I am leaving SL, for good.

[Beth Macbain]

7 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

The Gor books routinely contain scenes of women being scarred with burning irons, beaten literally senseless (and revived with cold water just to be beaten senseless again), keelhauled, left for hours on blocks of ice and thrown into sacks of manure, to name but a few. I could perhaps excuse this as fantasy or just a story except that it's always followed by 5000 pages telling you that this REALLY IS how women should be treated, and of course they always fall passionately in love with the sociopath doing it. And these books have been coming out with depressing frequency since 1792 or whenever. To be honest, Fifty Shades, crap and offensive as it was, really had nothing on this Texas Chainsaw Massacre style orgy of utter effing hatefulness.

I had never heard of Gor until SL and since I don't RP I've not paid a lot of attention to it other than to write people off as broken who display any interest in it. 

There is a whole wave of (I really hesitate to say men here) men who are somehow getting indoctrinated into this belief that women are inferior and were put on this earth to serve men - the incels. Are there more now than there used to be, or is it just that they have tools (the internet) to find each other and prop each other up in their beliefs, giving them courage to be more vocal?

I'm not sure how much of it has to do with porn because I think a person has to already have those proclivities in order to act on them. I have watched and enjoyed a lot of porn that most feminists would consider harmful to women and not a good example of anything a man should ever watch to get ideas on how women like to be treated. For most of us, we watch, we... do the thing... then we turn it off and forget about it. For those whose brain is already mis-wired, it's absolutely going to have a detrimental effect on them, but is it harming them anymore than if they hadn't watched it? 

I genuinely don't know the answer to that. I would almost say that rap and hip-hop music have just as negative of an effect on impressionable youngsters with the way women are spoken about, and treated as if it's just normal.

[Akane Nacht]

7 hours ago, Beth Macbain said:

My objection to it is that women deserve better porn 

Now that's a cause I can totally get behind..

[Scylla Rhiadra]

10 hours ago, Beth Macbain said:

had never heard of Gor until SL and since I don't RP I've not paid a lot of attention to it other than to write people off as broken who display any interest in it. 

There is a whole wave of (I really hesitate to say men here) men who are somehow getting indoctrinated into this belief that women are inferior and were put on this earth to serve men - the incels. Are there more now than there used to be, or is it just that they have tools (the internet) to find each other and prop each other up in their beliefs, giving them courage to be more vocal?

My sense is that Gor is seriously on the wane -- certainly, in SL. One reason is probably that it has been displaced by newer, somewhat more interesting SciFi/Fantasy worlds (and hence RP), but the other is probably related to your second point: the kind of world view that Norman's novels represented no longer needs to hide behind fiction. There are "real world" cultures, like the Incel, that give expression to it.

10 hours ago, Beth Macbain said:

I'm not sure how much of it has to do with porn because I think a person has to already have those proclivities in order to act on them. I have watched and enjoyed a lot of porn that most feminists would consider harmful to women and not a good example of anything a man should ever watch to get ideas on how women like to be treated. For most of us, we watch, we... do the thing... then we turn it off and forget about it. For those whose brain is already mis-wired, it's absolutely going to have a detrimental effect on them, but is it harming them anymore than if they hadn't watched it? 

I genuinely don't know the answer to that. I would almost say that rap and hip-hop music have just as negative of an effect on impressionable youngsters with the way women are spoken about, and treated as if it's just normal.

I've really come to believe that the pro- and anti-porn debate is a red herring. "Porn," per se, is neither a good nor a bad thing; it's a vehicle for other things. Saying that porn is "bad" is a little like saying that books are "bad" because someone once produced one called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or another called Mein Kampf. Personally, visual porn isn't my thing; it doesn't do anything much for me (although well-written literary erotica . . . that's another story), but ethically speaking, it seems to me kind of neutral . . . like vacuum cleaners or cell phones.

There's been "porn for women" -- even "feminist porn" -- for quite some time now, and insofar as it provides an outlet or tool for women looking for visual sexual stimulation, then it's great. But any idea that it was going to somehow reform or "appropriate" pornography for feminism and women was a pipe dream. Male-oriented, and frequently abusive and misogynist "gonzo" porn has largely displaced the older mainstream examples of the genre, and as that has happened, any controls that might once have operated to moderate it have gone out the window.

At the same time, it's more accessible than it ever was before, and as it's reaching ever younger audiences, it's having a discernible impact on sexual practices and aesthetics. Millennials don't do sex the same way that my generation does, almost literally. Some of that change has probably been liberating; an awful lot of it hasn't.

