Captive of Gor chapter 4

In which absolutely nothing happens. It is time, boys and girls, for EXPOSITION. We are about to find out what's going on. Because KIDNAPPING isn't clear enough at this point.

So Strawchick is taken into a clearing where men are loading other drugged girls onto a UFO. Because Elinor Brinton is SO VERY NOT SPECIAL she gets the drug-free kidnapping treatment. You know. Because when we're reading about girls kidnapped and sold into slavery on alt-Earth we want the alt-earth stuff to start five chapters in. Why am I reading this again?

...because I wanted to. Right.

The dude removes the collar Elinor was given. Why? Fuck if I know. Why was she given one in the first place? Again, how the fuck should I know. At this point it's just psychological torture porn. She attempts to bribe her way out, they laugh--

--wait a second. Remember that part in chapter one?

Yet on this world I am a fifteen-gold piece girl, more lovely than many, yet far excelled by many whose stunning beauty I can only envy.

Yeah. That part. If she's worth so little on the slave block, and she's handing over oodles and oodles of gold and diamonds...why not take her up on the offer? I'm pretty sure they've made their quota, and I'm pretty sure they could find her again if they need to squeeze more cash out of her. "Pay us or we'll sell you into alien slavery" is a pretty good blackmail tactic when you can back it up with your space ship. If she talks about aliens she's just another space-brained blond. Nobody's going to listen to her...and again, you can back the threat up with a space ship. And maybe earth-cash ain't worth much but as far as I can tell, gold on alt-Earth is still fucking gold. She's a fucking millionare, boys, and she could probably hook you up with a couple nice slaves a month via fake jobs for less experianced models. The girls dissapear, hey, it's NYC baby. AND you've just made your case for women being horrible, horrible creatures who should be locked up and punished, sexily.

Anyway, they laugh, take her money anyway, and she fights them with the knife she's still got in her purse.

Again: WORST. SLAVERS. EVER.

They disarm her, which I need to point out would not be necessary if they'd drugged her in the first place, then try to fix the damage they she has done to her face by resisting and making them hit her, which also wouldn't be necessary IF THEY HAD DRUGGED HER IN THE FIRST PLACE, then elaborately showed her how they tracked her with their space ship. Bug in the purse. Which I pretty much guessed.

Again. Awful lot of technology there when they could have just DRUGGED THE IDIOT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Yeah. These guys and this chick totally deserve each other.

Oh, hey, I think these sentences are too long. Do you think these sentences are too long? Let's let John Norman show us how it's done:

“The light,” I said, “it couldn’t catch me.” 

“You think it was simply your misfortune, a mere coincidence, that you stumbled into our camp?” he asked.

 I nodded, miserably.

 He laughed. 

I looked at him, with horror.

 “The light,” he said. “You ran always to avoid it.”

 I moaned. 

“You were herded here,” he said.

 I cried out with misery.

Like we didn't figure that one out six fucking pages ago. One paragraph, John, that's all I'm asking.

So the dude, whose sole job is apparently to get Strawchick used to being a slave, gently urges her up into the spaceship, instead of IDK hauling her up by her hair OR DRUGGING HER (WHY IS SHE NOT DRUGGED LIKE THE OTHERS?) and then...John Norman does something that's actually kind of cool:

I saw the sun’s rim at the edge of my world, rising, touching it. In the east there was dawn. It was the first dawn I had ever seen. It was not that I had not stayed up all night, even many times. It was only that I had never watched a sunrise.

This perplexes me, and not in a bad way. Why is her first dawn on Earth also her last? This has some kind of umph to it, like rebirth or something else metaphysical. Like an inkling that this experience (being sold into slavery) is the start of her new, true life. Which is oh, so very ick, but let's not go messin' with the zen thing, man (/Jeff Bridges FTW) While the first sentence can go die on a piling (what touched what? Earth touched the sun, sun touched the earth? Elvis touched Miranda? What?) but the concept here is actually kind of awesome.

Does it go anywhere? No. Instead we get Strawchick's description of the slave holding area, where she is dragged kicking and screaming which, may I needlessly point out for the nine billionth time, would be a whole lot easier IF THEY HAD DRUGGED HER FIRST. They lock her in for the voyage, give her air, and we get today's contender for MOST OBVIOUS STATEMENT EVER:

The rich, clever, vain, insolent, proud Elinor Brinton, it was clear, had not escaped.

It took you two pages to described being locked into a vacuum-sealed tube. No shit, Sherlock.

TOMORROW: Alt-Earth, aka GOR, the world of a thousand raging hormones without soap.  Be there. Bring gas masks.

