BDSM Vs Gorean

A series of books about everyday people going about their everyday lives does generally not sell books - especially to the prepubescent teen boys this pot-boiler series was aimed at. It is reading beyond the sex & adventure that one sees the true philosophy the author wove in.

The best website, IMO, on Gor is Luther's. He is an attorney RL and has studied the books to the nth degree and used to hold weekly discussions on IRC. Most of the SL Gorean libraries are stocked with excerpts from his website and most teachings I've attended have been largely just copied from his site as well.

This is his insight, with book quotes included, on Gorean Free Women:

http://www.geocities.com/delphius2002/id26.htm

His former weekly discussions are archived here:

http://home.comcast.net/~goreanforum/

If one scans through one or two of those, they might see a familiar name.

~ ~ ~

Back to Free Women....

One of the quotes that talks about the number of FW/slaves is:



On the subject of respect:



And many other similar passages.

(One of my favorite passages of all the novels is in Book 5 - "Assassins of Gor" where Elizabeth (a woman captured from Earth, transported to Gor and throughout the novels was Free and slave several times) refused to wear the robes of concealment customary by FW of the cities. First a slave mistakes her for a slave and gets slapped by the feisty Elizabeth, then a city guard echoed that he thought she was a slave as well - which earned him a slap as well. The entire passage is one of Norman's best comic moments, but again demonstrates that a FW could get away with slapping a city guard...if she was bold enough.)

However, Norman was a master (no pun intended!) of contradictions on many subjects...Free Women and slaves especially.

Interspersed with quotes such as above are others:



So it becomes a game of "whose ox is being gored, so to speak."

Luther pondered it and came up with this conclusion from the website indicated above:

However, there is quite a collectors market for the books. The series were published by several different publishing houses, each with different cover art. Some collectors want an entire set of each one.

The artwork of Boris Vallejo who (I think) did the first published series is sought after on its own as well.

I own the complete set, except for the more recently released "Witness of Gor" and have thought of selling them on ebay. The last time I checked an entire series generally runs approximately $300.00 USD depending on condition of the books. There are several in the series that are rarer due to less being published. I saw ONE of those go for $75.00.

As for other Gorean-associated projects, there was talk a long time ago of a regular fan magazine and (of all things) a board game that was broached to Professor Lange. I lost track of how that discussion went but I never heard much more about it, so I doubt that went through.

Ah Denise, Czari ... I couldn't do it without being kick-banned. It's the banana thing ... they're almost boomerang shaped ... it's a compulsion!

Ive read through that website, thanks.

Ive also read two of those books you have quoted there.

My point was even though the fictional world of Gor Free women are the vast majority of women ...

Unless somehow slavery touches them, those free women aren't all that important to the progression of the story.

Its not any different from a Story about WW2 Germany where England is mentioned .. You know the place is there and that England influences events --- but its not necessarily part of the plot. Especially if the book is about the Eastern Front.

As you said the books concentrate on more action/adventure stuff. And in that Context slaves and slavery are a MAJOR aspect of every book.


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The amount of slavery in Second Life Gor is more in the middle between the Background comments as you quoted, and the book storylines.

And its most certainly the influence of the Women in those sims that Free Women are as common as they are;

To the Chagrin of some of the SL Free Men, who complain about it to the slave girls when the Free Women aren't around.

But that money doesn't go to Norman though?

It seems like he should be getting more money for as popular as Gor is than he most likely does.

BDSM doesn't have Priest-Kings that look like big ant things that come from another planet.

Hello,

I have to pop in to agree with Czari on this :^) (Must be a first that a RL Domme agrees with a Gorean but weirder things happen online everyday)

Most of us in RL SM/BDSM/D/s (whatever you want to name it this year) don't actually consider Gor to be a subset of our lifestyle. You seldom see the two groups mixing at fetevents or munches these days. Goreans have their camps/groups and we have ours. I do treat any Goreans that come to our Munch with respect but at the same time I expect them to leave the majority of their "kinks" at home...same as anyone else who comes to a public restaurant to have a good meal and meet new kinky friends.

The closest that comes to the rigid and scripted Gorean "role play" would be the High Protocol D/s groups that place a huge emphasis on serving, rituals, attire and such. There are bottoms in the lifestyle who find service to be the ultimate "kink" and that's what they find the most freedom and pleasure doing...serving a Dominant.

Chacun a son gout..it's just not MY taste

Morganna

Ahh this is interesting.

By subset I didn't really mean they all hang out together or anything,

Just that the activities are related.

BDSM means a whole lot of things. Gor just a narrow aspect. Pony Play, Milk Play, Ageplayers, Dulcet, etc are all called subsets of BDSM as well.

But most people who are into BDSM don't engage in any of those things.

I am aware many in the more usual BDSM groups have a low opinion of Goreans, particularly RL Goreans...

So definitely me using subset I don't mean they all agree or anything.

Maybe "BDSM" (the more standard definition) is also a subset of *BDSM* the overall category.

Errrr, except since there is no such planet as Gor, there are no RL Goreans

There *are* people who embrace the Gorean philosophy (living in accordance with nature, the "natural order" according to Norman's definition of the roles of men/women) and some go so far as to bring the rituals into their lives.

I enjoy your posts and, although we will have to agree to disagree on some things Gorean concerned, I am happy to see at least one or two people on the forums that have an inkling of Gor before just repeating "what they've heard" or unfortunately experienced in some wacko sims that call themselves Gor.

I'm also not a great debater, just been involved in Gor (online only primarily) for a long time.

Thanks Morganna I appreciate your comments and insight

I still have no idea why the two groups have such a war going on. As I've said before, prior to my involvement in Gor (which I always participated in as strictly role play although the underlying philosophy meshes well with my personal belief system) I had no idea what BDSM or D/s even was...(I know...naive).

