European observers eroticized and condemned Egyptian domestic slavery in one gaze

Evidence

The intimacy of this relationship and the extension of family ties to slaves provoked a mixture of titillation and disgust from British observers, reactions similar to those elicited by the exoticism of the harem, which, for European observers, was closely connected to slavery. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, the idea of the Egyptian family’s structure had become politicized within Egypt and sharply scrutinized from without, particularly by Great Britain and France. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 667

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The British ‘titillation and disgust’ at Egyptian harem-slavery parallels the moral-panic framing in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ regarding how outsiders read and police intimate dress and family arrangements.