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So while violence and conquest certainly played some role in human evolution, so did cooperation and conciliation, and -- contradicting the macho, individualistic romanticism espoused by some evolutionary psychologists today -- peaceful men probably bequeathed just as many, if not more, survivors to history as the warlike ones did. In any case, both kinds of traits were selectively valuable in different circumstances, and in both men and women. (Goreans seem to want us to believe that girls inherit only their mothers' genes and boys inherit only their fathers'.) In short, most evolutionary psychologists agree that it is the flexibility and diversity of human reproductive strategies and choices that have made the human animal so successful and that also account for the wild mix of human types we see around us today -- few of them conforming to the Gorean ideal.

So where does the sexual appeal of the dominance and submission scenario come from? "Why," Marcus of Ar asks, "do women find themselves attracted, on a biological level, to the 'rebel' or the 'bad boy,' the male who indicates through his actions that he is strong enough to make his own rules? Why are men attracted to females who seem willing to obey their every wish or fantasy?" He is in essence asking why the Gor books are popular, why the online role-playing of Gorean scenarios has skyrocketed and why some people are even making attempts to create Gorean lifestyles based on the philosophy that female slavery is natural and right.

There seem to be as many guesses about this as there are experts, but in essence the theories come down to two: 1) the "lizard brain" erotic theory, which says that the older part of our brains, below the cerebral cortex, makes significant physiological connections among sex, fear and aggression, which are then picked up and elaborated by the conscious mind, and 2) the "control" theory, which basically argues that our fantasies always center around getting what we don't have and controlling what we can't control. The answer probably lies in a combination of the two.

The problem for the Goreans in the lizard brain theory is that the coupling of sexual feeling with anger, pain and aggression does not break out strictly along heterosexual or gender lines. There is statistical correlation -- humps in the curve on either side of the gender line -- but there is also considerable overlap. If there weren't, we wouldn't see male submissives and female dominatrixes in the BDSM community or the gay and lesbian versions in the "leather" life, in which the dominant partner of each pair is the same sex as the submissive. We also wouldn't see individuals "switching" back and forth between the roles, as some do in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships.

Determinism according to gender is hard to sustain in view of these facts, but "Julian of London," a chillingly smooth and plausible charmer and one of the slickest Gorean apologists I encountered, has another explanation for these cross-gender "aberrations" from our supposed instincts. He says that modern society and its incorrect ideas have contaminated us and ruined our deep biological responses. "I personally suspect that in a more natural society, the vast majority of men would have the strength and integrity to trigger the submission instinct in women," he says. For him, a more natural society would be Gorean, in that it would "allow men to be strong" and to use their strength to conquer women.

And yes, he means men should be allowed to use their muscle in addition to employing mental and emotional methods of dominance, even to the extent of kidnapping, "training" and forcing sex, as happens frequently in the Gor novels. Asking for consent from a woman is exactly the wrong approach, Julian says. "For her to fire up, the woman would have to 1) see the man being strong-willed, big-hearted, etc., and 2) be 'taken' rather than begged by the man. This is what it means to be 'swept off your feet.'"

While Julian still agrees with the basic premises underlying serious Goreans' lifestyle, he is coming to have significant differences with their implementation. The current community of real-life Goreans, he maintains, not only are indulging in "too many dumb-ass sci-fi customs" but are "technophobic," and their "dogma" is too "hardheaded." In a sharp exchange with Bear and other Masters on the Gorean Public Boards, Julian also disputed, on theoretical grounds, the very foundation of the Gorean lifestyle as it is being lived: the consensual nature of the slavery entered into by women like sura.

Julian thinks that many Gorean men are eliciting that consent not so much by means of their "personal magnetism" or the proper use of masculine force but by mere reliance on the "rules" of the Gorean game. But most important, he considers the whole notion of female consent bogus and anti-Gorean. "If women respond the most to the Master who takes them without even showing the weakness of begging permission, then why should I, who know myself to be such a man, ask their consent? That is why I've said I am leaning against consent as an ideal."

Julian's fantasy is that he would be able to make a woman surrender to him totally if he were somehow able to "get away with" kidnapping and "training" her to please him. Right now, though, he not only doesn't have a good prospect in mind but doesn't have the time, the financial wherewithal or a secure place to "store" the woman -- not to mention that he wouldn't want to go to jail if things didn't work out as he expected.

Next page | The downside of abducting your own slave girl