Why doesn't he kill her?

Besides the fact that you
A) obviously don't get it; and
B) are obviously trying to be disturbing, you
C) obviously didn't read the book.



Woman is the Earth and Man is the Sky.

MissOctober asked me to glance over this thread and see if I could offer up some clarification. I agree that a few posters here seem to be DELIBERATELY missing the points made by others. IF you want to logically argue a point, you must do it by refuting or countering the points made by the other side, not merely repeating old points. Let’s examine a few of these:


SANDY said: “there is no girlfriend as sick as 'O'”

Sick? This is a simplistic and overused epithet. I will presume to re-state your argument by assuming you mean that O is to some extent mentally unbalanced or incompetent. She clearly does not lack ability or function, so she is not mentally deficient. A good comparison would be that between a broken computer and a misprogrammed one. O is not broken, but you assert that she is misprogrammed.

Now that we have terms better explained, let’s look at the assertion. There are many women (and men, for that matter) whose programming is VASTLY different from the mainstream. Most of these find ways to cope, but some cannot. The different programming would include sexual fetishes, pederasty, genius, asexuality, whatever. Personally, I call these folks the ‘deeply weird’. In other words, different. Society celebrates some of these (Ted Nugent, Penn & Teller), ignores most of them (the lonely and neglected), and fights the rest to one degree or another (Serial killers, child molesters, homosexuals).

SANDY finds O’s programming and choices to be unacceptable, twisted, and wrong. Further, SANDY says that nobody is that ‘sick’. I’ll address whether it is wrong below, but I can state categorically that many people are that different. Either SANDY is making a snap judgment in a flip manner, or her experience is too limited.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Hamlet, Act 1. Scene V)



SANDY said: “I don't understand it either. I would *never* accept to be "given" or whatever the correct word is to another man. This is beyond the game of submission IMO.
You become a sex slave and it's no less than prostitution (for free!!).”


SANDY starts by admitting she does not understand O’s choices and actions, and then displays appalling hubris by saying that SHE would never consent to such things. SANDY, what works for you means nothing in setting standards for others. Step away from this particular issue of fantasized sexual slavery and look at what you have said: “*I* don’t get, it wouldn’t work for ME.” Therefore, it wouldn’t or shouldn’t work for ANYBODY? Freedom of thought and choice are not just pretty words inscribed in our national documents, they are critical concepts that too few take to heart. At the bottom of your soul, let us say that you need to be (for example) Christian. That religion and its precepts define you and most other Americans. However, some CANNOT identify with that inner calling. They MUST be Jewish, or Muslim, or Atheist. I hope that SANDY is a good enough person to allow me that personal reality without castigating me. All right then, if I can be Jewish and not suffer the wrath of SANDY, why can’t O follow HER soul without the same persecution? O isn’t Charlie Manson or John Wayne Gacy. Her choices harm (IF they harm) only herself. Does O have the right to choose what is best for her body, her life, her SELF? These are all fairly debatable, but SANDY cannot so easily dismiss O’s decisions because they do not concur with those SANDY would make.

Consider for a moment what happens in a society where the majority make all decisions without even a concern for opposite opinions. Not only are all such societies unpleasant, but also they rarely progress. They lack creativity and usually happiness. Perhaps O does need to be protected from herself, but that should be a hard and well-reasoned decision made by the careful and the contemplative. SANDY is too quick to dismiss that. Individual rights and freedom are MORE important than OUR comfort and safety, else America means nothing.

“First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.”

by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945




AZZIANFREAK said: “It's not serious BDSM, it's prostitution.
I'm sure in a court O would be considered as a weak-minded person who's been abused. If a girl as sick as "O" could exist anyway...”


