Slavery - The Kajira
Slave Classification
..."They all wear collars," is the first portion of a familiar exchange, of which Goreans are fond. The second, and concluding, portion of the exchange is, "But each in her collar is different." This exchange, I think, makes clear the attitude of the Gorean toward the slave girl. In one sense, she is nothing, and is to be treated as such, but, in another sense, she is precious, and is everything.
---Guardsman of Gor, 20:260
The Gorean has, for those he owns, many a different name. The region or the specific origin or use reserved to a girl will sometimes give her a 'label'. It is important though to note that slaves, from the highest to the lowest on a chain, may be used in whatever fashion determined by their Master, no name or label ever excluding one thing or another. The majority of slaves on Gor will serve both as kitchen slaves in the day, and adorn themselves in brightly colored, diaphanous pleasure silks in the evening to serve, dance and please their Master.
There is no automatic connection between what a slave wears, and whatever status or training level she has reached;, in fact it is most unusual to find a girl who actually wears silks of a color that reflect her level of training. At best, a virgin or 'white silk girl' will be given a white ribbon of silk to loop to her collar on nights when she is asked to serve men who may not be aware of her condition. All others incidentally, will simply wear pleasure silks of whatever color is handy. There need not be an identification of non virgin slaves, it is always assumed that a slave isn't a virgin unless specified otherwise.
A "white-silk girl" is a virgin slave. A "red-silk girl" is a slave who has been "opened for the uses of men." This does not mean that virgin slaves wear white, or that slaves who are not virgins wear red. The categories are rather more semantic than descriptive of garmenture. Sometimes the distinction between "red silk" and "white silk" is important, as on a slave block.
One might remember that Doreen had a white ribbon fastened on her collar when she first publicly danced in the Paga tavern of her master, Hendow of Brundisium. Her virginity, as we may remember, was being, in effect, raffled off. Too, she must dance enticingly before her master's customers, as though begging them for her own deflowering, that they might buy more ostraka, serving as "tickets." When she is hooded, and deflowered, the white ribbon is removed from her collar and replaced with a red ribbon. The white ribbon, and a slave paper, attesting to her former virginity and her subsequent "opening," indeed, a paper marked with an insolent smear of her virgin blood, were later publicly posted in the tavern, nailed to a wall in its vestibule.
The general expectation, of course, is that a slave girl would not be a virgin. Accordingly, one would not expect a red ribbon to be found on the average collar. A pleasure slave is supposed to serve the pleasure of her master, frequently, and profoundly, and as a slave girl. Accordingly, her virginity, if she had it before she was enslaved, would presumably be short-lived. Presumably, if she was ribboned, with white or red silk, that would be extremely rare, and would require some special, or unusual, context, as, perhaps, when a slave is displayed in an auction house's exhibition cage prior to her sale, or such.
A master might require a virgin slave to wear white silk when she first comes timidly to his chamber, to serve him, and then, later, he could throw her a brief tunic of red silk, which she must wear for a day or two, before her fellow slaves, and in the streets, an action the symbolic aspect of which will not be lost upon her.
This is not, of course, to deny that a slave could not, whether a virgin or not a virgin, be given silk of any color to wear, of white, red, or yellow, or of any other color.
---John Norman, Letter to the Gorean Group, Sept 20th 2000
White silk, red sillk, passion slave, pleasure slave, paga slut, kettle girl? To BE white silk means to be virgin, to WEAR white is a different story, the use of white in slave attire may mean something, or not, depending on the local custom. And certainly training levels such as the 'certified' pleasure slave, are unique to slaver houses who produce such, not something the common Gorean Master has a right to 'tag' his slave with.
The first element in slave classification is breeding
This would indicate the original status of the slave.
Barbarians are earth girls brought to Gor on the voyages of aquisition.
"You excite me, Master," she said. "Does that horrify you? Does that scandalize you? Does it startle and discomfort you, does it so dismay you, does it seem so hard to comprehend, that a woman from Earth could be sexually excited, that she could have sexual desires, that she could feel helpless and frustrating passion, that she could beg even to be sexually satisfied?"
"It is not typical," I said. "And it is not permitted."
"It is typical!" she said. "How little you know of women! And on Gor it is permitted--to slaves!"
I did not speak.
