The Politics of Being Pro-Slavery in the 21st Century: "GOR".

in this video we're not going to judge a
book by its cover we're not going to judge a book by its book reviews we're not going to judge a book by the response of its fanbase or its detractors we're not even going to judge a book by taking select quotations of the original text out of context we're gonna judge the book by the stated intent of the author and let's never forget john norman was a career professor of philosophy he taught philosophy he wrote philosophy and then he started this side project writing the books the science fiction world of gore that increasingly took over his life as the years went on my Wow what was so rewarding him of this was it for him just a fantasy was it for him just a hobby was it the fame was it the adulation of at least thousands if not millions of fans was it the possibility of a connection to Hollywood and at least two movie adaptations maybe what was it what you're gonna find in these interviews with John Norman is that he took himself incredibly seriously as a writer that he was motivated not just to reach out to people and change their minds and maybe change their sex lives by sharing his faddist in them he really felt that he was out here trying to change the course of Western civilization from his perspective he was trying to save the world I kid you not 1996 interview with New York view of science-fiction by David a Smith Smith the interviewer says I wonder if what upsets people is not the content of the books so much as their author after all you were a man writing and part about the glories of dominating and enslaving women to this chart Norman responds that is an important and interesting strand of the gorian fabric but it is only one strand an entire world is created here with languages cultures artifacts politics religion Concha pre-cooking military strategies weapons oh he alternates between boasting about the graphically sexual violent nature of the vision of an alternate reality and alternate future for planet Earth that he's presenting here he alternates between boasting about it and this very evasive cagey dishonest sort of reaction right and I give a lot of credit to this interviewer he doesn't let Norman wriggle out of it here right like oh yes well dominating enslaved women that's just one strand of the fabric that would be like pretending it's just what happens to be on the cover but as if the rest of the books were really concerned with as he says politics religion costume and cooking military strategy weapons to keep in mind John Norman born in the 1930s still alive today and still writing books in the 2020s has he has he in his books addressed any of the major political issues that arose in his lifetime he lived through World War two he lived through the Cold War the rise and fall of the Soviet Union right the rise and fall of Mao Zedong in China all right the end of the British Empire British colonialism and the emergence of new nationalistic movements including pan-islamism pan-arabism you know the increasing importance of Islam in Western politics right September 11th and so on he's lived through all of this when he says he's interested in politics religion sir is there the evidence of that in his books and then on the contrary as we're gonna discuss through this video is there evidence that he has this unique belief in the significance of relations between the genders and that our society must be transformed to reflect the true inner nature of women and the kind of relationships they secretly inwardly were for men that is very clearly the exclusive obsession of his books and that's the key to his philosophical and political belief that he's doing something profoundly meaningful in making a lot of money out of some pretty sick and twisted and science fiction fantasy here the interviewer continues I highlight it your issue that your books are completely obsessed with you know domination domination of women by men exclusively never the other way around I highlight it because female sexual slavery seems to me such a prominent element lots of credit lots of credit for the interviewer plenty of people would let him just wiggle out of this line of questioning we've already what he's trying to do right and in the reactions they generate the gorian novels imply that women want this whether they know it or not Norman replies well there are plenty of folks such as Anne Rice who are writing material which is far far quranic and Rice's Sleeping Beauty trilogy is light-years beyond anything I would do even think of doing yet miss rice is a heroine to many feminists and is published about one of the houses that refuses to so much as look at anything by so he's being very directly asked about sex slavery in his books and now we have another form of dishonesty in division where he's trying to make the issue that he's a victim of censorship by feminists there's a lot of that material in it is introduced and I need to say this guy's but if what he were saying here about Anne Rice's novels and Rice's most famous for vampire novels if if that were true it would still be completely utterly irrelevant right like if Anne Rice's right sexy vampire novels you didn't answer the question of the fact that you devoted your life to glorifying one particular type of slavery and rape interviewer you are saying that Gore is an emotionally healthier society that it's emotionally healthier than our own in the real world in 21st century Norman's replied well for example some men in our world seem to want to hurt women these things are incomprehensible in a gorian world but they make some sense in our world a world in which natural relationships tend to be denied hey you were that asks denied how oh you're giving him just enough rope to hang himself John Norman leaps at the chance to answer that question the male cheated of his manhood desires to inflict pain and revenge the fee for womanhood accepts and perhaps even desires pain perhaps to punish herself for deserting her defensive right really think about what he's doing here directly he's lying to you he's being deceptive dishonest evasive and like he is directly lying to you in claiming that men do not hurt women in his fictional