The John Norman School of Romance

Note: I can’t believe I’m giving the equivalent of a trigger warning, but just an FYI there are some utterly brutal quotes in this article. If you prefer lighter fare, you might want to give this a pass.

When I was younger, like every boy who develops a love to read, I had an obsession with sword-and-sorcery and sci-fi novels. For fantasy I read classics like The Hobbit as well as throw-away serials like the Robert Jordan Conan books. In my sci-fi binge, I voraciously read Arthur C. Clarke and Frank Herbert. I loved the first Dune novels, devouring the first three. With God Emperor of Dune and Heretics of Dune, I didn’t know what I was getting into. Herbert delved deep into his sexual ideas and philosophy as my twelve-year-old self could only wonder what the hell was going on. Reading Arthur C. Clarke’s later Robot stories was the same experience. Writers are a weird bunch.

Around this time, I had a conversation with my cousin, who proudly exclaimed he found his dad’s stash of dark and erotic fiction stowed away in the den. He was also a big sword-and-sorcery fan, and his eyes immediately planted on a particular series in the shelf, John Norman’s “Gor” series. His explanation of the stories were… unique and enthusiastic. I heard the name a couple times after that, with either annoyed murmurs or an amused smirk, but I never read one in those years, as much as the forbidden fruit aura around them piqued my curiosity.

It wasn’t until my twenties that I saw “Marauders of Gor” in a used bookstore and gave it a try. As worldbuilding goes, it had some interesting ideas. The crux of the plot is there exists a counter-earth that follows an orbit that always shrouds it from Earth’s observation. It is ruled by a near omnipotent race of insectoid-like creatures, the Priest-Kings, who abduct humans from Earth and place them on the planet. They restrict technological weaponry to medieval times while allowing more advanced technology in other fields. There are flying animals to tame along with large, hairy monsters to fight. It’s a world brimming with potential for plenty of pulp action. Because of the forced technological stagnation, it’s a primal, brutal world with little in terms of higher culture and altruistic aspirations, largely being a raw state of nature. It is clearly influenced by Burrough’s “John Carter of Mars” series, with a few key differences. First, there’s little hint of the honor culture found in Barsoom. Second, the writing is far poorer. Third, it’s absolutely littered with sexual domination themes.

She looked down, tears in her eyes. I had used her. She was quite good. But it had taken longer to arouse her than is common in a slave girl. The Forkbeard, I, and the crew, would improve her. The trip south would be long. Whereas it commonly takes a third of an Ahn to arouse a free woman. A female slave is often responsive from almost the first touch of the master. Why this should be I do not know. I suspect it is due, primarily, to two factors: the first is psychological. The collar itself, and the state of bondage, for no reason clear in my mind, commonly transforms even the tepid free woman into an orgasmic marvel of a slave. Perhaps the fear to be whipped if they are not pleasing? Perhaps, behaviorally, given no choice but to act as a passionate female slave, they find, suddenly, through simple psychological relationships, they, to their horror, have become only a passionate female slave. Perhaps it is the knowing that they are rightless, owned, dominated, which so deeply, so incredibly triggers the profound web of yielding, piteously receptive helplessly submitting reflexes; perhaps in the depth of their bodies lies the secret need to be sexually subjugated, totally without which they cannot attain their full sexuality.

- Marauders of Gor

In this strange world’s culture, women are little more than cattle. While most of the stories rotate around the exploits of Tarl Cabot, a rather one-dimensional Earthman, some focus on the women who find themselves in the strange new planet. There is a common thread in all these stories. She is an insufferable feminist who one day finds herself waking up naked in Counter-Earth. She gets captured, put in chains and a collar, and forced to be a slave. She resists her subjection only to be beaten and broken down even more. She’s forced to drink “Slave Wine”, a bitter, sterilizing concoction every month until her master wants to breed. Eventually, she grudgingly submits to her new status, coming to the realization she enjoys his ruthless dominion. By the end of the novel, she learns to love her master, realizing her natural state is that of a slave. If you didn’t get the subtle nuance reading one of these books, don’t worry, you have 37 more tedious novels to ensure the point is beaten into your head.

It’s clear why it got feminists in an uproar. He began the series during the sexual revolution, likely as a response to it, so there was always controversy. It might strike one as a shameless fantasy of some incel living in the basement, but it was written by a college philosophy professor, happily married with three children. In the 1970’s he even wrote a sexual roleplay book. No, I did not read it. I have my limits. What’s clear is John Norman was not writing these for escapist fun. He truly believed this binary domination/submission hierarchy was the natural order of things that worked the everyone’s benefit. Still, plenty of smart people have all sorts of crazy ideas, and the memory of Gor receded from my mind soon after I read it.

