Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
This is where a book like this has the potential to be extremely damaging, not in inciting the act, but in further harming the victim.
|
Where do we draw the line in "further harming the victim", though? For example, I'm going to pick on brecklundin a bit here: his avatar is the cover of one of John Normal's "Gor" novels. If you've never read them, the basic premise of the books is that sexual slavery is the natural condition of women (and occasionally the females of other species), and no matter how much they resist, they will be happier (and make badly-written speeches on the subject, apparently) when suitably raped and subjugated. And he's written book after book detailing this. I know several women who, after having been raped, find the "Gor" novels utterly horrifying -- in one case, shaking if the books are even mentioned. I should mention, by the way, that they lived in a country where rape, especially the stranger rape so lovingly detailed and endlessly justified by Norman, is quite illegal. So ... are those books "further harming the victim"?
Again, we're dealing with one of those lines. Who is a victim? What constitutes further harming them? And who decides?
By the way, if you want a good feel for the writing of the Gor novels without actually having to read one, I strongly recommend the parody "
Houseplants of Gor". Or, for that matter, if you
have read them. Aside from getting John Norman's literary voice dead-on (yes, he
is that stilted) it's a side-splittingly funny parody.