We’re about to tackle another complicated subject and, as you’ll have gathered, while I like to explain things, I also like to make them simple. The slave heart, I think that out of his 34 novels, Norman loses himself in it for at least 200 to 250 pages without ever explaining it clearly, nor realizing the absurdity and paradoxes of the concept.

But here, we’re going to take a look at the purely Gorean aspects. How, in the world of Gor, is a kajira’s slave heart created, and above all, what is it? This is very important to understand, because every kajira knows this, even feels it. And every free person demands it, even those who despise slaves. So all slaves, whether they really have it, fully or not at all, know what the slave heart is, and know how to make people believe that they all have it. Their survival depends on it.

Free Woman & woman

A small point to remember from Gorean culture: woman and Free Woman do not have the same meaning in Gorean. Free Woman is a female who is an active member of society and has rights. Woman is the word that designates the enslaved and possessed female animal: the kajira. The latter is expected to be nothing but femininity, i.e. in the Gorean sense: sensual and erotic animality, exquisitely beautiful and absolutely obedient.

EXTRACTS FROM THE NOVELS

You’re a slave,” I explained. You’re possessed. You’re a female. You will be forced to be a woman. If you were free and Gorean, the men would let you stay as you are, but you’re neither Gorean nor free. The Goreans won’t accept any compromise on your femininity, not from a slave. You’ll be what they want you to be: a woman, entirely, and their property. If necessary, they’ll whip you or let you starve. You can fight your master. He’ll let you, if he feels like it, to prolong the pleasure of your conquest but, in the end, you’ll remain the slave; and you’ll lose. On Earth, you had a society behind you, the result of many centuries of feminization; when a man simply dared to speak harshly to you, you could flee or appeal to the magistrates; here, however, it’s not you that society supports, but him; it will take account of his will, because you’re only a slave; you won’t be able to flee or call anyone to your rescue; you’ll be alone with him, and at his mercy. What’s more, the men here are not conditioned to fight their instincts, to feel guilty, to hate themselves; they’ve learned pride and, in the very air they breathe, the domination of women. These men are different. They’re not Earthlings. They’re Goreans. They’re strong, they’re tough and they’ll conquer you. With Earth men, you might never be a woman. With the men of Gor, I assure you that, sooner or later, you will be one.

The Gor Tribes

The slave heart

This term refers to the nature of slavery and the total devotion of slave-girls to all free people. It’s not just devotion to their own master, but to all. This is the whole and core of what all kajirae are, once broken, trained and eventually educated. Once they’ve become trained slave-girls, enslaved women are blank pages, and they’re filled with nothing but this principle, which becomes their main motivation, their only guide: in short, it’s to please the men, please the free. But it’s more complicated than that.

– Blind obedience:

A slave-girl will do anything to obey a master’s order, because doing so is not only a duty – and she will be punished if she doesn’t – but also an intense concern to please the master by obeying in the most faithful, efficient, pleasant and pleasurable way possible. A kajira cannot even imagine disobeying: the idea will make her tremble with fear, both of the sentence, and of mortifying herself at the risk of disappointing the master, and then her own master.

– To be pleasing to masters:

To please at all costs implies becoming what the master expects of the slave, doing everything to make his life easier, to please him, to attract his interest and arouse his satisfaction, to fulfill his every desire. A slave-girl can’t put her own desires and interests before those of a free person, and she won’t put any of them before her master’s, even if it means suffering or risking her health or her life.

EXTRACTS FROM THE NOVELS

“It’s natural for a young slave-girl, of course, to regard her master with some apprehension. After all, she’s an animal, belonging to him, over whom he has total power. The rational slave-slave, on the other hand, will almost never intentionally displease her master. For one thing, it costs too much. Secondly, for reasons sometimes obscure to men, which have to do with the fact that she’s a woman, she rarely desires him”.

Savages of Gor, p. 140

Progressing to perfection:

Perfection is demanded in everything a kajira has to achieve. A slave-girl will rack her brains, learning from other freedwomen and slaves how to be ever more pleasant, ever more perfect, ever more available, ever more efficient, ever more pleasant, ever more loyal. As her master will want to know everything about her, a kajira will strive to know everything about the free and their tastes, preferences, etc., so she can serve them better and please them.

EXTRACTS FROM THE NOVELS

Do you know, in the end,” I asked, “who will be your best trainer? “No, Master,” she replied. “You, yourself,” I replied, “the girl, herself, eager to please, imaginative and intelligent, monitoring her own performance and feelings, will lovingly strive to improve and refine them. You yourself will be largely responsible for making you the superb slave you will become”.

Savages of Gor, p 210

To be the honor and pride of its master:

Everything a slave-girl does reflects on her master’s honor and pride. She herself is not supposed to have any pride other than the idea that she is her master’s pride and, being enslaved, she has no honor. The only things that count then are the quality of her art to serve, her perfection to please, her dedication and efficiency. Beyond the fact that the more this pride and honor are served with quality, the more the slave-girl can hope to escape the harshest treatment, to do so, in the mind of a kajira, is to honor her master; the deepest way of being pleasing to him.