"On Gor," she said, "I have experienced feelings and sensations I never knew could exist. Inhibitions have been shattered, some of them commanded from me by strong men and the blows of the whip. I have learned to live and to feel. My emotions have been freed. My deepest sexuality and nature have on this world at last been fully liberated. I have found myself. I love and I serve. I now know at last what and who I am, a love slave for uncompromising masters.
---Rogue of Gor, 2:18
Gorean slave girls are Gorean women, born free or slave, on Gor.
Passion slaves and Exotics, are slaves bred, not captured; born in the pens of a slaver from selected breeding slaves in order to perpetuate a particular trait found pleasant and much sought-after by Gorean men.
Ho-Hak's right ear twitched. His ears were ususual, very large, and with extremely long lower lobes, drawn lower still by small, heavy pendants set in them. He had been a slave, doubtless, and doubtless, judging by the collar, and the large hands and broad back, had served on the galleys, but he had been an unusual slave, a bred exotic, doubtless originally intended by the slave maters for a destiny higher than that of the galley bench.
There are various types of "exotics" bred by Gorean slavers, all of whom are to be distinguished from more normal varieties of bred slaves, such as a Passion Slaves and Draft Slaves. Exotics may be bred for almost any purpose, and some of these purposes, unfortunately, seem to be little more than to produce quaint or unusual specimens. Ho-Hak may well have been one so bred.
"You are an exotic," I said to him.
Ho-Hak's ears leaned forward toward me, but he did not seem angry. He had brown hair, and brown eyes; the hair, long, was tied behind his head with a string of rence cloth. He wore a sleeveless tunic of rence cloth, like most of the rence growers. "Yes," said Ho-Hak. "I was bred for a collector."
---Raiders of Gor, 3:14-15
...She was fairly complected but had extremely dark hair and dark eyes, very red lips; the movement of her exquisite body was a torment to observe; she looked at me with a slight smile, regarding the black of the tunic, the mark of the dagger; her lips were full and magnificentty turned, probably a characteristic bred into her; I had no doubt this black-haired, cruelly beautiful woman was a bred Passion Slave. She was one of the most rawly sensuous creatures on which I had ever looked.
---Assassin of Gor, 12:150
Most Gorean slave girls are comely, or beautiful. This is easy to understand. It is almost always the better looking women who are taken for slaves, and, of course, in breeding slaves, it is commonly only the most beautful of female slaves who are used, these usually being crossed, hooded, with handsome male silk slaves, also hooded. The female offspring of these matings needless to say, are often exquisite.....
...Some female slaves, incidentally, have a pedigreed lineage going back through several generations of slave matings, and their masters hold the papers to prove this. It is a felony in Gorean law to forge or falsify such papers....
In the case of the bred female slave, of course, she has been legally and literally, in anyone's understanding, bred to the collar, and in a full commercial and economic sense, as a business speculation on the part of masters. The features most often selected for by the breeders are beauty and passion opposed to the pseudomasculine type of intelligence often found in women with large amounts of male hormones, is commonly linked, apparently genetically, with these two hitherto mentioned properties....
---Savages of Gor, 2:68-70
I remembered, too, the girls in the last tavern, if it was a tavern, lascivious in their dancing silks, pleasure slaves bred like animals for passion. If there were natural slaves and natural free men, as the Older Tarl had insisted, those girls were natural slaves. It was impossible to conceive of them as other than they had been...
---Tarnsman of Gor, 4:61
The next element of classification is training
Although it seems at times the words 'pleasure slave' are thrown around freely, it is written in the saga of Tarl Cabot, that in fact few slaves were pleasure slaves. The fact that a slave is used for pleasure is not what makes her a pleasure slave.
The pleasure slave "title" is subject to an accreditation process by a slaver's house following extensinve training in the arts of pleasing.
The training of the slave girls progressed. It had begun, following the period entirely consumed with exercises, with such small things as instruction on how to stand, to walk, to kneel, to recline, to eat, to drink. Grace and beauty, following Sura, and I would scarcely dare dispute such an authority, is mostly a matter of expression, both that of the face and body. I could, week to week, see the change in the girls, even Elizabeth. Some of the things they were taught seemed to me very silly, but I, at the same time, found it difficult to object.
