What defines a Gorean male?

[E. Edward Gray]

I think euphoric recall has a lot to do with it..

A man who often claims to be Gorean often struggles with over exaggerating his previous accolades, much the same as the women who claim him to be a farce often under exaggerate said man's previous accolades..


Both use their perception and perspective to define the man in their eyes..

The big difference is that in the novels the gorean male was able to no limit the extremes he was willing to go to in order to force the woman to witness the event from his perspective..

It has very little to do with how hard you are able to hit the gorean male, and so much more to do with the fact that there was no boundary, no remorse when it came to how hard he was able to hit you..

Today if you or I had a disagreement I could hang up, walk away.. I could sue or file claim.. I could take to physical violence if I am disturbed.. But there is a mental balance, conscious that allows me to weigh the cost of continuing the battle or just letting it go..

Gorean men didn't have such a block.. if a woman cheated or slighted you, then you kid nap, torture, rape and enslave her.. if a man insulted you, you rush to war, or hire an assassin to murder him, or target his family..

You may read the novels and they tell you that it's a show of respect to give a wide berth to the gorean man, in reality it's the knowledge that these people will do anything to get you back..

Sure the novels tell us that it's bad to place limits on our reactions, that it's more natural or primal to respond to force with great force..

And that is what defines the Gorean Male..

[Vylixan]

Guess you never visited South Europe

You mean the macho men that cry for mommy when they encounter a tall blond guy from the north that flirts with their women

[Willow]

And probably the rest, the crowd of anonymous men, that are only mentioned parenthetically, could be imagined as being just average men, pretty much akin to those that you'd have come across in Earth Antiquity

Yes. One problem with the books for our purposes is that they describe the adventures of a few unusual individuals, not all of who are even Gorean. We imagine a world largely populated by warriors and tarnsmen and adventurers, pirates, raiders and so on. In other words, all the various tough guys.

But “real” Gor was undoubtedly a lot more every day, and most of the men – and women – as Septimus says, just ordinary people. If we’re to compare it with the past on Earth, then the largest section of society would work on the land, with somewhat fewer craftspeople, and comparatively very few members of the high castes.

“Real” Gor would need thousands of peasants who would be able to support only a limited number of high caste. But this of course gets totally skewed in SL, where most of us live in cities and play high caste.

So most Goreans would spend all day long in fairly back breaking work that would leave them with little time or inclination to swagger around drinking, fighting and furring all day long. He would be up before dawn, and work for as long as there was daylight, and would most likely have an aching back for most of the time.

A society based on small agricultural villages and small, primitive industries would mean that men and women and slaves all had to work together, side by side, with the women doing their share of heavy labour as well. It would not mean equality, but a man would know that every pair of hands in his household or shop, even his village mattered. So I think that he’d be tough and unsentimental, sure, and very much master in his own home. But as Septimus said, pretty much the ordinary joes that Earth history was full of.

[Pelopidas]

Guess you never visited South Europe

You mean the macho men that cry for mommy when they encounter a tall blond guy from the north that flirts with their women

Mate, never underestimate our mothers, id go fight the Taliban before having to deal with a Cecilian or Cretan mother!

[Vylixan]

Mate, never underestimate our mothers, id go fight the Taliban before having to deal with a Cecilian or Cretan mother!

Nothing wrong with the mothers, though there is something wrong with macho's crying for mommie Though luckily the book Gorean man does not exist, the world would be a mess.

[Pelopidas]

Nah, the book Gorean man would do fine, the phony wannabes is what concerns me.

[Shikhandi Panthar]

If the comparison is accurate would that make industrialisation the lessening of men?

I think at some primeval hunter level yes. Norman using the Priest Kings to withhold science and technological advances is certainly in agreement with Nietzches belief that that science and knowledge causes the loss of, "man's belief in his dignity, his uniqueness, and his irreplaceability in the scheme of the universe".

That is a very interesting question: what is the root that made our world stray away from the male-dominated civilization that has existed, in the West at least, for millennia, until fairly recently?

Technology? Industrial revolution? It could very well be so, but exactly what is the logical relationship between the technological progress and the downfall of male domination? I could simply suggest a few quick hypothesis:

1. Armament technology: until the late 19th century, the use of "weapons of mass destruction" was unknown and it seems that once bomber planes, tanks, submarines, etc. started to appear, conflicts, and especially the World Wars involved ever-increasing manpower. As a result, while men went to the battlefront, and incidentally got killed, women stayed at home and took over the business that was held by men until then. This is pretty much what happened, at least in Europe, during WW1.

