Winnowing the Wheat from the Chaff I

(Reprinted from orig­i­nal pub­li­ca­tion in the Gorean Voice magazine)

One of the things which seems to be more preva­lent recent­ly is a con­fu­sion about exact­ly what con­sti­tutes being of Gor, as an ethos, a phi­los­o­phy, in real life. Bearing in mind that many of those who have fall­en prey to this con­fu­sion are on-line only, when it comes to Gor, it is per­haps not quite so sur­pris­ing. This is not a slur, rather a sim­ple fact. Very few have tru­ly crossed the line and made the Gorean Way a part of their real, dai­ly lives.

Lately an arti­cle was writ­ten which por­trayed Gor as pri­mar­i­ly an on-line role-play­ing phe­nom­e­na, with a hashed-over phi­los­o­phy as thin veil­ing over BDSM erot­i­ca. It con­sid­ered the men of the Gorean venue to be fundi­men­tal­ly frus­trat­ed, angry folk, who blamed their inad­e­qua­cies and inabil­i­ty to fit in, upon their mod­ern soci­ety. It con­sid­ered the women to either be frigid Free Women or seduc­tive­ly infan­tile sluts. While there has been plen­ty of acri­mo­ny over this arti­cle, there has been lit­tle effort to address the very real issues which were raised by it.

How did the writer, an artic­u­late, intel­li­gent woman, come by such obser­va­tions? How much of what she wrote is dead-on accu­rate? And if some of it is accu­rate, why is that so? Is it acceptible?

Instead, a sub­stan­tial amount of effort has been put towards ver­bal­ly attack­ing the writer, instead of deal­ing with the issues that were raised. What does that tell us?

Rather than try­ing to address and appor­tion blame, it is more fruit­ful to con­sid­er pos­si­ble caus­es for what was observed by that writer. She came into var­i­ous on-line venues and dis­cov­ered role-play­ing in the major­i­ty of cas­es. When she spoke to those who called them­selves ‘lifestylers’, she encoun­tered con­flict­ing and ill–thought–out the­o­ries on what peo­ple claimed to believe. She got to lis­ten to peo­ple describ­ing their approval of clear­ly ille­gal activ­i­ties, to atti­tudes that would be con­sid­ered neu­rot­ic at best. While Gor has attract­ed it’s share of the men­tal­ly unsta­ble, I think a more like­ly cul­prit in the major­i­ty of these cas­es is sim­ple con­fu­sion about what con­sti­tutes the phi­los­o­phy of Gor.

What is it to be of Gor? The stock in trade answer; to fol­low the phi­los­o­phy as set forth in the books. And this would be fine, if the books were clear and con­cise in the answer, yet we all know that is not the case. The books require care­ful and com­plete read­ing to gain a full under­stand­ing of the phi­los­o­phy, and only a small per­cent­age of those in on-line Gor have done so. And even if one reads all of the books, there is still the obsta­cle of analy­sis, fig­ur­ing out what the full con­text of each point in ques­tion might be. Understanding the whole process embod­ied in a story–line, instead of just one part. Consider that most have read 6 or less of the Gor series. A typ­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion might be books 1 through 4, book 6, and book 9. A small­er per­cent­age has read a few more than that, per­haps books 13 and 15. Access to the books is an on-going prob­lem due to the cost and dif­fi­cul­ty in locat­ing and pur­chas­ing these old, out of print vol­umes. When the sto­ry of Tarl Cabot’s jour­ney from being a man of Earth to becom­ing a Gorean takes all of the first 10 books to cov­er, how can any­one expect to under­stand the process by only read­ing a few scat­tered vol­umes? It’s like the fable of the three blind men who encounter an ele­phant; the one who touch­es the trunk says, “It’s a snake!”. The one who feels the legs says, “It’s a for­est!”. The one who gets swat­ted by the tail says, “It’s a camel!”. Such glo­ri­ous con­fu­sion we have in Gorean venues, with almost as many dif­fer­ent under­stand­ings of what Gor is, as there are peo­ple to put them forth, and few of them have the whole picture.

Perhaps the most basic thing which must be done in order to under­stand what being of Gor real­ly is, is the clear sep­a­ra­tion of fact from fan­ta­sy. Of phi­los­o­phy from cul­ture. We are not giv­en clear man­u­als on what it is to be of Gor, we have a set of 25 fantasy/​science fic­tion nov­els to work with. Most of that fan­ta­sy aspect, the Gorean cul­ture, sim­ply does­n’t apply to the real world. Our cities don’t have Home stones, though we may wish they did. The force of law is very real and very bind­ing across our entire plan­et, while on the fan­ta­sy plan­et of Gor, one can eas­i­ly dis­ap­pear to anoth­er city. Honour as a social con­cept does­n’t exist on Earth any longer, while on the fan­ta­sy plan­et of Gor it is as impor­tant as the air they breathe. Slavery is ille­gal on Earth, but it’s an hon­oured insti­tu­tion and high­ly prof­itable mer­chant busi­ness on the fan­ta­sy plan­et of Gor. These are exam­ples of the cul­tur­al con­sid­er­a­tions, the eas­i­ly seen ones. But what of the ones that are more close­ly inter­twined in thought and understanding?

For exam­ple, it has been said often on–line that all women belong in chains at the feet of men. In the books we can find numer­ous points of ori­gin for such state­ments, the vast major­i­ty of which are fre­quent­ly quot­ed out of con­text. The thought behind it is that women are genet­i­cal­ly pre­dis­posed towards being in bondage to men, and that thought is not what Norman’s books are say­ing. Cave folks didn’t have chains and col­lars, they didn’t even have ropes! The books say that women are genet­i­cal­ly pre­dis­posed towards being sub­mis­sive to men, and that men are genet­i­cal­ly pre­dis­posed towards being dom­i­nant over women. It then over­lays that with the fan­ta­sy cul­ture of Gor, a healthy dose of whips and chain, of dominance–and–helplessness–erotica, and an unbi­ased inves­ti­ga­tor in ircGor walks away with the intrigu­ing notion that Goreans believe that the nat­ur­al place of all women is chained at the feet of men. That’s quite a leap from the basic premise. If that were ‘nat­ur­al’, women would be born with lil’ baby chains on their wrists and a cute lil’ col­lar on their necks. The only thing that whips and chains are ‘nat­ur­al’ to is the fan­ta­sy cul­ture of a fan­ta­sy plan­et, because on our Earth, those things are con­sid­ered to be fetish­es, sex­u­al devi­a­tions, and some­times even, sex­u­al aber­ra­tions. On our Earth, peo­ple who use such devices are con­sid­ered to be mem­bers of alter­na­tive lifestyles, lumped into the same cat­e­go­ry as oth­er alter­na­tive lifestylers, such as homo­sex­u­als and BDSM extrem­ists. That’s reality.

We don’t live on the fan­ta­sy plan­et of Gor, we don’t live in the fan­ta­sy cul­ture of Gor. We live, work, play, on the plan­et Earth, in a real life, mod­ern soci­ety which we are a part of, even if only at the fringes. When some­one who doesn’t under­stand what Gor is and sees the sort of things which are com­mon in the on-line Gorean venues, it should come as no sur­prise that the con­fu­sion fac­tor rears even high­er. What’s tru­ly amaz­ing is that her arti­cle was as neu­tral as it turned out to be. Yes, neu­tral, because it could eas­i­ly have been far more negative.

So what is it that tru­ly con­sti­tutes being of Gor? To find that, you have to sep­a­rate the wheat from the chaff, the phi­los­o­phy from the fan­ta­sy cul­ture. Get to what’s real, and under­stand that the rest is enter­tain­ment. Not that there is any­thing wrong with enter­tain­ment, but it is of val­ue to know the dif­fer­ence. At that point, one can take it into their real lives, and dis­cov­er that there real­ly isn’t any imped­i­ment to liv­ing the Gorean Way in real life. The prin­ci­ples and val­ues from the actu­al phi­los­o­phy still require will-pow­er and strength to apply, they still require a potent integri­ty, but it is not impos­si­ble, and no laws need be broken.

I stood amazed at the great­ness and small­ness of man. And then with shame I real­ized how near­ly I myself had come to betray­ing my fel­low crea­tures. I had intend­ed to make use of that moment myself, pre­tend­ing to have come with a mes­sage from the Priest-Kings, to encour­age man to live as I wished him to live, to respect him­self and oth­ers, to be kind and to be wor­thy of the her­itage of a ratio­nal ani­mal, and yet of what worth would these things be if they came not from the heart of man him­self, but from his fear of Priest-Kings or his desire to please them? No, I would not try to reform man by pre­tend­ing that my wish­es for him were the wish­es of Priest-Kings, even though this might be effec­tive for a time, for the wish­es that reform man, that make him what he is capa­ble of becom­ing, and has not yet become, must be his own and not those of anoth­er. If man ris­es, he can do so only on his own two feet.

- Priest Kings of Gor, page 299

Of what val­ue are acts which come from fear or a desire to be pleas­ing, instead of from the heart? An inter­est­ing question.

People have the right to role–play, to enter­tain them­selves, to have fun. To live their lives as they see fit, with­in the bound­aries of their soci­eties laws. What they choose to do with that free­dom is their own choice, and by their choice, we shall know them for who and what they are. But it’s still their choice. For those who wish to live the Gorean Way in real life, the task of under­stand­ing the full con­text of the books and what they are say­ing will require a bit of effort, because there’s more at stake than just enter­tain­ment. The way you will live the rest of your life hangs in the bal­ance, it’s up to you how you choose to tip the scales.

- LionHeart
Rarius, Intended of Nyre