Amina Sopwith

There isn't any nuance. It really is as stupid and binary and hateful as that, as I explained in my previous post with regards to things like the existence of FW and male slaves. What does complicate the issue a little (and only a little) is that the first few books are not quite as completely deranged as the ones that follow. It's still very clear that they are not going anywhere good, though; not a wolf in sheep's clothing as much as a gorilla in a mini skirt and a blonde wig. (The later books explicitly reject some of the marginally less hateful things that are suggested in the first few. You can actually hear Nobhead thinking "ha ha, got 'em now".) When Nobhead finally gives it up and just unleashes the full psycho, it's really not a surprise. Like I said before, even if there was a group of people who do it solely as consensual role play and don't take any life beliefs from it, they're still propagating this, keeping it alive and don't appear to be offended by it. It's not something I can respect. I make light of it because, well, what else is there to do? But the truth is, reading Gor books made me angry, sad and very upset at times. They're not so bad they're good, they're not so bad they're intriguing. They're just unenjoyably bad on every level. Even die hard Goreans agree that they are execrably written, and those guys aren't even offended by the content. You have one life, dear reader. Don't waste your precious time on horrible, nasty, hateful stuff that even the fans think is s**t on an artistic level. Be a mermaid, be a pirate, watch a good film, read an exciting book, have a cheese grater massage...anything but this.

It's just bog standard Madonna/whore complex. Don't dignify this tosh by over complicating or overthinking it. The books are quite clear that while you "respect" a FW, you definitely don't really desire her properly and she can't fully enjoy sex. Because, you know, doing both is impossible. It's nothing new. And yes, women are most certainly regarded as inferior in the books. They're always being outsmarted and outwitted by men (it's painful when every character is actually as thick as pigsh*t. Did you see the one about the Gorean Master who travelled through space to gather women from Earth to sell even though he knew the market was saturated and prices were dropping all over the shop? What a complete plank. It's only a shame he couldn't get pregnant, I see no other way the average Gorean could ever grow a second brain cell) and described as having less important concerns. And when a slave is not legally or morally a person (that's explicit) and all women should be slaves, well. Did you notice how much Nobhead likes the phrase "the female animal"? Frigging hell, we read different books. The torture porn was off the scale in some of the ones I read, as well as the endless babble paragraphs about how women need abuse and can't be happy without it. If women do fall over whenever Turd Kaput approaches, it's only because he's mansplained them to effing death. I've never seen anything like it. The male slaves are mere foils and it's made very clear that they are supposed to be an aberration. If they ever get a story, it's to reclaim their true place, which is of course to rape the lady of the house and then, as she falls in love with him, to sell her off at once because that's what you do. And yes, of course FW treat slaves like dirt. Didn't you read any of the babble on that? (I don't blame you if you didn't.) It's because they're jealous because they want to be slaves. They're repressed and hate other women because, well, they're women, aren't they, guv? Didn't you see any of the conversations where a woman makes an appeal to female solidarity purely so that the other can scratch her eyes out and prove it doesn't exist? No, nobody is surprised by the stereotyping there. Don't dignify Nobhead's screed by imagining it's anything new. It's just every nasty, misogynistic stereotype you've ever come across since time began. Like I said. I don't know how the man got his knuckles far enough off the ground to write this crap. Gor is a Darwinian nightmare.

You mean button mushroom?

Well, I do recall various kajagoogoos hanging round empty sims for hours waiting for someone to turn up so they could emote for a week about pulling a pint. I guess they needed something to do. Don't eat the stew at that tavern, that's all I'm saying.

There was a Gorean trying to push his sim in the RP board the other day (I'm taking it as a good sign that they need to advertise now). He said something like "where men are men and the vegetables are not in the stew". You what? I mean, skimming over the obvious connection between Goreans and vegetative life....what? They don't eat vegetables? What in the ever loving fark do they do with them? Or do I not want to know? Just how bored have people become over there??

It's really more like failed skydivers arguing over who had the best pavement.

No, the RLV system is not centred on a load of quasi-religious misogynistic sh*te.