2. Birth-control technology: before the 20th century, birth control techniques were rather haphazard. Women were kept at home and in a relative state of submission / seclusion, not only because they had very large families (having more than five children was not uncommon), but also because they were supposed to have sexual intercourse with their husbands only (the contrary was not always true though), in order to make sure the children were not of bastard origin. Since the democratization of the contraceptive pill and other such techniques, women have had more leeway in choosing / changing their sexual partners and in getting their own means of subsistence.

The consequence of these two factors, at least, are that women, around a century ago, shook their yoke while the men were fighting, and, having fewer children to attend to, started to earn their own lives, thus becoming independent.

3. This, in turn, led to a third breakthrough, not so much linked to technology, this time. The moral "revolution" of the late 1960's. This was all about, not so much "forgetting" the old traditions, but rather opposing them as an oppressing paradigm. The patriarchal structure of the Western culture tumbled, and it had consequences within most social contexts (family, business, etc.). This came along with the sexual revolution / liberation and the feminist movement.

Oddly enough, Norman's novel appeared in the midst of this, with a blend of protest against the armament escalation of the Cold War (the Priest King's limitation on technology) and a return to the previous model of man-dominated society (the whole anti-feminist Gorean theme of women's submission). Added to this, the theme of women's sexual slavery, available to all men's use and the use of slave wine (as a fictional substitute for the pill), was, oddly enough, along the lines of the sexual liberation advocated by the May 68's revolution. In the end, it is as if Norman, out of the three factors that shaped our world, only picked one and left the others aside, creating a fiction from these premises.

Now, is Norman extolling the virtue of a world that has collapsed? I would think so. Is this fading world a "natural order" towards which we should turn again? However fond I might be of the Gorean theme, I am always suspicious, when the "natural order" argument is promoted (as Norman does here and there) as the founding ground of an ideology. This sounds to me like a conceptual tour de force or just begging the question…

[Pelopidas]

Was reading a book the other day about how the humble washing machine changed the world more than the internet. Think of it, with the invention of all those home electric appliances, cooking, washing, cleaning, activities that would take all day in the past now could be completed quite faster. Millions of women could now work if they wanted to and keep a household as well. So what technologies we can pick is a bit arbitrary. World wars played a significant role too, when millions of men found their way into the battlefields women massively joined the labor market to replace them. But that also meant that those women had some kind of skills other than cooking or cleaning, which means that they had gone through public education. So the changes are broader and all interdependent.

So one could focus on structural changes like that, family structure, division of labor, industrialization and so on, but it would be advisable not to build a grand narrative, like Norman does, cause usually such grand narratives ignore cultural diversity. For instance, yeah, those Ancient Spartans were tough and kick ass, but also Sparta was the only ancient Greek city that allowed women freedoms other cities did not. That Spartan Queen, in the film 300, speaking her mind and having a say and an influence is an archetypical case of the place of Spartan women in Spartan society. Japanese society got modernized and industrialized like the Western ones but that didnt change very much family dynamics.

[KataMagnus]

That is a very interesting question: what is the root that made our world stray away from the male-dominated civilization that has existed, in the West at least, for millennia, until fairly recently?

Not to derail, but there is still an argument for Western Civilization being very much a male dominated society today.
/endderail

I know a few gents who play "Gorean" Excpetionally. Well, some girls who play guys play them exceptionally well too. For me, it's about the confidence. Book knowledge, etc, is all secondary. Gorean men act like the world is theirs, and in the case of Gor, it is. They don't' need to smack FW or fur slaves to make their "TRUE DOMINANCE" known. THey don't even need a black hat and a belt buckle. The ones I've interacted with will let Free Women run their mouth, because they really don't care. When action is undertaken, however, then they spring into action and smack em down - and sometimes, don't even collar them.

Philosophy aside, it's about embracing the pulp, and the utter ridiculousness of the "Gor" scene, in addition to knowing their limits.

2 cents, there it is.

[Conall]

The ability to drink lots of beer.

The rest? It depends .. Men are different.