From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Gor Considered Thoughtfully --- an analytical essay
Date: 13 Nov 92 17:25:50 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <1jPmLP#1JgFR74LSpf97kj1JV30N4rp=esr@snark.thyrsus.com> esr@snark.thyrsus.com 
(Eric S. Raymond) writes:
>A lot of people space the reasoning behind Norman's "women are natural slaves"
>theme.  His rationale was twofold, and quite explicit:
>
>1) Women seek competitively-successful, dominating men because they
>   instinctively want offspring with dominator traits.  That is, female
>   "masochism" is a manifestation of "genetic selfishness".
>
>2) Women enjoy slave status more than free because being dominated frees
>   them to be totally and uninhibitedly sexual.  Surrender of responsibility
>   to the male also surrenders all the inhibitions which stand between
>   a woman and the perfect orgasm.
>
>I'm going to be heretical and point out that these arguments are not obviously
>crazy.  In fact, I'll go further than that and observe that (a) some women
>fit Norman's model all of the time, and (b) many women fit Norman's model at
>least some of the time.
>
>(Evidence?  For (1), the fact that there *is* a heterosexual SM subculture
>in which the roles are male-master/female-slave.   For (2) I have only my
>own experience and cultural folklore.  I suspect every heterosexual male
>must have experienced times when his partner clearly wanted to be be
>*taken*, sexually dominated and swept away.  More about this below.)

There is also a heterosexual SM subculture in which the roles are
female-master/male-slave.  It's also common for SM participants to switch
off roles.  I very much doubt class (a) is very large at all.

>IMHO, Norman's error is also twofold.  His *logical* error is to go from
>observing that such behavior is *common* among humans to a claim that the
>underlying instinctive and psychosexual pattern he posits is *universal*,
>healthy, and only suppressed by our `diseased' cultures. [...]

>It's been thirty-one years since the Pill; twenty-five since the Summer of
>Love.  It's easy to forget that female "frigidity" was once an adaptive
>response to the high risks and high social cost for women of an active 
>and visible sex life.

I'm not sure what you're saying here: it sounds like you're claiming that
"frigidity" derives from an active sex life in a repressive culture.
I believe it's much more common for women to lose interest in sex due to
their treatment by insensitive or abusive men who have this "male as
dominators" attitude.  Adopting Norman's philosophy is a good way to turn
off women, not to turn them on.

Abused girls often become promiscuous women, so the Normaniac might indeed 
be said to be supplying his ilk with accessible women; but it's only a
particularly unattractive rationalization to think that the women are happy 
with the situation.

>From this angle, Norman isn't *wrong* so much as he is a man who's outlasted
>his time.  But if that's so, why his return?  Why is "The Chieftain" viable in
>the marketplace?

Are adolescent boys now getting all the sex they want?  If not there's
still a substantial market for Gor.

I've seen one of the Gor movies, by the way.  On the whole, a mindless
Conan ripoff; but it has at least one advantage over the books, in that
it doesn't attempt to explain Norman's theory of women.