Speaker 1: In my hands. I hold a slim paperback novel titled
Speaker 1: The Tarnsman of Gore, published in nineteen sixty six by
Speaker 1: author John Norman. It's the first in a sprawling series
Speaker 1: of fantasy novels set on a counter Earth. Here's the
Speaker 1: blurb from the back cover.
Speaker 2: Earth could never.
Speaker 3: Know of Gore, the world always on the opposite side
Speaker 3: of the sun. But Gore somehow knew about Earth. As
Speaker 3: Tarro Cabot soon discovered. Taken my force to that savage world,
Speaker 3: Cabot was compelled to become a Tarnsman, a warrior trained
Speaker 3: to master the great warbirds of Coroba.
Speaker 1: This book, it's not the type of fiction I typically
Speaker 1: gravitate towards. It's giving pulpy romance. Novel meets planetary sci
Speaker 1: fi vibes. On the cover is a suggestive illustration. A shirtless,
Speaker 1: muscular man brandishes a sharp weapon, his stance exaus dominance.
Speaker 1: Below him, a topless woman kneels, her head bowed in submission,
Speaker 1: her hands bound behind her back. Looming in the distance,
Speaker 1: A warrior rides a massive, savage looking bird. I read
Speaker 1: the first book for research purposes, but honestly, it was
Speaker 1: a struggle listening as an audiobook on double speed helped.
Speaker 3: Among the trees on the clover, I threw her to
Speaker 3: my feet. She tried frantically to readjust the folds of
Speaker 3: her veil, but with both hands I tore it fully away,
Speaker 3: and she lay at my feet. As it is said
Speaker 3: on Gore face stripped.
Speaker 1: The Gore series spelled Gor starts off pretty tame, following
Speaker 1: a British professor abducted from Earth and forced into the
Speaker 1: life of a warrior on Gore. Gores differ from Earth
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. Fantastical creatures, homestones that hold
Speaker 1: mythical powers for different clans, that sort of thing. Plus
Speaker 1: there's your typical array of human activities plundering, nomadic wandering, kidnapping, wars.
Speaker 1: But the most notable thing is that men on Gore
Speaker 1: can own female slaves. They're called kajira. They wear collars
Speaker 1: and have no rights. These women are considered akin to pets,
Speaker 1: and this arrangement is mutually beneficial according to the philosophy
Speaker 1: described at length by author John Norman, as men are
Speaker 1: naturally dominant and women are inherently submissive. Here's a typical passage,
Speaker 1: the likes of which is repeated ad nauseum throughout the series.
Speaker 3: Most Gorrian slave girls, once they make the adjustment to
Speaker 3: the caller, are radiantly happy. Society, particularly it's males, rejoices
Speaker 3: in their existence. The male fulfills himself and the mastery,
Speaker 3: and the girl, sheltered and cared for and nurtured and
Speaker 3: commonly loved, even madly, receives the strict, uncompromising domination without
Speaker 3: which she could not attain her full woman in society
Speaker 3: approves of their status, and they themselves desire it. No
Speaker 3: wonder they walk with grace and beauty, No wonder they
Speaker 3: walk proudly. They have been found women enough and feminine enough,
Speaker 3: and exciting enough, and desirable enough and beautiful enough to
Speaker 3: be put in the collar.
Speaker 1: So yeah. Unsurprisingly, the books were divisive. Released during the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and seventies, as women fought for equality and
Speaker 1: pushed back against patriarchy, there was public backlash. Marion Zimmer Bradley,
Speaker 1: a sci fi author of the popular Miss of Avalon,
Speaker 1: shared a publisher with Norman and wrote a book in
Speaker 1: protest called Warrior Women, in which a female slave fights
Speaker 1: back against her enslavement. Yet the Gore books resonated with
Speaker 1: enough readers to sustain Norman's prolific output, roughly one book
Speaker 1: a year for over two decades. In nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: the series inspired a Hollywood movie, Just Remembered a Woefully
Speaker 1: and was treating like.
Speaker 4: A sage to Morels.
Speaker 1: It looks campy and was widely panned by critics at
Speaker 1: the time, but despite dismal box office numbers and reviews,
Speaker 1: a second Gore movie was released a year later. I
Speaker 1: can't even find box office numbers for that one, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like it had much of an audience.
Speaker 1: And it was around this time in the late nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties that Norman was dropped by his publisher, a decision
Speaker 1: he has said was due to pressure from feminist editors.