That said, the idea that even violent or abusive porn creates rapists was always pretty far-fetched. Humans are too complicated for the social science models that are generally used to measure the social harm of porn: they are blunt instruments that reduce the complex operations of the individual mind to percentages. As you say, those who are attracted to "bad" porn are already exhibiting predilections for that kind of thing. Some undoubtedly are effected negatively by it, some probably find it an outlet that may actually inhibit "bad" behaviors in their real interactions . . . and the vast majority are probably pretty much unaffected by it at all in any long-term sense.

However, it does seem to me odd that we can agree that media representations of, say, unrealistically idealized women's bodies, have a discernible social impact, but millions of young men and women watching abusive sexual practices on Pornhub doesn't. At the very least, it's likely at some level producing expectations about what constitutes "normal" sexual behavior and fulfillment.

The other aspect of this which is often overlooked is abuse within the porn industry. There is no shortage of documentation that the men and women who "act" in porn videos are subject to physical, financial, and psychological abuse. As the industry has become decentralized, it's become harder to regulate: back in the day, when it was produced primarily by mainstream companies like Playboy, Penthouse, or Vivid, it was easier to keep tabs on what was going on behind the camera (even if that was seldom done to a satisfactory degree).

I'm not sure what the best response to any of this is. Certainly, the blanket condemnations of porn so beloved of 2nd Wave Feminists in the 70s and 80s seem misplaced and misdirected. Better government regulation of the production of porn would be a really good thing. Other than that, I fall back on my tired old answer: education. If and when the consumers of pornography, whatever their gender, tastes, or orientations, start to view it critically and thoughtfully, maybe we won't need "feminist porn" or "porn for women" anymore, because all of it will avoid functioning as a vehicle for abusive and misogynistic models of sexual behavior.

Edited June 11, 2019 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Akane Nacht]

34 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

My sense is that Gor is seriously on the wane -- certainly, in SL. One reason is probably that it has been displaced by newer, somewhat more interesting SciFi/Fantasy worlds (and hence RP), but the other is probably related to your second point: the kind of world view that Norman's novels represented no longer needs to hide behind fiction. There are "real world" cultures, like the Incel, that give expression to it.

 

Yup, it's waned. Most of the old communities are no longer active, and the genre itself has morphed a lot. They had their oddballs for sure, but most of the oldschool players were actually really nice people OOC. Big supporters of SL charities too. 

Gor novels are terrible tripe, but Gor RP in SL was pretty tame and selective about the lore. It was just an easy to grasp fantasy world with dancing girls and swordplay. Nothing darker than that. And, the female to male ratio was pretty high. The guys mostly came for the combat.

[Amina Sopwith]

3 hours ago, Akane Nacht said:

 

Gor novels are terrible tripe, but Gor RP in SL was pretty tame and selective about the lore. It was just an easy to grasp fantasy world with dancing girls and swordplay. Nothing darker than that. 

Perhaps it changed after I left, but it had a lot of sickos in it when I was there, and a lot of people arguing about the "true, by the book" Gor.  Not everyone in it was a religious fanatic but enough to influence it as a culture. There were also people who claimed they'd been doing branding in RL. I hope it was bollocks but they certainly wanted you to think it was true.

I don't believe video games make murderers but I do believe that if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you...

ETA: Norman's philosophy (if you can call it that) as expounded in the Gor books is essentially a how-to for actual abusive relationships, which we all know that many women find very hard to leave. Negging, trauma bonding, locking one's identity and self worth entirely to the abuser and getting a high when you've got their approval...it's all there. Again, I could maybe excuse this as sexual fantasy, but then Norman's always on at us that it's not, that this REALLY IS the basis for a fulfilling relationship and anyone who disagrees is repressed. Or just ugly and bitter, if they're women. Yeah, he says that. And don't get me started on his attitude towards gay women. 

I'm not saying Norman actually engages in abusive relationships in RL. All I'm saying is that he certainly understands how they operate. Once you understand their psychology (again, lots of women stay in them) and read Gor books, it's terrifying.

Edited June 11, 2019 by Amina Sopwith

[Scylla Rhiadra]

5 hours ago, Akane Nacht said:

Yup, it's waned. Most of the old communities are no longer active, and the genre itself has morphed a lot. They had their oddballs for sure, but most of the oldschool players were actually really nice people OOC. Big supporters of SL charities too. 

