What's so bad about Furries & Goreans anyway?

Wewt. I'd have to use an alt, tho. My Burke personality doesn't work well for that.

I'll have to check it out ^_^ I'm always looking for a good place to RP, Gor is unfortunate because most goreans it seems are really really bad roleplayers. They could use furries in their sims, furries tend to be pretty good roleplayers.

And because the Gorean setting can pretty much allow for any roleplay, giant robots, little blue men, monster ants, because it's out in space and there's already 2 non-human species. If goreans were better roleplayers or interested in roleplaying, then gor would be much much more interesting.

But atleast I have the Laura sim.

One of my nagging issues is that I can't find any places to really excercise my rp skills and get the same effort returned. If I write three paragraphs, I want more than a two word response back. This is why I don't go to clubs often.

Funny you should bring that up, because we get giant mechs all the time. I got talking to one last night, he was pretty cool.

We get goreans, furries, drow, fae, child avies, vampires, goth, you name it. I even saw a tiny badger once - which incidentally fit in REALLY well! The visitors look just like a typical cross-section of SL.

We are quite casual about such things, and the emphasis is on fun.



On the other hand, last night someone (in human form) made a racial slur in my direction, after I had said little more than "Welcome to Caledon!"

I hit the ban button in less than a New York minute, no explanation given. They were lucky I didn't report them to the Company.

MMOG guilds are also a breeding ground for abuse, heartache and drama. I don't see anyone railing against those. I dont know who you talked to because the people I talk to are generally happy.

Of course there's going to be upset and drama. Its a function of their system clashing with the real world. So you agree to be a slave and do what your Master says and all of a sudden he tells you to do something you REALLY don't want to do. SURPRISE! All of a sudden you remember this isn't real. Oh! the drama! as you contemplate rending yourself away this place. Oh! the drama! as you actually separate yourself. oh! the heartache! oh! the drama! you could sell tickets... As the stomach turns: The Gorean Experience.

No.Shit.Sherlock.

I have belonged to more RP groups and guilds than I care to actually count or admit and the drama is rife in every single one of them. It doesn't make them dangerous. It doesn't make them predatory. Gor is easy to single out becuase of the overt misogyny. But online predators existed long before Gor became an online thing.

Sure, make a place for refugees to come and talk. I'm all for that. But stop with the making stuff up about Gor.

See, I could make a simple statement:

"A lot more abuse happens in regular, vanilla, type relationships."

But me saying that doesn't make it true because frankly I don't know. I'd be willing to be that it does simply becuase there are MORE regular vanilla type relationships -- so the amount (but perhaps not the precentage) is going to be higher. See, I can even make up supporting 'evidence' to support my non-factual statement. It still doesn't make it the truth! We can both go into Gor and give supporting anecdotal evidence to support our arguments. It doesn't make our arguments true. Anecdotal evidence isn't evidence. Artemis can post stuff about brainwashing and then use Norman's books to support her theory that Goreans are brainwashing unsuspecting women everywhere. Still not true!

You, Artemis, Corvus are completely misrepresenting these people. What you say may be true and I may be talking out of my ass. What I say may be true and you may be talking out of your ass. What we both say may be true given certain situations and we may both be talking out of our respective asses. But you don't know.

If you want to set up a place for people who have been abused online, I think thats great. But don't start with your premise that Gor is bad and there's all these women out there who need a place to go and they don't have it. Start with your premise that there are people who are abused online and THEY need a place to go.

Otherwise what you have is a crusade built on lies. And we have quite enough of that in the world already, thank you very much.

Yeah... Gor is okay sometimes when it comes to roleplay (in Laura I mean), but sometimes it's just really bad, at the moment i'm taking what I can get.

Burke check out Haven. Its an RP sim that's just opened up. All sorts of RP is going on there.. I can get you a contact -- IM me in game.

Vivianne, why the hostility?

I didn't point the finger at you or at any person in particular. I don't believe I've said anywhere that it happens in Gor more than anywhere else. I simply said it happens there too often. Why do you seem to see that as an attack?



Well, great. If it works for them, if everyone's good with it, then there's no problem. *shrug*

However, I have spent more than a few hours talking with people who have been hurt by what's gone on. And I maintain, I have met few, if any, people who are happy in it. That's simply been my experience there.



Please. Don't belittle what happens to some people.

It's not a matter of being given a command you don't like. I'm talking about a master who is threatened by a slave's friend giving a command such as, "You are not to speak to this person. Not in-game. Not in SL. Not in Yahoo. Not on the phone. This is your punishment."

Tell me that's healthy. Go ahead.