One thing of that sort I recall is a trick where the girl feeds the master a grape held between her teeth. She may or may not have her wrists braceleted behind her back for this particular feat. One leg is folded beneath her and the other is extended behind her, toes pointed, and then she lifts the grape delicately to your mouth. Elizabeth and I used to laugh heartily over this one, but I think it was effective, as I seldom got beyond the third grape.
"Observe," once had said Elizabeth to me, to my amusement, in the secrecy of our compartment, "the twelfth way to enter a room."
I had observed. It was not bad. But I think I preferred the tenth, that with the girl''s back against the side of the door, the palms of her hands on the jamb, her head up, lips slightly parted, eyes to the right, smoldering at just the right temperature.
"How many ways are there," I asked, sitting cross-legged in the center of the compartment, on the stone couch, "to enter a room?"
"It depends on the city," said Elizabeth. "In Ar we are the best; we have the most ways to enter a room. One hundred and four."
I whistled.
"What about," I asked, "just walking straight through?"
She looked at me. "Ah," said she, "one hundred and five!"
A good deal of the training of the slave girl, surprisingly, to my naive mind, was in relatively domestic matters. For example, the Pleasure Slave, if she is trained by a good house, must also be the master of those duties commonly assigned to Tower Slaves. Accordingly, they must know how to cut and sew cloth, to wash garments and clean various types of materials and surfaces, and to cook an extensive variety of foods, from the rough fare of Warriors to concoctions which are exotic almost to the point of being inedible. Elizabeth would regularly bring her efforts back to the compartment, and the nights were not infrequent when I longed for the simple fare at the table of Cernus, or perhaps a bowl of Ho-Tu's gruel. One dish I recall was composed of the tongues of eels and was sprinkled with flavored aphrodisiacs, the latter however being wasted on me as I spent, to Elizabeth's consternation, the night lying on my side in great pain. Elizabeth was, however, to my satisfaction, taught a large number of things which, to my mind, were more appropriate to the training of slave girls, including a large number of dances, dozens of songs, and an unbelievable variety of kisses and caresses. The sheer mechanics of her repertoire, theoretically outfitting her to give exquisite pleasure to anyone from an Ubar to a peasant, are much too complex and lengthy to recount here....
---Assassin of Gor, 15:203-205
Dancers, although usually pleasure slaves first, are also a class of slave. Again if any girl can dance for her Masters, it does not make her a 'dancer', as this label is reserved for those girls who have been certified in this art by a recognized school. There is in Explorers of Gor reference to the fact that some houses specialize in breeding these types of slaves. The dancer then, can be dancer by breeding, by training, and most likely, by both.
Dancers bring high prices on Gor. Some slavers specialize in dancers, renting them, and buying and selling them. Two such houses in Ar are those of Kelsius and Aurelius. Some say that the finest dancers on Gor are found in Ar; others say that they are found in Port Kar, and others that they are in the Tahari, or in Tuna. These controversies, I think, are fruitless. I have been in many cities and in each I have found marvelous dancers. The matter is further complicated by the buying and selling of girls and their shipment, as merchandise, among cities. A dancer has usually had many masters; her fair throat has been graced by many collars. In some cities if a dancer is not thought to have been sufficiently pleasing she is thrown to the patrons of the tavern to be torn to pieces or beaten. If she is thought to have been sufficiently pleasing she may be auctioned, for the period of an Ahn, to the highest bidder.
---Explorers of Gor, 33:343
Lady's serving slaves are trained especially to attend the needs of Gorean women for their bathing, dressing and table service.
The next element is the status of the girl's Virginity
Obviously there can only be two types here: virgins or non virgins.
Glana (the white silk) virgins
The only true 'tag' to a slave that is placed upon her to restrict how she is to be used is in reference to her virginity. The 'glana', or virgin, will be marked as such to warn those tempted to taste this one's flesh, that she has not yet been used by her Master.
The expression 'white silk' applies to the virgin slave, though it is unlikely that she wears silks of white. It is not unusual that the owner of such a girl will reserve first use to Himself. Similarly, a girl who is new to a chain may find a bit of white silk knotted to her collar even though she is not virgin. This is done when the Master decides that He will first 'taste' His new girl before He will let her be used by others. In the camp of Rask of Treve, E-li-nor was so 'tagged', whether she was indeed virgin or not is unclear. When, after the feast at which all slaves, dressed in pleasure silks, were made to serve and dance, she was summoned to the tent of Rask of Treve. He reached to pull the small white ribbon from her collar, explaining to her that He had had it placed there so that He could have her first. Once the 'sampling" has taken place, the girl will never again wear the white silk as a tag.
