Explorers of Gor - selected highlights.

For example, in the slave brand, the 'Kef', though clearly a Kef and in cursive script, is more floral, in the extended, upturned, frondlike curls, than would be the common cursive Kef. This tends to make the mark very feminine. It is at this point that the symbolism of the brand becomes more clear. The two frondlike curls indicate femininity and beauty; the staff, in its uncompromising severity, indicates that the femininity is subject to discipline; the upturned curves on the frondlike curls indicate total openness and vulnerability.

"The Nyoka flows into Schendi harbor, which is the harbor of the port of Schendi, and moves thence to Thassa."

The men in the crowd regarded her, curiously. Had she never been sold before?

She tried to turn away, and cover herself, her feet in the damp sawdust. The inside of her left thigh was stained yellow, as she had lost water in her terror.

They had seen, I gathered, few Earth girls. They did not understand the effects of years of insidious, pervasive, anti-biological conditioning. Their own culture, perhaps because of the limitations imposed on it by Priest-Kings, who did not wish to be threatened or destroyed by an animal with which they shared a world, had taken different turnings. They would not understand a world in which dirty jokes had point, a world in which a woman's attractiveness was supposedly a function of the utilization of certain commercial products, or a world in which men and women were taught that they were the same, and in which they attempted to believe it, and would hysterically insist that it was true, bravely ignoring the evidence of their reason, senses and experience. Civilization may be predicted upon the denial of human nature; it may also be predicted upon it's fulfillment. The first word that an Earth baby learns is usually, "No." The first word that a Gorean baby learns is commonly, "Yes." The machine and the flower, I suspect, will never understand one another.

How shamed she was. Why was she so ashamed that she had sexual needs and was sensuousy alive? Of course, I reminded myself, of course, she was an Earth girl.

"Please," she cried. "Sentence me only to a penal brothel!"

"The penal brothel is too good for you," said the praetor.

Surely she must have sensed that the mouth kiss which she had so helplessly proffered, and had proffered as a slave, was the symbolic opening of her vagina to male penetration.

But perhaps weak men, who fear true women, have conditioned them so. It is not clear that any true man would object to a true woman. It is clear, however, that those who fear to be either will object to both. Values are interesting. How transitory and peculiar are the winds which blow over the plains of biology.

"I can be attractive, if I wish," she said.

"I doubt it," he said.

"Behold!" she said, striking a pose.

I did not greet her. She was the sort of woman who is best greeted by throwing her upon her back and raping her.

"I will now touch you," I said.

"I am frigid," she wept. "Do not kill me, I beg of you."

"I do not find it difficult to believe, Master," she whispered. "Merely to look at the curtains excites me."

"Oh," she said, softly, moving, "I did not know it could be like this. Never before have I been locked in a man's arms in this fashion. How sweet it is. How helpless I feel. I am beginning to become excited, Master. I am beginning to become terribly excited, Master!"

"Could I dare to be a woman on this world?" she asked.

"Yes," I told her.

"But what if I wish to crawl to a handsome man, and beg to obey him?" she asked.

"On this world," I told her, "you may do so."

"But would he not then, as a gentleman, scandalized, lift me hastily to my feet, embarrassed, implicitly belittling me, and encouraging me to the pursuit of masculine virtues?"

"Would you fear that?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Is that why you would hesitate to crawl to a man?" I asked.

"Of course," she said.

"On this world, as a slave," I said, "you need have no fear."

"What would he do on this world?" she asked.

"Perhaps instruct you in the proper way to crawl to his feet," I said.

"It is basically simple," said Ayari. "One determines what one wishes to prove and then arranges one's principles in such a way that the desired conclusion follows as a demonstrable consequence."

"I see," I said.

"Logic is as neutral as a knife," he said.

"But what of truth?" I asked.

"Truth is more troublesome," he admitted.

"I think you would make an excellent diplomat," I said.

"I have been a fraud and charlatan all my life," said Ayari. "There would thus be no transition to make."

"I do not understand," I said.

"You will, in time," he said.

"Do you menace me?" I asked.

He put his hands on my shoulders. "By the crops of Ukungu, no," he said.

Such blood might attract the bint, a fanged, carnivorous marsh eel, or the predatory, voracious blue grunt, a small, fresh-water variety of the much larger and familiar salt-water grunt of Thassa.

"Please take me into your arms," she said. "I am an Earth woman who has been made a Gorean slave girl. You need not respect me as you might a Gorean woman and I am further only a slave. Do not respect me!"

"I do not," I told her.

"Thank you, Master," she said.

"I beg to earn clothing, in any way my master may see fit," she said, "and I, humbly, beg this as what I am, only a slave."

She lifted her head. Our eyes met.

"Engage in female display behaviors," I said.

Females of Earth, not permitted to move as women, are expected to perform what are, in effort, male-imitation movements. It is little wonder that they occasionally, crying out with frustration, dance naked before a mirror. It is little wonder that in their dreams they are roped and thrown to warriors. On Gor, of course, the woman, if she be slave, is no longer prohibited, because of cultural requirements, from expressing the kinesthetic realities of her womanhood.

"I held her, tightly, and looked sternly into her eyes. "You are not a man," I told her. "You are a woman. That is what you are. Try to understand that. You are a woman, not a man."

"Yes, Master," she sobbed.

"I feel the desire for meat," had said Kisu. "I, too," I said. "I will hunt." Kisu and I, warriors, wanted meat. Too, ahead of us we suspected that the river, as we had been warned at the last village, would become ever more dangerous and treacherous. We felt the long-term strength of meat protein would be a useful addition to our diets.

"I will need a beast of burden," I had said.

The blond-haired barbarian, immediatly, had sprung to her feet. She had stood before me, her head down. "I am a beast of burden," she had said.

She was starved for a man's touch. Such women, in their waking hours, are often tense and restless; it is not unusual, too, for them to be irritable; and many times they are hostile toward men; many times they are not even fully aware of the underlying causes of their uncomfortable conscious states; how horrified they might be if they were told that they were women, and desired a master; yet must they not, on some level, be aware of this; would not their hostility toward the male who does not understand their needs or is too cowardly or weak to satisfy them not be otherwise inexplicable; what other hurt could the uncooperative male be inflicting upon them; the more he tries to please them the more they demand; the more he tries to do what they claim to wish the more he finds himself disparaged and despised; can he not see that what they really want is to thrown to his feet and subjected, totally, to his will?

"I fell to these women," he said. He lifted his chained wrists. "They made me their work slave," he said.

"Surely they forced you to serve their pleasure, as well," I said.

"Sometimes they would beat me and mount me," he said.

"Unchain him. He is a male," I said.

"I will no longer be permitted to fight my femininity, will I?" she asked.

"No," I said. "You are now a slave girl. You will yield to it, and fully."

"I'm frightened," she said.

"That is natural," I said.

"It will make me so loving and helpless," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"Can I dare, too, now," she asked, "to be sensuous?"

"If you are not fully pleasing in all the modalities of the slave girl, sensuous and otherwise," I said, "you will be severely punished."

"Yes, Master," she said.

For what it is worth women tend on the whole to be unsuccessful in conforming to masculine images, and tend to take gracefully and naturally to feminine images, towards which they seem to have genetic predispositions. Perhaps that is because that is what they really are, not men but women. Sex is superficial. Not one cell in the body of a woman is the same as that in the body of a man.