Gor novels are terrible tripe, but Gor RP in SL was pretty tame and selective about the lore. It was just an easy to grasp fantasy world with dancing girls and swordplay. Nothing darker than that. And, the female to male ratio was pretty high. The guys mostly came for the combat.

I never tried to insert myself into a Gorean community, so I lack the kinds of insight that you and Amina bring to this subject, but I did engage a fair bit, from the outside, with a number of Goreans of different stripes. Those with whom I connected represented a pretty wide range, from the moderator of a "progressive" Gor RP community, who was quite sweet, and invited me to check out how liberal was the treatment of women in his community, to fiercely belligerent "lifestylers" who certainly tried to parrot Norman's own pronouncements on gender. Back in those days, there was a pretty diverse spectrum of different "kinds" of Gor (and, I seem to recall, two major and competing "hubs" for Gorean communities), and mostly they seemed too busy arguing among themselves about the approach to take to the books to spare much attention to someone critiquing them from the outside.

I decided pretty early on that Gor wasn't worth taking very seriously: the whole thing seemed impossibly silly, and the most vociferous defenders of the "ideology" always sounded a bit like they were talking in character, or from a (poorly written) script. And certainly, the one woman Gor RPer I knew relatively well was just in it for fun, and thought the whole thing pretty hilarious. My responses to Gor were to some degree also softened by the stark contrast with my encounters with members of other groups that RPed violence against women. I remember one four hour conversation with a guy from a Dolcet sim that literally gave me nightmares for a couple of days after. Compared to him, the Goreans I'd met seemed merely rather goofy.

Edited June 11, 2019 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Amina Sopwith]

Just now, Scylla Rhiadra said:

 I remember one four hour conversation with a guy from a Dolcet sim that literally gave me nightmares for a couple of days after. Compared to him, the Goreans I'd met seemed merely rather goofy.

Oh yes. I certainly don't wish to imply that Goreans have a monopoly on this kind of stuff. They do, however, have a series of texts on which they base it, argue over it and quote from to justify themselves. And that series of texts is truly hateful.

Dolcett I know less about because there was nothing in that to entice me to find out about it at any point. As soon as I saw someone was into that, from day 1, it was straight into mute and block and didn't even bother telling them. Well, I may have once made a Hannibal Lecter joke but that sick fark was muted before I heard his response. 

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, Amina Sopwith said:

I certainly don't wish to imply that Goreans have a monopoly on this kind of stuff.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you were implying that!

What I was getting at is that I tend to think of Gor as belonging to a class of its own, partially because it sometimes pretends to articulate a particular "world view," and partially because the fictional world provides a sort of framing narrative within which the violent sexuality is embedded. Other kinds of sexual violence RP -- Dolcett and gynophagia, snuff and torture RP, and even some kinds of CARP -- lack that, really: it's straight to the buzz saws, with nary a pretense of any other interest, for most of them.

[Madelaine McMasters]

I've also never been part of a Gorean community, but had some friends from one (and I'm still a member of their group). They quite enjoyed my "Seamstress of Gor" character, and my rants about Norman. I lampooned their para-RP style with absurd walls-of-text and they played along. Some Goreans know their canon is impossibly silly. They pick what they like from the canon and ignore the rest.

I have also run into serious Goreans who prompted me to sharpen my tongue to a shovel's edge. But, as you know, that's a pointless endeavor. They are dug in and you're not gonna pry them loose. You can only hope that their RL personas are nothing at all like what we see here or that, if they are, their cluelessness is as obvious to others as it is to us.

Yesterday I listened to a radio interview regarding the death of Rap artist Bushwick Bill, who was known for a particularly violent and misogynistic subgenre of rap called "horrorcore". There wasn't a thing said about him in the interview that didn't make me want to dance on his grave (and perhaps glare at Audie Cornish, the show's host) , yet there he was, being eulogized on NPR. Clearly I missed something.

There's no shortage of crap ideology for admirable people to nestle in. And there's no shortage of admirable ideology for crap people to nestle in. If only I could tell who's who.

[Amina Sopwith]

5 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I've also never been part of a Gorean community, but had some friends from one (and I'm still a member of their group). They quite enjoyed my "Seamstress of Gor" character, and my rants about Norman. I lampooned their para-RP style with absurd walls-of-text and they played along. Some Goreans know their canon is impossibly silly. They pick what they like from the canon and ignore the rest.