..."Tela, when captured," he said, indicating a blonde, "begged to be kept in white silk." He laughed. "After throwing her to a crew, for their pleasure, we put her, as she had asked, in white silk." "Amusing," I said. "She now often begs for red silk," he said...
---Rogue of Gor, 23:197
"To be sure," I said, "' white' in the context of 'white-silk girl' tends less to suggest purity and innocence to the Gorean than ignorance, naivety, and a lack of experience. 'Red,' in the context of 'red silk girl,' on the other hand, connotes rather clearly, I think, experience. One expects a red-silk girl, for example, to not only be able to find her way about the furs, but, subject to the whip, owned and dominated, perhaps chained, to prove herself a sensuous treasure within them."
---Savages of Gor, 13:205
...The buyers were also informed that I was 'glana,' or a virgin. The correlated term is 'metaglana,' used to designate the state to which the glana state looks forward, or that which it is regarded as anticipating. Though the word was not used of me I was also 'profalarina', which term term designates the state preceding, and anticipating, that of 'falarina,' the state Goreans seem to think of as that of being a full woman, or, at least, as those of Earth might think of it, one who certainly is no longer a virgin. In both terms, 'glana' and 'profalarina,' incidentally, it seems that the states they designate are regarded as immature or transitory, states to be succeeded by more fully developed, superior states, those of 'metaglana' or 'falarina.' Among slaves, not free women, these things are sometimes spoken of along the lines as to whether or not the girl as been 'opened' for the uses of men. Other common terms, used generally of slaves, are 'white silk' and 'red silk', for girls who have not yet been opened, or have been opened, for the uses of men, respectively.
---Dancer of Gor, 9:128
"You are a pretty slave, Evelyn," I said.
"Thank you Master," she said.
"Are you white silk?" I asked.
"I am virgin," she said.
"Then you are white silk," I said.
---Explorers of Gor, 13:172
Falarina (the red silk)non virgins
...Similarly, the expression 'red-silk,' in Gorean, tends to be used as a category in slaving, and also, outside of the slaving context, as an expression in vulgar discourse, indicating that the woman is no longer a virgin, or, as the Goreans say, at least vulgarly of slaves, that her body has been opened by men. Its contrasting term is 'white-silk,' usually used of slaves who are still virgins, or, equivalently, slaves whose bodies have not yet been opened by men. Needless to say, slaves seldom spend a great deal of time in the 'white-silk' category. It is common not to dally in initiating a slave into the realities of her condition....
----Blood Brothers of Gor, 54:472
Then I felt him, and I could not have stopped him, had I wished to do so, as I was chained, remove the white-silk ribbon from my collar. In a moment he had fastened something else there, in its place, doubtless another ribbon, doubtless the red-silk ribbon which had been given to him earlier by Mirus. He jerked it down on the collar, snugly.
---Dancer of Gor, 11:209
The last element is with regards to use
This pertains not to status of virginity, nor training, but rather are a form of description of either what the slave is used for, or the region to which she belongs at the time. The list below includes terms used in reference to the use of slave girls, although it does not cover all of the possibilities. A complete list would be rather endless, and cover many cultural and language differences and terms that may be found both frequently or limited to one specific area of Gor.
BATH GIRL : Term used in reference to the girls who serve in the public bath houses common to many cities. The habitual cost of the bath includes use of the bath girl.
...The pools were beautiful, and yet I knew that somewhere, chained in darkness, were gangs of male slaves who cleaned them each night; and there were of course the Bath Girls of Ar, of which Nela was one, said to be the most beautiful of all Gor. Harold, as a boy, had once been a slave in the baths, those of the city of Turia, before he had escaped. He had told me that sometimes a Bath Girl, to discipline her, is thrown to the slaves in the darkness. I held Nela a bit more closely to me, and she looked at me, puzzled.
---Assassin of Gor, 13:164
BELOW-DECK GIRL : Term used in reference to slave girls transported in separate cages, their body hair shaved in an attempt to avoid lice and other vermin infestation, in the hold of a ship. The term 'below-deck girl' is used by those slave girls who are kept on the deck, and permitted to keep their hair, as an insult to those kept below it.