In recent times, women’s smut fiction has gotten a lot of attention. Many remember the fervor over “Fifty Shades of Gray” and the dark and demeaning plot that women seemed to eat up. It’s gotten younger and younger, as novels like the fantasy “Fourth Wing”, supposedly for young adults, show the same hyper-sexual patterns. The American Sun recently hosted a fantastic article where a brave reader slogged through some women’s BDSM adjacent literature. For

Tree of Woe

’s part, he wrote a legendary Twitter post summing them up in a more digestible form.

- The lead-up to the battle will take 60-70% of the book, during which time we will learn about the main hero's childhood struggle to master her inner demons and her need to maintain her independence from the amazing billionaire vampire dragon knight that threatens to overwhelm her with his raw sex appeal.

- During the battle, the main hero will save everyone by unleashing special powers that only she has. Her annoying bitchy rival will die unredeemed. No real-world military tactics will be used, or if they are, it will be by the losing side, to its humiliation. The whole battle will only take 1 chapter.

- Afterwards there will be a chapter describing the psychological horror of having had to fight a war. The main hero may wander the battlefield distraught until she finds comfort in the arms of the billionaire vampire dragon knight, who will finally open up to her emotionally.

- The next 2-3 chapters will describe in intimate detail her consortium with her paramour with details on what it's like as he shapeshifts into dragon form. Male readers will stop at this point in horror at what cannot be unlearned.

- Finally, the book will end with the main hero, billionaire vampire dragon knight at her side, giving a speech commemorating the battle and pledging to end all war forever.

- The End.

This would be bad enough, except the debauchery doesn’t end there. These books are gateway drugs to an ever-increasing library of women’s literary smut, and the deeper one goes, the more depraved they get. While these books pay lip-service to feminist orthodoxies, they’re very forced. For example, the amoral, dark, handsome love interest often acts like a complete psycho to the protagonist and everyone around him and then decides to respect consent. The protagonist is a perfect heroine but can’t stop being horny for the love interest. This largely seems to be a way for the book to get published under the “young adult” label. Going deeper into the genre, consent goes more and more out the window. There’s even a sub-genre labeled “consensual non-consent”, where the protagonist roleplays getting raped by her partner.

It was a disconcerting going through these forums and seeing expressions of such fantasies being empowering, but reading smut involving a woman truly getting raped and enjoying it (because he’s hot) is going too far. There is a cognitive dissonance where they insist that everyone just enjoy things, that’s it’s all in harmless fun and exploration, yet underneath the exterior facade understand how such visceral literature can warp a mind, or at least what’s acceptable to publicly admit.

The ever-applicable Owen Cyclops comic

I can’t help but wonder if John Norman took his book “Slave Girl of Gor”, added more feminine language, and made the sex scenes more graphic, whether anyone would blink an eye if it was published under the name Jane Norman. It would probably be lauded as a spicy fantasy tale by the same people who would consider the man to be a raging misogynist. John’s still around at 93 and churned out yet another Gor novel last year. If he knows of the female literature scene, he’s probably grinning in mild amusement at how much he’s been proven right.

This isn’t a new take, and the always fantastic

Yakubian Ape

made the same observation recently. This doesn’t even get into the reality that Gor was popular with a contingent of women, and there is a niche subculture dedicated to practicing it in modern times.

The question becomes, was he right? Do human sexual relations come down to simple dominance and submission, and the social games we play just mask what we crave deep down? Would it be better if we removed the facade altogether and restructured society so that women became sex slaves at 16 and men trained to be brutish warlords using women as chattel? Ethics aside, would society flourish with this arrangement?

An alien visiting Earth would immediately notice the sexual dimorphism of human beings, and a cursory look of male and female physiology would establish the unequal but complementary nature of the sexes. It’s clear that regardless of all the modern talk about gender equality, by the very act of intercourse romantic relations establish a hierarchy. It would also become clear that the powerful impulses of the sexes needed to be refined in order for any civilization to form above the brute Law of Nature.

Raw female sexuality can only be sated with raw male sexuality, and such energy gives not one whit about social constructs like consent or propriety. There’s a reason sexuality is constrained in both men and women, to synchronize themselves with higher order aspirations for everyone’s wellbeing.

