The Alphaville Herald

Gorean Journey: Part 3. about the collar

by Pixeleen Mistral on 25/11/06 at 8:50 am

[editor's note: we kick off what might turn into a Gorean-themed sim week at the Herald with a companion piece to the two installments of the Confessions of a Gorean Slave articles here and here]

by sparrowhawk perhaps {Raddick Szymborska}

I had no clue about the journey I would be taking when the collar snapped around my neck. I was, at that time, of the opinion that synthetic worlds were not real and that I would be involved in a fantasy experience of pixels and cartoons. I had no idea at all that I had just signed up for a very grueling experience.

Most of what I learned about the collar was learned during those times when I struggled against the collars demands. I am pretty sure that somebody is going to read this and think as I thought in the beginning and wonder why I was so much affected by a bunch of pixels. I need at this point to say that there is a school of thought in the old leather D/s community that feels that online collars are not real and do not qualify as experience. To those people I would say that many RL Dominants who are online as Gorean Masters, for example, believe that while an online flogging makes no sense at all, it is indeed quite possible to enforce the psychological discipline of D/s online, and so they do. I have met Masters who came on thinking that the online collar was not real, and then changed their minds with experience. My moment came while talking with a woman I love very much. I will call her Mary. Mary is a sub, a very intelligent woman.

I met Mary at an event where she was giving a presentation. She spoke with authority on a controversial subject, and exhibited what I can only call judicial temperament. She was fair, and she disagreed with grace. She made nobody wrong, and yet proved her line of reasoning logical and correct. Afterwards we talked, and became friends. I have found her over the long time I have known her, to be a source of wisdom, and I think it is really Mary, and not me, who should be writing these essays. But one day Mary was speaking of her Mistress, and she said that her Mistress had rocked her world. Mary was not afraid for her world to be rocked, she accepted it. Suddenly I realized that my world was rocked, also, but I was fighting it. It was like being hit by a thunderbolt. Later I went timidly to my Master, and explained what happened. I acknowledged that my world was rocked by Him. It is good you learn from others, also he said, I cannot teach you all that you need to know. He was not pixels. It was terrifying. It is Mary more than anyone who knows my journey I think, who has kept me at times from flying off either edge. I want to honor her for that.

I came in time to understand that the struggles I had with and against the collar never originated with my Masters requests. The struggles were always within my inner self, a war of me against me, and me against cultural mainstream values that I had internalized to a degree I didn’t realize I had. In our culture, after all, the urge to dominate is important and the alpha dog is highly rewarded. This is, I think probably truer now of women than it is of men. The successful woman in RL world has some kind of corporate identity associated preferably with a global-level enterprise, and has the battle scars to show for it. Women who choose more traditional lives, well, they require apologists and conservative radio talk show psychologists to tell them that it is really just fine to be who they are, and that mother is not another word for dork. Words like family are code-signs for mediocre or bland and powerless experiences in entertainment and dining. People define their lives in terms of the importance of what they did or did not achieve in the outside world. Humility and modesty don’t rate, and mainstream society now needs advice columnists to tell people that being polite is not a sign of moral weakness. Against the advice of this world, I followed my Master, begged His collar, tried to stuff my enormous pride into a bag, and knelt. It was a politically incorrect act, in the extreme. He was my nightmare. I came to love him very much, almost senselessly, and I expect pretty much nobody to understand that. It is my fault, not his, that I did not understand the culture and what was required of me.

I do think that political correctness figures in the debate about Gor. I hear Gor called a cult, I read so-called analyses of Gor, and all of them appear to focus on things that in my experience mostly do not happen. I know of one article circulating that I would myself accuse even of sloppy research: the article was clearly going for sensationalism, and omitted a few of the most sensational documents in SL Gor all of which are available in scriberies open to anyone, and of which I have copies.

There were many things to learn from the Gorean collar and many things to observe. The learning and observing began about two minutes after the collar snapped on. I was standing. Then Master turned to me and said: Since when do slaves stand before the Free? I didn’t know the answer. It was at that moment that I learned I would be spending most of my time on my knees, specifically in a position called nadu with my knees open, my hands on my thighs, and my head looking downward. The position, and the general lack of clothing I was permitted offended a modesty that I did not even know I possessed. I am able to admit now that the question, the tone of the question, hurt me. There would be more lessons against modesty later, and more questions, but in the beginning I knelt on the ground. Then Master said something, and it angered me, and I turned my back on Him. There was a silence, and then he said: Turn your back on me again, girl and I will beat you. I remember this not for His response, but rather because it was the first act in my war against my collar.

One learns in many ways what things are, and are not. I learned what the collar was by fighting it. Of course now, knowing more, rather than fight I would have created dances to express my feelings. The Gorean dance tradition is the one tool the kajira has to take initiative to express feelings openly to her Master without an invitation. You must understand that the Gorean Master for the most part has little interest in his kajiras, shall we say, inconvenient feelings. This idea is very much at odds with mainstream cultures idea that people create relationships by expressing their feelings and ideas. The Gorean Master simply does not see the world this way, and he is just not interested in what you have to say unless it is pleasing or obedient. Insist on telling the man what he does not want to hear and you will end up watching your head roll down a hill or with a long pointy stick up your butt.