Pre-Criminal Education

Most people aren't going to agree with this, so we're going to start by explaining the basics: Our brains are smarter than we are.

Our brains are a wonderful tool, and we only consciously use about a quarter of it. Which is how it's supposed to work. If we had to consciously do everything our sub- and unconscious minds do our heads would explode. We'd never get anything done. And one of these things is reading ten million social cues a day so we can behave in a socially acceptable manner.

Unfortunately one of the cues in our society is this thrumming undercurrent of "they deserved it".

Let's use a movie as an example. It can be any horror movie in the last fifty years, but we're going to use Cabin Fever because what I'm talking about is really blatant. Victim blaming is par for the course in horror movies, which is sad because it takes most of the actual horror out of the equation, but that's a rant for another day. The premise of Cabin Fever is, a bunch of friends show up at a cabin, get sick with flesh eating rabies (or something) and try to quarantine themselves/get out/keep everyone from getting out/survive angry mob of townspeople. You'd think this would be horrifying, but then we meet the characters.

And you realize the world would be better off without them. They totally deserve it.

In any horror movie/movie about serial killers/movie where a lot of people are going to die, you can always pick the first deaths out of the crowd. They're the ones behaving in a socially reprehensible manner. In Cabin Fever the kids are heading up to the mountains to party over spring break. They all have responsibilities they've elected to dodge so they can get drunk on a mountain. The promiscuous girl? Dead. The kid taking a drag on weed? Dead. Final Destination 3 lets you know who's going to die by having a character declare her intention to break up with a devoted boyfriend within five seconds of her introduction (also: death by tanning bed).

The function of doing this--setting up an unlikable character to die--is a reflex on the writer's part. We don't want our likable characters to die. We don't want to be affected by death. If you're reading a book and you suddenly come across a lot of "She saw it happen" and "it seemed/almost/probably" it usually means the writer was REALLY uncomfortable with that scene and tried to add more distance between themselves and the action by having it almost happen through the character's eyes, not their own. I call them "filter" words. Unlikable cannon fodder serves the same purpose. We're protecting ourselves from the mayhem we're about to create by shoving the morally reprehensible under the bus.

The problem with doing this is it creates a social implication. That being that only the morally reprehensible get thrown under the bus. It's subtle and not something we pick up consciously. But our brains are smarter than we are. Subconsciously, we pick it up just fine. And if something bad happens to you? You must have deserved it. If you were good, and of upstanding moral character, you would be Final Girl, walking out of the dead zombie horde with a bloody chainsaw. Victims are the weak. The truely strong can fight it off.

It's bullshit, of course. You can take steps to protect yourself, but over and over and over again there are stories of homeowners who did everything right, who still got robbed. Women who carry mace and whistles and know you scream "Fire" still get raped. The people who trusted Bernie Madoff weren't idiots. They did their homework and got taken anyway. Victims cannot control what happens to them. Or to phrase it slightly differently: gazelles can't control when the cheetahs get hungry.

Thing is? People aren't cheetahs. Victims shouldn't have to be the one responsible for their safety, as the victim is not the person putting themselves in danger. The initial decision, "I'm gonna go hurt somebody", does not lie with them. They can choose how close to danger they get--don't walk alone, lock your doors, buy alarms, carry mace--but they do not choose when danger will exist. That choice lies with the individual committing the crime.

Imagine how effective drunk-driving campaigns would be if they were aimed at the victims, and not the drivers. "Know how to identify a drunk" would be one class. "Avoid these roads. Drunks use them" would be posted everywhere. Cops would be pulling sober drivers aside and say, "Don't go out tonight, there's a drunk in the neighborhood."

Why aren't we doing that? Because it doesn't work. It will never work. Educating the victims on how not to be a victim does not and will never be an effective social tool. We're educating the drunks because the drunks are the ones with the initial choice.

But other crimes, it's okay. Because we still have that social implication: You were asking for it. And that implication is why people laugh if an unchained bike gets stolen. It's why that FUCKING MORON from Missouri said women can't get pregnant from rape, why the rich white men in charge of the world keep saying "lie back and enjoy it, if you can't avoid it".

We need to educate the people who can actually stop crime: The people most likely to commit it. Right now all the materials say "Rape is wrong, here's how to avoid it". It might save my life, but it won't save every life. The day I see a poster with the message "Rape is wrong, don't do it", I'll know we've turned the corner.

Hey, and don't forget to check out the preview for my next book: Starbleached due out on Monday. 

