What is "mastery"?

Why would you care to know?
"Mastery" of a man over a woman is achieving control, but it is something more than merely that. A man is usually, but not always, larger and stronger than the female. Mastery in this sense, does not depend on that.

There is a manner, a way, in which a handicapped male may erert as much control, as a large, muscular vibrant man.

Show me a man being harsh with a woman to prove he is a tough man, and I will show you a fool with no more grace or talent of mastery, than a brute.

Granted that Gor is and should be all things stated, still Gor and mastery of women requires a further step. This step is the distinction between intelligent mastery and abuse. Remember that famous Gorean quote: Perhaps it should only be added that the Gorean master, though often strict, is seldom cruel. The girl knows, if she pleases him, her lot will be an easy one. She will almost never encounter sadism or wanton cruelty, for the psychological environment that tends to breed these diseases is largely absent on Gor. this does not mean that she will not expect to be beaten if she disobeys, or fails to please her Master. Outlaws of Gor, pages 53-54

It is mindless force, mental and/or physical, to force a woman to do something, merely to show one is a "strong or Dominant man". The mastery, and the Gorean way, is to treat a pleasing slave in such a way as to cause her to be more pleasing, or to achieve some other logical purpose or outcome.

Men and women think differently, and are better at different things. The skillful Master uses knowledge of this, and other gender-general and individual-specific nuiances, so as to achieve his perfect "slave".

"An interesting contrast here is the Gorean master/slave relationship. Men tend to be extremely interested in things they own, and tend, usually, to be quite fond of them. Owned women do not form an exception to this general rule. The slave girl is commonly desired and prized by her master; she is one of his treasures. The Gorean master, interested in her and attentive to her, wants to know everything about her, in her emotions and feelings, in their feminine, lyrical detail. Conversing with a lovely slave is one of the many pleasures of owning her. It is almost impossible for a girl to keep her thoughts or feelings from her master. He knows her too well. Most girls are extremely responsive to their masters, and love them deeply, with that incredible love which can be known only by an enslaved woman, that love which a woman can accord only to a man who is her total master. Yet I would be remiss did I not mention that even the most vital, animate slave, delightedly conversing with her master, knows that at a mere snap of his fingers she may have to tear aside her garments and serve him as a chain slut. She is owned. Too, many slave girls are kept by men who are harsh and cold to them, who despise them as mere slaves. These girls, too, of course, must obey. They, too, of course, must perform perfectly for their masters." FIGHTING SLAVE OF GOR, Pg. 99

"Excellent slaves are seldom beaten, for there is little if any, reason to do so. To be sure, such a a girl, particularly a love slave, occasionally desires to feel the stroke of the lash, wanting to feel pain at the hands of a beloved master, wanting to be whipped by him because she loves him, in this way symbolizing to herself her relationship to him, that of slave to master, her acceptance of that relationship and her rejoicing in it." MAGICIANS OF GOR Pg. 124 & 125

"May I speak, Master?" asked the girl. "Yes," I said, as Marcus would not respond to her. This permission may be given by any free person and is effective, unless it is overruled by the true master." VAGABONDS OF GOR, Pg.486

"The slave is totally subject to the Master in all ways, and in all things. She is his to do with as he pleases. She depends on him forher food and the merest scrap of her clothing, if any. She is subject,completely , to his discipline, to his abuse and his whip. She is owned, like a sandal or saddle. She may be slain even on a whim, if her master wishes" BLOOD BROTHERS OF GOR.

"A slave girl is often very careful about meeting the eyes of a free man directly, particularly a stranger. They can be cuffed or beaten for such insolence" MAGICIANS OF GOR.

"The control of a girl's clothing, and many other things, such as her diet, chaining, name, whether or not her head is to be shaved, and so on, are all within the purview of the master. His power over the slave is unqualified and absolute." MAGICIANS OF GOR Pg. 26

"I considered the unilaterally of the master/slave relationship. All power is with the master. This, of course, has its effect upon the slave. Let her strive to be such that her master will keep her." MAGICIANS OF GOR, Pg. 127.

