Gor – A Short Introduction

The Gor or Gorean lifestyle is based on the twenty seven books written by John Norman in the late seventies. The books describe a fictional planet, the Land of Gor, a medieval fantasy land, which has a lifestyle quite different from what we see in our everyday lives. On the planet of Gor, the men are the dominant gender, whereas the women are the submissive gender. Basically, the terminology for the dominant man would be a master and the terminology for the submissive women would be slave, or the more poetic ‘kajira’.

Gor- A Connection with BDSM

There is commonality between BDSM and the Gorean lifestyle in a number of respects .A few Goreans do practice BDSM even though BDSM is not Gorean in itself. These Goreans may or may not use a safe word when involved in BDSM scene play; however, if they do not, then some sort of communication is usually practiced. The majority of Goreans do not practice BDSM, but do engage in certain tenances such as branding a slave, discipline at the whip, and chaining a slave. Another area that Goreans practice is the demonstrative fashion their slaves serve and perform slave positions. Many of the slaves take great pride in pleasing their Master in this manner. Note that Norman’s non-fictional sex manual imaginative Sex presents a series of elaborate fantasy scenarios to be acted out and recommends that symbolic substitutes should be used instead of actual physical chastisements (such as whippings).Most of the scenarios are male dom / femsub, but a few portray men as the slaves of women, and anticipate the eroticised first-person male slave narratives of some of the Gorean novels.

Controversies With Gor

Another aspect that is controversial about Gor, and something that is not found in the world of BDSM, is that Gor, for the most part is not an interpersonal interaction, but something that can be considered to be a group interaction. Basically, a group of dominants will own a group of submissives, and it at the very end that a person would actually have an interaction with another. This has given rise to a thought that Gor is more demeaning to womankind than the general BDSM, which normally has a person interacting with a person.