As has been said before, the problem is not the system. The problem is abusers who happen to use the system as a justification for what they do.



If you want to do that, go ahead.

I never made such a statement about Gor, however.



Again, if you'd set aside the hostility long enough to listen, I'm not saying Gor is bad. I'm saying there are some bad agents in Gor, and those bad agents have hurt too many people, and those people who have been hurt should be assisted *if they choose.*

Is that threatening in some way?



What's the lie, again?

On the subject of slaves being brainwashed...it's possible. I've seen people take 180 degree shifts in personality when they became slaves and i've seen people who tried to leave Gor who couldn't. One slave girl I knew, got hurt by her master and decided to leave, and she cried and was very depressed about it for a while then she became Anti-gor for a bit. Then I lost track of her for a week or two and when I saw her again she was a slave once more.

I think it's kinda like the battered woman syndrome where a woman keeps going back to an abusive husband.

But some Masters can be nice and it's really hard to bring up an issue like that without blanketing too much or being too vague, but I don't think it makes it less true.

You have made such a statement about Gor. Becuase the bad agents are not just in Gor -- they are everywhere. You aren't worried about bad agents. Your very specific argument is against Gor.

Again, anecdotal evidence isn't evidence. You may have met a Master or two in Gor that gave some bad commands. Yeah it happens. It also happens that poeple are just as manipulative outside of Gor. I'm not saying it doesn't happen in Gor. I'm saying that by concentrating on the abuse that happens specifically in Gor you are misrepresenting these folks.

I am not being hostile, btw. Sorry if you took it that way. Nor was I specifically just addressing you although I did quote your post -- I also called out Corvus and Artemis.

Whinge Langush has a pretty good weasel/ferret/mink/jelly-like-mustelid avatar. Go to Dwellget and check out the Ninja Weasel vendor. You can pick up a really cool Ninja Weasel plush that can sit on your shoulder and go "dook dook" as well...

Actually we're concerned with bad agents altogether.

It just so happens that Gor has a very in-depth training system that successfully brainwashes people and we've seen plenty of real people that we love hurt by it.

Plus it came up as the conversation piece.

So really its more of, "We're here to help abused people. Gor? Oh, that's one of the worst places for it, we have to get a whole department of people just to handle it. But we're worried about everyone, not just Goreans who are afraid not to be. "

Well, I think you're seeing only what you want to see and twisting my words to suit your purpose. That's how it's coming across.

Look, if I choose to feed the hungry people in Detroit, are you going to berate me because there are even more hungry people in the Third World? Am I being unfair to Detroit's reputation? Or does helping someone close to home have a merit of its own?

Why do I focus on Gor? Because I know it. Because I have friends there. Because I interact with it daily. Because I want it to be better.

Where is the harm?

eta: What Corvus said. It's not like I'd ever turn away a non-Gor person who needed to talk.

Oh one other problem with gor is that Goreans ban anyone who comes into their sim that's not human and doesn't respect their roleplay right? But then I see slaves and masters going all over the grid and going to other places and refuses to stop being gorean for the land owners and confusing people with the third person talk. I remember watching a bewildered Japanese girl who had english as a second language try to understand what a slave was talking about when she refered to herself as third person, and telling her not too. And she wouldn't and would just get more and more offended. It was kinda funny.

But goreans do often have a double standard there, you must change for us but we don't have to change for you.

But then, as I said they don't roleplay they consider that stuff as a part of their lifestyle, and thus they never drop it for anyone and get offended if someone asks.

I wonder if this would have been opposite if the furry sims were doing it to goreans, but I guess it couldn't be since the furries tend to be much more tolerant then the goreans.

Pretty much everyone is much more tolerant than most goreans actually...

Incidentally, many Gorean Masters would be appalled to know that I know many of their slaves, and their slaves stop referring to themselves in the third person when they're sure noone's watching and noone can sneak up on them.

WHich is itself a sign of a problem.

Thos curious about my D/s-allowing new RP i'm working on to provide an alternative RP environment to Gor should take a look at the Events forum.

'Cept me. I'd expel them from my land and ban em. As is my right as the landowner. I don't need to see that any more than I need to see yiffing, thanks. My land. My rules. Am I discriminating against Goreans specifically? No. I'd expel anyone who talks about themselves in the third person while displaying obvious dom/sub behaviour. It just so happens that would include most Goreans.