Oh, there's always SOME Goreans this, SOME Goreans that. I'm talking about on a cultural level. I'm so intrigued by all the people on the outside who perceive them as a bunch of harmless buffoons who don't take it seriously. I spent months in there and it was, simply, religious. Endlessly quoting the canon and arguing over who was "truly Gorean" and "by the book". Endless new sims springing up in protest over other places not being REALLY GOREAN enough.  I also got a few giggles from slaves when I went back as a revolting looking av to annoy everyone, but that's a novelty.

I shouldn't have given it anywhere near as many chances as I did, of course, but like a battered wife I had to keep going back because I really, really, really did want it to get better. Honestly, I wanted sophisticated capture/combat enabled adult RP and it seemed like a fertile place for it. I WANTED to like the place!

But then I read some of those turds Norman dropped, and speaking entirely for me, there is only so much misogyny, homophobia and sheer outright hatefulness that I'm prepared to overlook to get my jollies. I don't object because it's male-dominant master/slave BDSM with whips and chains; that was what drew me in the first place. I object because it says, specifically, 98 million times, that this REALLY IS how society should be. That non-submissive and gay women just haven't been raped and beaten enough (yes, really - although at a later point he did eventually deign to say that it would work only on women of "glandular normality", whatever the feck that is), or maybe they're just ugly. The characters who just embody every hateful misogynistic stereotype ever vomited forth (and by the way, Norman REALLY hates wealthy women. He's got a particular thing about that.). Constant assertions that women are all spiteful and b*tchy and jealous of each other. Lengthy paragraphs about why it's a good thing really to burn women with white hot irons. I could go on and on. It's that bad. 

I mean, for God's sake. I wondered if I was even reading the same books as everyone else; it's not as if this is merely implied. Norman bangs you over the head with it for page after page after page. I've read subtler stuff from the Brexit Party.

And with that being the source material, it's really hardly surprising that so much of it turns out the way it does. Perhaps there is a Gor sim somewhere that's dedicated to consensual, fantasy RP that completely rejects the actual tenets of, well, all of it, but I never found one. And the source material is so incredibly offensive, I wouldn't want to play there anyway now. It's too tainted by association for me. 

On a side note, my other problem with them was how they overran and ruined every capture/combat enabled sim I ever loved. It really pished me off that I couldn't actually get away from them just by avoiding their sims and groups.

But of course, Gor's certainly not the only outlet of horrible misogynistic content, so...yay? I'm not surprised that this Bushwick Bill character got eulogised. Misogyny is always being explained away, "not taken seriously" or otherwise considered unimportant when it gets in the way. Gor is one example and this pillock sounds like another. 

 

[Amina Sopwith]

9 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you were implying that!

What I was getting at is that I tend to think of Gor as belonging to a class of its own, partially because it sometimes pretends to articulate a particular "world view," and partially because the fictional world provides a sort of framing narrative within which the violent sexuality is embedded. Other kinds of sexual violence RP -- Dolcett and gynophagia, snuff and torture RP, and even some kinds of CARP -- lack that, really: it's straight to the buzz saws, with nary a pretense of any other interest, for most of them.

I quite sincerely want to cry right now, no joke. It's not that you're wrong; I take and understand your point. But my God, we are at a point where it is a true and legitimate mitigation of one type of misogyny that at least it's not like the other kind where it's all chainsaws and murder without even the dignity of a frame story. I was looking for some pirate RP places a little while ago and several of them were linked to vore based islands for cannibals. Needless to say, I didn't stick around but I still managed to stumble upon several images of beautiful, naked, nubile, dead women being roasted before I got away. Not real ones, avatars, but, you know, high quality mesh and all, it's pretty realistic. We wouldn't want our dead, slow-roasted women looking too plasticky. 

I'm thinking back to my earlier post that listed some of my lived experiences, a PTSD style recollection of Gor and things like those roasting dead women. I don't understand. Will someone please tell me what on God's earth it is that we've DONE????

 

[Selene Gregoire]

35 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

what on God's earth it is that we've DONE????

Being better at being decent human beings? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Akane Nacht]

9 hours ago, Amina Sopwith said:

And with that being the source material, it's really hardly surprising that so much of it turns out the way it does. Perhaps there is a Gor sim somewhere that's dedicated to consensual, fantasy RP that completely rejects the actual tenets of, well, all of it, but I never found one. And the source material is so incredibly offensive, I wouldn't want to play there anyway now. It's too tainted by association for me. 
 