She loves you," I told Hassan.
"I have given her no choice," he said.
I supposed it true. I supposed, further, that the rare event had here taken place of a girl meeting her true master, and a man his true slave girl. The girl, one among thousands less fortunate, had encountered a male, surely, too, one among thousands, who could be, and was, to her and for her, her absolute and natural master, the ideal and perfect male for her, dominant and uncompromising, who could, and would, demand and get her full, yielding sexuality, which a woman can give only to a man who owns her totally, before whom, and to whom, she can be only an adoring slave. This happens almost never on Earth, where, the normal male/female relationship is the result of a weak, pleasant male's releasing of the female's maternal instinct, rather than her usually frustrated instinct to submit herself fully to a truly dominant male as a held and owned, penetrated, submissive female: it does occur, however, with some frequency on Gor, where girls, slaves, are more frequently traded and exchanged. One tries different girls until one finds her, or those, who are the most exquisite, the most pleasing: one tends then to keep them: this tends,too,to work out to the advantage of the women, the female slaves, but few, except themselves, are concerned with them, or their feelings; men, it is clear, have a need to dominate:few deny this; none deny it who are informed; in the Gorean culture, as it is not on Earth, institutions exist for the satisfaction of this need, rather than its systematic suppression and frustration; the major Gorean institution satisfying this need is the widespread enslavement of human females; the master/slave relationship is the deepest, clearest recognition of, and concession to, this masculine need, felt by all truly vital, sexual male; but, in the Gorean theory, this masculine need to dominate, which, thwarted, leads to misery, sickness, and petty, vicious, meaningless aggressions, is not an aberration,nor an uncomplemented biological singularity in males,but has its full complementary, correspondent need in the human female,which is the need, seldom satisfied, to be overwhelmed and mastered; in primitive mate competitions, in which intelligence and cunning, and physical and psychological power, were of biological importance, rather than wealth and status, the best women, statistically, would fall to the strongest, most intelligent men; it is possible, and likely, that women, or the best women, were once fought for, literally, as well as symbolically, as possessions; if this were the case then it is likely that something in the female, genetically, would respond to dominance and strength; most women do not, truly want weak men; they wish their children to be born not to an equal but a superior; how could they respect a man who in stature and power was no more than themselves. the equal of a woman, a prize; given the choice to bear the child of an equal, or a master, most women would choose to bear the child of a master; women long to bear the children of men superior to themselves; it is a defeated woman whose body grows fat with the child only of an equal; just as evolution,at one time, selected for strong, intelligent men, capable of combat, because they were successful in mate competitions, so too, correspondingly, in the transmission of genetic structures it would be selecting for women who responded to, and yielded to,such men, women who were the biologically specified such men either mated with weaker men, her children then being less well adapted for survival, or, perhaps, fled away, and her genes were lost, for better or for worse, to the struggling human groups; the female who was excited by such men, and longed to belong to them, to masters, and keep by them and serve them, had the best chance of survival; she was the best protected; further her children would be more intelligent and stronger.Tribesman of Gor...page 163

It is hard to be a man," I said, "until one stands in a relation to a woman. and, I suppose, it is hard to be a woman until one stands in a relation to a man."
"What relation," she asked, "Master?"
"That of the natural order of nature," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I looked at her. "I cannot know well the nature of your feelings," I said, "but I know, and well, that women are deep as well as beautiful."
"We are so different from you," she said. "I fear you will never understand us."
"It is doubtless easier to put you on your knees and push the whip to your teeth than it
is to understand you," I said.
"The man who truly understands us," she laughed, "is the first to put us on our knees
and make us kiss the whip." Explorers of Gor...page 188