Never complain:

A Kajira is fed, housed and clothed by her master, and everything she is, the very fact that she breathes and is alive, she owes to him. Every gesture is a privilege, from a caress or a pastry to a small decorative jewel. In the mind of a Kajira, even gratuitous punishment has a meaning. Only a master who did care about his slave-girl would take the time to discipline her. A Kajira never complains about her fate, because she knows that she owes everything she is, including her life, not only to her master, but also to other free people.

Never hide anything:

Once cruelly trained and reduced to a blank page on which to write her new nature, a Kajira can hide nothing of her emotions and desires. They have been laid bare and animalized, she has been led to express them without restraint, and the slightest attempt at concealment has been punished. A kajira is the complete opposite of a free woman: she contains nothing, hides nothing, expresses everything and, of course, not only never has to lie, but is theoretically incapable of doing so.

EXTRACTS FROM THE NOVELS

“Her feelings were easily hurt, a valuable property in a slave. Nor could she control them, another excellent property of a slave. Her emotions, vulnerable, deep, exploitable in her expressions and on her face, betrayed her, exposing her to men and their amusement even more easily than if she’d been naked. They made her easier to control and enslave.”

(Page 103-104 – Tribes of Gor.)

I looked down on her. You’re a disloyal slave,” I said. She looked at me and laughed: “A collar girl isn’t allowed to have inhibitions,” she said. It was true; slaves must reveal their sexual nature, totally. If they don’t, they’re beaten.

Marauders of Gor

Living in the present:

Once enslaved, a woman loses everything she is and has been. Her history, her crimes and her deeds are erased, they no longer count. Her family ties are destroyed; her own father, son or brother no longer see her as a member of their family, but as an animal, a slave. This is the law, and during training, animalization strongly supports the destruction of all ties to the past.  Projecting into the future is also meaningless for a kajira: her destiny depends entirely on her owner, and no longer belongs to her. She can’t anticipate the future, and to try to do so is to cause herself needless suffering. This obvious fact, repeated and hammered home during her upbringing, becomes an integral part of her nature, helping her to accept her role and live it to the full. It’s no surprise, then, that many kajirae don’t remember their past… or simply ignore it.

(Note: yes, this means, and there are examples in the novels, that a father can enslave and sexually use his daughter, or a brother do the same with his sister. Judeo-Christian morality has no place on Gor. But I advise you to avoid this kind of RP. If they are coherent, they may disturb or offend sensibles players).

Slave fire:

Also called the slave womb, slave fire is the sexual and carnal appetite that all kajirae develop during their training and upbringing, by dint of conditioning and heightened awareness to experience all their feminine emotions and desires in an animalistic way. Sex is the slave’s ultimate reward, the gift offered in exchange for everything else she is. Conditioned to need it as much as drink, depriving a slave of sex is a common punishment or ordeal, as much as depriving her of food for a few days and creating the same all-consuming vital lack in her. A slave wants to please with all her might, out of devotion. But if she wants to please men so much, it’s also to calm her slave fire, which can, in some cases, be permanent and all-consuming.

EXTRACTS FROM THE NOVELS

The young slave’s excited sexuality is surely the strongest of the chains to which she is bound…” And you want more, don’t you?” he asked. “Yes, Master,” I replied, my eyes suddenly filling with tears. How helpless I was in the face of such men. “And desperately?” he said. “Yes, Master!” I cried. “Perhaps now you understand,” he said, “that slavery is not just about necklaces and chains.”

Page 251 – Gor dancer

The sensuality of women (slaves) is interesting for its globality. Their reaction is a whole, physical, emotional and intellectual. Men want sex; women are sexual desire.

Page 101 – Gor’s renegades

A slave’s sexuality is a glory that sets her apart from free women… The sexuality of the horny slave girl is incomprehensible to the free woman. It’s nothing she can ever understand. It’s a color she can’t see, a sound she can’t hear…”

Page 333 – Gor tribes

To love madly :

All Kajirae dream of truly loving their masters, of experiencing this feeling, of being able to immerse themselves in it completely and let themselves be guided by it. The absolute of a slave’s heart is this unconditional love, all the more wonderful and cruel because the master who loves his slave will be all the more demanding and ruthless, so that his own feelings don’t become a social weakness that his enemies and rivals can take advantage of. For a slave to love her master, unconditionally, is the fulfillment of a state of mind, the epitome of a slave’s heart. Literally, she has no choice, and this secret desire is the strongest known to slaves.

EXTRACTS FROM THE NOVELS

“Beauty and intelligence are all well and good,” I said, “but the best slave is the one who loves most deeply.”

Magician of Gor, P204

The absolute love of a well-trained dog

For those who haven’t made the connection, a slave’s heart sounds like the unconditional love of a well-trained dog for men in general and his master in particular, doesn’t it?

Because it’s exactly the same thing.