...The girls in the deck cages are permitted to keep their hair. The hair of the below-deck girls, mercifully, is shaved off; indeed, our body hair, too, was shaved off, completely. These precautions prevent, to a great extent, the nesting of ship lice...
---Slave Girl of Gor, 16:321
BOND MAID : Term used in reference to slave girls of Torvaldsland. The bond maid is said to be one 'whose belly lies under the sword'. They are the product of looting and raiding and the daughters of the enemy, captured in raids and thrown into the bond-maid circle often as part of the victory celebration.
The women cried out in misery. To enter the circle, if one is a female, is, by the laws of Torvaldsland, to declare oneself a bond-maid. A woman, of course, need not enter the circle of her own free will. She may, for example, be thrown within it, naked and bound. Howsoever she enters the circle, voluntarily or by force, free or secured, she emerges from it, by the laws of Torvaldsland, as a bond-maid.
---Marauders of Gor, 3:44-45
COIN GIRL : Term used in reference to a slave girl who, usually naked, and with a box for the coins to be left in tied about her neck, is sent out to earn money for her master in exchange for sexual service.
It is called the Street of the Writhing Slave. It is dark and narrow, and not far from the wharves. It has its name from the fact that most renters of, and dealers in, Coin Girls in Victoria, keep their kennels on this street. The girls of the day, designated by a coiled whip pressed against their left shoulder, wearing their neck chains, with the attached bell and coin box, are sent into the streets in the late afternoon and expected to return before the nineteenth ahn. And woe to the girl who does not return with a jangling coin box on her neck chain! Some girls, once designated, and locked in their accounterments, kneeling, weeping, scratch even at the insides of the stout gates of their masters' houses, hoping to be sent into the streets early, that their chances of turning a profit for their master, and thus avoiding a beating or torture, may be enhanced. Such a lenience, however, is seldom shown to the girls, as it is against an agreement binding the entrepreneurs engaged in this trade. Sometimes the girls are sent into the streets with their hands braceleted behind their backs. Sometimes they are sent into the streets with their small hands free, that they may use them to please their master's customers. Sometimes a new girl is sent into the streets on a leash, with an older girl, that she may leanr how a Coin Girl behaves....
---Guardsman of Gor, 17:143-144
DISPLAY SLAVE : Term used in reference to slave girls whose purpose is the display of beauty in order to impress one's assets and value upon those watching, enhancing the apearance of a caravan or party. She will usually be chained where all can see her, at the front of the caravan or tied to a man's stirrup as he enters a town or city.
I felt the collar on my throat. It was the collar of Ionicus. I was a work slave. Yet, tonight, I had not served as a work slave, but a pleasure slave. Too, Aulus had chained me at his stirrup. He had used me as a display slave, to enhance his appearance, to add to the effect he might make when he came into the presence of Pietro Vacchi. It is a use for slaves. I was proud that I had been put at his stirrup. In such small ways a slave may gather that she is exciting and beautiful....
---Dancer of Gor, 27:367
HOUSE SLAVE : Term used in reference to slave girls who serve within a home, habitually in a wide variety of ways, including kettle duties, keeping house, mat duties etc.
...I knelt small there by the table, trembling, my head down. I knew I had done wrong, daring to touch Milo, I, he so favored by the master and I only a house slave, but I had been unable to help myself....
--- Magicians of Gor, 19:312
KETTLE SLAVE : Term used in reference to slave girls used mainly in kitchen and for other menial duties.
On her throat as well were wound the five coils of binding fiber, declaring her slave.
Of the four girls only she did not wear silk, for she was only a Kettle Slave. She wore a brief tunic only of rep-cloth, already stained with grease and the spatterings of the kitchen. Her hair was not combed, and there was dirt on her knees and face. Her face was tired, and strained, and red, flushed from the heat of the cooking fires. Her hands had been blistered from scrubbing and burned from the cooking, roughened and reddened from the cleaning and the washing of the bowls and goblets. I found great pleasure in seeing the proud Telima, who had been my Mistress, as mere Kettle Slave.
