Malkinius
Posts: 1814
Joined: 1/9/2004
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cellogrrlMK
I keep seeing posts referring to females being "failures as a slave" or being a "failed slave". This is always within the context of Gor, not BDSM.
I would like to know, does the term "failed Master" or anything like that exist within the realm of folks who do Gor? If yes, what is entailed with failing as a Master, and if no, why not?
greetings cellogrrll...
Give it a little time....I will get here. <grins> I sometimes have to do other things than spend all my time online.
Yes, the failure of a Master is also something we talk about, but not as much as slave failure. I will note that in this context, Master/Mistress and Free Man/Woman are interchangable. What is not interchangeable is the difference between someone who is Free and someone who is slave. Also, irrespective of the Gorean custom of calling anyone Free Master, in this case, a Master is only defined as someone who owns a slave.
There are three areas where Goreans consider a man capable of failing. They are as a man, as a Gorean and as a Master.
Someone may fail as a man in several ways. First would be to give up his manhood and beg to become a slave. This is why most Goreans find sub males distasteful. They are failures at being men. I will grant that such behavior is truly the nature of some men. In the rest, it is giving into the perversion that our society has perpatrated on the genders. When it is considered wrong for men to be men, where they have to be part woman, then we have as much of a problem and requiring women to be part men. Men and women are different biologically, physiologically and neurologically. A male may fail through giving up on his life....shutting down and shutting the world out. They no longer care or do. That type of failure is not limited to men, women can do it too.
Someone can fail as a Gorean. These are the people who pretend to be Gorean, usually online. They go back to being something else once the computer is turned off. Also BDSMers who pretend to be Gorean or those who call the BDSM slave holding they do Gorean also fit this category.
There are certain vitues we consider to be Gorean. Failure to keep to them when you claim to be Gorean can also be where we say that someone has failed to be Gorean. Those are virtues such as Honor (the one you hear the most about), responsibility, honesty, loyalty and other things not all of which we all agree about after the first two or three mentioned. Those virtues are not unique to Goreans. They are part of what we have called taken from the books as admirable traits for Goreans. A person who is working their way, changing their life to become Gorean, but is not yet there has not failed, they just have not yet achieved the status where they and others call them Gorean.
Now we get to the one you are really asking about. Someone who fails at being a Master. The first way to fail is the same as for the slave. They say that they are not doing this any more and walk away, abandoning whatever relationship they had. Even if they had very good reasons for going away, that is still failure, especially if they just drop the slave they were responsibile for. Like a slave, they may succeed as a human, but fail at being a Master and it was the right choice for them to have made.
The second way is for a man to fail to master himself. If you can not control yourself, how do you expect to control another. Men who fly into rages over little things do not have control over themselves. Men who can not decide what they want but everything is wrong unless it was what they wanted have not mastered themselves. Men who say that everything is the slave's fault and never their fault and who keep looking for ways to punish the slave have not mastered themselves. Either that, or they are sadists pretending to be Gorean. In the books Norman calls sadism a sickness not often found on Gor. Personally, I think that is because he thought that sadists were using the infliction of pain as a way of dominance and to transfer what they felt was being done to them by others. Gorean men usually are dominant by nature, they don't have to hurt someone to prove it.
The next way to fail at being a Master is to not work at being a Master. I would stay far away from anyone who says they are a natural Master and everything automatically comes to them and they always do things right. Masters are people. People make mistakes. Masters make mistakes. Some of those mistakes hurt people and can hurt them badly. I tell new people who want a slave that first they have to learn EVERTHING they want the slave to learn, they have to learn the slave better than she knows herself and they have to learn how to Master a slave and keep that mastery over her. I won't even go into what depths and knowledge I think it takes to train a slave and know what you are doing and why it is working. Most people train on gut instinct and the slave ends up serving mostly out of love, not his mastery of her. (How many of you would understand what I mean by the accretion of psychophysiological triggers? <grins>)
Men can fail very many ways. Masters can fail in many ways. Goreans can fail in a few ways. Personlly I think most will fail primarily through not being what they claim to be and secondarily through lack of knowledge and/or lack of working at being a Master. I have failed at being a Master through the lack of knowledge and work. My failures have hurt other people. I do not wish to fail again. This is also why I try to educate others about what it means and takes to be a Gorean. Goreans hold each other to much higher standards than we do other people. I hold myself to a higher standard than I do other Goreans.
This is probably a bit longer than you expected but it is something that needs to be said, and I will rewite it a bit and put it elsewhere for others to read. So...it serves a good purpose...probably several.
be well....
Malkinius
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Failure - in the Gorean context - 
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