world of God all right that is a lie but he's also inviting you in a very real sense to blame the victim in our world that women who are the victims of rape and sexual violence that in fact he's suggesting we should instead feel sympathy or pity for the men because they are quote unquote cheated of their manhood and desire to inflict pain in revenge because of this this sickness in our modern society that he he alone John Norman is trying to solve just just how much of a lie is it just how dishonest is it for him to say these things are incomprehensible on the corium world no nobody gets hurt in his fab it would be easy to imagine some other author writing a book based on their own sexual fantasy or even based on their political philosophy which Norman is you're doing where nobody gets hurt in fiction anything is possible quote misogynist manifesto this one star review really means zero the book asserts that what all women including intelligent well-educated women really want is to be abused degraded humiliated by powerful brutal men and shared with other men the women begged to be sold into slavery rather than killed you can guess what the alpha males decided and he notes that he is a male reviewer this is the single most sexist book I've ever read I'm a guy still this entire thing is offensive and degrading to women the ideas behind the story could have led to an interesting sci-fi take on time travel instead it's mostly about rape and subjugation of women this all sounds pretty standard and it is but right around page 50s when Norman starts in with his bizarre dongs selves philosophies so the whole story becomes murky before Hamilton can be sent back to the distant past in the hopes that she will join a group of cro-magnon men her will must be broken by her Ellison's lackeys until she is deemed ready for the submissive slave slave-like existence for the submissive slave like existence that awaits her here's the old cranks explanation to Hamilton before she shoves her into a box for a one-way trip to the Stone Age you must understand said healer so that if you were transmitted as a modern woman irritable sexless hostile competitive hating men your opportunities for survival might be considerably less quote I'm a prisoner she said and I want to be [ __ ] like a prisoner used exclamation point closed quote time slave wouldn't be a John Norman book if women didn't revel in their captivity which brings us to the middle of the book where things get real Brenda Hamilton transported to an unfamiliar time is naked and running through the forest with a leopard in pursuit when she runs into three a red-blooded cro-magnon hunter at page 143 is the first of many there unfortunate rape scenes in this book some go on for pages none are really necessary the next 100 pages chronicle Brenda's transformation from a caricature of a fully realized woman to a whimpering sex-obsessed slave of course this being a John Norman novel she revels in this change and feels that she has finally become a true woman in quotation marks for the first time in her life she felt the fantastic sentience of an owned loving female she had just begun under the hands of a primeval hunter to learn the capacities of her femaleness close quote regrettably more than half of this novel is lent to Norman's BDSM leadings which involve a repetitive preachy tone because the man is literally trying to convert you how can he say that in our world some men want to hurt women whereas in his fictional world this is inconceivable frankly how dare you John Owen the interviewer asks elsewhere you have made the point that gore and society is decentralized and pluralistic would you want a gorian society to actually be created his reply it seems possible that a gorian world might be the best possible world empirically given human realities it would not be a utopian world now apart from the obvious and important questions of morality and ethics here like sex slavery being the ideal way to reorganize Society um you wouldn't prefer to live in a world that had electricity flushing toilets paper pencils pens like why would this one factor of having access to sex slaves and being in a society that normalizes this kind of rape and violence towards women why would that one a factor alone make this quote the best possible world empirically for human nature the interviewer I give them a lot of credit presses this point that obviously John Norman has spent his whole life evading many people who express tolerance over people's private lives and private fantasies become militant if those philosophies are forcibly imposed on others so this is asking the right question the crucial question in the most polite and tactful way imaginable the interviewers saying very clearly we're not talking about fantasy we're not talking about dress-up playtime between two consenting adults middle-class bourgeois decadent people who just want to pretend to be slaves or pretend to be raping each other we're talking about actual rape actual slavery and a political philosophy written by you John Norman that glorifies and propounds these things as the greatest possible society the most suitable for human nature Shaw Norman replies the philosophies of statism authoritarianism and collectivism are being imposed forcibly on the American people by the bayonets and guns of the state sound a little bit familiar John Norman's biggest secret was the extent to which he was ripping off an R and an R and is a terrible writer to begin with and a terrible philosopher and a terrible economist it's a whole other story but if this kind of verbiage doesn't sound familiar to you take a look at an Rand or what her immediate followers and fans had to say about life in the 20th century United States of America hi yes mmmmmm yes what a deep analysis of what America was like from 1980 to 2020 the American people being forced but the pigments and guns of the state does this even seem like someone with a PhD in philosophy offering a critique of the life in the contemporary nights as America but this is how he justifies his own mission to save the world his own mission to liberate his fellow man from this repressive regime that won't let people enslave and sexually dominate one other Danton [Music]