---Raiders of Gor, 9:112
LOVE SLAVE : Term used in reference to slave girls who have found, as it is said, their one true love master. The slavery that love slaves are kept in is said to be the most harsh as the man who has been found caring for a mere slave freqently fears to become weak with her.
They are prized, and relished. They become radiant, and zealous, and passionate, hot, devoted and dutiful. They set themselves to win the love of their master, and not unoften they succeed. Many then become the love slaves of love masters. They are kept as slaves, of course, for they are slaves; too, of course, as slaves, they are kept under perfect discipline. She, as other slaves, would not want it any other way. How could she, or any other slave, respect a master too weak to enforce discipline, too weak to get the whole slave from her? They are radiant. They are joyous in their collars.
To be sure, not all slaves are love slaves.
---Tribesmen of Gor, 13:
"She is a pretty thing," I said.
Samos ran his tongue over his lips. "Yes," he said.
"I think you like her," I said.
"Nonsense," he said. "She is only a slave."
"Perhaps Samos has found a love slave," I said.
"An Earth girl?" laughed Samos.
"Perhaps," I said.
"Preposterous," said Samos. "She is only a slave, only a thing to serve, and to beat and abuse, if it should please me."
"But is not any slave," I asked, "even a love slave?"
"That is true," said Samos, smiling. Gorean men are not easy with their slaves, even those for whom they care deeply.
"I think Samos, first slaver of Port Kar, first captain of the council of captains, has grown fond of a blond Earth girl."
Samos looked at me, angrily. Then he shrugged. "She is the first girl I have felt in this fashion toward," he said. "It is interesting. It is a strange feeling."
"I note that you did not sell her," I said.
"Perhaps I shall," he said.
"I see," I said.
"The first time, even, that I took her in my arms," said Samos, "she was in some way piteously helpless, different even from the others."
"Is not any slave piteously helpless in the arms of her master?" I asked.
"Yes," said Samos. "But she seemed somehow different, incredibly so, vulnerably so."
"Perhaps she knew herself, in your touch, as her love master," I said.
"She felt good in my hands," he said.
"Be strong, Samos," I smiled.
"I shall," he said.
I did not doubt his word. Samos was one of the hardest of Gorean men. The blond Earth girl had found a strong, uncompromising master.
---Explorers of Gor, 1:14-15
LURE GIRL : Term used in reference to slaves who are used in the luring of men for the purpose of capture. The prisoners are most often put into work gangs.
...Such devices, of course, but without the authenticity and ultimate surrender, are often resorted to by "lure girls," slaves who serve as bait for captains who need crewmen, masters of work gangs, and such. Such work can be very dangerous, given the astuteness of many Gorean masters....
---Dancer of Gor, 13:244
MAT and KETTLE SLAVE : Term used in reference to slave girls used as a type of all purpose girl. As many Goreans do not have the means to keep chains of girls, there will commonly be in a house one single slave girl whose function is divided between household tasks and all aspect of service, including sexual pleasures.
...At the minor blocks in the small houses, or even the minor blocks in the Curulean, sales are conducted with a swiftness and dispatch that gives the girl little time to interest and impress buyers, with the result that even a very fine girl, to her indignation and shame, may be sold for only an average price to an average buyer, who may use her for little more than, as it is said, kettle and mat.
---Assassin of Gor, 9:112
MUL : Term used in reference to slaves who serve the Priest-Kings within the nest. A certain proportion of muls were gorean, men and women, who entered the Sardar mountains and were enslaved rather than killed, such was the case of Vika of Treve, others, were genetically cloned within the nest.
"I am Mul-Al-Ka," said one, "honored slave of the glorious Priest-Kings."
"I am Mul-Ba-Ta," said the other, "honored slave of the glorious Priest-Kings."
"In the Nest," said Misk, "the expression 'Mul' is used to designate a human slave."
---Priest-Kings of Gor, 12:94
PAGA SLAVE : Term used in reference to slaves who owned by paga tavern owners. The price of the paga slave's use for an ahn or more is usually included with the price of the drink.
I noted that Tendite now, again, served in the tavern. I noted, too, that, clad in yellow silk, belled on the left ankle, as another paga girl, the dancer, she whom Thurnock had sported with, too, carried a vessel of paga about. When she was not dancing, Sarpedon, I gathered, used her as a common paga slave, not unlike the others. It was more economical, I supposed, to do so.