Dear Christ, I've met them, and even the ones who weren't serious were far too tolerant of those who were. And in all my months there (yes, my IQ has never recovered. Don't be like me, kiddies), I never found a self-aware place that was playing it for lulz. Actually, @Tolya Ugajin, this is why you find bajillions of places with nobody in them... because new places pop up all over the place due to the previous one being Not Truly Gorean. It's also why they're so rubbish in build and design; they're rushed and unimaginative and they won't last three arses or whatever the word is for an hour before some other halfwit decides it's Not Truly Gorean and drops another turd somewhere else. It's like a giant, infinite, unholy whack-a-mole of crap. Thank you.

I thought you had kids? Maybe I'm thinking of someone else. Behold, the extent of the average Gorean's reading capabilities (and they need a good lie down and a skinful of Calpol afterwards to recover):

The very fact that it exists as a subculture at all is highly misogynistic. The books are not male dominant fantasy BDSM. They're not even male dominant BDSM. They're not just silly stories either. They are didactic, hateful texts that literally expound, at length, about how women are effectively subhuman, that abusive relationships are fantastic, that women all hate each other because all they care about is competing for men, that there is no such thing as lesbianism and that the only reason a woman would disagree is because she's ugly or hasn't been raped/beaten/burned enough (don't be fooled by the existence of free women and Xena Warrior Princesses, the books are quite clear that they are all just in denial). They even fetishise the real life human trafficking industry. Literally. I'm not talking about another level of interpretation for kidnap in the narrative, I mean the author explicitly references real life human trafficking on Earth and how natural and desirable it is, or how it's a cover for women being taken to Gor, mwahahahaaaa. I could go on and on. The first few books are awful, and stupid, and it's quite clear that they're not going anywhere good (still a bit too much pontification about why it really is an RL terrific idea to burn women with hot irons and all feminists are hysterical and repressed and women all hate each other). But if you really want it to work, and you're an idiot, I suppose you could just about do the mental logic pretzel. But soon after that, what little mask there is slips and Nobhead just goes pants on head insane and there's no excuse. (That's the point where 98% of the women become slaves, by the way. No, it's not worth waiting for.) Please believe me that I understand the draw of an immersive master/slave dancing girl fantasy. I also understand that some people really really like rules and rituals. I get why someone might initially have an interest. I wanted to like the place myself but there is only so much crazy misogyny I can take. I also got a bit tired of having my bones broken and being covered in vomit and sewage, even when I asked in IM if we could avoid that and I'd submit without it. Answer: no, because we are Truly Gorean. It's true that not every Gorean is informed by reading the books (the average Gorean, to be fair, has never read any book that wasn't machine washable), or a raging misogynist, and I did get a bit of decent RP here and there. But it was never more than a day or two before I came across one or more of these berks. And even among the relatively normal people, I recall enough of them quoting the books and arguing over being "truly Gorean" to drive the culture (and bore me to death). It was largely religious, even though in this case, there's literally no question that it was all just made up by a stupid man who doesn't understand how gravity, saturated markets or human shields work. That's also why you find the place so boring, by the way. It doesn't encourage or tend to attract imaginative people. They like having it all mapped out. I might have just gone live and let live, except that even when I left, the Gorean Borg still popped up to overtake and ruin every RP sim that I ever truly loved. Christ, they even sent me abusive IMs about my RP when I was in general CARP sims, interacting with my own Dom! And since Gor was the first and only BDSM-related experience many of them had (I don't want to say actual BDSM, because it's not), it made sense. The trouble is that even if you do have a group of people who are truly only about consensual roleplay and have absolutely no actual Gorean beliefs about the human condition, they're still propagating this subculture (they hold RL conventions! Only three teeth to be found in the entire place, but still) and these revolting books and philosophy. I can't stop anyone doing this, and for obvious reasons I wouldn't try (at least, not by outright banning), but don't expect me not to heap scorn and mockery upon it. I will give it this, though. I don't think I've ever come across anything that could be so offensive and yet so absolutely boring.

My parking goes well! (I parallel parked like a boss earlier.)

Lost my parking space.

Blast into space forever.

I remember when I was totally immersed in SL last time, I never got colds or bugs. Admittedly I never got any vitamin D either, but you can't have everything.

Barker plus Corbett, forever.

Shell pink.

Cake mix.

(That's what I was hoping for, thank you!) Fork handles, Ronnie Barker!

Sea green.

Jacket potato.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Feather duster.

I was thinking...

Forest ranger.

Say what? Four candles?