So what is someone like me doing in Gor? Frankly: I appreciate what it is Norman (the author of the Gorean series and philosopher) was attempting to convey: a fantasy immersed in biologicalism and traditional gender roles. In modern society women are pressured to do something which I consider really “sick” and “preverse”: be utter pack mules. If we are stay at home moms we are “lazy” and not intelligent enough to be considered part of the working world. If we show submissive traits to the alpha male in our life we are considered “weak” and “dumb”. Men of course have the same issues with gender roles. Prior to the sexual revolutions in the western world men took honor from being good providers and protectors. But with the advancement of feminism the work force has been flooded, driving down wages, fracturing the nuclear family with a single provider. The classical gender roles of strong men and nurturing women are all but over: kids shuffled into day cares and elderly to nursing homes. We have managed, in our contemporary “ethics” to eliminate the characteristics which nature implanted to create a synergetic relationship.

So I enjoy for a few fleeting hours to give myself up to traditional roles in my SL time. I enjoy observing the characteristics of an alpha man. I enjoy not hearing a woman is “weak” if she chooses to dote on someone’s needs. I enjoy witnessing men trying on those old ideas of honor, strength, courage and ownership. I enjoy watching my fellow women indulge their desires to be the stealthy huntress, refined pompous woman of status or the nurturing, docile, submissive girl. I understand where the psychological need comes from, and consider it healthy to indulge such fantasies considering how little opportunity there is to exercise them in our modern world.

This doesn’t make me some backwards fundamentalist nut case harboring the secret desire to enslave someone. On the contrary: I’m a Human rights advocate. I’m an atheist. I’m a free thinker, I am pro-choice and as a woman I know we our worth is equal to that of any man. But I’m also a creature of this earth, a primate who with millions of years of evolution has developed certain traits I need to exercise: I need to not be ashamed of my admiration for an alpha male. I need to not be ashamed of my feminine desire to sometimes hand over the reigns to the leader of my troupe. I sometimes need to exercise my primitive desire of anger, or sometimes I need to exercise my social instinct via the caring for others.

Gor is so much more than shoot em up, torture crap. On the contrary, people who THINK its only that don’t know what Norman’s vision was. They don’t think on deeper philosophical levels concerning the nature of man and woman. And people who assume that those who DO see a deeper meaning in Gor as simple perverse nit wits, have failed to meet many Goreans. As a Gorean, I have met many well adjusted, accomplished people who in their RLs are progressive compassionate people. I AM such a SL Gorean. And that is because Gor is an OUTLET, a fantasy, a fictional world to indulge the primitive desires, that ARE a part of all humans, regardless of whether one has the courage to admitt it or not.

A battlefield does not fall into that category.

If it did the US would be prohibited from defending itself with bombs, guns, knives, ships, fighter aircraft, mortars, howitzers, submarines, missiles or anything else that does kills the enemy and is not lethal injection — or whatever other means of capital punishment deemed neither cruel or unusual.

Thus, Scalia was accurate. It is not punishment. Punishment in the context of the US legal system is defined as a sentence imposed by the US civilian court system. Clearly torture is not punishment by that clear definition.

Prohibitions of torture by the US military are defined in military regulations and not within the auspices of the civilian court system. The extent and constraints on actions that can be taken as part of interrogation and defined and authorized, or not, by those regulations, which are always subject to change.

Any points you were trying to make are lost in just plain bad writing.

Sarah

Sigmund said “For some, Second Life gives them the opportunity to act out graphically their cruel selves and much time can be wasted discussing motives and morals, when all you need to realize is they do it because they CAN and because they WANT to.”

That is Goreans described pretty well, imo!

The thin veneer of civilization doesn’t need an electric sander to be removed – just an opportunity. In “Thoughts for the Times,” Freud pointed out that “In reality our fellow-citizens have not sunk so low as we feared, because they had never risen so high as we believed.” For some, Second Life gives them the opportunity to act out graphically their cruel selves and much time can be wasted discussing motives and morals, when all you need to realize is they do it because they CAN and because they WANT to.

Revenge is not only a dish best served cold but also dangerously delicious. We just pretend we don’t enjoy it.

You answered that already, talking about the American and Chinese government’s misdeeds.