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| At least it's not Gor. |
(Don't forget, boys and girls, to pick up a copy of Blue Ghosts on either Smashwords or Amazon. You can get a free copy off Smashwords using this coupon: TX75M)
So while Strawchick is pulling Targo/Torgo's little red slave wagon for him, she reminisces about Torgo's life. Because we all need to know the slaver's life story. The important part is, he's bought a whole bunch of raw girl, which I guess is a little like raw hamburger with more wriggle. He's going to get his cargo trained, and...hold on, feminist meltdown in progress:
A slave, of course, in one sense, has no caste. In being enslaved, she is robbed of caste, as well as of her name. She belongs to her master in all respects, as an animal. He may call her what he wishes, and do with her what he pleases.Remember, in this book this is a positive thing. Human beings reduced to an animal state. One of the blogs I read regularly, because I like train wrecks and sometimes the day isn't complete without a little murder urge, is a blog called Bad Breeders, in which parents frequently reduce their children to an animal state. This should tell you how fucking inexcusable this attitude is. And it's a positive here because submission is the natural state of women and far be it from us to allow such petty concerns as physical safety and emotional well-being to get in the way of the Natural Way Of Things. Hey, John?
The point of this passage is supposed to be that Targo got hit by raders and lost some of his girls, thus making Strawchick a windfall of epic proportions. Except...
We get another one of those "Gee I am worthless" passages. In which we are told how the slave girls are displayed on an ankle chain with the least lovely girl first and the most attractive/expensive girls last. Strawchick is displayed fourth. She is not special. She got abducted from earth, psychologically tortured by the space-slavers, was allowed to run free for days and days, was even chased by a space ship, but she is in no way special boys and girls. Stop trying to make her look that way.
I hope whoever this girl is based on got out of college in one piece and is now a million miles away, happy, successful and completely clueless about her literary double.
My point is, she's not worth that much. Less windfall and more "Well, we got room on our shelves and it ain't rotten, so we'll see what we can do with it."
Also? The raider that robbed Torgo? Is named Rask. Remember this.
Torgo finds some kind of market, replaces most of the stuff he lost in the raid, buys a couple space-oxen because girls can't pull wagons for shit, and...uh...this is highlighted in this book:
The camisk is a rectangle of cloth, with a hole cut for the head, rather like a poncho. The edges are commonly folded and stitched to prevent raveling.
Five people thought that was memoriable enough to underline in gold. Somebody please tell me why.
...three pages later, we're still on the camisk. Oh, we get this paragraph:
I wondered why Targo permitted us camisks. I think there were probably two reasons. The first is that the camisk, in its way, is an incredibly attractive garment. It displays the girl, beautifully, provocatively. Moreover, it proclaims her slave, and begs to be torn away by the hand of a master. Men thrill to see a girl in a camisk.Hey, kids? Fun thought exparament. Let's replace the word "Camisk" with the word burqua. Now we're playing in Norman's ballpark, aren't we? And oh, fuck, guys. Up there, when I said that Strawchick was pulling Torgo's little red wagon? I was kidding. Only it turns out I wasn't:
The two wagons he bought were merchant wagons, with red rain canvas.Slavers ride around in little red wagons. Radio Fliers. Oh, my gosh. They ride in the wagons. They take a break. Strawchick eats a slab of meat provocatively and goes on and on and on about how Elinor Brinton would never have done this, no one will ever recognise the great, elegant Elinor Brinton in this lowly slave girl, and let me remind you late-comers that this is STRAWCHICK HERSELF, worshiping her past via third person perspective. Gag me.
And then right when we're begging for Rask the Tarnsman to show up with his raider troop again, one of the other slave girls, Lara, decides to dress up in Strawchick's old clothes and re-enact Strawchick's capture by Torgo. Having been shown the error of her ways, Strawchick decides to try to make it up to one of the other girls, Ute, by combing her hair.
Moving on?
No. Now we get the description of the other girls, and how Strawchick is terrified every time she has to kneel on the grass and say "Buy me, Master" in Gorean. And then...oh, fuck, guys. Here's a great big wall o'text on Norman's philosophy.