"Greetings, Captain," said Thurnock.
"Greetings, Captain," said Rim.
Both men seemed well relaxed.
I nodded with my head toward the dancer, now serving as a common paga slave. I did not wish my men to be cheated. "How much did she cost you?" I asked Thurnock.
"Since, when not dancing, she serves with the common slaves," said Thurnock, "she came, like the others, for the price of a cup of paga."
---Hunters of Gor, 4:62
PIERCED EAR SLAVE : Term used in reference to slaves who's ears have been pierced. Ear piercing, on Gor, is considered the ultimate degradation, it virtually guarantees that the girl will never be freed. Although the custom of ear piercing is often said to have originated in Ar, the following quote shows that the role of Ar was not so much in the origin of this trade as it was in making it popular.
...Another custom, long practiced in the far south, below the Gorean equator, in Turia, for example, is the piercing of the ears of the female slave; this custom, though of long standing in the far south, did not begin to spread with rapidity in the north until, again, it was introduced in Ar. At a feast Marlenus, as a special treat for his high officers, presented before them a dancer, a female slave, whose ears had been pierced. She had worn, in her degradation, golden loops in her ears; she had not been able, even, to finish her dance; at a sign from Marlenus she had been seized, thrown to the tiles on which she had danced, and raped by more than a hundred men. Ear piercing, from this time, had begun to spread rapidly through the north, masters, and slavers, often inflicting it on their girls. Interestingly, the piercing of the septum, for the insertion of a nose ring, is regarded, generally, a great deal more lightly by female slaves than the piercing of the ears. Perhaps this is partly because, in the far south, the free women of the Wagon Peoples wear nose rings; perhaps it is because the piercing does not show; I do not know. The piercing of the ears, however, is regarded as being the epitome of a slave girl's degradation. Any woman, it is said, with pierced ears, is a slave girl.
---Marauders of Gor, 8:113
Some earth girls, of course, brought to Gor as slaves, as lovely meat for the slave markets, did have their ears pierced. Some of them did not learn for months why it was that they were treated with a roughness and contempt far beyond that of their imbonded sisters, subjected to a harsher authority and put beneath the rudest predations of a master's lust. And yet the answer was simple. They were pierced ear girls. It is said that the ear piercing of slaves, on Gor, originated in Turia. Certainly it was practiced there. After the fall of Turia the custom spread northward. It is now relatively common on Gor, for pleasure slaves. Slavers have discovered that a pierced ear girl commands a higher price.
---Explorers of Gor, 5:96
SILK GIRL : Term used by slaves of Torvaldsland in reference to the silk clad slave girls of the more Southern parts of Gor. Bond-maids are commonly dressed in wool kirtles and consider the silken garments of the Southern kajira to be a sign of a more pampered and spoiled type of slavery.
"Look!" cried Pudding. "A silk girl!" The expression 'silk girl' is used, often, among bond-maids of the north, to refer to their counterparts in the south. The expression reflects their belief that such girls are spoiled, excessively pampered, indulged and coddled, sleek pets, who have little to do but adorn themselves with cosmetics and await their Masters, cuddled cutely, on plush, scarlet coverlets, fringed with gold. There is some envy in this charge, I think. More literally, the expression tends to be based on the fact that the brief slave tunic of the south, the single garment permitted the female slave, is often of silk. Southern girls, incidentally, in my opinion, though scarcely worked as their northern sisters in bondage, a function of the economic distinction between the farm and city, are often worked, and worked hard, particularly if they have not pleased their Masters....
---Marauders of Gor, 10:144
SILK SLAVE : Term used in reference to male slaves as sexual toys by FreeWomen. Typically such slaves are quite handsome, even 'pretty' by male standards. These slaves are sometimes effeminate in behavior, though most often they are more virile in appearance and action. Most Gorean free women prefer to be served by manly and quite masculine males. This is, however, a dangerous tendency, since such males are often more difficult to control and handle. Silk slaves will not be found in all Cities and are usually confined to 'specialty' markets.