Well, I played there for years, multiple sims, both sides of the coin, and every sim was consensual RP. You may have fallen in with "lifestylers" as opposed to roleplayers. There was always that tension at play in the community, but both were consensual in their way as some people liked the "lifestyle" kink and sought it out. And then there were the all female Panther bands who did horrible things to male captives (reputedly, I never actually played in those). There was, in short, a kink for everyone. I only had one bad OOC experience - a sim owner said I could not be a mod as I am a woman. Guess what.. the sim owner was female 😋 

[Amina Sopwith]

49 minutes ago, Akane Nacht said:

There was always that tension at play in the community😋

The very fact that there was "always that tension" even in supposedly consensual fantasy RP tells you...well, perhaps not everything you need to know about it, but something significant. I know the supposee difference between the lifestylers and the roleplayers and the only demonstrable distinction I saw was that there was a mildly better chance of plot based RP among the latter. I still got banned from one of those for refusing to go along with a graphic and entirely unnecessary RP that involved having my tongue cut out and being covered with sewage and vomit. 

As before, they overran every capture/combat aim I ever did enjoy to make it Gorean in practice, which isn't my definition of consensual.

I played with and as a panther too (like I said, I wanted to get on with the place! I tried everything!). I don't think it would make it better if there was also horrible misandristic content too, just fwiw. But as it was, I didn't see anything beyond standard BDSM there. Except for the time I got captured and subjected to a bone breaking rack (yes, I asked OOC if we could avoid that and I'd submit without it, was told no because we are truly Gorean).

If your mileage varied and you found the place to be full of lovely, thoughtful, imaginative, consensual people, that's great. Honestly. But I'd be surprised if anything based on that source material turned out to be much different from how it seemed to me. There's a LOT of hatefulness to overlook. It doesn't surprise me if it requires mental gymnastics of the kind where female avs are refusing mod status to women...

[Akane Nacht]

12 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

The very fact that there was "always that tension" even in supposedly consensual fantasy RP tells you...well, perhaps not everything you need to know about it, but something significant. I know the supposee difference between the lifestylers and the roleplayers and the only demonstrable distinction I saw was that there was a mildly better chance of plot based RP among the latter. I still got banned from one of those for refusing to go along with a graphic and entirely unnecessary RP that involved having my tongue cut out and being covered with sewage and vomit. 

whoa you did run with a rough crowd 😁  

Pro tip - all SL RP is consensual. Set your own standards and stick to 'em.

[Amina Sopwith]

8 minutes ago, Akane Nacht said:

whoa you did run with a rough crowd 😁  

Pro tip - all SL RP is consensual. Set your own standards and stick to 'em.

That's just one example.

And yes, thank you, I do. I realised after far too long that the place and I were not a fit, and went off to do some capture/combat/dancing girl RP in Arabian Nights and Ancient Rome sims. Guess who turned up in droves....

[Scylla Rhiadra]

14 hours ago, Amina Sopwith said:

I quite sincerely want to cry right now, no joke. It's not that you're wrong; I take and understand your point. But my God, we are at a point where it is a true and legitimate mitigation of one type of misogyny that at least it's not like the other kind where it's all chainsaws and murder without even the dignity of a frame story. I was looking for some pirate RP places a little while ago and several of them were linked to vore based islands for cannibals. Needless to say, I didn't stick around but I still managed to stumble upon several images of beautiful, naked, nubile, dead women being roasted before I got away. Not real ones, avatars, but, you know, high quality mesh and all, it's pretty realistic. We wouldn't want our dead, slow-roasted women looking too plasticky.

I may not be communicating very well. When I said that Gor was a sort of special case, I wasn't implying that it therefore merits a free pass, or that there is anything that mitigates the expression of misogyny there. I was suggesting that it was different -- although, your example of the vore pirates argues less different than I'd thought: I've never run across gynophagia embedded in that kind of long-form, complex RP before.

In practice, I've spent a pretty healthy chunk of the past 10+ years here arguing with, and against, Goreans. In fact, in January I received an official warning from the mods here, and had two of my posts deleted, for being "abusive" about Gor. And yeah, I was being abusive: I called it "appalling" and "idiotic," so I guess in one sense my reprimand was deserved. So I certainly don't think we should ignore Gor.

BUT . . . I think it needs to be treated differently. In part that's because there are so many people attracted to Gor for reasons that only peripherally have anything to do with its misogyny. You yourself are a case in point, and the differing experiences of yourself and Akane similarly suggest that, at least for many people, Gor needn't primarily mean misogyny. That's not really true of Dolcett, for instance: if you're engaging in a bit of BBQed woman RP with someone else, you're both there for one reason, and one reason only, and any RP narrative is very secondary and a means to an end, rather than the point itself.

