What's so bad about Furries & Goreans anyway?

The thing is, while *you* see it that way, many furries do not. To a lot of furries, their AV isn't a "suit"... It's them, as much as the SL client allows. It is their self identity in SL, as much as a human's avatar is theirs. In a virtual world like SL, there's no reason to assume a black female avatar is either black or female in real life... they could be a white guy, or an asian hermaphrodite, or something. But would it be considered acceptable to tell someone, even if you knew for a fact they were a pasty white guy sitting in his basement, that no black women were allowed in your sim? Probably not. But it's just an outfit - it's just an outfit with *any* of us, in SL - you could rip off your skin as well as we can. But for some reason it's only "no big deal" to tell furries to do it.

Is it racism, what the goreans do? No. But it basicly boils down to "We don't want anyone with your self-identity here". Do I go out of my way to complain about it? No. I've visited one gorean sim once, and I have no desire to ever do so again - they have contributed nothing to SL that I place any value on. But if you can't see why that bothers some of us, I worry about you.

I can see why it bothers you. BUT it is a sim dress code. If you can't follow the regulations set forth by a private sim..then don't go.

Its not racism. Its not descrimination. Its keeping the area inline with the rp theme.

Theres nothing wrong with it. While I can see why it may bother some..I also don't really care, given the context. If you aren't willing to 'go' human for a short period of time, don't go to a gor sim.

That is completely subjective and you have no proof whatsoever of this. I'd be willing to et that most abusive internet predators on SL are NOT Gorean Masters as, were I an abusive internet predator, I'd want to hang below the radar and not out where everyone has a bullseye painted on me.

One thing that hasn't come up in all these discussions is the community that forms around Goreans. People watch out for each other there -- there IS a support structure.

I'm not understanding here why its a problem for furs to stay out of gor sims. Hell I'm not understanding here why its a problem for ANYONE to stay out of a Gor sim. If you feel they discriminate against you -- DON'T GO THERE. If the misogyny offends you -- DON'T GO THERE. If you feel D/s is wrong -- DON'T GO THERE. I mean there are how many hundreds of sims and there are what -- like 10 Gorean sims? Surely you can find something else to do and somewhere else to go.

Artemis, very impressive posts. I never thought of the Gor books as a lifestyle, though I had read a couple of them years and years ago, and know of D/s lifestyles...I guess I never really thought about it, much.

To me, I could never RP a submissive or a Master...it just seemed to dehumanizing either way, but some people seem to enjoy it.

That said, there are girls I have met in other MMOs that have actually been hurt IRL engaging in D/s play because it was just "roleplaying" and hence "harmless."

Some people are stronger willed than others, and can more easily break away from these kinds of situations and move on, but others can't. The fact that some people are more easily controlled, even online, is why I think your posts are so important, and I wish more people in MMOs read and understood what you have written here.

Online experiences can be very powerful, even emotionally overpowering for some people. I think even people who have no problems distinguishing between RL and SL, can sometimes feel real anguish or sorrow over something or someone in SL, or even real passion, though these feelings may be misdirected. Taking advantage of people's weaknesses, their trust, fears, and especially a girl's desire to please, can be a powerful form of control and can lead to damage.

I can't say from personal experience that all Goreans are bad, etc., but I do know that there are inevitably some very bad people in all groups.

It is not hard to manipulate someone, especially if that person wants to please, or has a "helping" type of personality. This is why it bothers me when people so quickly dismiss the very real dangers as mere RP and "it's online," and why did some girl give out her personal information, etc. Sure, it's not smart to give away personal information like that, but I think too many people do not understand how powerful manipulation can be, even online, and how powerful online connections we make can sometimes be as well.

To me, Artemis, your posts are intended to convey the dangers and risks inherent in the D/s and Gorean lifestyles (online or otherwise) and should be taken to heart by anyone curious about, or involved with, this sort of thing.

Personally, I'm glad you took the time to post all that information, especially since I have known some girls who have gotten caught up in these things and have had rl problems because of it. You should write a book!

Anyway, great posts, and thanks for taking the time to include all that wonderful information.

What if I have a sim where black female avatars are breaking RP?



The irony being, one of the complaints most often leveled against furries is that we refuse to assosiate with non-furs - which is so far from true I don't know where to begin, and we STILL catch hell for it. When a group openly admits to such policies as directed at us, nobody cares.

Hey, personally I don't get why anyone would want to go to the gorean sims ANYHOW. That's kinda beside the point, however.

Black females ar eborn in real life. Thats racism.

When I see someone born a furry in RL I'll call that racism too.

The goreans aren't attacking furs. They are sticking to the book series their rp is based upon. Plenty of other rps do this as well.