...This is perhaps because many male silk slaves are chosen to be male silk slaves not because they are weak or like women, but because they are not; it is only that they are men, and often true men, who must serve women, totally, in the same fashion that a slave female is expected to serve a free master. To be sure, it is also true, and should be admitted in all honesty, that many male silk slaves are rather feminine; some women prefer this type, perhaps because they fear true men; from such a silk slave they need not fear that they may suddenly be turned upon, and tied, and taught to be women. Most women, however, after a time, find this type of silk slave a banality and a bore; charm and wit can be entertaining, but, in time, if not conjoined with intellect and true masculine power, they are likely to wear thin.
The feminine type of male silk slave, incidentally, for better or for worse, is seldom selected for breeding purposes. Gorean slave breeders, perhaps benighted in this respect, prefer what they take to be health to what they think of as sickness, and what they take to be strength to what they deem weakness....
---Savages of Gor, 2:69
WORK SLAVE : Term used in reference to slaves used for labor in the fields, houses, stables etc. These females are considered, like kettle and mat girls, to be low slaves.
Recap
On Gor, certain expressions are used to more clearly express a slave's virginal state, or the lack thereof, note 'the expression' not the attire. To 'be' white silk means to be virgin, to 'wear' white is a different story; the use of white in slave attire may mean something, or not, depending on the local custom.
There is a difference to be made between the two. A virgin then, can be a trained pleasure slave indeed.
In Dancer of Gor, at the time of her sale the girl Doreen is a virgin; she has however undergone training in the art of pleasing and is sold as a white silk pleasure slave.
The terms red silk and white silk are repetitively used to denote virginity, or lack thereof, not training. Although one would assume they might often go together, and most times they do at least partially, by simple logic, one is more apt to please if she has been trained as well as used, but Norman tells us it is not a must. See here:
"Category," I heard, "---Pleasure Slave."
---Dancer of Gor, 9:129
This quote is from the marketplace, where Doreen, still a virgin is about to be sold. Then, this:
...I knelt as I had been taught, and as the sort of slave I was, the sort of slave I had first learned I was in Market of Semris, a pleasure slave....
---Dancer of Gor, 11:186
At this time she is still a virgin as well, but you see how she says she was 'trained' as a pleasure slave. At last the girl is used, then this:
I had been opened, I thought, I was now "red silk!"
---Dancer of Gor, 11:204
The expression 'red silk' then, is not exclusive to the pleasure slave, indeed any non virgin is red silk, and surely it is clear that not all non virgins are pleasure slaves, the use of the term IS related to training and sometimes breeding.
In Assassin of Gor, the reader is brought into a training house where all trainees wear white, note however that although the dress color is the same, Norman does mention often that SOME of these girls "were" 'white silk', and SOME 'redsilk', hence supporting the difference between the virginity label and the training level. Here is a quote where these girls are let out in the streets, all dressed in white.
...Some of the girls, judging by the stripes on the hoods and cloaks were White Silk, and others Red Silk. The White Silk Girls, of course, having been released from the house, would have been placed in locked, iron belts....
---Assassin of Gor, 12:147
These are the same girls mentioned here:
The meal was served by slave girls in white tunics, each wearing a white-enameled collar. These would be girls in training, some of them perhaps White Silk Girls, being accustomed to the routines and techniques of serving at table.
---Assassin of Gor, 6:88
In this house the slaver chose white for his trainees, but note that he may have used blue or green or any other color for that matter.
Similarly, in most Taverns, the reader will find slaves in yellow, it is the most used color for Paga slaves, the color of the dress here is an indication that the girl may be had for the price of a cup of Paga. It is noted though, that all Paga slaves are "red silk", i.e., non-virgins. Not all, though most, would be certified pleasure slaves; the mere fact that a slave is used for a man's pleasure is not what makes her a pleasure slave, training does that.
in Assassin as well the reader will find notes about the accreditation of pleasure slaves and the fact that this is indeed a 'training' achievement. Even passion slaves, who are bred for pleasure, and dancers may not be legally called pleasure slaves unless they receive the training, and of course the bred passion slave, as she is born to the pens, would train from birth in the art of pleasure, but be referred to as 'white silk' until her virginity is taken, despite breeding or training, she cannot be redsillk until 'opened'; she IS however 'passion slave' by breeding, and also 'pleasure slave' by training, sometimes long before she is actually 'red silk' or 'falarina'.
research and commentary Nicole Gonzalez, World of Gor.com
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Subject: Classification of slaves 
Mon Dec 17, 2012 5:03 pm
