The Alphaville Herald

Collared! A Newbie goes to Port Kar and gets a taste of Gorean Iron

by Alphaville Herald on 22/05/05 at 4:48 pm

By Anonymous No0b

“Next, the master told me to strip. I didn’t respond immediately, I think mostly because the idea that I was supposed to do something just because he said so didn’t compute in my brain. He repeated the request again, this time explaining that he needed to see me, because I belonged to him. He needed to see what he had, as he put it. So I took off my clothes and stood there while he walked around me and made comments.”

The world of Port Kar in 2nd Life appears to have its roots in John Norman’s ideas about gender relationship, which he expressed at length in the 25 or so books that make up the GOR series of science fiction/fantasy novels. In the world of GOR, men are strong and valiant and protective, and women are only able to fulfill themselves as females if they become totally dependent on men, in all areas of their lives. John Norman, who is, or was, a professor at a college in New England, apparently felt that the route to liberation for women was through total sexual slavery. I’m still trying to figure out if he was joking or not, seeing as how he wrote these books primarily during the era when Catherine MacKinnon and the late Andrea Dworkin did most of their high screeching. But even if John Norman was joking or satirizing gender theory when he wrote these books, the fact still remains that a whole bunch of people take his ideas very seriously, and a select group of these people live the so-called Gorean lifestyle 24/7 in real life. Another, larger, group, role-plays the Gorean fantasy online in several venues, under very strict rules and prescriptions for behavior and relationships. In Second Life, Port Kar is the location where these games are played.

A woman who becomes a slave, becomes the property of her master. In some places, she is renamed, and her name is always written with her master’s name next to her name, the master’s name being in curly braces:

woman {Master’s name}

Writing the name in this way apparently provides the woman with protection from the advances of other men, since the other men understand that the master’s strength and power will be used to protect the kajira, if the master wishes to protect her. There are different kinds of slaves: a tower slave isn’t ordinarily used for sexual pleasure. A pleasure slave, also called “red silk” or “kajira” is a woman who supposedly reaches the highest expression of her womanhood through sexual slavery. A tower slave kneels with her knees closed. A pleasure slave kneels with her knees open. A woman who becomes a kajira or pleasure slave surrenders her body and her will to the man she accepts as a master. The kajira becomes the man’s property. In exchange for this surrender, it is said that the kajira becomes the master’s treasure, and that his task is to know his kajira completely and absolutely in order to realize her sexual nature most fully. Among Goreans it is said that the most perfect relationship between men and women occurs between a master and kajira who are in love. Let it be said that Goreans are somewhat suspicious of free women, and it is said also in that world that free women look on the kajira with contempt primarily because they are jealous of the kajira’s status as the master’s treasure.

There is, as you can see, a lot of romance in these ideas and sometimes I wonder if the GOR series is not a man’s version of the romance novel that many women devour. The GOR series and romance novels share many elements, even if the point of view is different. Primarily both the GOR series and the romance novel are about strong males and sexual conquest.

But I was curious, and curiousity inflamed me. I wanted to see what that other, forbidden life might be like. I wanted to see who the people were, how they lived, and how they made peace with their lives of power exchange. So I began searching for a place where I could learn more.

In clubs I saw people who identified themselves as either master or slave. They dressed in particular ways but nothing was particularly striking about how they looked. It was all black, revealing, and sometimes I’d see a person with a tail. One time I walked into a “scene” by accident, and the scene involved mostly people saying “do this” and other people saying “yes master”. There was nothing outrageous here, although I did see what I came to realize was pretty much the stock collection of animation balls which would put the person touching it into various sexual positions. I tried some of them out. I visited dungeons, which were mostly empty at the times I went into them – many clubs have teleport access to dungeons, and most of them look pretty much the same. People in clubs are very tolerant. I walked around and danced in many different forms of dress and undress and it was all accepted as normal.