If I walked around Caledon (victorian/steampunk from what I have read) in a 40 foot tall mech avatar.. would you be defending me if I was being 'descriminated' agaisnt?

It's an attractive community for predators because their activities are easily masked as being "part of the RP". And, putting it bluntly, the support system tends to favor the males because the culture does.

Reitsuki



Reitsuki, I can understand the way you feel about "BEING" a furry....and all it entails, but once again, if you turn up in a Gorean sim in a ROBOT av, or a STAR WARS av, or an ORC av for example, you will be asked to change the av during your visit.
Even HUMAN av's are often asked to remove "sci fi" weaponry and such.
Please accept it is NOT a case of being anti-furry.

The Goreans pay a lot for their private SIMs. You have to understand this and respect them for keeping their afairs private. If I would want to visit a Gorean sim as a women, I would have to be covered from head to toe in clothing and veils. I could go in conservative clothing and the observer sign.

Furries are not very nice to hoomans either. My experiences with them have been BAD. My experience is that people that want to project themselves as such tend to impose themselves on others. Thus they would visit a Gorean sim and make pests of themselves and disrupting the roleplaying. This rule does not work with all furries but what rule works for everone? Also you chose to be a furrie! In SL we chose who and what we are and it is not chosen for us as it is in RL. Thus dont give me any of this nonsense about racist. I might as well be accused of being racist against gymsuit wearing people attending a fancy party!

Unless you're avatar is made to look exactly like your RL self, your avatar is as much you as mine is me. Refer to my hypothetical example, please.



It would depend if said 40 foot mech avatar was your personal identity in SL, or you had just thrown it on for a half hour on a whim. There's a bit of a difference.

Except that their sims aren't private. If they were, I would have no problem at all with what they do.




There is no furry policy of descrimination against no furries. Far from it, those that do are generally looked down upon by the rest of us.



At exactly what word in my post did you just decide to stop reading and make up things you thought I might have said, and respond to those instead? I'm curious.

I didn't say it was anti-furry, precisely.

Let me put it this way:

If soemone whined about being banned from Caledon because of a 40 foot futuristic avatar, I would say the same thing.

Its the sims rules..they pay LL directly for that land..they decide.

I don't give a damn about a hypothetical situation. If you want to call it racist, show me someone born as a rabbit furry in the real world.

I make an effort to not disrupt any rp or area.. a good example is I wnt to furnation earlier today. I wore a lion av. Its not what I was born as..it s a costume.

You say some furries feel as if the furry -is- the real them? Then they can put a 'not them' human costume on over the real them for their visit. Same as those of us who put on a furry costume when visiting a furry sim, or elf costume when going to an elf one.

It might be.. it might not be. YOU don't know. There's been no studies. There's been no quantititative analysis. Something about the thing offends you and you make up all this stuff which may or may not be true but probably isn't. You aren't actually interested in finding out though. You are just interested in levelling chargers which you pulled out of your ass.

You aren't Gorean. You haven't spent a lot of time in Gor. You actually have no idea whether or not people there are predatory or not. You assume that men are hanging out at the welcoming areas ready to pounce on the unwitting, ignorant, weak-willed, unable-to-control-her-own-urges female. Could you possibly be any more condescending towards the females? You know it is possible that most chicks know their own mind, are strong and easily able to defend themselves against such predatory jerks. Did it ever occur to you that many of the slaves are very strong women? That they actively sought out their slavery? That, far from being manipulated into something they didn't want, they are having a lot of fun. And hey -- it may not be RP! It may actually be a lifestyle they enjoy. Its THEIR choice to make -- not yours.

These people aren't looking for some jackass knight in shining armor or some militant bra burning feminist (and I actually am a militant bra burning feminist and have been so since the early 70s so stick that in your pipe and smoke it) to come and save them from the evil Gorean Masters. They are intelligent able-bodied and able-minded women who have made their own choice. Do not presume to take this away from them. Women may all be potential victims in your mind but I generally think better of the female gender.

I do agree that the bans are OK, because it's private land.


I actually had a plot on Caledon when it first started, but had to give it up (partially) because I didn't like the idea of being limited to 19th century construction (contradicts my business). Worked out for the best, I would have been neighbors to my now-ex and that's a woman I could go my whole life never seeing again. Phewwhattabitch. Never try to turn a whorish vampire into a housewife (duh)....Anyways.....

But when I originally left, it had a lot to do with the rules of the island. But that's exactly that, and why I don't come back to visit in full power armor. I respect Desmond's rules, and would expect others to respect those sorts of rules on my lands. If I said no furries, that means no furries, though I'd never say that.