For the record, I'd also expel people with long curly prim hair that goes through their body when they 'LOL' cuz that looks bloody silly. Oh, and anyone pushing a prim baby around my land in a pushchair would go too. And people with pink prim bunny slippers. And anyone with talking sex organs. Oh, and anyone who has to spam my fucking chat to tell me that I can smell their perfume. And ... actually come to think of it it's quite a long list. n/m.

yea....if it were really just roleplay i'd have to think that a slave girl leaving the gor sims to shop or whatever would be able to drop the slave-girl talk and look for that duration, but they can't because their masters don't allow it and seem to think their will encompasses all of SL. Which makes problems for people who have trouble understanding third person, or places that don't want a slave wandering around acting like a slave in a place where it doesn't fit.

Goreans used to do that in the Sith sim that was next door to the gor sims, Slaves would come in and wander around and if you tried to say something they'd get uppity and say you're being discriminatory.

Sounds kinda like what they do to furries in the gor sims...

An odd note is what I read into the third person, Corvus

I only enforce the third person speek when a slave is in training or being punished- that is when I saw it in the books.

And slaves talking first despite owners orders when they think they are alone..that also happened in the books. Same thing with slaves literally fighting over a free or their masters attention.

Some people who rp Gor tend to forget the parts they don't like..

edit:

If you don't like the Gorean lifestyling or rping on your land - ask them to stop. If they do, great. if not, theres always nute.. or ban if you are landowner. You don't think they fit the 'theme' you ar ein, ask them to change..they don't, eject them. Simple enough..

The question becomes are they referring themselves in the 3rd for the RP, or are they doing it to avoid emotional pain from actual punishment via the RP? There's a big difference.

Thats the question that needs answered more than any other, Corvus. The land ownership can help point that otu to a degree. Those who are asked to leave Gor rp at the door and continue talking in third are more likely to be victims. They may also be into the lifestyle as a lifestyle..but many of those only doing it for the rp will stop or leave.

And there's your scary moment, when you realize you requested it, and got nervous explanations from a gaggle of women as to how they absolutely must speak in the third person. Every time.

Unfortunately thats where experiences come into play. The few times people around me have asked gor slavegirls (and a slaveboy) to talk first person, they (except for one) agreed. I'm not saying your experiences aren't valid, its just an issue of time and place.

To me this thread exemplifies a very unpleasant tendency I have seen lately in Second Life. It is authoritarianism masquerading under the guise of protectionism. We saw the same thing in the 'child porn' threads.

The one great thing I have found in Second Life, and I have been here a while, is the general atmosphere of tolerance that prevails. Anything that threatens that is wrong, so far as I am concerned.

I am not Gorean, and indeed, I don't like Gor. But I have spent some time in Gorean sims, and I have seen very little resembling what some of these posters claim to have seen. I saw *one* case of a Gorean Master actually carrying out what I saw as abuse, and when he was asked to stop, said in IM that he was doing what the slave in question had asked him to do. The question then became whether what she wanted was within the limits of a normal healthy mental outlook. That was a judgement call, and I felt the Master had made an incorrect judgement call - but that was his only fault.

The rest of the time I have met people enjoying themselves, enjoying both the role-playing and, in the case of some of them, the lifestyle generally. There are aspects of Gorean philosophy and Gorean role-play which I find personally icky, but then there are aspects of many people's lives which have the same effect, and I wouldn't dream of telling them how they should be modifying their behaviour to suit me.

Many of the women who speak of themselves in the third person are highly intelligent women who are very strong into the bargain. The reason why some people find freedom in slavery is that personal responsibility no longer becomes something they have to worry about - that is something that is handled by the Dom or Master, and the sub or slave - who might well be in a high-powered position in their day-to-day life - can relax and let the decisions be taken by someone else - the mental equivalent of a warm bath at the end of the day.

And as a post script let me say that so far as misogyny goes, you will go a long way in Second Life to see a large group watch breathlessly as a kajira performs a Gorean dance, using animations skilfully synchronised with the poetry she delivers, often extemporaneously, and hear afterwards the genuine admiration and respect she commands.

By all means, look after people who are abused. But when you target one section of the community with your allegations, one has to suspect there is an agenda there.

Quest




Could you slip "some" in there Quest. I, for one certainly dont object to anyone on THEIR land asking me to abide by THEIR "rules".
I'm more than capable of "changing" when requested..
In other words, not ALL consider it an affront to our lifestyle. After all, it would be pretty rich for ANY Gorean to request abidance of THEIR laws in their sims, yet ignore those in others.

I think that what this thread really exemplifies is what happens when one group says something bad is going on, and another group, worried that it might be, proclaims that there's a secret agenda against them.

The responsible thing to say would be, "Oh really? That might be going on? Let's look into that, how can we help?"