While no culture has gone full Gorean, many women have unfortunately been subjected to barbarism. The women from stable, healthy societies who were kidnapped to slavery in Arab lands, abducted by Vikings, or abused by powerful conquerors, would likely be surprised by what the feminine lit scene finds arousing. They would immediately recognize the dark, dangerous powers these women are trying to wield, both in their own psyche and in the psyche of the men they lust for. Take, for example, the behavior of Columbus’ companion on his second voyage.

While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful woman, whom the Lord Admiral [Columbus] gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked — as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought she had been brought up in a school for whores.

- Michele de Cuneo

Compare this to Alexis de Tocqueville’s narrative of single women entering into married life. Contrast the difference in how this natural sexual hierarchy is handled and ascertain which is healthier both for the couple and society as a whole.

Upon her entrance into the world a young American woman finds these notions firmly established; she sees the rules which are derived from them; she is not slow to perceive that she cannot depart for an instant from the established usages of her contemporaries, without putting in jeopardy her peace of mind, her honor, nay even her social existence; and she finds the energy required for such an act of submission in the firmness of her understanding and in the virile habits which her education has given her.

It may be said that she has learned by the use of her independence to surrender it without a struggle and without a murmur when the time comes for making the sacrifice. But no American woman falls into the toils of matrimony as into a snare held out to her simplicity and ignorance. She has been taught beforehand what is expected of her, and voluntarily and freely does she enter upon this engagement.

- Democracy in America

Even in these hyper-egalitarian times, it’s taken as a truism that women prefer a strong, dominant man. Men, of course, like a woman with attractive physical features. This is the base level of attraction for any sort of romance to flourish. A man who gives a girl flowers, talks sweetly, and is always asking of her needs is going to fail if she considers him weak. Hence all the whining on how nice guys finish last. A man is not going to care how pleasant a woman is to be around if she’s 300 pounds. There is a core baseline, but it’s not the only measure. There are a multitude of broader wants that also need to be sated.

Pornography, in both video and literary form, elevates only these primal sensations, the ones most susceptible to a quick rush of pleasure, far above what would be otherwise be experienced. It’s this separation from the general culture, displacing sexual relations from broader society, that creates perverse wants. Men watching video porn gives a cheap thrill of contextless sex that requires more and more bizarre fetishes to get a rise. Same with women reading sexual roller coasters as the erotic narrative of the dark, amoral, and brooding anti-hero love interest need to get more visceral, more dangerous, more vivid, until she sees herself in the protagonist, aroused by becoming nothing more than a piece of meat for her love interest to pound.

It can’t be understated how women flocking to this coarse entertainment is due to rampant cultural and spiritual deterioration. All the sex positivity messaging has, instead of freeing people, instead put hedonistic shackles on them as their sexuality is degraded to a cheap thrill. Old romantic customs and rituals have fallen away. Traditional social networks that were once fodder for the rich and fascinating sexual tensions of Jane Austen novels have disappeared. Sex has been unmoored from any long-term commitment, its larger cultural significance nonexistent, and has become bereft of any higher spiritual ends. If all sex boils down to is two people in the bedroom, it’s just as bereft of meaning as urinating.

This is also likely why they flock to fantasy worlds, as how is it possible to have an intriguing romance in modern times? Where is there tension in a world with no stigma against casual sex, where any vow can be broken, and no relationship has a true sense of permanence? There is no rich cultural tapestry to explore, no taboos to avoid, no broader relationships to navigate. The depth of Victorian romance is not possible in modern times, as we don’t have the social architecture to sustain it.

Also, any media encouraging traditional romantic standards are verboten. Modern media is allergic to strong, assertive male leads, with the only ones allowed being in smut. It’s just as allergic to traditional female roles, with a woman using traditional charms and values being considered hopelessly antiquated. Every movie has to have a girlboss. Every T.V. show has to have a weak man who defers leadership to the girl. Basic, healthy tropes have been buried underground. We’re setting up the young for failure.

Sexual maturity is one of the most confusing parts of a human being’s life. In previous times there were specific guardrails set up to traverse one’s ascent to manhood or womanhood. Bonding rituals were created to get comfortable in one’s own skin, and effort was made to make appropriate use of one’s awakening to adulthood. There were middle school dances to attend, chaperoned mingling events with clearly established bounds in how to interact, and countless examples from family and the wider community in behavioral expectations. This isn’t to say no one ever ran off the plantation, as everyone’s genealogy has that couple who had a shotgun wedding, nor is it to say some took too much caution and ended up alone and old, or with a mate they never felt attracted to. Maybe the guardrails were too strict sometimes, but now the guardrails are practically non-existent.