Once I did and witnessed the ensuing fireworks online when the twain met I was like...whaaaaaaaa????

Just pick the group you like...and enjoy it.

Nice to meet you

"online ... primarily" meaning you are only involved in Gor off-line when you poof! back to planet Gor?

/me facepalms and reminds herself to stop being so silly

Well true,

But they do call themselves RL Goreans.

And to people completely outside of BDSM its all one catagory.

Thats all.



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But some go a lot farther than you mention here. Both from News stories and people I have talked to who call themselves "RL goreans."

Very true. I was present when the first group that started the IRC Gorean channel when it was great role play decided a few years later that only "lifestylers" could call themselves Gorean and anyone else who roleplayed their chosen lifestyle was hurting the community.

It got really ugly.

Hi Collette,

Funny you bring up a topic which has been generating a lot of talk and discussion on BDSM forums and at RL events. While it was a "underground" thing we all stuck together but now you've got ppl who think BDSM doesn't accurately define the lifestyle now that's it's more mainstream...and the more extreme ends of the BDSM continuum seem to be the ones most ppl are trying to "remove" from the mix.

Splitting D/s from SM for example or distancing themselves from the more obvious fetishists like the Ponies and Painsluts and Age players...it's kind of sad to watch it happen when I know how hard it was for BDSM to get to the point where there's 30,000 active profiles on Fetlife.com (facebook/myspace for kinksters) and that's in less than 6 months.

I think the reason RL BDSMers are uncomfortable with Gor is the rigidity of the concept as a whole...the very thing that attracts those who enjoy Gorean RP :^) In general, Dominants react badly to anything which infringes on how WE interact with our submissives. We set the limits, the rules, the protocols and the expectations after much negotiation, time and attention to the needs (spoken and unspoken) of our subs...and heaven help anyone who gets in our faces and tries to tell us that we're "wrong" or we should do it "this way".

And I'm not the only Domme whose had some incredibly ignorant and arrogant "Master" try to pull some lame azz crap about how I need to be collared to be shown my "true" nature and he will "make a real woman" out of me. With all due respect to the RL Goreans who are probably very decent, caring and polite human beings...the huge majority of total morons who populate the online Gorean "world" and filter into some RL areas just give a very bad impression and leaves a kneejerk reaction when most of us hear the words Gor or Gorean :^)

To be fair...I have the same reaction to the words High Protocol and Old Guard but that's a whole other discussion

Morganna

I would love to know where you got the 30000 figure from for fetlife when just a couple of months ago they were saying over 4000 members no doubt the have gone the way of most and purchased the member profiles readily available online

In SL, it also gets pretty silly. My erstwhile kajirus alt once stumbled into a "lifestyler" sim, and was severely upbraided for lapsing into the post-Norman IRCism of using a third-person voice. Whereupon the locals returned to their conversation of how to best pack homemade RL ammunition.

Where the hell are those Priest Kings when you need them?

QFT!

I can't tell you the number of times I have been told as a Gorean Free Woman that "I just haven't found the "right" Master yet.

Errrmmm....when I discovered Gor (due to my research for grad school, which I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing about but germane to this particular issue)...I wasn't told there were Free Women so I *was* a slave by default(again, ONLINE ONLY). I wasn't all choked up about the idea, but since it was (1) role play and (2) did turn out to be helpful to have the experience for my thesis on submissive women, it was ok for the time. But since I am not largely submissive...I would get to a point where I wanted to say "Who made you God?" to some guy that I could probably think circles around.

After I understood more about Gor and read more of the books and met some lovely, gracious Free Women on line (not the bitchy ones highlighted in the novels as Colette pointed out that were "taken down to slave" to "show them their place" I realized being a slave was decidedly NOT me and I have enjoyed role playing a Gorean Free Women (when I *do* participate these days...which is few and far between).

(Note: Another common misconception online is that Gorean Free Women are Dommes. A Panther would likely fit that category, but the robed and veiled FW were also of a submissive nature - just not to the degree of slaves. The "freedom" of their existence largely depended on the men around them - family or Free Companion. I'm sure Norman patterned this largely after the Middle Eastern cultures. Free Women were largely not permitted to travel unescorted or permitted out of the house without the permission of their male relatives. (Sound culturally familiar?) )

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I'd go so far as to say the majority of SL "Goreans" I have met outside of the sims with which I inhabit are full of self-righteous, pompous asshats who, as one of my friends likes to say - have no personal power in RL so they come to online Gor to try to achieve some illusory fantasy "positional power."

And they do give the rest of us a bad name

~ ~ ~

EDIT TO ADD: If I were interested in a power exchange lifestyle, I would definitely pursue D/s. As has been pointed out, much care, communication and often a very loving relationship develops between a Dom/me and the sub.

I'm tellin' ya. If they truly existed a good Blue Flame Death would be a good way to kind of clear the idjits out.

/me thinks of a new use for particles *grins*

Hi,

Sorry that should have said 3000 active profiles which is what it had when I joined at the begining of the summer...

Morganna

I offered to make coffee and sandwiches to a bunch of Gorean men. That didn't go over so well.

If you had offered Black Wine and bosk in a bun, you would have been ok.

imogen

QUOTED
FOR
TRUTH!

So, basically, given them a burger.

McGor, anyone?

(God help me, I want to make this now ... lmao ...)

LOL i thought that was wrong as we run a similar site but more facebook style and started just before john did and of course we have an account on fetlife just as fetlife has an account on bdsm-life.com and i know we have about the same member base, when u quoted 30000 i just thought they had gone and purchased fake profiles like so many do lol

Warmest regards

What are these sites? I'm way out of the loop here.