In a patriarchal tradition, sexual enslavement means that men own women by paying a bride price to the woman's parents, irrespective of her own consent. The greater the wealth and power, the greater the number of polygamous wives or of concubines in the harem. According to the binary logic of sex, the greater the proportion of sequestered women in a society, the greater the proportion of unpaired males for whom the society must provide an alternative - wars and feuds in which they die, enforced celibacy, homosexual pairing, or shared pairing with harlots. The whorehouse, the public harem, is the counterpart of the seraglio, the private harem. The polyandry of the one matches the polygyny of the other, and the institution of the double standard is complete.
Women are either whores or madonnas.
Only the whores of society are entitled to more than one male partner. Their children are their own responsibility. Madonnas are bound by the rule of chastity and fidelity. They bear children for their master or husband, and he owns them until, if daughters, he gives them away in marriage or, if sons, they reach legal adulthood. Whereas legal polygamy has long since disappeared in our society, the institution of the whorehouse has preserved itself since ancient times, and the concubine or mistress, the kept woman, still exists.