The second thing is maybe more subtle. In all of my years of confronting Goreans, male and female, I think I've maybe once or twice run across a proponent who argued from the perspective of Gorean "ideology" or world view. They don't tend to say, "Well, the Prophet Norman says it is thus," or "It is so decreed by our Insect Overlords." And maybe that's in part because they know how ridiculous that would sound to an outsider. The defenses of misogyny I've personally heard from Goreans almost invariably fall back very quickly on good ol' fashioned misogynist attitudes of the sort that are very much RL, and not Gor. So, I don't know that there's a lot of point in taking on "Gor" as such: it would be a bit like trying to argue that the cultural systems of the ancient Numenorians (or whatever they're called) were flawed and backward. Gor is the apparel: the key is the set of RL attitudes that attract people to the misogyny of Gor in the first place.

15 hours ago, Amina Sopwith said:

I'm thinking back to my earlier post that listed some of my lived experiences, a PTSD style recollection of Gor and things like those roasting dead women. I don't understand. Will someone please tell me what on God's earth it is that we've DONE????

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, to little avail. When I was most active in-world as a feminist activist, from 2008 to 2011, I found my thinking shifting, largely as a function of my increasing frustration. And so when I built an exhibit on representations of gender violence in SL in 2011, I was really left with only one question that I hoped, vainly as it transpires, I might get an answer for: "why is it that you get turned on by the thought of hurting or killing someone?"

That was the question that underpinned the whole exhibit. I didn't get one response that even attempted to answer it, possibly because any answer would have to come from a very deep, dark place where most people don't want to venture.

[Amina Sopwith]

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I may not be communicating very well. When I said that Gor was a sort of special case, I wasn't implying that it therefore merits a free pass, or that there is anything that mitigates the expression of misogyny there. I was suggesting that it was different -- although, your example of the vore pirates argues less different than I'd thought: I've never run across gynophagia embedded in that kind of long-form, complex RP before.

Neither had I. I was very surprised. It was towards the end of last year and it was a couple of examples. They may have been somehow connected to each other. 

You're communicating just fine, though. As ever, your points are thoughtful and lucid. I'm very sure that I understand what you're saying.

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

In practice, I've spent a pretty healthy chunk of the past 10+ years here arguing with, and against, Goreans. In fact, in January I received an official warning from the mods here, and had two of my posts deleted, for being "abusive" about Gor. And yeah, I was being abusive: I called it "appalling" and "idiotic," so I guess in one sense my reprimand was deserved. So I certainly don't think we should ignore Gor.

It's not my call, of course, but I disagree. Being Gorean is not a protected characteristic. It is, as best, a "lifestyle", or "kink", or at least, a way that people choose to act. There's nothing remotely abusive about denigrating it. I'm into BDSM and there would be nothing abusive about people criticising that either. 
 

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

BUT . . . I think it needs to be treated differently. In part that's because there are so many people attracted to Gor for reasons that only peripherally have anything to do with its misogyny. You yourself are a case in point, and the differing experiences of yourself and Akane similarly suggest that, at least for many people, Gor needn't primarily mean misogyny. That's not really true of Dolcett, for instance: if you're engaging in a bit of BBQed woman RP with someone else, you're both there for one reason, and one reason only, and any RP narrative is very secondary and a means to an end, rather than the point itself.

I don't think it's exactly heaping praise on Gor to say that at least it's not roasted dead women, but....

My issue is that, on a cultural level when I was playing there, the overwhelming drive was people aspiring to be as "truly Gorean" and "by the book" as possible. By the book? The books are utterly loaded with misogyny and hate. I'm not even talking about events in the narrative, necessarily...I'm talking about what's often referred to as the "babble paragraphs" where Norman waffles on about that this should all be real, that the real life Earth histories of women being forced into sex slavery were natural and good, that there are benefits to branding women, that women are vapid and all hate each other and so on and so on. Plus I kept meeting utterly noxious people who weren't exactly damage limitation. 

I'm not surprised that Akane was able to overlook the misogyny in the lore and the "tension" within the community...Gor was and is very popular with many people playing there for years. And as we've touched on already, misogyny is usually excused or overlooked when it gets in the way. That's not surprising in the slightest. I also know, from my personal experience of religion, that a lot of people really, really like rules and rituals. Which can be harmless of course, but how much does one like them and what will one overlook to get them?