One day, though, I went into a store that looked very different from the others, and the owner was advertising for courtesans. The owner also advertised “training”. I went to the store twice, and the owner was kind enough to give me a lot of lingerie. I went to this store three times, maybe four times, and I read the sign. I thought maybe if I went through the courtesan training I would see what it was like. About this time, a friend showed up and asked if I had seen Port Kar. Of course I had no clue, as usual.

In the middle of this conversation, the owner of the shop appeared. In a halting way I explained what I wanted to do. The idea seemed risky and frightening, but I wanted to see what it was like. The slave master was large, dressed in some kind of space suit, with dark hair and dark glasses. He looked like a man, who, if you took the space suit and the rest of it off, would turn out to look like the boy next door. He did not seem threatening in the way that I expected a master would seem threatening. He was accompanied by two women, who appeared to be slaves. The women were dressed in flowing garments that looked like something out of the Arabian Nights. They were beautiful, especially the blonde. The master talked to my friend a little bit – I thought they knew each other, but later I’d discover that they didn’t know each other. The master thought that my friend was a stranger, annoying me. I explained. Then the master told me to look around, and my friend excused himself. I saw cages, racks, and other things that I can’t describe or identify very well. After a while, the blonde woman, who was really very kind and very gentle in manner, took me back to a large room.

This room was huge and it was their dungeon, I learned. The front part of it looked like a series of jail cells, and the rest of it was a large room with torches, fire pits, racks, and other bits of equipment around. The room had very high ceilings and had what looked like racks suspended from the ceilings. Almost every cell had a name above the door, and each cell had a cushion and what looked like a Persian rug. Other than that, they were very uncluttered, almost empty-looking. The back wall of the room changed continually, mostly it looked black, with high flames darting around. This made me a little nervous mostly because I come from an area of the US where flames of that size signal disaster — I’m thinking now particularly of October 2002 when there was a brush fire four blocks from my house; I’d go to sleep at night watching the flames walk down the hill towards my house. But anyway there I was standing around all these racks and flames and jail cells, not really doing anything, just standing there. Shortly before this, the kind blonde woman had taken me to see Port Kar, which looks like something right out of a Star Trek fantasy of late medieval Europe. She seemed to feel that Port Kar could be dangerous, and the master had told her to be careful that no one stole me from her while we were there. We didn’t stay there long, and soon we were back in the dungeon. I objected to the idea of being caged at some point, and the master told me that if I liked being out in the open that he might park me somewhere out in the open and give people “access” to me. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant until later when I saw the tip jar with my name on it.

Then this woman came in – I hadn’t seen her before. She was mostly naked and prancing around wearing what I can only describe as a horsetail buttplug, asking permission to do this and that.and receiving very gentle and polite responses, from what I could see. It was mostly her appearance that surprised me. Anyway I stood there for quite some time, saying basically nothing, watching everything around me. The master stood there, and his companions moved here and there. Then the master turned to one of the women and told her to collar me. He seemed to have something to attend to that did not permit him to collar me himself, and he left apologizing for his departure, which if you think about it, has to be pretty much near the top of any list you could come with about awkward social situations.

A “SLAVE TUNIC” GARMENT

After he left, the woman that I would later learn was his #1 slave, gave me a box of stuff and told me to unpack it. I had some difficulty with this job, so she helped me. In the box was a collar, some clothes, a tip jar, some appliances, lingerie, stuff like that. She told me to put on the slave dress. The slave dress is really a kind of poncho, just a front and back, no sides, and a rope belt. It’s very short, and very low cut, and it only comes in gray, apparently. So much for modern democracy, I thought to myself. I put the thing on. Next we fiddled with the collar and got that on. Not long after this, the master returned, apologizing again for not having seen to my collaring himself. I would later learn that the moment of collaring has an important emotional meaning for both master and slave, but I didn’t get to have that experience. Slaves note the date of their collaring and note it as one might note an anniversary. I did notice that the collar gave the master some ability to run my avi, because when he said KNEEL, my avi would kneel, and if he said STAND the avi would stand.