You are slave. In actual practice, of course, masters tend to pay a great deal of attention to the thoughts and feelings of their lovely slaves. Her deepest thoughts and desires, as well as her most trivial fancies and observations, are open to him and, because he owns her, of great interest to him. A man is much more likely to be in tensely fond of a girl he owns than of a free individual toward whom he stands in a mere contractual relationship. The latter he does not own; the former he does. The owned girl is a valuable; she is precious; this makes her much different from a business partner. For what it is worth, the most intimate and deepest loves I have known have been between masters and their slaves, that between the love master and his love slave."
"But the woman is still a slave," she said.
"Yes," I said, "totally and categorically. She may even be sold, if he wills."
"The attention and love such a girl obtains," she said, "need not be accorded to her."
"No," I said. "It is a gift of the master."Explorers of Gor...page 354

The slave girl learns to think of herself as deeply and radically feminine, as uncompromisingly feminine. she thus, soon unconsciously, thinks and moves as what she is, a female. Moreover there is a special modality to the movements of the slave girl. She knows not only that she is a female, but female in the most radical and profound sense, and owned female, one at the bidding of masters. this excites her, and cannot help but be reflected in her movements. She is the most natural, biological and
profound of women, the woman at the mercy of men, who must obey and serve them, the slave girl. The blond haired barbarian put a bit more wood on the fire. I smiled. The men of Earth think often of sex as a simple matter of explicit congress. This is, however, much too limited. The perimeters of sex are not limited to those of physiological union. Any woman, I suppose, knows this; it is unfortunate that it is not recognized by more men. The blond haired barbarian and I, she beneath my will, were now surely intensely engaged in sex; yet she was feet from me, and I was not touching her.Explorers of Gor...page 318-319

Men," she said, "are only interested in women's bodies."
"I have never known a man who was only interested in a woman's body," I said. "This is not to deny that some such unusual person might somewhere exist."
She looked at me.
"If what you say is true," I said, "it would be the case that it would make no difference to a man whether the woman with whom he was relating was conscious or not. Indeed, if what you say is true, it should not even make a difference to him whether he held a sentient woman in his arms or an unconscious mechanism designed to resemble such a woman. I submit, with all due respect, that that is not only libelous, but preposterous. Surely no rational person, male or female, if they took a moment to reflect, could entertain so peculiar a hypothesis. No man with whom I am familiar would be content with a woman who lacked consciousness. That sort of thing is simply stupid. It seems to me it would even have limited propaganda value." Explorers of Gor...page 353

"Perform," I commanded.
Almost instantaneously she seemed transformed. I was startled. I found myself for the first time, partner to a woman's dream. How vividly she was re-enacting the experience. Nay, how intensely was she reliving it. I could sense almost the high, oblong stone, that rude, barbaric eminence, on which, cross legged, sat her master. I could almost sense the torches, the pool of reptiles to one side, the rude altar, with its rings, in the background. I could almost feel and see the savages, those red men and women, in their ornate robes and feathers, in the midst of whom a white beauty, freshly enslaved, piteously strove to save her life by pleasing her stern red master. I watched her perform. I marveled. I think that no one will ever again be able to lie to me about women. How incredibly exciting and marvelous they are! What a fool a man is who does not seek, and release, the deepest slave in them! Then she was on her belly, whimpering, scratching at the turf, her face pressed against it. Delicately she extended her tongue and licked a stone. Then, moaning, she rolled onto her back and twisted, moving her head from side to side, in the dirt before me. The firelight was beautiful on her body. I think there was no aspect of attitude of her beauty which she had not, pleadingly, presented before me for my inspection and appraisal. Then she lay on her back, her knees drawn up, before me. She arched her back. Her breasts were lifted beautifully. I observed their lovely rise and fall, correlated with the respiratory cycle of her small lungs. Then she lay back, her shoulders in the dirt, and pressing against the earth with her small feet, piteously lifted before me, for my examination, and seizure, if I pleased, the deep belly of her, the sweet cradle of her slave's heat. How vulnerable are female slaves! I rose to my feet, my fists clenched. She lay back, before me, at my feet.
"It was thus," she said, "that I tried to please Him."
I scrutinized, from head to toe, the naked slave who lay at my feet. I could feel my fingernails in the palms of my hand. I gritted my teeth. I must not now take her. She was not yet fully ready. One must sometimes be patient with slaves. The next time I took her, I resolved, she would be a well prepared feast. On the occasion of that feast it was my intention to teach the girl who she was, truly, to free at long last the hidden slave which was her secret self, her true self, that girl which, hitherto, had been permitted to emerge only in the disguise of clandestine dreams, that piteous girl, denied and suppressed, who had been for so long so cruelly imprisoned in the dungeon of her mind. I would free the secret slave from her dungeon; then I would make her mine. I would call her 'Janice'. Explorers of Gor...page 328-329