So perhaps these people didn't actually read the books? They were always quoting them and boasting about how "by the book" they were, but maybe they were just bullsquitting. Or they read them and somehow didn't notice all this venom. (See previous paragraph.) And that is actually better than the alternative, which is that they did encounter all this hate, and still aspire to it. Either way, though, it's not a world I want any part of. Which is why I left, and got so irritated that they kept turning up and overrunning everywhere else. Why wouldn't they? According to The Books, every woman thinks like this unless she's repressed or ugly. 

 

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

They don't tend to say, "Well, the Prophet Norman says it is thus," or "It is so decreed by our Insect Overlords." And maybe that's in part because they know how ridiculous that would sound to an outsider.

I'll totally accept that that's been your experience but my experience was, well, yes, that kind of was how most people justified it...because it was in a Gor book. Hence all the quotes in the profiles and endless arguing over the text. (Is it the Talmud that rabbis have analysing and arguing over for 500 years?) It would make sense if they adapted it for someone who wasn't in there because, as you say, it would sound very stupid to an outsider. Hell, I was in the middle of it and it sounded thick as squit to me. 

But look. I'm not denying anyone's right to play there, to read those awful books (have you noticed that, while lots of people claim not to see or mind the misogyny, every single person agrees that they are terribly written?) or whatever.

I'm just offering my own lived experience of the place, which is not a world full of good-natured buffoons who play it with a chuckle and a tongue in their cheek. And of the books, which are truly hateful. I'm afraid hatefulness is something I can't personally get past, no matter how much I like wearing belly dance costumes. I can manage snobbery, self-aggrandisement and other things, but hatefulness is something I can't abide. 

 

Edited June 12, 2019 by Amina Sopwith

[Luna Bliss]

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

On 5/24/2019 at 1:44 AM, Tarina Sewell said:

 I am posting this to let you know I have died.  I will be leaving SL for good.

https://tenor.com/view/confused-whitepersanguardian-why-gif-10312546

[Selene Gregoire]

5 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

They don't tend to say, "Well, the Prophet Norman says it is thus," or "It is so decreed by our Insect Overlords." And maybe that's in part because they know how ridiculous that would sound to an outsider.

You haven't met any of the ones I have then because they have and do say such things, almost verbatim. 

Reading through these last few posts I have to wonder if any of you are aware of just how long Gor has been online? It was/is in Active Worlds and has been for 23/24 years. Before that it was in chats like YaHell Messenger (never saw it in YaHell but it's just an example). And before that, there was UseNet. 

Gor has been online for probably over 30 years now. And all that time people have been saying it would not last long. 

A bunch of them did get together and created their own grid several years ago. And they do "recruit" for that grid in SL. They tried to recruit me then got pissy when I refused to leave SL. They always get pissy when you don't fall for their bs.

Edited June 12, 2019 by Selene Gregoire

[Scylla Rhiadra]

37 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

It's not my call, of course, but I disagree. Being Gorean is not a protected characteristic. It is, as best, a "lifestyle", or "kink", or at least, a way that people choose to act. There's nothing remotely abusive about denigrating it. I'm into BDSM and there would be nothing abusive about people criticising that either.

Well, I was being diplomatic and giving the mods the benefit of the doubt (and probably looking over my shoulder too). I don't think that there should be much that is off the table here entirely, barring outright personal abuse, and straight-forward homophobia, sexism, or racism.

I mean, seriously, if we can't call things "appalling" and "idiotic," is there even any reason to post here????

(I have issues with BDSM too, but they are very different in degree and kind to my objections to Gor and other misogynistic RP.)

52 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

I'll totally accept that that's been your experience but my experience was, well, yes, that kind of was how most people justified it...because it was in a Gor book. Hence all the quotes in the profiles and endless arguing over the text. (Is it the Talmud that rabbis have analysing and arguing over for 500 years?) It would make sense if they adapted it for someone who wasn't in there because, as you say, it would sound very stupid to an outsider. Hell, I was in the middle of it and it sounded thick as squit to me. 

I think this is fair comment: what I hear, as an outsider, when I grapple with Goreans is going to be very different from what is said on the inside.

I do keep running into Gor RPers who tell me that "not all Gor RP is like that" . . . like the one who invited me to check out the "woman-positive" sim he moderated. Is that not a thing? Or maybe the "kinder, gentler Gor" just masks the kinds of tensions that you describe?

