Gor Is Indeed A Silly Place

[Cinos Field]

I do think it's important to distinguish between fleeting lewd fantasies and actual beliefs... sometimes I might enjoy feeling like, well, an object, or less valuable than others. Isn't that what they do in Gor? What I mean to say is there's really no harm in living in out submissive fantasies, yes?

I'm sure we can agree on that part. What I just don't understand is what makes doing that in Gor makes it that much more detestable than other locations. Except the books being horribly poorly written. But that's true of a lot of popular RP settings... :P

edit: I really have no stake in the argument, it's not like those sims allow furries anyway. I just don't understand why roleplaying hard BDSM stuff in this particular setting would be so much worse than others.

Edited February 22, 2020 by Cinos Field

[Amina Sopwith]

13 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

What I just don't understand is what makes doing that in Gor makes it that much more detestable than other locations. 

Because when you do it in Gor, a place where it's more or less  a requirement to attempt to be By The Book and Truly Gorean, a place with a quasi-religious subtext, you're perpetuating these books and the "philosophy" they're expounding, which is hateful and stupid in the extreme. Plus you're making John Nobhead happy and, in his mind at least, proving him right. For that alone, anyone deserves a slap with a wet fish.

In a nutshell, as Scylla has said: BDSM is not gendered, but Gor is. It is literally about the inferiority of all women, which by logical extension must include the ones not playing there, and their need for horrible abuse. 

Do it in an Arabian Nights sim. Do it in a superheroines in peril sim. Do it in Dark Den or whatever it's called. Do it in a generalised kidnap/forced sex place. Do it in any one of the other zillion male-dominant sims. Just please, please, please don't do it there. 

 

Edited February 22, 2020 by Amina Sopwith

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

15 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

all the shock, none of the actual horror.

Gor serves not only the point of noting how much of a hateful person the author is... it diminishes the actual horror of both slavery and rape by turning them into fetishes.

One day in my first couple of years here, I was following along on an educational event a friend had put together about African-American history, including the slave trade. Standing there in a replica of a slave ship, with the shackles and the knowing, the idea of playing at slavery like the Goreans did became, not this curious thing other people did, but completely abhorrent to me. It had a history, it was real, it was done to real people, it horrendously, hideously, unconscionably abused people, real people, generations of real people. And here were other people playing pretend at it to get their jollies.

If BDSM is your thing, please use another model for control, one without such an abhorrent, abusive and hateful history behind it.

[Ted McGregor]

On 2/21/2020 at 4:52 AM, Tolya Ugajin said:

A few months ago, my partner and I decided to check out SL Gor. 

But, yeah, unless you're a diehard Gor fan, it's a pretty silly place.

Never heard of either the THEME or author of Gor, before all of this was mentioned here specifically in this forum. Since my interest was never akin this genre ( more a futuristic sci-fi stuff admirer myself ). I find it surprising you call it a place, because that always indicated to me this was contained to one sim / region only.

Since I myself read a bit up about it ( and no, still not interested in the slightest to consume any of it  and won' t ) , I find it surprising this seems more like a rally against a certain attitude rather then a ' please avoid this destination(s) at all costs'  - plead ( not specifically directed at Tolya ).

Doesn' t this perception change completely if the basic rule remains that we are all human beings as a first, indepedent of sex ? Then why worry like this over sheer (bad) fantasy ? Because that is all that it is. 

 

Edited February 22, 2020 by TDD123

[cheesecurd]

I avoid “descriptive text” roleplay places specifically because the bar is so low that just about anyone can get into it, and it creates a really low quality experience. Gor in general is basically that, it’s the bottom of the barrel for just about everything it’s affiliated with. Its a very boring world concept, with an ever present overbearing but still boring sexual aspect, and the actual roleplay is done by people with a room temperature IQ who might as well just be typing into a discord for as much value the SecondLife virtual world around them is given as a tool for their roleplay.

I tried out a less sexual gor based rp area and group and was sorely disappointed to find it was basically a bunch of nerds who barely spoke English arguing over rules after every single line of roleplay text.

Roleplay should go on like improv, props and all, on the fly with no delay. There should never be a text line that isn’t dialogue of some variety. Actually know what you’re doing and bother getting through the first grade so you can act and enunciate with such eloquence unrivaled by lesser peers and suddenly roleplay can actually be fun instead of just a jerk off fantasy like all of Gor seems to be,

If you told the average Gor member about AI dungeon they would drop SL entirely to go poorly text RP with a computer instead.

[Beth Macbain]

What differentiates Gor from BDSM for me is that in BDSM there is consent and equality in the relationships even if that consent comes from consenting to be submissive or a slave and the equality comes from the submissive (I'm not including slave in this because the master/slave thing is something I know little about, and don't really wish to explore more because ick) being the one with the power to stop anything and everything by uttering a single word (if the relationship is a healthy relationship). If the submissive doesn't have that power, then it's not a BDSM relationship, it's an abusive relationship.

Anyway, none of the various types of BDSM relationships (the healthy ones) come from the premise that the female of the species is inherently inferior to the male. Gor does. And when groups of humans gather together to enforce their beliefs that another segment of humans is inferior, nothing good happens. These groups of humans that believe women are inferior are gathering on the internet, whether through Gor or Reddit or wherever they went when they were banned from there, and they encourage each other's beliefs and anger because the women just won't give them the time of day, much less submit to their superiority, and then they find their way out of their parent's basement, and we get Elliot Rodger, Chris Harper-Mercer, William Atchison, Nikolas Cruz, Alex Minassian, Scott Beierle, Bryan Clyde, Tobias Rathjen, etc. 