Why are the men of Gor different from those of Earth? Is it that it is only a matter of chance, that on Earth and not Gor due to a chance dynamic or a particular situation, the consequences of which were not understood, civilization developed not as the expression, celebration and enhancement of nature, constituting a palace within which nature might thrive, but as its nemesis, its stunting foe? I do not know. Perhaps those they call Priest-Kings, if they exist, have been thoughtful in this respect. Or perhaps it is simply that the men of Gor, unlike the men of Earth, do not choose to unman themselves. why should we do so, they might ask. And there is, I think, no answer to that question, The men of Gor, like beasts and loving gods, subject the women they own to their total mastery. It pleases them to do so. They are men. Should I be distressed, or displeased? Not truly, for I am a woman. I admire their honesty, that they scorn to conceal the sovereignty which is theirs by nature. They do not play games. They put me to their feet, where I belong. Should I be displeased? No, for I am a woman. Only where there are true men can there be true women. Whatever be the reasons, whether genetic or cultural, or both, the men of Gor are different from those of Earth. They have remained men, perhaps simply because it has pleased them to do so. This also pleased me because only where there are true men can there be true women." She put down her head. I did not stir, but continued, through half-shut eyes, to regard her, in the filtered moonlight, in the hut, tethered to the slave post, she again lifted her head.
"I did not know such men could exist," she whispered again, again in English, which language she used to express her most intimate thoughts, again so softly that she might not awaken me. She pulled toward me, on her knees, her wrists extended behind her, tethered to the slave post. "Even to look upon them," she whispered, "makes the slave in me scream for fulfillment." She sobbed, and half choked, then she said, "How terrible I am. It is fortunate that my tether is so short, I want to crawl to you and please you with my tongue and mouth. I hope that you would not beat me, if I so disturbed your rest."Explorers of Gor...page 305

I picked that hut which seemed the largest and most impressive, one in the center of the camp. On my belly, quietly, I entered it. Moonlight filtered in through the thatched roof and between the sticks which formed the sides of the hut. She was sleeping within, in her brief skins. Her weapons were at the side of the hut. She lay on a woven mat, her blond hair loose about her head. I examined her thighs, moving back the skins she wore. They had never been branded. She turned, restlessly. She was the girl who had feigned being chained at the post, to lure us into a trap. She was, I was sure, the leader of the talunas. she had given commands in her pursuit. she did not share her hut with another girl. She threw her arm restlessly over her head. I saw her hips move I smiled. She was a woman in need. She moaned. I waited until her arms were again at her sides, and she lay upon her back. I saw her lift her haunches in her sleep. 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 be thrown to his feet and subjected, totally, to his will? They wish to be women that is all. But how can they be women if men will not be men? How cruel a man is to deny to a woman the deepest need of her womanhood. Can they not care for them? Can they not see how beautiful they are, and how marvelous? Explorers of Gor,page 395-394