52 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

I'm just offering my own lived experience of the place, which is not a world full of good-natured buffoons who play it with a chuckle and a tongue in their cheek. And of the books, which are truly hateful. I'm afraid hatefulness is something I can't personally get past, no matter how much I like wearing belly dance costumes. I can manage snobbery, self-aggrandisement and other things, but hatefulness is something I can't abide.

I've really, seriously, appreciated your perspective on it precisely because it's one I wouldn't otherwise have access to.

To repeat a point I've made many times before here -- the vast majority of SL residents want to "protect" children by maintaining LL's ban on sexual ***** (despite the fact that there almost never any actual children involved). And, mostly, we are all solidly against racist forms of RP. There would be howls of outrage -- rightfully so, of course -- if someone started a "rape the Jewish concentration camp inmate" RP sim, or a "Birth of a Nation: Let's Lynch Black People" RP sim. On the whole, we collectively do agree that there are limits to the expression of what we'd all define as "hate" here. That is a good thing.

But women seem a different proposition. It's as though misogyny was a protected category. You can do whatever the hell you want to women in SL, and it will not only be defended as a "kink" that is somehow integral to someone's identity, but you'll actually get disciplined if you oppose ("abuse") such a viewpoint here.

So, to repeat your earlier question: WHY? Why are women acceptable targets of the kind of hate that we wouldn't tolerate it were it directed at someone else?

I have no answer for that.

[Beth Macbain]

28 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

So, to repeat your earlier question: WHY? Why are women acceptable targets of the kind of hate that we wouldn't tolerate it were it directed at someone else?

I have no answer for that.

Women are still viewed as lesser. Simple as that. We're just being silly if we get upset. We're being b*****es if we get angry. 

We're just being too emotional when we demand to be treated well.

All of that in spite of the fact that we rarely shoot a lot of people, or start wars, or drop atomic bombs and stuff.

[Amina Sopwith]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I do keep running into Gor RPers who tell me that "not all Gor RP is like that" . . . like the one who invited me to check out the "woman-positive" sim he moderated. Is that not a thing? Or maybe the "kinder, gentler Gor" just masks the kinds of tensions that you describe?

Oh my God, a Gorean Master who mods a "woman-positive" sim. Next up, Cruella de Vil talks about her puppy sanctuary and Freddie Krueger cuts the ribbon on his new orphanage.

Yes, there were the odd people who were more into the gentle, more indulgent BDSM. They inevitably got into unresolvable drama (to be fair, so did everyone else) and were the primary reason for the standard ban on "princess slaves" in sim rules. No masking the tension, they brought it right out, but a lot of the trouble it caused was hilarious to witness. I used to park myself down, get a cup of tea in RL and kick back and enjoy. They never lasted long. I don't think they'd read the books. I used to wonder what on earth the appeal of the place was for them (to be fair, I was wondering it myself as well) but as before...I think some people just really, really, really like rules and rituals. This is going to sound unkinder than I mean it to (honestly), but Gor is very good for people who lack creativity and imagination. The world, roles and rules are all mapped out for you and you don't need to think very much if you don't want to. 

 

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

To repeat a point I've made many times before here -- the vast majority of SL residents want to "protect" children by maintaining LL's ban on sexual ***** (despite the fact that there almost never any actual children involved). And, mostly, we are all solidly against racist forms of RP. There would be howls of outrage -- rightfully so, of course -- if someone started a "rape the Jewish concentration camp inmate" RP sim, or a "Birth of a Nation: Let's Lynch Black People" RP sim. On the whole, we collectively do agree that there are limits to the expression of what we'd all define as "hate" here. That is a good thing.

But women seem a different proposition. It's as though misogyny was a protected category. You can do whatever the hell you want to women in SL, and it will not only be defended as a "kink" that is somehow integral to someone's identity, but you'll actually get disciplined if you oppose ("abuse") such a viewpoint here.

So, to repeat your earlier question: WHY? Why are women acceptable targets of the kind of hate that we wouldn't tolerate it were it directed at someone else?

I have no answer for that.

I don't have a response to this. I've asked the same question on here myself.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

18 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

This is going to sound unkinder than I mean it to (honestly), but Gor is very good for people who lack creativity and imagination. The world, roles and rules are all mapped out for you and you don't need to think very much if you don't want to. 

Arguably, part of the appeal of Star Wars or Star Trek or Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings RP must be the same. What Gor provides "extra," I suppose, is a ready-made and pre-formulated "philosophy."

19 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

I don't have a response to this. I've asked the same question on here myself. 

I know you have. I was echoing you . . . but what is really riling me at the moment is the rank hypocrisy of it.