It's easy to just point and laugh at these people, but when they log off from playing out their Gorean fantasies on SL, I'm not convinced that their Gorean beliefs shut off along with their computers. I do equate Gorean men with Incels and believe that the echo chambers they reside in online should be obliterated.

TL:DR - It's all fun and games until one of them gets hold of an AR-15 and shoots up a sorority house. 

[Amina Sopwith]

8 hours ago, TDD123 said:

Doesn' t this perception change completely if the basic rule remains that we are all human beings as a first, indepedent of sex ? Then why worry like this over sheer (bad) fantasy ? Because that is all that it is. 

But that rule doesn't exist as Nobhead writes it. There's a lot of emphasis on how slaves are not legally people, and various examples of women proclaiming their "personhood" before becoming slaves one way or another and, therefore, having such personhood revoked. As a fantasy concept, or a label that two consenting adults want to stick on their relationship, I don't have an objection to this. (I don't want to traumatise anyone with TMI, but please, please believe me that I absolutely understand submission and yielding your will and begging to please the person who can draw out this side of you. I really do.) But when the books are filled with endless babble paragraphs about how slaves are basically not people, and also how all women should be slaves and will never be fulfilled otherwise - yes, it's literally about denying humanity to women, including the ones who aren't in Gor. Add to this some liberal use of phrases like "female animal" and I swear to God I can't understand how anyone doesn't see it. I really don't get how anyone could read the Gor books I read and miss it. It's like being pistol whipped for 12 hours and not noticing. I like sparkly belly dance costumes as much as the next sub girl, but sheesh, they're clothes, not lobotomies. At least, I thought they were.

Which goes back to my earlier point: that even if there's a Gor sim somewhere that truly does not take itself seriously, and plays it entirely for lulz, and honestly doesn't take it a millimetre beyond consensual roleplay (and I never found such a place, personally)... they're still perpetuating and legitimising this. They're the reason those godawful pile of arse books are still in f***ing print, and available, and legitimised, and sanctified in a freaking subculture of their own in which, I can assure you, plenty of people are not lovable buffoons playing with a jolly twinkle and a tongue in their cheek. It is true that a lot of them are just thick and obviously don't know better, but it's still a sinister state of affairs. As Pussycat said earlier, if the words "woman" or "girl" were changed throughout to "black person" or "Jew", they'd be slung off the grid and the publisher's list in ten seconds flat, as well they absolutely should be.

I have noticed that every SL BDSM player likes to think that they are an expert in the field. (And it does seem to be an SL thing; I never heard anyone in the RL places I've been to complain that anything wasn't "real BDSM" or proclaim themselves the authority on it. They were just massively big on consent, and as long as everyone involved was happy, they really didn't care how far you did or didn't take it.) It is therefore frankly astonishing to me that Gor gets as much of a free pass as it does. 

So yes, let us not go to Gor. It is a silly place.

 

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

9 hours ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

One day in my first couple of years here, I was following along on an educational event a friend had put together about African-American history, including the slave trade. Standing there in a replica of a slave ship, with the shackles and the knowing, the idea of playing at slavery like the Goreans did became, not this curious thing other people did, but completely abhorrent to me. It had a history, it was real, it was done to real people, it horrendously, hideously, unconscionably abused people, real people, generations of real people. And here were other people playing pretend at it to get their jollies.

22 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

But that rule doesn't exist as Nobhead writes it. There's a lot of emphasis on how slaves are not legally people, and various examples of women proclaiming their "personhood" before becoming slaves one way or another and, therefore, having such personhood revoked.

the books are filled with endless babble paragraphs about how slaves are basically not people, and also how all women should be slaves and will never be fulfilled otherwise - yes, it's literally about denying humanity to women, including the ones who aren't in Gor. Add to this some liberal use of phrases like "female animal" and I swear to God I can't understand how anyone doesn't see it.

Which goes back to my earlier point: that even if there's a Gor sim somewhere that truly does not take itself seriously, and plays it entirely for lulz, and honestly doesn't take it a millimetre beyond consensual roleplay (and I never found such a place, personally)... they're still perpetuating and legitimising this.

Let us all just imagine a sim where consenting adults roleplayed the fun and enjoyment of being gassed to death in chambers because of their race, religion, gender, sex, nationality, or etc, by people consenting roleplying the joy of being a person who did this to them and felt superior for it...

- That is Gor.

Swap one genocide for another.

I swear I have always been baffled as to why it wasn't banned on day one.

 

ps: The day I realized that Orcs in Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy based on such were a proxy for Plains Indians (even down to using outfits and tactics that were attributed to Plains Indians during wartime propaganda and 1950s movies), and that the 'Dark Elf' creation story in those games was the one US Churches used to tell to claim Africans had the Curse of Ham on them (to legitimize slavery); was the day I was no longer able to put up with table top roleplaying... And again, pulp genre fiction doesn't have to be rooted in genres of hate... plenty of counter examples where it isn't.

pps: If you play the modern game Skyrim, or any of the games related to it... it uses the Curse of Ham to explain why it's dark elves have black skin... so that racist b.s. is still being put forth in 2020 by a major game company... D&D long ago edited out the Curse of Ham, but still makes elves good or evil based on skin color alone... and the Orc issue is still there. By contrast Skyrim never copied the racist trope for it's Orcs, but doubled down on the Curse of Ham for it's elves...

 

There is also a mile-wide difference between fetishizing these things into a fantasy and historical re-enactment.

Edited February 22, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap