Gor & the Goreans: the Anti-Feminist Fantasy that Became… Slavery.

from this image you should get an idea
what this is about essentially there's this earth on the other side of the Sun and you have characters from from our earth to get kind of whisked off there and on this earth it's essentially like a medieval fantasy women are most women are basically slaves and there's a bunch of sex slaves as you can tell from this particular cover image right here and this is something that goes through all of the novels as women are are literally physically dominated like beaten sexually dominated it's a it's a very strong what most people consider a ante female empowerment narrative that runs throughout these particular books so I first found out about gore when I was 18 years old that was 11 years ago now and I was like what school and then I went on Google and then that kind of wrapped this whole slavery domination Conan the Barbarian meets Frank Frazetta meets dirty perverted Minds come to life in the book series and I just hook line sinker sunk into it a lot of people consider the misogynist sexist and perhaps they are the thing is they're also very successful not just with men but with women there's a whole subculture that developed called the gorian subculture the gore subculture where women choose to live this lifestyle where they are essentially sexual slaves to a man and in the books they're often presented in women off to present it as being sexually liberated through slavery which is a weird thing and the women who aren't slaves like are sexually repressed and there's a little I don't know a there's a lot of weird themes like that oh how did we meet brandy so funny story you actually saved me because I was about 18 at the time maybe a couple months to being 19 and as a Kujira who was very young naive so first of all where does the term khajur come from brandy so Kujira is a Korean term that comes from the books the commonality is la cuchara which is not french and it means I am a slave girl but you're you know it's dirty now but is the fact and you've helped me since I was 18 years old I had a male who was telling me that I should be removed from school because it's not my job to go to get a good education I need to be taken out of work because my job is to serve Him that I was gonna live in a basement and that was just my life and actually stalked me and found me at my school rocker actually helped me get the authorities involved get this person off of any kind of venue where he could contact me and kind of guided me towards like what ethical Gore is versus what like a video game is so maybe it's sexist maybe it's misogynist does that mean that you blacklist or censor it particularly when you have a group of people including women who are really into wanting to live this lifestyle and it became a whole subculture like an S&M subculture and you also have similar content like Fifty Shades of Grey now what happened with this novel is that the original publisher Ballantine Books didn't want to publish the books anymore and you can maybe guess why but this was a long time ago this is like in the 70s so Dahl picked it up doll is a very famous publisher fantasy published a whole bunch of Michael Moorcock's novels but and a bunch of other people very big fantasy you know fantasy publisher and somewhere in the book series they decided they weren't gonna publish them anymore and the official reason they gave was low sales now that he couldn't find another publisher he said he got blacklisted by the entire industry as a result of the portrayal of women in his books and I also think he wrote like a practical like fantasy dominating sex dominating guide for couples as well just as an aside that I think might have sold pretty well first published in the UK anyway in 1969 talisman of Gaul began the gorian cycle or series sometimes also referred to as the counter-earth saga I picked this up because while I was reading Elric saga I discovered that Michael Moorcock campaigned against these books because of their objectification or women I posted a review of hunters of Gore on amazon.com and reposted it to my personal Facebook page it got such a strong positive response that I figured I'd go ahead and share it with everybody having heard various people especially those in the role playing BDSM community extolling the magnificence of the series I looked into it and found myself disgusted time and again at the idea of philosophy that values men who control women with rape and physical beatings the most common defense I heard of the books was that they were intended to satirize feminism while there were certain thematic elements of this in the plotline of outlaw of Gore the remainder of the books seemed to ever-increasing degrees to justify why a bully is the best thing that a man can ever be and that men have a right and a responsibility to beat up women and terrorize the go begins very much in their burrows in tradition with an English professor called tal Cabot go as a counter-earth which mimics our own over completely but on the opposite side of the Sun there is considerably more mention of female slaves than male likewise we learn little about the free women at all beyond that they exist and that they are subject to the same caste system but it's limited social mobility as the men tall though thanks to his perspective frequently acts or speaks out against the worst of the society's rules including pledging to abolish slavery the rest of the society though suggests that slavery is okay or even good for some that sort of position usually opposed by the hero I did find objectionable but at the same time defeating a situation is not the same as endorsing it and Tull as our protagonist remains both reasonable and likable in part by his going against the rules of the world it must have been it when they made these books later he must just escalate it and that's what I heard people say when I go on the Amazon reviews is the first books the first couple of books are good and then as it goes on they just turn into straight BDSM and just kind of misogynistic pseudo philosophy this was the first Gore novel I read and I subsequently read torrents Minh outlaw priest kings and captive in case you want to accuse me of being ill informed and I was introduced to Toro but who revels not in consensual BDSM but in the merciless gloating terrorizing work into a high school bully who unable to accept the more tender and vulnerable feelings he has for a girl beats our and humiliates her to suppress his own inadequacy in the face of those feelings and it's kind of edgy but it's really like halfway it's like very mild watered-down Rouge this first novel of edginess against women like it's not that bad it just it's just literally like the worst it just talks about hypergamy like the natural state as hypergamy and women only being attracted to the highest class of men and that women it's not it's not even like rape fantasies are in this really and I that's what I understand it gets into later but it's like women desiring men based on their status not how good they treat them so men that have higher status but abused women are considered highly attracted by one that's that's like as edgy as this book gets the section I think that will enrage more people than any other is where they work out the details of her slavery and talena is forced to wear a collar announcing that she is his property her life as a slave though actually a force her slightly more freedom than her life as a princess did confined as she was by being veiled and limited to the Quarian sake oh this real-world commentary features a handful of times in the text in with not just Greek mythology but also Darwinian concepts and again in Anna's section and might well offend quite a few comparing the activity of the slave market with the more modern 4 1969 dating practices that comparison has she seemed more open in the Twitter age and it was certainly raise an eyebrow or a hackle or two Norman's assertion is that men must be brutally harsh with women because if they ever show the slightest sympathy then women will seize on that and enslave the men by weakening and feminizing them for the women and the novels this is undoubtedly true every single female character in the affirmation books with one very minor exception was a shrill maniacal malicious stuck-up pain-in-the-ass that was ultimately brought under controlled by a physically strong arrogant man and what are the expectations as far as surrendering as a kageura the idea is that you give up yourself completely to your master the idea being that you are his article of possession you are his clothing or property to do with whatever he pleases so at that same connotation your mind your soul your body your thoughts your fears your inhibitions your desires they no longer belong to you they belong to the person that you submitted to and it's very difficult for a lot of people to come to terms with that because they lose their independence okay and what are the three things that you that you would give as far as advice to any new person coming in that's considering as far as being part of Gore as far as being a Kujira what's what are three things that you would give advice the first thing I would say is read the books just just read them know what it is that you're dealing with know the nuances of the difference of a stray slave versus a free woman that's actually a Kujira in clothing like there's a lot of subtle differences in nuances and the most important thing is don't submit to people that you've never met you you don't know who these people are and there are a lot of dangerous people in this world and you are more than likely a very attractive very sweet girl who they want to keep forever in confusion the sexism and a depiction of slavery sexual or otherwise in this book is fairly toxic probably only though is belonging to a certain sexual subculture would read this and fifty Shades of Grey but it's hard not to see them as originating from the same sort of inspiration if you can shake off that mental shudder you'll find tons 'men of gore to be nothing like is expected imax in which holds true about just about every aspect of it the plot is better than expected the characters are better than expected the quality of writing is better than expected the relationship between Tao and telling that is probably the focus of the book motivating tile as it does even when the two are separated not even one person as explicit as Fifty Shades of Grey they are a much more engaging couple than steel and gray when not varying towards abuse or if I'm being generous BDSM their relationship is is it quite reasonable occasionally enjoyable transition from sparring to affection there is nothing noble about being so emotionally weak that anyone you don't dominate physically will be able to take advantage of you Norman likes to make the argument both in the books and elsewhere that the savage patriarchal rule was necessary for the good of society if there is one positive and the gore novels it is that it will compel the reader to rise to the occasion enough to articulate precisely why they disagree with mr. Norman and if on a personal note why do you love Gore so much and what does being a good year how is how is that for me was the secret to the world that I didn't have it was like learning who I was all over again I've never been in a community where I strived so hard every waking moment to study and learn and just retain information it was like a it's a drug you can't stop because once you are pleasing and once you do get that attention it's it's addictive you don't let that go and it's not the same as when a BDSM master looks at you or even a vanilla person looks Q like when agreein looks at you you feel it you know that you know in your heart that this is a different dynamic and that like you get to be the real you that you don't get to be anywhere else if there's one thing we all know about science fiction and fantasy it's that it never dies how many years would be until the next Conan the Barbarian movie comes out but the last