Kamchak was looking closely at the girls, leaning forward, squinting. I blinked a few times. "Is anything wrong?" asked Elizabeth Cardwell. I noted that there was a large welt on the side of her face, that her hair was ripped up a bit and that there were five long scratches on the left side of her face. "No," I said. Alphris of Turia appeared in even worse shape. She had surely lost more than one handful of hair. There were teeth marks in her left arm and, if I was not mistaken, her right eye was ringed and discolored. "The meat is overdone," grumbled Kamchak. A master takes no interest in the squabbles of slaves, it being beneath him. He of course would not have approved had one of the girls been maimed, blinded or disfigured. Nomads of Gor...page 138

I lowered her to the furs. I began to kiss at her body. "No," I said. Soon she began to gasp and sob in my arms. Then she began to writhe, Then she screamed in the alcove and then, shuddering, shaking, was held in my arms. "Am I not a natural slave?" she asked. "Yes," I said, "you are."There had been no mistaking the nature of her movements, her reflexes. They were clearly those of a natural slave. These things troubled me. She lay back. "And I am a woman of Earth," she said. "You are not typical," I told her. "I am typical," she said. I looked down at her. "What are you thinking?" she asked."I was thinking," I said, regarding the girl, "that the men of Earth, if they could but see an Earth woman as you are now, would scream with pleasure." "We are waiting for our masters," she smiled.

Rogue of Gor , page 19 You understand, of course, Master." she said, "that I would not have spoken to a man of Earth, those pathetic and ineffectual fools, with the intimacy, the frankness and honesty with which I have addressed you, a man of Gor?" I said nothing. "What miserable weaklings they are." she said. Rogue of Gor, page 213

The women of Earth," she said, "are starved for strong men. I cannot tell you the restlessness, the misery and frustration they feel. The men of Earth are not true men. Perhaps once they were, long ago. But that is now history. Now they are weak and ineffectual. Manhood among them is measured by its lack. Nor longer are they capable of true manhood." I doubted what she said, but, surely, I had no intention of explicitly gainsaying her, I thought it best to let her speak. "Females," she said. "are the natural property of men such as Goreans, not of men such as those of Earth. It is men such as Goreans, and not men such as those of Earth, who recognize the meaning of our beauty and simply take us, and make us serve them, but I have bathed Master and now kneel naked and bound before Him. I tell him nothing."Rogue of Gor, page 209

There are true men in this place," explained the girl. "Oh," I said, I did not understand her remark. Did she not know that true men repudiated their sovereignty, forsook their manhood and conformed to prescribed stereotypes? Was she not familiar with the political definitions? I wondered then if there might not be another sort of true men, true men, like true lions, who, innocent of negativistic conditionings, simply fulfilled themselves in the way of nature. Such men, I supposed, of course, could not exist. They, presumably, in the way of nature, would be less likely to pretend that women were the same as themselves than to simply relish them, to keep them, to dominate, own and treasure them, perhaps like horses or dogs, or, I thought, with a shudder, women.Kajira of Gor ,page 42

Sometimes slaves are skillful in immeshing masters in the toils of their beauty. How often do they conquer us with their softness! How often are we the victims of their delicious, insidious charms and wiles! What drums and alarms are found, upon occasion, in their glances and smiles. What battalions can march in a tearful eye and a trembling lip. What potent strategies can lurk in the line of a breast or the turn of a hip. How a bent knee and a bowed head can wrench a man's guts. Helplessness and vulnerability seem strange shields; how implausible is gentleness as an instrument of diplomacy; what an unlikely weapon is her tenderness. Who is most powerful, I wondered, the master of the slave? Then I realized that it is the master who is most powerful for he may, if he wishes, put her on the block and sell her or dispose of her in any way he pleases. In the end, in the final analysis, it is he, and not she, who holds the whip. It is she who, in the end, must kneel at the feet of a master, completely at his mercy, her will, in the final analysis, nothing. It is she who, in the end, in the final analysis, is owned, and must please, absolutely. Blood Brothers of Gor,page 316

You may judge and scorn Goreans as you wish. Know as well however, that they judge and scorn you. They fulfill themselves as you do not, hate them for their pride and power, they will pity you, for your shame and weakness. Beasts of Gor, page 11