In Which A Dedicated Pro-Lifer Jumps Ship.

So today I found out that Mississippi state House, on Nov. 8th, is voting on a bill that would grant “personhood” to human embryos. And I realized that despite years and years of education in Why Abortion is Bad and When Life Starts and a gazillion other things my good Christian parents have educated me about, despite being a dedicated Christian (with kinks) and a Republican (technically) I really don't like this. Having this pass and set precedent for other states would be a really bad thing for me. You know, because I'm one of those “woman” things with ovaries and a uterus.

And no. I’m not saying this because limitations on birth control, which is what this group is advocating, would limit my happy fun sexy times. I don’t have happy fun sexy times. I have not had sex. Ever. And I don’t plan on having sex in the immediate future, partially because me having a baby right now would be a really bad thing. Even if I were on birth control I probably wouldn’t be having sex, because I have some really good evidence that the pill doesn’t always work.

Me.

Yep. I’m a pill baby, folks. Not only that, but Mom was on the pill because her doctor told her it’d be a really BAD idea for her to ever get pregnant again. She’d lost two babies before she had me, and when she did get pregnant with me, the first time she went in for a checkup the doctor could feel my head.

And you know, maybe it’s me shoving my head up my own ass here, but that tells me that God really wanted me here. Enough to bypass every safety mechanism my parents put in place because Mom having babies was Not A Good Thing according to everyone. And this leads me to why this bill pisses me off.

Point the First: I am poor. Anyone I marry is likely to be poor. Therefore, if within the next ten years or so I decide to get married, it probably will not be “right” for me to have a baby. Note that I am considering this in the relm of “marry” because, religious leanings aside, given how often birth control has failed in my family if you want to get in my pants you’d better fucking be ready to marry me before you cross the finish line, so to speak,  because I cannot afford to have a baby if and when I get married right now, let alone if I’m on my own. In fact, every other consideration off the table, under every conceivable set of probable circumstances shows me that I probably will not ever be able to afford a baby and provide the level of care and life the child would need.


With "good of the child" as my primary concern, it's a bad idea for me to have kids. So who the hell are you to take this decision away from me? To tell me that if I want to have a relationship with someone I’d better have a baby plan in place first? I’m already paranoid about having a kid, in or out of wedlock, before I’m ready to raise and care for that kid. And I want to have a kid! I just know me having babies right now is a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad idea. This is a decision I’ve made carefully and soberly, and to have somebody tell me “tough luck” and take the few, unreliable tools I DO have for managing my future away from me is not fair. If I can’t afford a fucking CAR, sir, I can’t afford a baby. And you’re telling me that I also can’t afford to have a relationship, MARRIED OR NOT, because I can’t even have birth control?

And hey? Pro-life people? Did you see that place above where I said “Even if I’m on the pill, I probably wouldn’t have sex”? Does it not occur to you that some people use hormonal birth control for something OTHER than not making babies? That maybe us women people need to be able to function and not be incapacitated with cramps? Or deal with the anemia that comes with excessively heavy periods? That being able to predict when the monthly gift deposits itself on our door might be a good thing? Oh, and you know the mood swings that come with? Do you want to combine brittle emotional states with chronic depression? You want to know what a fucking funhouse it is to have S/I issues and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that once a month I get to hold on to my sanity by the skin of my teeth? Because I sure as fuck didn't, and I got to anyway.

You want to control crime? Make sure you don’t have poor families with sixteen mouths to feed. Make sure women don’t have to fucking sterilize themselves to ensure that “woopsie daisy, there’s a baby” doesn’t get in the way of feeding their other children. Make sure that the family a person has is the family they can afford to feed. Want to prevent abortions? See above.

And that brings me to Point number two. This is aimed at the religious people. The people who want to do God’s will in life, who think that preventing abortions is it.

Who the BLAZING BLUE FUCK do you think you are? How DARE you shove your head so far up your own ass that you think anyone can abort something God wants to have happen? Do you see that part above me? The part where I said I’m a pill baby? Do you think that one single person God wants in this world hasn’t been born? Do you think we really have that much power? Really? You really want to think that human beings have more power than God?

Do you think God is so weak that a surgeon with a scalpel and a vacuum can undo something he wants done? Is your God so powerless that he can’t secure the birth of every child he desires?

Judge not, lest you be judged, sir. And you’re judging. You’ve decided that every teenager who gets pregnant is a careless sex fiend. You’ve decided that every career woman who decides to go on the pill is a feminazi ice bitch. Every poor person who visits planned parenthood is someone getting an abortion, and every woman who gets an abortion is a whore.

In your world, there are no rape victims.

In your world, biology is perfect.

In your world, everyone can scrape together the tens of thousands of dollars it takes to bring a single healthy baby into the world.

You don’t see the pain.

You don’t see the desperation.

You have the compassion of a jar of mayonnaise.

You know that part in the bible? Splinter in your friend’s eye? BIG FUCKING LOG in yours? Abortion is a splinter. Abortion is a matter between the individual WOMAN faced with that choice and God. So is birth control. So is everything else in a WOMAN’S life. May I emphasize that again? If I decide that I am neither financially nor emotionally nor physically stable enough to have a baby it should be my fucking choice. You cannot tell me what I am capable of. It is my body, and I’d rather become a nun than bring a child into the world when I cannot provide a stable, healthy home for it. Children, marriage and sex are decisions that are between ME and GOD, and not some rich politician who probably spends twice my monthly rent on BOOZE, or gas, or electricity for his air conditioning, who doesn’t see things from my perspective, who has never seen things from my perspective, who, if he did see me, would see me as a waitress and would ogle my boobs and cut my tip in half if I protested.

In short, sir:

And yes, that’s me judging too. And I’ll apologize to both you and God for it when I’m less pissed off.

C.S. Lewis, the great theologian and fantasy writer, said two things in passing that apply here. The first was in his biography, where he discusses the massive amount of pediastry that happened in his prep school (aka boys screwing other boys). He said that he never felt it his place to judge because he never experienced that particular temptation. Then, in The Horse and his Boy, there is a place where Aslan tells a character why it was necessary for him to scar the character across the back: the girl needed to know what she had carelessly done to her faithful servant. When the girl, now humble, asks what happened to the servant, Aslan replies that that is not the girl’s story. We each may only know our own stories.

You might believe that birth, not abortion is the morally right choice. This is great. I believe that too. But, and this is the key, you will never have to make that choice. I will. You will never have to decide between buying food and buying diapers. Between having a romantic life and having stability. And constricting my freedom just so that you  can sleep at night is not and cannot be God’s will. And to think that you have any control over God’s will, in a positive or negative sense?

Look up megalomania in the dictionary. I think you’ll see your picture right next to it.

Knitting and feminism? A hypothesis.

I had a thought that probably has nothing to do with anything and is probably total bullshit, but I want to write it down so I can remember it later, and I'd like to open it for discussion.


One of the reasons lace knitting was such a strong industry where it appeared was that it gave women an additional source of income. A woman who could knit well would have been a very valuable person because she could contribute something of great importance to her household. The same would go for all of the "women's work" things in European culture--knitting, spinning, weaving, sewing, embroidery. All these things weren't just keeping houses pretty for husbands. They were things they could take to market and sell, like the veggies and the other things their husbands did.

Because the finer stuff (ie wedding ring weight shawls, brussles lace, anything involving silk) was more valuable than the rougher stuff, the women had to avoid rough work. You CANNOT work with fine fibers if you have rough hands (as proven by the amount of hand lotion I go through when I'm spinning lace wool, an option women in the 'teens wouldn't have had). So the husbands would have had to do the heavy lifting and the digging and the other things considered "men's work" while the wives stayed home to do the jobs that wouldn't ruin their hands, and to knit, or sew, or embroider. Both members of the household were doing something that would earn money. It was (in theory) an equal division of labor with both members of the household contributing.


Then you had the industrial revolution, where thread, cloth and clothing production were shifted out of the home and into factories. There was no longer any value in handcraft skills, and the women who had them lost their value. Lacemaking, knitting, spinning and such were the industry of the poor. When the skill was made obsolete by factory production, the women who had them became, well, useless ornaments. The division of labor had been set in culture--because in a culture where spinning and knitting HAD value, a woman who had to work outside the home was a woman without valuable skills, and could be looked down upon by her neighbors--so the devalued woman had very few options available. They couldn't regain a valuable skillset without first changing the culture to allow it.

If the above is true, then one could argue that feminism and sufferage was an outgrowth of a (relatively) sudden devaluation and not a long-term cultural disregard for women. The girls stayed home because the work they could do at home earned more money than they work they could do outside the home. When handcrafts lost their value, however, a women who could only knit and embroider and who couldn't do something more valuable in the NEW skillset became an ornament for her husband, a way for him to say, "look, I can support someone who is worthless", the way footbinding worked in China. Feminism did not alter gender roles. Rather, it fixed them.



I think I shall study both and find out if this argument could be made reasonably, and if it might have historical support. Should be interesting if nothing else.