Gor

What is Gor?

Gor is an invented planet from the science fiction novels of John Norman, and with that also the name for the lifestyle and roleplay people base on that world. On Gor, society is strictly patriarchal, with masters and slaves. In real life people experience that as consensual play, not as the force from the books.

What Gor looks like in practice

In practice Gor is two things at once: a book series, and a way a couple or a few people deal with each other.

Take a common picture. A woman chooses the role of kajira for herself, the Gorean word for slave. She learns a handful of positions, a few forms of address and a number of rules, and within that agreement she calls the other person Master. Journalist Helen Meriel Thomas spoke for Vice to women who do this day and night. One of them, Vivienne, put it like this: “I didn’t go into this because someone made me.” She chose it herself, and she keeps boundaries and a safeword. That is the difference from the novels, in which no one chooses anything.

The form ranges from a single evening to a relationship that lasts years. What stays the same is the emphasis on rules, rank and ritual.

Where Gor comes from

The world comes from one pen. John Norman is the pen name of John Frederick Lange Jr., born in 1931, in daily life a professor of philosophy at Queens College of the City University of New York. His first Gor novel, Tarnsman of Gor, appeared in 1966. Dozens followed, 38 titles together, and in the 1970s and 1980s, according to Wikipedia, somewhere between six and twelve million copies went over the counter.

The genre is called “sword and planet”, a cousin of the pulp adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Gor itself, according to the description on Wikipedia, is a habitable planet that shares the same orbit around the sun as Earth, but lies directly opposite it and so stays forever hidden behind the sun. Hence the nickname Counter-Earth. On it Norman built a society in which, in his own words, male-led bondage relationships are natural. That idea, not the sword fights, is what stuck.

Why people are drawn to Gor

The appeal sits in the completeness. Where loose BDSM is a scene of a few hours, Gor gives a whole world: a language, a ranking, clothing, positions and a word for everything. For anyone who wants to disappear into a role, that is more appealing than a single act. Nothing needs to be worked out from scratch any more.

What it gives depends on the person.

• For you, if you choose the submissive side, a worked-out world can bring a calm that loose arrangements do not offer. You do not have to keep working out how it should go; the form does that.
• For the giving side, Gor offers a frame in which dominance becomes a task with rules and responsibility, not only a stance.
• For a couple together, it is a shared project. The studying, the agreeing and the building of your own version take time, and that time binds.

The source material is outright misogynist, and not everyone can separate the aesthetic from the ideology. Gor also asks for work: you read, you practice, you agree things endlessly. Anyone after a quick thrill is better off with an ordinary BDSM evening.

How people experience Gor

There are roughly two camps, and that distinction decides almost everything.

The first group calls itself lifestylers or literalists. They take, according to the English-language description of the Gorean subculture, elements from Gorean culture and the division of roles into their daily life. For them it is not a game that goes on and off, but a way of living together, often 24/7.

The second group plays it as roleplay, online or in bed, without endorsing the philosophy. For them Gor is a setting, not a conviction. What both camps share is the fixed content: slave positions such as nadu, forms of address, and rules around clothing and behavior. The form is fixed; how far someone goes into it is not.

What Gor is not

“On Gor a woman may not say no, so that is how it should be.” No. In the novels a slave cannot refuse; in the real world that is exactly the distinction that makes the whole thing bearable. The women Vice spoke to keep boundaries and safewords. Anyone who reads the source material as a manual for force has not understood it, and is doing something dangerous.

“Gor is just BDSM in a different coat.” That is touchier than it looks. Many Goreans themselves say no and see it as a lifestyle, not a scene. The subculture sits badly with both feminists and part of the BDSM community, precisely over that claim of “more than play”. It overlaps with D/s and total power exchange, but does not coincide with them.

“The books are well written, that is the draw.” Rarely. The later volumes are regarded as crude pornography. What stays with people is the world, not the sentences.

What I see of it myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, active in BDSM for twenty-five years and trained as a psychotherapist. Gor does not come up with me often, and when it does, it is almost never about the books. It is about the wish for a role that is fully fixed, so that for a while nothing has to be worked out any more.

The women who ask about it are the sharpest on consent, not the sloppiest. They know the source material is problematic, and for that very reason they talk everything through. The form is strict, the agreement beneath it stricter, if anything, than on a loose date. That is not a contradiction. That is the reason it works.

More about Gor

On this site, at Gorean I explain how someone who lives this world behaves, and at kajira what the slave role involves exactly. If you want the dynamic without the setting, look at M/s, the master-slave relationship Gor is a worked-out variant of.

Beyond it, the Wikipedia page on the Gorean subculture gives the best factual overview, and the page on Gor itself shows what the criticism of the novels rests on.

Where this fits on this site

If the thought of a worked-out master-slave role appeals to you, but you want to build it with someone who puts the agreement first and not the force, a conversation is the first step. The page on the BDSM date sets out how such an evening is prepared. An ongoing Gor relationship I do not offer, but an evening in which you taste how such a role feels, I do.

Sources

• Gor. Wikipedia. Provides the first novel Tarnsman of Gor from 1966, the planet as hidden Counter-Earth, the 38 titles, the sword and planet genre, and the finding that the series shows men who abduct and abuse women and that the later volumes are regarded as sexist pornography.
• Gorean subculture. Wikipedia. Provides the distinction between lifestylers and roleplayers, the central place of training a slave, the nadu position, and that the subculture meets resistance from both feminists and the BDSM community.
• John Norman. Wikipedia. Provides the real name John Frederick Lange Jr., the birth year 1931, his professorship in philosophy at Queens College, and the print run of six to twelve million copies in the 1970s and 1980s.
• Meeting the 24/7 Sex Slaves Inspired By a Sci-Fi Series. Helen Meriel Thomas, Vice, 2018. Provides the voices of real Gorean women who chose it voluntarily, with boundaries, agreed rules and safewords.

Related terms

• Gorean. Someone who lives or plays by the world Gor, with the forms of address and rituals that go with it.
• Kajira. The Gorean word for slave, with its own system of positions and rules.
• M/s. The master-slave relationship Gor is a tightly worked-out, invented variant of.
• Roleplay. The broader umbrella, of which Gor is the most complete and most contested form.
• Total power exchange. The full handover of power that lifestyle Goreans pursue.
• Consent. The agreement that makes the whole difference between the novels and the real world.