A GOREAN MASTER AND HIS SLAVE

Next, the master told me to strip. I didn’t respond immediately, I think mostly because the idea that I was supposed to do something just because he said so, didn’t compute in my brain. He repeated the request again, this time explaining that he needed to see me, because I belonged to him. He needed to see what he had, as he put it. So I took off my clothes and stood there while he walked around me and made comments. He seemed especially pleased with my height (I am very tall). Then the #1 slave asked me if I wanted pubic hair or if I wanted to be clean shaven. I chose pubic hair, so she gave me some. She asked me if I was intended as a pleasure slave and I said I didn’t know. After more questions, I put my clothes back on. The master then asked me personal questions about my RL, which spooked me some even though they were not specific questions. He wanted to know my marital status, if I was straight or gay, my geographical location, and if I was over 18. I say again that the questions spooked me, and I was spooked mostly because I didn’t understand how these things affected in-game play. I’d learn more about that later, though. Mostly I tried to be as vague as possible. After this, they asked me to choose a cage. This part seemed absurd to me, because all the cages looked the same and I couldn’t figure out what possible difference it would ever make whether they locked me in this cage or that one over there. They really seemed to want me to pick a cage, though, so I chose one.

The lady with the horsetail came back, and asked if the master would give her permission to wear clothes. He gave his permission and she changed into something which to my untrained eye didn’t look all that different from the other thing she’d been wearing. This woman’s appearance gave me a sense of anxiety which I’d learn later was not without some basis in reality. The master and the two other women were making plans to take me to Port Kar. The master said that he wanted to buy me something beautiful to wear, and so we would go to Port Kar to buy these clothes. Then my system crashed.

2nd Life had problems that weekend, as they explained on Monday, and it was something about load. I’d spent the weekend thinking about what I’d signed up for, and had decided that it was not going to be a good thing to do. Mostly not safe. That was my intuition, anyway. I wrote a distressed email to a friend of mine who is a person of just miraculous terseness except when he decides to be eloquent. When this guy decides to be eloquent, you just have to stand back and admire it. but mostly he writes email not more than ten words, usually small ones. I learned from these emails that all I had to do was detach everything and I was free. Period. No prob. So I detached. When I’d logged back on, I rezzed in the dungeon, so I had to get out of there. My friend was online, it happened, and he teleported me to his place. As part of slave-induction, I’d accepted friendship from the master, so I knew that the master knew where I was. I’ve been teleported before, so I was nervous that I might get teleported out of my friend’s place, or that the master would come to fetch me back. Games work for people with huge and vibrant imaginations. I am one of these people, and my imagination hath no bounds. I didn’t know what I would say to the master if I saw him again, if the master saw me again. I realized though on some level, that as a slave I was replaceable, just as good as any other slave, so not really worth coming after, but I was still a little ragged.

For the next few days, I wandered around and I spent about five thousand dollars for no reason that I can think of. I even went to Port Kar. I went somewhere else that had a library and it was there that I found the document that explained my discomfort to me. This document, one of a set of three, explains the duties of a slave, and it is clear that the pleasure slavery that begins in-game is expected to continue out-of-game. The rules include statements like

o “ I freely agree to be responsible and send my master at least one email every day.
o “ I shall dress according to my Master’s specifications. Even though my Master cannot see me through the computer, I shall be honest.
o “I shall remove all of my clothing when Master commands of me to do so, regardless of who may be present and despite where it is that I am.
o “…I shall maintain a healthy weight…”
o “I freely agree to when our relationship has progressed to a RT commitment, I freely agree to receive his permanent mark of ownership upon my flesh, in a place of his choosing, whether it be a piercing, tattoo, or a branding.”[1]

Reference is also made in these documents to web sites containing more material and guidance in constructing these relationships. Later on, I’d learn that at least one of the women that I’d met in that dungeon had a RT relationship with that master. I’d also learn that progressing from in-game to RT was not uncommon, particularly among Goreans. It did not surprise me to learn this, but I was still a little bit amazed, and glad that it wasn’t part of my life.