Those with Gorean Authority

Those who have become part of the online Gorean Community soon learn who they may challenge and who they must always support. There are one or two *elders*, for want of a better word, who teach about matters Gorean. They give themselves this authority or the virtue of having “lived as a Gorean in this society for xxx amount of years” There are many who accept their authority. They copy the style and behaviour of these few. It is interesting to note the mind games that go on between these people. The subordinates have to gauge carefully what they are allowed to say and do. On the one hand a Gorean man must be a man, and speak out concerning what is right, and honourable and Gorean. They test the water. If they make an error and are pulled back in line by their mentors they make the necessary obsequious replies and admit they were in error. “After all a real Gorean man knows when to admit that he is wrong.”

Of the many anomalies in their attitudes and behaviour I find this the most puzzling. The very notion of learning about how to be Gorean, how to be a man in this day and age from a person you meet in a chat room, surely must forever preclude you from the very club you seek to join. If you really were a man with Gorean ideals, but had just not yet found a name for it, (this is what many who come to play online say), then you would fit right in without any need to be tutored in how a man should behave. Of course the fact of the matter is that no real man, and certainly none who really held Gorean ideals as valuable would associate for long with these people. Tutored they certainly are and to see the obsequiousness is truly enough to make a man squirm. Some go a little too far in testing the water however, and end up making too a grave an error to be allowed to remain. They do so in the mistaken belief that if they stand up and show themselves to be a man, they will earn the respect of the community. But no man must ever, ever question the authority of the leaders. It has happened occasionally that someone who was quite well established in the community has made this error. Then like the intelligent outsider who asked a few awkward questions, they will be ripped to pieces and hurled outside. These are usually the chaps who set up their own section of Gor. Stating how they are the real Gor and their former buddies are a lot of “gamers”