The mind of a kajira works in simple systems: after becoming a blank slate, the enslaved woman is trained to obey blindly and to ask, beg and please for the smallest privilege, even the right to drink or go to the loo. And so, in the course of training and education, after the terrifying trauma of having her will broken, her personality is reshaped to obey without thinking, to accept the worst humiliations as her new natural state of affairs. Naked and lacking in intimacy, with all elementary freedom drastically curtailed and all self-esteem and pride reduced to nothing, subjected to the stimulation of her senses, emotions and sexual pleasure, she reinvents herself in an animalized form. This new nature, which guides her new way of thinking, is very similar to that of the trained pet dog, who loves masters, all masters, even more his own, wants to please them at all costs, will do anything to please them, and will never think of his own interest.

That said, is the slave heart common? Well, yes, it is for breeding slaves, who know nothing of freedom and for whom this life of unconditional devotion, whatever the risks, is normal. It’s less obvious for slaves who were formerly Free Women, or even Panthers. It’s a state that can only be achieved through the violence and ruthless cruelty of slave training. For Earth women, it’s even more difficult, as they know more about the freedom and privileges of modern life than any woman on Gor could ever imagine.

And the Goreans say it themselves, they know it and that’s how they see it: the slave is an animal, that’s what they expect of him; the law considers him as such. You can’t judge a slave, their word is worthless and their life is only of commercial value. So it makes sense to train them as pets:

EXTRACTS FROM THE NOVELS

“In that sense, my dear,” I said, “I am not an animal, and you are an animal. Yes, my dear, you are legally an animal. In the eyes of Gorean law, you’re a beast. You don’t have a name per se. You can wear a collar and be leashed. You can be bought and sold, whipped, treated according to your master’s wishes, disposed of as he sees fit. You have no rights whatsoever. Legally, you have no more status than a tarsk or a vulo. Legally, literally, you are an animal.

Explorators of Gor

Simulate the slave heart

This state of mind, as described above, is not the norm. It is an absolute, more or less strong or present in a kajira, depending on her own nature, her degree of submission, her acceptance of her state, her experiences with the world and the free and, more simply, the quality and depth of her training. Many slaves will never have the devotion we’re describing, simply because they’ve been trained summarily, in the sole use of fear, and it’s through fear that they do everything they have to do.

A slave-girl, whoever she may be, has been through horrible things, enough to break a spirit and destroy personality and self-esteem. But to create a slave’s heart, you have to go much further than that, and it’s not for everyone to create such successful conditioning. Only slavers, and even then, only the best, really succeed. It’s not natural, Norman may not like it, except in the case of breeding slaves, who generally know nothing else. Even the most naturally submissive of women could not achieve this state of affairs without thorough and successful conditioning.

Also, many kajirae simulate the heart of a slave. They know how to seduce, deceive, lie, cheat, swallow their suffering and fears, and put on a good face, to please, serve well and thus ensure their survival, which depends solely on the will of their masters. No doubt they dream of living the complete feeling of abandonment and devotion that is the slave heart, hoping one day that a master will manage to give them the security and stability that will enable them to live serenely. But most will never know.

And the funniest thing is not to forget this paradox: goreans love women who resist them, who fight against enslavement, who refuse to give in and submit, and will fight against this slave heart which, sooner or later, will be imposed on them without mercy. Suffice it to say that in these women, the slave heart takes a hell of a lot of work and time to bring into being…

EXTRACTS FROM THE NOVELS

If necessary, we’ll whip you or let you starve to death. You can fight your master. He’ll let you, if he feels like it, to prolong the pleasure of your conquest, but in the end, you’ll remain the slave – and you’ll lose.

Tribes of Gor

Yes, the goreans find it exciting and amusing that a captive resists them, and even resists them for a long time. But consider this: the captive will lose, no matter what. There is no alternative. She will submit, or die resisting; and for goreans, this risk is rarely a big deal. In most cases, a dead slave-girl can be replaced. Some are very precious, for many reasons, and they’ll break her by will or force without killing her. But if that happens, too bad.

The litany of kajirae

The kajirae litany is a kind of mantra that slave-girls learn by heart and repeat for hours and days on end during their upbringing and conditioning. When a slave-girl is afraid, when she’s in doubt, when she’s lost, she’ll often be seen repeating it in a low voice. They teach it to the new ones and make them repeat it again and again. The most educated of the kajirae may even, like the educators, detail and explain its full meaning.

EXTRACTS FROM THE NOVELS

He’s the master, I’m the slave

He possesses me, I am possessed

He commands, I obey

He must be satisfied, I must satisfy him

Why?

Because He is Master and I am slave”.

Gor explorers p.184

The other well-known mantra is the series of questions and answers that kajirae endured during their training, under the yoke of an educator, having to answer again and again, until it became a reflex, to shape their thoughts and create in their minds the principles of the slave heart. There are several variants of this, here is the shortest of them:

EXTRACTS FROM THE NOVELS

“Who am I? A slave, a woman possessed.

Why am I marked? So that everyone can see I’m possessed.

What is my only duty? Absolute obedience,

What is my greatest desire? To please men.”

Assassins of Gor