Conan movie was a disaster it was a failure it was a flop doesn't matter Conan the Barbarian somehow will have a sequel and if there's a problem with securing the rights there will be a knockoff version of Conan the Barbarian there will be Bonin the carb Aryan or some people find a way they will find a way to make another corner in the barbarian movie when is next Star Wars movie coming out but the last three Star Wars movies were terrible they were a critical failure at a commercial disappointment does not matter somehow there will be another Star Wars movie there will be another Ghostbusters movie and I think of anything will you deal with the overlap between science fiction and fantasy that's even more irresistible maybe just because the fantasy elements are easier to do on a lower budget make no mistake the gore books they're gonna come back I think we're already in the middle of this in 2030 I think it's already going through a comeback however toxic lamentable or deplorable that may be satire satire by contrast is very delicate it's very difficult to reproduce in one climate versus another a sense of satire that made sense in the 1870s didn't make sense anymore in the 1970s if you've ever had to read Shakespeare in a university classroom and the professor stops and tries to take 20 minutes to explain to you a joke that's in some subtle way poking fun at the Protestant church from a Catholic perspective and the students are sitting there like what Oh doesn't matter the passage of a single century is enough for satire to become incomprehensible or at least to lose its edge and the other thing that made the gore books worthy of a footnote in history is that they began as a satire of feminist philosophy written by a professor of philosophy a guy who went on to write a philosophy of his own again however deplorable that may be in the year 2020 we're living through another period where a new wave of feminism has come to its ascendancy has has had a period of overwhelming influence and power and I think there's a question or a challenge for Satta rests in what way could you should you might you satirize the feminism of our own era in the same way that John Norman tried to do in the 1970s looking back at the feminism of 1960s addressing for a creative writer that's that's a real challenge and I do not think the satirical element of the gore novels is an excuse for the very real evil of that's what makes us politically more worth talking about if anything both the gore novels and the subculture of BDSM fans imitating the realms it shows us why even now in 21st century slavery should be illegal it shows us that many of the moral underpinnings of a society really matter and a lot of these things can't be taken for granted you can't just assume nobody would voluntarily put themselves in this kind of situation and no it's a it's a kind of unbelievably abrasive lesson in aspects of human nature that all of us want to ignore or want to imagine disappeared from the surface of the earth in the passage of 500 years and no guess what it's still here this aspect if you've been nature it's still here just like Conan the Barbarian in Star Wars we're gonna go away things like I'm a creative writer myself I would not want to take on the challenge of trying to today write an original or an original series of novels that did what gore managed to do back in the period 1969 to 1975 to really kind of shake up you know the sense of safety that had emerged from the previous 20 years of the development and proliferation of feminist ideology because feminism is reassuring it's a set of norms that's really part of reassuring us that we haven't made some terrible step in the wrong direction from medieval the Renaissance and Renaissance to enlightenment and enlightenment to modern and here comes this wildly eccentric author that says no no no back to the Bronze Age back to the Stone Age this is a guy who's really to call him a reactionary is an understatement he's more like a time traveler ethically he wants to get back in touch with the the most brutal elements of pre Roman Empire savagery and he's gonna sell it to you deadpan serious that this is what you and I and society as a whole needs to be happy this is the only thing that can satisfy human nature for both genders whoa okay no that's a challenge as a creative author I'm not even interested in I would not take the step into insanity that I think he did I don't know exactly when the line was drawn in these in these books when it went from this slightly edgy satire into being you know him laying out this philosophy of pronouncement for out we ought to live our lives I don't know if that was three books into the series or six books in the series or 30 books into this series and guess what guys the most recent book in the series was published in 2019 I would love to buy a copy of that book and review it but you guys just do not donate enough that the author of these books that started in 1969 he's still alive he's still writing the books and again the fact that in the past this was made into at least one major motion picture it's inevitable this make a comeback if you don't want to happen I have a real simple moral to put this story if you think Gore is awful and terrible and should be erased from this earth just like a tattoo the way to do it is not by trying to rub it out it's not by trying to censor it the way an eraser gets her defensive the way is to create something better if you want to make your old tattoo disappear make something better each other I would challenge you in the audience you hear you someone someone has to you know get rid of this garbage that's been in our culture from the 1970s with his happy Star Wars whether that be Conan the Barbarian or whether that be Gore the Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stone the Bronze Age didn't end because we ran out of bronze Stone Age ended because we had something better to work with in the realm of cultural production I challenge you take a look at how awful gore is and let's do better [Music]