By: Patholic

The following was in response to a statement made on The Gorean Forum regarding "slaves and honor." Could not a slave have honor if her master "instructed her to act with honor in all things?"

If anything, the man so commanding simply does not grasp what he is talking about or means the word "honor" in a different way.

Think about the statement itself. The slave is being "instructed" to act with honor. For the slave, the focus isnt on the word "honor" but on the word "instructed," for she is being instructed by her master to do something. Her first priority is to obey his will, to respond to his instruction with obedience. What she is actually told to do is secondary to this.

Commanding a person to "act with honor" does not make them honorable. Their behavior is only a display of their compliance to the command. How they are acting is an imitation, a manner assumed because as a slave, they must do so. Even if this is how they would wish to behave, that desire is obviously secondary to the desire and command of the master, if the words "slave" and "master" (in the sense of owner) are to have validity.

Honor is something that is dependent upon "free will" to have. The directives of "devotion" (which can be seen as what truly does guide a slave in a similar sense to what honor does the free) and "obedience" conflict with the notion of "free will," for to be devoted and obedient to another's will, you have to sacrifice your own. If you are under the command of another, to the degree a slave is, then you are being directed by the will of another. A girl's level of devotion reflects just how much she has submitted to that other's will, and how deeply she has embraced her femininity (Slavery is a condition. What a woman embraces through slavery is her femininity).

Saying that "in the real world we all have free will" doesn't really work either, for in any sort of master/slave relationship a degree of free will must be given up for the relationship to exist at all. If the slave takes back her free will, and decides to reject a command, she can't have her cake and eat it too. In taking back her free will she is taking back her freedom and thus stepping out of the slavery equation, even if only temporarily (even slaves on Gor can do this, though the choice is to die. As free people they dishonor themselves in the first place by choosing slavery over death, but in later rejecting slavery and choosing to die they take back their freedom and free will, and with it their honor). To be a slave one must be *enslaved* (slavery is a condition, there must be two parts - master and slave - otherwise the individual is free, with the want to be enslaved or inclination towards that state) and give up their free will, even if they have the ability to take it back in the consensual-slave sense. But the two concepts - enslaved/slave and honor - cannot exist at the same exact time.

It is also erroneous and insulting for a slave to claim that her "honor" is her slavery, as if her dedication to her master and her nature as a slave is somehow a display of honor and is itself honorable (besides the simple fact that to Goreans, submitting to slavery is one of the ultimate dishonorable acts - which rejects the whole subject of "slave honor" instantly, at least in Gorean terms). It is not (especially since the slave could even be commanded to oppose her own slavery, or for that matter, be freed). Such is a display of her *devotion* to her master. That word - devotion - should be the one slaves focus on, in a similar sense that the free do honor.

I think a man commanding his slave "to act with honor in all things" is simply misusing the word honor and likely does not himself grasp the depth of the word he is using. He is probably using it to mean something like "do the right thing at all times," or more likely, "behave in a way I would find pleasing," but even if that is what is meant, what does that really mean? Who defines what is "the right thing?" To a slave, it is the owner who provides the answer and tells her his expectations, with her devotion to him governing how hard she strives to obey. To the free person it is his own convictions that direct him and the choice, or better yet, the will to stand by them, which constitute his honor.

- Patholic
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