Women will argue that their sexuality has always been repressed, while men have always had full reign to act on their sexual urges. They say modern spicy literature is their way of exploring sexuality in a non-judgmental way. Men, upon being hen-pecked and lectured on how free and unbounded their sexuality is supposedly allowed to be, will likely struggle to avoid their eyes rolling clear to the back of their heads. With regards of female sexuality being repressed, welcome to the club. They never consider there’s a good reason for that.

I will agree in principle everyone needs a way to understand their sexuality. Where the conflict begins is what that entails and what social limits are enforced. If any guardrail is put up for their own safety, they cry repression, regardless of how prudent. It seems the only guardrail emphasized today is “don’t get pregnant”, thereby removing their sexual nature from its proper purpose. There’s no training as to proper communication with the opposite sex, and their world model of men is either hopelessly naive or senselessly cynical. Worse, there is no context on living inside what’s left of our scorched culture, nor any idea of higher spiritual goals, such as family formation. They’re stuck with the influence of degenerate, deracinated literature and media instead of organic relationships that direct their place in the world.

These sorts of narratives, when accessed again and again, form a conditioning regimen. And what kind of conditioning can stem from hypersexuality to frigid asexuality. For instance, for those who were adults around the 1990’s-2000’s in Protestant circles know the push regarding Purity Culture at this time. What was at its core a worthy goal, staying sexually pure before marriage, turned into a fanatical cause of one-upmanship to avoid all sexual urges. Instead of learning to harness and regulate their sexuality through finding wholesome outlets such as dancing, light flirting, and gentle kissing, they suppressed it altogether. When the women finally married, they found themselves sexually frigid, cold as ice. They conditioned themselves to find the sex act gross, and couldn’t turn normal female attraction back on, even for their new husband. The poor husband found a dead bedroom on his wedding night. This doesn’t even get into how many became perpetually single through bad relationship advice.

I Kissed Dating Goodbye: A nuke dropped on Evangelical singles.

Purity culture’s issues stem from the same common source, young people being forced to navigate a sexual landscape they are unequipped for. Instead of clear cultural markers and universal, time-tested traditions, they are forced to decide from modern fads with no track record.

Unhealthy repression is an issue in some niche circles, but I fail to see how anyone can see this as a problem in general culture. The animalistic training given in schools and media puts emphasis on the primal to the expense of integrating it with one’s full life. Criticism has been made that before modern times everyone repressed their sexuality to unhealthy levels, requiring everything to be rethought and reconfigured. This is cope. I remember in my youth watching old couples from the Silent Generation in their 70s still ballroom dancing, emanating a deep passion that absolutely showed up in the bedroom during their younger years. Just because Grandma was too respectable to go into detail on their bedroom shenanigans doesn’t mean their love life was boring.

Sexuality can’t be separated from every other part of the human experience, like a light switch being turned on and off. It’s all encompassing, and one’s proclivities in one’s love life will trickle into every other aspect of living. One can’t engage in empty, violent animalistic intercourse and not expect it to damage higher-order social and spiritual needs. It requires an integration of the whole person.

The Integrated Woman

A lot of push-back has been given to the idea that a woman’s journey is finding her own innate value. This is derided by feminists of being condescending and hated by men who complain of women’s sense of entitlement in the modern dating scene. While not perfect, in the proper context it’s a useful model for ascertaining proper romantic relations. All the classic romances follow this journey, and there’s a reason they’re still read and loved.

One of the perfect avatars of this is the story of Jane Eyre. It has all the hallmarks of a modern dark romance. You have the horrid upbringing of the protagonist. You have her falling for a dark, brooding, experienced older man. You have said love interest gleefully toying with her. You have the dark secret of the mansion, a mad woman who is revealed to be Rochester’s secret wife and the cause of their failed wedding. He begs her to be his mistress, arguing nothing would be different. She loved Rochester deeply, but knew he could not meet her higher aspirations of being a proper lady of society and a good Christian woman in such an arrangement. This leads Rochester to recite a speech that manages to be both touching and psychotic.

“Never,” said he, as he ground his teeth, “never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!” (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) “I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage—with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it—the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit—with will and energy, and virtue and purity—that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would: seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like an essence—you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! come, Jane, come!”

- Jane Eyre

She runs away, nearly dies, and is given shelter by a pastor. She builds a platonic relationship with the compassionate but humorless man. Time passes and he asks for her hand in marriage and to accompany him on a mission trip. While the man can give her the social status she wants, as well as being spiritually pure to the point she will likely die on the missionary voyage, she doesn’t love him in the deep, primal level she loved Rochester.

