification rather than a person for your covenantal love. Third, commit to becoming a counter-sign: someone who treats every human being as an image-bearer deserving of dignity, who pursues sexual expression only within the safe, mutual, free bounds of marriage, and who speaks against exploitation wherever it appears—in the news, in your school, in your church, or in your own heart. God’s design for sex is not a relic of a simpler time; it is a radical, counter-cultural vision of freedom, dignity, and love. In a world still recovering from the deep wound of sexual slavery, choosing to live by that design is not just personal morality; it is a prophetic act of resistance against the oldest lie: that some bodies are meant to be used.