(Gorean Men) tend, on the whole, to be large, strong, virile, confident, uncompromising, powerful men. Yet the major differences between them and the men of Earth are not those of size or strength, but rather those of character and psychology...They live...in a world in which female slavery is acknowledged, recognized and celebrated. They are accustomed to seeing beautiful women in bondage, their limbs and beauty well revealed by slave garb, their necks locked in collars. And there is nothing, of course, which so enflames the virility of a man as the sight of a slave girl, let alone the thought of taking her in his arms.So in other words, this is a world where half the population are not people. They are kleenex for the other half to blow their unmentionables on, and then throw away. Because there are two major, MAJOR problems with this system that Norman does not address. Ever.
People get old, and if your only value as a person is streingth, beauty and ability and you get old? You are SOL on the scrapheap of life, 'cause ain't nobody on this world of psychopathic neanderthals capable of caring for somebody altruistically.
Second problem? Hey, you seen any kids around here? Where are all the Kids? No kids? Well thank fucking God for that. Any child raised in this society would be massively broken. We're talking like, end stage Universe 25 level brokenness. This is not a psychologically healthy enviroment for puppies, let alone small children.
It is their culture. They have never surrendered their manhood. They have never seen fit to relinquish their natural biological sovereignty. The Gorean culture does not deny nature but accepts it, acclaims it, relishes it, and enhances it.
Bull fucking shit, Norman. This is not manhood. This is sociopathic exploitation. It is a bleeding miracle nobody has gone Ted Bundy in this place. Being able to beat somebody unconsious before you rape them--that's what you mean by "biological sovereignty" right?--should never ever ever be the defining trait of a society. Just as stealing, murder, or any other antisocial behavior should be deemed "okay". And I think the key here is that the relationships explored in this fucking book? Are all sexual and romantic. Never once, never fucking once, is a child brought up. There are no children. There are no families. Nobody is reproducing in these books. Children, after all, put a stop to the happy fun times. It requires you to take on responsabilities beyond murder-rape-grunt-kill, to submit your own urges to then needs of the child. Human development requires the imput of both a mother and a father figure. Yes, you can raise healthy children without either mom or dad, but the healthiest model is two parents who put their child's well being first. And that's not something you can have with a fucking slave-based society.
The men might be happy, but the genetic line here is doomed. And that's the whole purpose in women-as-second-class citizens, right? You're protecting their reproductive organs...or more specifically, you're protecting your ability to reproduce your own genetic line. It's barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. You leave out the preggers part, and you've not only reduced the girls to their outer genetalia, but you've ended your own genetic line.
My point with this rant? Eventually the fun times with slave girls have to stop and become Responsable Times With Baby, otherwise the perfect Gorean society? Becomes a dead one.
But hey, that probably explains why the aliens are kidnapping Earth people. They're hoping to get some unbroken genes into the system before Gor itself collapses. Too bad Gor breaks every single person it gets ahold of within a couple months...
And then they encounter a free woman.
Yes, that evil thing that defies everything that is Gor! A woman who is not a slave. Oh, noes! What could this creature look like?
The woman sat regally on the curule chair, wrapped in resplendent, many-colored silks. Her raiment might have cost more than any three or four of us together were worth. She was, moreover, veiled.I was wrong, kids. This is the burqua.
And then Strawchick, being forced to kneel before this wonderful, free woman, understands what her position and wealth did back on Earth! It created unfair social divisions! HOW TERRIBLE!
WHY IS THIS CHAPTER NOT DONE YET???
And now Strawchick is realizing she would rather be owned by a manly manly Gorian man than a woman in a veil.
We have this interlude:
Goreans believe, or many of them do, that each woman carries a slave within themselves, but that the slave in some is more desperate for her release than in others...They take her by the arms and command her to look into their eyes; then, if she is ready, so soon, in her eyes, frightened and tear-filled, they can see the slave longing for her collar, begging for it.Right. If a man takes you in his arms and shouts at you and you look back submissive and scared, it's because you want to be a slave.
It's not because you're scared, you're about to be hurt and you don't want to either. No. It's because you want to be a slave.
Oh, but who is the free woman?
“The Lady Rena of Lydius,” said Targo, “of the Builders.”
Ah, an important strong female who needs bow to no man. Wanna bet what happens to her? Any takers?
Out of the darkness came two men, warriors. Between them, face-stripped, was a woman, stumbling. Her arms, over her resplendent robes, were bound to her sides with a broad leather strap. She was thrown to the feet of Targo.
And with the lovely Rena bound, gaged, naked and branded in the back of Torgo's little red wagons, the chapter finally ends. FINALLY.