Of course, she goes back to Rochester, whose wife conveniently dies when his mansion burns down, and they marry. Through these two experiences, she learned what her innate value was in every domain: physically, socially, and spiritually. She stuck to her sense of worth and principle through enormous pressure and uncertainty, completing her journey.

A modern, smuttier version of this likely would have involved Jane agreeing to become his mistress, followed by several chapters of intense BDSM action. Later, when his old wife escapes and attacks the couple, they’ll team up to kill her with a deep, thorough play-by-play of every plunge of the knife Rochester gives to his former bride. After the blood splattered finale, he asks if she would like to get married now that his wife is dead. Jane says she doesn’t care about that anymore, and they make raunchy love while their bodies are still smeared with the dead woman’s entrails.

Which version is more “empowering”?

The Integrated Man

The male version of the romance has always been the adventure novel. Whereas the romance tells of a largely inner journey, the adventure is unabashedly external, going through the trials and tribulations of the protagonist as he proves himself to the outside world. Contrary to having inner value, he often begins the adventure poor, disrespected, and an unknown.

Such as with John Carter, a southerner who found himself on Mars. His station went from a respected gentleman to an outsider, a nobody. While the natives were first impressed with his prowess and strength, the person who truly ignited the flame within him was upon seeing Dejah Thoris. As opposed to watching her get brutalized and accepting it as the proper state of Nature, he leaped to her rescue.

That I have taken moments to write down a part of what occurred as that blow fell does not signify that I remained inactive for any such length of time. I think I must have sensed something of what was coming, for I realize now that I was crouched as for a spring as I saw the blow aimed at her beautiful, upturned, pleading face, and ere the hand descended I was halfway across the hall.

Scarcely had his hideous laugh rang out but once, when I was upon him. The brute was twelve feet in height and armed to the teeth, but I believe that I could have accounted for the whole roomful in the terrific intensity of my rage. Springing upward, I struck him full in the face as he turned at my warning cry and then as he drew his short-sword I drew mine and sprang up again upon his breast, hooking one leg over the butt of his pistol and grasping one of his huge tusks with my left hand while I delivered blow after blow upon his enormous chest.

- A Princess of Mars

Of course, he goes on many daring missions, wins the respect of the entire world, conquers his enemies, and gets the girl. There are no spicy love scenes in the novels, not even the restrained, fade-to-black variety. The protagonist has no ambition to dominate, humiliate, or subject his love interest to sexual servitude. Through his struggles he won the love and admiration of the object of his affection, her pure nature driving him to dig deep into his reserves to prove himself. He integrates his primal wants with his higher aspirations and becomes King.

The smuttier version of this would be…. well, Gor.

I know which books I’ll be giving my sons.

What Is Lost

Arguing sexual interactions boil down to dominance and submission is just as reductionist as saying life boils down to eating and sleeping. There are countless deeper wants that permeate one’s life, and far more spiritual needs that need to be fulfilled.

I like writing love notes to my wife. I enjoy giving her flowers. I look forward to taking her out dancing. She enjoys it, and even if she didn’t care about those things, I would still do them. It adds flavor and fun to our domestic life. If that all went away and everything boiled down to primal sex, what a barren world that would be. In a world that expected me to abuse and humiliate my wife, I would opt out entirely. If that makes me a cuck, then so be it.

We have a generation of youth that not only will not be trained in the dance of romantic relationships, but will consider it passe, an old relic to be thrown away for the new sexually emancipated woman. It may seem to be a stretch that in the age of MeToo, in the age where consent has never been emphasized more, that we would devolve into Gor-like sexually brutal and raw world. This fails to recognize quickly the law can disintegrate as social norms become more decrepit. The Rotherham scandal shows how pathetic the arm of the law can be. And when the lines between dark fantasy and abuse blur as a new generation seeks out a consistently more erotic high, enforcement becomes a grey nightmare.

There have always been rich and powerful men who lure naive women into parties and subject them to sex acts with dubious consent. What’s new is now instead of being in the shadows, away from the peering eyes of moral society, such situations have become open fantasies to satiate the unrestrained horniness of youth. While it’s argued this is just LARPing, anyone can tell you how quickly such role-playing plants the seeds for something far more real. A majority of young women already drink the modern equivalent of the sterilizing “Slave Wine”, and we may be seeing a generation of women willingly putting on those collars, bolting those chains to their wrists, and expressing their empowerment through sexual bondage.

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