I'm going to ask you the same question I asked Ranma - At exactly what word in my post did you just decide to stop reading and make up things you thought I might have said, and respond to those instead? I'm curious.

Good for you. Nobody asked you to, expected you to, or would have kicked you out if you didn't.



I said it's their self-identity, actually, that's not quite the same thing. And as for the rest? Screw that. I don't change my avatar to make other people happy, and I'll be damned if I'd ever expect anyone to do the same for me. I am who I am, and if you don't like it, you can just not look at me - As long as your sim is public, I'm going to go there if there's something I want to see. If someone isn't mature enough to deal with people's avatars, get a private sim and keep it private. Don't make a farce of being a "public" sim.

I'm just going to throw in my 2 cents here.

I've been roleplaying around the gorean sims for about 2-3 months. I usually hang around a Gor sim called Laura because it's one of the few that actually cares about roleplay. I'm actually banned from most sims because I tried to "force roleplay" (that's what they say), in either words, I was roleplaying around them while they were beating slaves.

Goreans don't care about roleplay, they care about the Master/slave relationship (which they don't consider roleplay, they consider that a lifestyle in a lot of sims). That's why in some sims Panther girls aren't allowed even though they follow the rules and fit into gor roleplay, because it makes the small men feel smaller when they have strong independent women around.

I remember I went to one sim, glorious Ar, where when I arrived (following all the laws and roleplaying) that 2 of their guards got uppity about me "forcing RP" and started talking about OOC stuff in character. It really showed that these types don't consider what they
do roleplay, they consider it a way of living.

I can understand why goreans want furries to remove their avs, but I can understand why furries don't want to remove them. I don't bother anyone breaking the "appearance" laws as long as they have the observer title on. But you know, I don't see how anyone can consider futuristic stuff, alien stuff like furries or plain aliens, as totally against roleplay. Cause Gor is based on another planet and has not one but 2 extremely non-humanoid races that frequent the planet, the Priest-kings (a race of giant golden ants) and the Kurr (a race of giant werewolf-like monsters), and if you can have that and spaceships kidnapping people from Earth to take to gor, I don't see why you can't RP in a robot or a furry.

But of course, they'd only bother RPing in something like that if they actually were RPing at all.

So far my best way to tell whether a gor sim is going to be roleplay or is going to be lifestyle is if it's run by a woman. If it's run by a woman then it'll most likely be openminded roleplay, if it's run by a man, it'll most likely be mysogynistic lifestyle values.

That's just what i've seen so far anyways.

Why I'm not a Furry
- I haven't found any weasel or badger avs yet
- Burke's personality (ie, Mine) doesn't handle human-human situations that well, let alone others.
- I keep wanting to pet them. Not all of them like that.

Why I'm not a Gorean
- I burned out on Medieval RP (mostly the Medieval Sex Tavern)
- My personal convictions conflict with the slavery aspect.
- Me + New Dialect Syntax = Bad Idea
- I don't think they'd take me, I make an overly cocky sub and a less than completely responsible Dom. My underlings would have more rights than most, and would be expected to be able to fend for themselves.
- Gor doesn't have Covert Ops teams or Ninjas, or Pirates (does it?)

It's cool we have options, tho.

Quest, hop aboard my little project, check the post here called "Alternative to Gor" and then my posts on the event forums.

Sorry Reit but I don't think there's a farce about it being a public sim. As you enter the Gorean Sims you get a notecard stating that you are entering a private sim and as such you are expected to comply with their rules. I don't know how much more explicitly they can put it. Just because they let you walk in doesn't mean it isn't private. I belong to a private BDSM club but we don't have an access list. However when you arrive you are given a list of rules and some FAQs and if you fail to comply with these we ban your ass. Its still a private club, we have members only events, and we don't let just anyone in. But pretty much anyone can visit as long as our rules are followed. That doesn't make it public.

I don't think anyone is proposing to *take* anything away.

Corvus might not have spent much time in Gor, but I did. And I can tell you, this happens, much more often than it should. And if you want to know my honest impression, many of the people there (both men and woman) have trouble setting boundaries in their lives. Thy don't know where they end and their slave or master begins. And that can be a breeding ground for all sorts of drama, heartache and yes, abuse. It would be great if everyone there, if everyone *everywhere*, were a paragon of mental health. Sadly, that's not the case. And further, I don't recall coming across a lot of people there who seemed very happy to me.

So, for those who are unhappy and want someone to talk to about it, why not offer it?

I can show you to a good weasel avatar, if I remember right. And once you shed that humanity, dealing with humans gets alot easier

Exactly.

In fact, I've yet to meet a paragon of mental health. The ones that think they are = the most insane people I've ever met.