A few years ago, I wrote about the Gorean lifestyle and mentioned how it’s a dynamic that is often incorporated into BDSM relationships, typically in a Master/slave dynamic.
Yes, I know I wrote the article seven years ago. Pipe down, over-observant denizen.
However, over the years, I’ve noticed how a lot of people are STILL conflating the Gorean lifestyle with BDSM, and I want to clear that up a bit, because… Well, that’s a thing I do. Made a website about it and everything. Anyway, let’s get started.
About the Gorean Lifestyle
If you didn’t read the article or don’t already know, the Gorean lifestyle is based on a series of books called ‘The Chronicles of Counter-Earth’, written by author John Norman, which were first published back in 1966. The relationships in the Gorean lifestyle are for the most part Master/slave, called kajira, and those in the lifestyle adhere to the culture, rituals and protocols depicted in the books.
It’s also worth noting that aspects of the lifestyle depicted in the books, like the use of slave positions and collars, are themselves based on older S&M subcultures, and precedes Norman’s book series well over a century. However, most of these things weren’t publically known back then, so the books definitely brought some light to them, which I’d wager most lifestylers can appreciate the impact of Norman’s book series.
The Gorean Lifestyle versus BDSM
Now, there are a lot of people who believe, or have come to believe that the Gorean lifestyle is a sub-culture of BDSM, and this isn’t true at all. Gorean lifestylers are not a part of the traditional BDSM community, with many people regarding them as an independent group.
While the Gorean subculture did make an impact on modern BDSM, with some details of the book series finding their way into the BDSM lifestyle, the relationships of Gorean lifestylers are focused on the Master/slave dynamic of their relationships, not BDSM.
Saying this, here are a few similarities and differences between the Gorean and BDSM lifestyles:
- The Gorean lifestyle has its own culture, rituals, rules, and values, which sometimes fit into BDSM dynamics, but these rituals are practised by everyone, no matter the Gorean community. In BDSM, people tend to make up rules that fit their particular dynamic, and God help you if you tell these people nowadays that they might be doing it wrong.
- In Gorean and BDSM, there can be slaves and bondage involved, and punishments are used to train or control the actions of the submissive/slave.
- The Gorean lifestyle is one you live on a personal level. This means that unlike BDSM, Masters in the Gorean lifestyle don’t always feel incomplete if they have no slave, whereas the same can’t always be said for Dominants. And unlike submissives, slaves don’t need a Master to feel complete.
Other similarities include the use of slave positions and collars, which I mentioned earlier, which are now common in today’s BDSM practices. One of the most popular positions is the ‘pleasure slave position‘ where a slave kneels with her legs spread, her arms placed on her thighs, and her palms turned up.
Regarding collars, they have a symbolic meaning and significance in both Gorean and BDSM. In the Gorean lifestyle, a collar marks a slave as property, while letting her beauty to her Master known to others. In BDSM dynamics, a collar traditionally marked a submissive as being permanently bound to their Dominant, but nowadays there are several different types of collars worn/given for different reasons. There are still several communities, however, that only use collars in their traditional sense.
In Conclusion
Hopefully, I shed a bit of light on more differences between the Gorean lifestyle versus BDSM. While there are things to be appreciated in the Gorean lifestyle, do NOT take any of this to mean that you should simply try to insert yourself into the Gorean lifestyle, or Gorean-based dynamic.
Just as being part of the BDSM lifestyle is not for everyone because it’s not simply a kink or something that should be taken lightly — being in the Gorean lifestyle is not for everyone for this same reason. You’d be doing a disservice to the Gorean culture, and would likely piss off a few people along the way.
