First of all, the comparison between consenting adults roleplaying in a cartoon virtual world with RL trafficking of prostitutes and RL violence against RL women in RL islam is frivolous.

Second, have you ever done a research on the history of the wedding ring? The original purpose of marriage (and hence the publicly visible wedding rings) is nothing but “power exchange”.

And re. religious traditions: I must admit that I am neither christian nor muslum but pagan (and paganism has a much longer tradition by the way) but I accept any other religion. However, Europe for example is mostly christian and therefore I think the most important word is “integration”. And all European countries I know are far more tolerant towards muslims that are most of the muslim states towards christians or other religious minorities there!

And reagarding “traditions”: as time goes by, even traditions might change (tempora mutantur et nos mutabimus in illis – times change and we change with them) and despite the fact that i am not christian but pagan (which is even more “traditional” in Europe than christian religion), i must admit that what is considered as “european” is christian! And still Europe is even more tolerant towards other religions than it is practised in arabian or other countries.

Wish you well! Merry X-Mas or whatever you might celebrate (chanukka or solstice!) and a happy new year!

At least you qualified that. You are right, Gor in general, as its done on SL, is less hardcore in bondage and sex than a typical forced fantasy BDSM sim. Which makes senses, as in Gor there is stuff to do between the bouts of wild sex (whether it is interesting or not is another question).

There are people out there on sl gor running out capping kajira and then pushing them way beyond their limits on purpose. I think there is a desire to remain in character that overides a tap of the tp. Maybe. This may be why I suck at my attempts to be a kajira. It’s a minority of people who are like that, the caste of assholes I guess, but they are there.

As for your second post about minarets. There have been minarets for a thousand years how long does it take to count as a ‘tradition’? If someone said, Christian churches couldn’t have steeples because it wasn’t required there would be a riot. Since this is Switzerland, a very polite riot, but still.

“The only Gorean roleplay I have witnessed in any place outside the gorean RP sims, is a couple of instances of a master and his slavegirl shopping.”

That’s just it though, this kind of thing is fine I believe. In fact it’s great. One thing that has been pointed out to me is that a lot of the instances I’ve witnessed are from people new to Gor and indeed SL as a whole who simply haven’t learned how to behave in a reasonable way. It’s certainly possible that this covers many of the instances I’ve seen (although certainly not all by far). The problem is that Gorean is as Gorean does. So if someone comes to a place dressed as a Gorean, saying Gorean things and with a bunch of Gorean groups etc in their profile, they get viewed as Goreans and thus representatives of that subculture. Now the genuinely reasonable and fair Goreans (I’m sure there are many) then get tarred with the same brush. It was the same with the Vampire roleplayers who plagued SL so much. The genuine roleplayers, no problem at all. But when every n00b on the grid is getting recruited (“bitten”) and told that the way to advance is to recruit more, then we see the waves of vampires descending on every location and spamming people with invitations, often with trickery. Perhaps roleplaying groups who include activities with the potential for disrupting other grid-users need to be more stringent in who they let join their groups and perhaps they can find a way to encourage new members to learn correct ways to behave as part of their introduction to roleplaying? Like I said earlier, when visiting roleplay sims, we all get given notecards saying what is acceptable and how to behave when in that sim. In return, is it not reasonable that roleplayers leaving that sim to enter the rest of the grid should be giving a notecard telling them what is acceptable and what isn’t when entering the grid? Obviously I don’t mean in practice but at least in spirit. Just a thought anyway.

It basically boils down to roleplay should be kept in roleplay areas, public behaviour kept for public areas. Ari’s comment about public areas belonging to whoever gets there first is so obviously nonsense I won’t even bother to argue the point).

“It boils down to manners I guess, something that is far too uncommon in Second Life, goreans or not.”

Again, I’d agree. It does boil down to a simple lack of respect for others and no, it’s not confined to Goreans.

It boils down to manners I guess, something that is far too uncommon in Second Life, goreans or not.

On the minarets in Switzerland… dont they have freedom of religion there? that suprises me, I thought it was a civilized country.

In other words, if you come into a place and some Harry Potter or Gorean role players are already at it, what right do you have to bitch and whine. Just shut-up and move on. But the same vice-versa also is true. If are there first and they come along,. you have every right to bitch and whine about it and ask them to stop or move-on.

“Public area” = first-come-first-right.

JayR Cela :_)