Sometimes, for the Gorean, the purpose of punishing the slave appears to be the act of calling something to mind the slave, in reality, plays a difficult role and in that role is extremely limited in terms of what things may or may not be expressed. Sometimes it almost seems that the act of infraction of disobedience is done almost unwittingly, as repressed inner speech finds its way to the surface. The slave perhaps at the moment of disobedience and defiance does not perhaps see herself as disobedient. The Master, if he is effective, has made it his business to touch her inner self and disturb the hidden ocean floor of her spirit. He is engaged in the act of changing her to suit himself. Now when critics speak of Gor they use words like brainwashing while disregarding the fact that when the critics do the same thing to each other, they use the words adapting and adjusting. Nonetheless, in Gor, the experienced Master expects a certain amount of turmoil now and then.

The inconsistency in Gorean culture is this: the Master wants a spirited girl thats almost a universal expectation among Masters. None of them want a doormat, really, because doormats are boring; and truthfully even the most fluffy bunny doormat slave will try to sell herself as mischievous and bratty. The Master wants to conquer a spirited girl and create her as HIS doormat. The less experienced Master is ordinarily, however, generally not up to the balancing act required to keep a spirited girl in doormat mode for any length of time. Hell either get over-confident in his abilities, or he will cave to some extent. Unfortunately for SL, experience is not something you can buy at a market stall. Many a friendship is ruined by roleplay gone wrong said a very wise man, to me, one night. I have never yet seen those words proved wrong.

Yet it remains true in any case that when the slave disobeys the Master, no matter what the cause or compulsion, not withstanding whatever has driven the slave into disobedience, the act of disobedience remains an act of self-will, even if the slave does not perceive it as such at the time, and self-will is a land she promised not to visit when the collar snapped around her neck. Here I think there is a strange parallel between Gorean and monastic cultural practice. The collar is an agreement, a vow, between Master and slave. He is the abbot and she is the monk. She may have a pencil if he wishes her to have one. If he tells her that she may not use her pencil in a certain way then she may not use it in that way. If the abbot tells the talented gardener monk that he must become a cheese maker, then the monk makes cheese. It is not so different. Hardly anybody calls the monastic system a cult. Because the collar is a strange kind of vow, the collar should not be broken any more than that people should break any other kind of serious promise or commitment. Breaking the collar is somewhat like leaving the convent without permission. The agreement of the collar can be oversimplified in the following way: the Master guides and teaches. The slave agrees to obey and be taught.

Breaking the collar, that is to say, the act of a slave releasing herself from the contract between her and her Master, is probably the most severe insult that a slave may offer the Master. Removing the collar and thereby breaking the bond created between them by the collar, is in reality a fairly self-destructive act and an invitation to severe emotional pain and a kind of death. First, if she breaks her collar it is generally in most cases unlikely that the Master will offer a second collar except under extraordinary circumstances. Secondly it is likely that the Master she has insulted in that way will probably not remain a friend. The slave who thinks she can break a collar and remain pals with Master, that she can break a collar and have the same access to his care and concern as she had when she wore his collar is about to receive a rather rude surprise.

The slave removing the collar will likely inform the Master that she has done so, or in some cases, the collar itself will inform him. At some point shortly after that act, she will experience the emotional withdrawal of the Master from her. The collar said a very experienced Master to me is a sign of My presence with you. Take it off, and you miss the closeness. The slave who loves her Master will feel the withdrawal of his affection, attention, and availability to her on all levels. It is a hard thing to explain but anyone who has experienced the withdrawal of a Master knows exactly what this means. The slave then is left to her own resources. She is left to reclaim the self-will that perhaps she is not so well acquainted with now. Emotional confusion and grief may follow. She may not even be aware of the depth of her emotional reaction even if she understands what is happening intellectually, and interesting behaviors may follow: she may choose to become a panther or an outlaw. She may create a new identity. She may acquire a series of inappropriate Masters or even choose an unworthy Master.

Choosing an unworthy Master, said a Gorean slaver to me at one point, is one way that girls will sometime punish their Masters. But here’s the thing: the Master who is the object of this behavior, even if he loves the girl enough that her behavior annoys or hurts him, will never permit himself to show those feelings. The Master is held to a higher standard of self discipline. That is what everybody, including your garden variety Gorean, forgets. No man should be a Master who has not explored himself, who cannot control Himself. Because of this higher standard of discipline and control, you are not likely to see an experienced Master running around SL chasing his runaway slave. An experienced Master is not going to pay his runaway that compliment. It is also possible that the insulted Master, particularly the more experienced Master, may never acknowledge her existence again on any level; and to the girl who deeply loves her Master in spite of everything, that is the hardest punishment of all, and the one that will follow her for the rest of her days.

- TO BE CONTINUED -