Prostitution. Man, that bugs me. I will forego that debate about whether a person should have the right to sell themselves sexually (if they freely consent to do so), and instead concentrate on definitions. If a man should capture or manipulate a defenseless woman into forced sex that she does NOT want to join into, they call that RAPE! Those who are referring to O as a whore are being more insulting the gains women have made (the civil rights movement, Seneca Falls, the 19th Amendment) than the most misogynistic male chauvinist pig ever could. A woman should have the right to choose what to do with her body? Well, extreme BDSM is what O chooses to do with her body. A little consistency, please. Hell, check out http://www.slavenextdoor.com for people who do this in reality.

Have you people READ this book? O is not captured or enslaved in the traditional sense. She voluntarily surrendered some and then all immediate control over her body because that is what her soul called upon her to do. I am consciously trying not to use the word CHOICE more than I have to because O has no more choice in following her weird (read your Norse mythology if you don’t get that) than gay people do in what turns them on. The most revealing note in this hypothesis that she is following HER own heart is the very fact that she abandons her love for Renee at his order to become the property of Sir Stephen. Ultimately, she knows herself to be a slave, and the identity of her master is irrelevant. At many places in the novel, O is given the chance or is even REQUIRED by her handlers to consent in advance to her treatment. There is no parallel here to Kunta Kinte being forced to accept the name of Toby. This is something different – deep, primal, and accepted by all parties. The debate about prostitution has no place in this context.

“Remember that you are an actor in a play and the playwright chooses the manner of it...your business is to act the character that is given you and act it well; the choice of the cast is another's…”

-Epictetus



MISSOCTOBER said: “The fantasy is a FEMALE one, not a male one. And fantasy it is; "O" is a fairy tale, in which things happen that do not necessarily happen in the real world except in more subdued and secretive form.”


Precisely. The Story of O is a fantasy, and a very common female one. Alfred Kinsey and Nancy Friday and many others have done a lot of research here. More women than not have sexual fantasies about some form of control-loss in sex. This is not to say that every sorority chapter of gamma gamma spankme is going to run out and sign up to become sex slaves, just that such thoughts are known to occasionally pop up when a woman is being friendly with her shower massager. I have a large collection of fansadox comics, which take BDSM and forced sexual training and service to levels that are humanly impossible and would lead to my getting life in the electric chair if I were to attempt the mildest of them. That may well make me a perv, but it does NOT mean I cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy. We all daydream of winning the lottery or being omnipotent, and THAT is not inexcusable, so why should unrealistic sexual fantasies be any less acceptable? Hell, forget the whole BDSM aspect for a moment. I’m a guy. I have mentally *beep* every attractive female I have seen since I was about 12 years old. Yet in reality, my actual conquests (a common word in this context. Revealing, no?) don’t quite rank in the hundreds of thousands. Fantasy vs Reality. You think anybody, male OR female, would listen to Britney Spears’ atonal crapola if she didn’t look like that?


"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality."

-Jules de Gautier



SAMLEOPOLD said: “Not being in our place makes us miserable, frustrated. That is what society today is doing to us. It creates hatred for men, we lose our respect because men do not behave as men anymore. We do not want to be miserable and frustrated! We want to be freed! O is liberated and freed through her submission, and that is, as you can now plainly see, completely natural, not freakish, not weird, not wrong, and CERTAINLY not abuse. Men abuse us everyday by NOT taking us in hand. Just think about that for a while before you reply.”



Now HERE is a point that offers the possibility for great debate! Since the advent of the women’s rights movement, the entire Western world has been turned on its ear. All that freedom has meant tough choices, and women have discovered that they CANNOT have it all. Nobody can. Millennia of DNA programming urges us to act one way, and societal rules demand we act another. Can any ardent feminist honestly claim NOT to have played coquettish little games (IE screwing with some poor dumb guy) just because she so easily COULD? I have been glared at FOR opening doors for women, and for NOT opening doors for women. When you people decide what the hell you want, please let the rest of us know! Y’all changed the rules, and now you don’t know what they are, either! We are back to freedom of choice. SOCIETY should not have the right to force a woman to submit to a man, but women as a group should not have the right to prevent a woman from doing so by choice. This freedom stuff is tricky, huh? The concept certainly isn’t new, check out Ephesians 5:21-33.


"Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat."

-Oscar Wilde




SANDY says: I still think women like O do not exist!
And being given to that old guy IS abuse, even though she said she is consenting, she is just too weak mentally to refuse.
So this falls to abuse.
Consent is not always enough to get rid of abuse.
Some people consent to things because they are mentally deficient, and that's what O obviously is.
Maybe she would refuse being killed, but I'm pretty sure, based on the movie's logic, that René could ask her to become a prostitute and she would accept.
D'oh, and you call that woman strong?
She is a shame to we women... and don't tell me you're like her.
I wouldn't believe you.
Do you walk nude all the time?
Are you getting whipped?
Can any men or so abuse you anytime?
Are you being "given" to someone else just like a whore?
Or burnt on your shoulder so that you belong to someone else like a cow?
O is all that. Not only a slave, but a dirty paper, you can use and then throw away to your own will.

This movie tries to legitimate slavery, torture and abuse, by showing a woman whose stupidity is borderline offensive.
It's insane and appalling.


SANDY, it’s a FANTASY!!! Remember the Simpson’s episode where the Germans buy out the nuclear power plant and Homer has a dream about that land of chocolate? I’ve never seen dancing six-foot chocolate bunny rabbits that let me bite off their ears, but every chocoholic on earth damn sure wants to!

I might add that some people DO lead BDSM lives that come close to this in reality. Suppose YOU were to feel this way, Sandy, and wish to obey my every whim (What, I can’t fantasize?). There are legal contracts that you can sign in the presence of a lawyer that places a sub in the control of a dom, and excuses the dom from prosecution for what would otherwise be a gross violation of civil rights. I’ve seen a ‘REAL SEX” episode on HBO where a woman does just that, and then begs him to brand her with a real red-hot iron, which he does. She then had an orgasm that makes Meg Ryan’s look tiny. Works for THEM, doesn’t have to for YOU.


“I don’t care if two consenting adults dress up in leather Boy Scout uniforms and beat each other over the head with ball peen hammers while they take turns blowing their cat. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, and think how good the cat must feel.”

George Carlin




AZZIANFREAK said: “Just like you can break a mannequin doll, he should have killed her, she is not worthy of the life she has anyway”


Oh my. Deciding right and wrong is not enough, now you want power over life and death? Just like the characters in this fantasy you pretend to despise? I think in trying this hard to excoriate BDSM, you have just outed yourself. Now, sub or dom, I wonder…


“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 3 scene 2




There are certain FACTS here. The book was written BY a woman, it has primarily been purchased BY women, and dozens of FEMALE researchers have established that more women than not have fantasies along these lines.

Spiderman, tacitly speaking, is a ludicrous and impossible fantasy. That didn’t stop them from making two movies that grossed about 2 billion dollars, and million of people from seeing and enjoying them. I fantasize about playing linebacker for the Denver Broncos. I lack the size, skill or training for that, but I still wanna. The legal prohibitions and logistic/monetary impossibilities that prevent me from having a harem chained to my bed and awaiting my whips and whims has no bearing on my FANTASIZING about it, and yet I still manage to function in normal society without committing crimes or even being looked at askance. Nobody knows. Do you have any materials in YOUR bedroom that you don’t want the general public to see?

I teach in a high school, my students love me, and I am damned good at it. You think I don’t have about 100 fantasies a day where my ripe little female students are bent over my desk, chewing their lips and hoping I won’t whip them too hard for cheating? Guess again! And yet, I can be trusted around your kids because I can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. SANDY, AZZIAN, allow me to assure you that you have starred in fantasies in the thousands that you would never consent to. Dozens of men have gone home and soiled Kleenex thinking of you doing things you would never do. Accept this and get over it, because it isn’t gonna change. As a matter of fact, why not drape yourselves over your fella’s laps just once and tell them you have been very naughty. If you don’t like it, you never have to do it again. If you DO like it, write up a summary and pass it along, my copy of Penthouse letters is late this month.