Speaker 1: But he didn't stop writing. In the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: Norman took his work online, publishing more than a dozen
Speaker 1: ebooks since The advent of the internet also fostered a
Speaker 1: devoted subculture of fans. Gore obsessives gathered in chat rooms
Speaker 1: to debate everything from traditional sword sizes to slave garments
Speaker 1: to how best to integrate the social structure of the
Speaker 1: books into one's life. In other words, how to be
Speaker 1: a Gorrian not pretend, not role playing on second life,
Speaker 1: but how to be a master or a slave in
Speaker 1: the home, in the bedroom in life period. Today, a
Speaker 1: niche community of self identified Gorrians still exists. They practice
Speaker 1: master slave relationships modeled on the books keeping Norman's controversial
Speaker 1: vision alive. And that world, well, that was Tellina's.
Speaker 3: Gore was a world of slaves and beautiful women, of
Speaker 3: human domination by the alien secret priest kings. And it
Speaker 3: was also the world of Telena, the tempestuous daughter of
Speaker 3: Gore's great warlord. She waited for the man who could
Speaker 3: subdue her, the man who would be her master.
Speaker 1: From iHeart Podcasts, I'm Melissa Nelson, and this is what
Speaker 1: happened to Teleina.
Speaker 5: Zar when Tom passed. I mean, she was obviously devastated.
Speaker 5: Her world had kind of revolved around him.
Speaker 6: They had one of those bombs that you know, everybody
Speaker 6: could aspire to.
Speaker 1: Little town have their skeleton.
Speaker 5: I mean, they're not with that.
Speaker 7: I had done some internet digging and then that popped
Speaker 7: up with the John Norman Gorrian novels, and I was like,
Speaker 7: what the hell are you people into?
Speaker 4: What is going on here?
Speaker 1: Episode three Belonging. I had hoped to speak to John Norman,
Speaker 1: author of the Gore series, to learn more about his
Speaker 1: work and the subculture inspired by the books, but his
Speaker 1: current publisher told me that Norman quote does not want
Speaker 1: to be interviewed if the slant is going to be
Speaker 1: another judgmental feminist attack. He added that Norman is also
Speaker 1: over ninety years old, and like many that age can
Speaker 1: be a little cranky. So instead I talked to an expert, who,
Speaker 1: despite being a feminist, was surprisingly non judgmental.
Speaker 8: I don't think that when John Norman published this he
Speaker 8: ever imagined that people would try to live like that.
Speaker 8: Nobody writes a novel thinking now, I'm hopeful that everybody
Speaker 8: will read my novel and live exactly like that. Would
Speaker 8: anybody like to live through? Anna Karinina, I mean, you know,
Speaker 8: fiction is an escape.
Speaker 1: This is doctor Gloria Breem, a sex therapist and self
Speaker 1: described kinster.
Speaker 8: It could have been the pure product of his imagination
Speaker 8: and his sexual fantasies, and not a world d would
Speaker 8: even choose to live in himself, but a fantasy world.
Speaker 8: And we're all permitted to fantasy world. I mean, I
Speaker 8: actually read a Gore book when I was probably twenty.
Speaker 8: I was bored one night and I picked it up
Speaker 8: and I thought, oh, this is really interesting. The vibe
Speaker 8: of the cover was kind of sexy. It was a
Speaker 8: guy standing looking all masterly and you know, maybe a
Speaker 8: woman at his feet. It kind of got across its
Speaker 8: message to readers. I wasn't even aware I was kinky.
Speaker 8: It was just kind of interesting. It was a wonderful fantasy.
Speaker 8: And he wrote a ton in the series because the
Speaker 8: book sold a lot, probably to a lot of kinky people.
Speaker 1: Gloria has spent her career as a sex educator trying
Speaker 1: to reduce the stigma around BDSI, an acronym you've probably
Speaker 1: heard thrown around that stands for bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism.
Speaker 8: Certainly since the beginning of recorded history, you can find
Speaker 8: Roman wool paintings of people being whipped and having ecstasies,
Speaker 8: and lots of art from the Roman era on that
Speaker 8: tell us that people have always been interested in extreme
Speaker 8: or non conventional, non reproductive sex. Looking at it from
Speaker 8: the outside, it's definitely weird and bizarre, but looking at
Speaker 8: it from the inside, we all feel like this is
Speaker 8: where the love is, you know, the real, raw, primal love.
Speaker 8: We're not doing it to be emotionally hurt. We're doing
Speaker 8: it really in outs of finding joy and ecstasy.
Speaker 1: Though the Gore books were titillating, Gloria never really connected
Speaker 1: with them. The strict gender roles depicted in the series
Speaker 1: felt anachronistic. On Gore, men were in charge, women followed, listened,
Speaker 1: and served, often while scantily clad, which is.
Speaker 8: Why I didn't like the book and I didn't care
Speaker 8: for the series, because I'm feminist to the core, and
Speaker 8: I was from the age of fourteen, and I actually
Speaker 8: was raised that way by my parents.
Speaker 1: Gloria's introduction to Gore was brief didn't leave that much
Speaker 1: of an impact, But later in life, when she immersed
Speaker 1: herself in the BDSM community, she learned that some people
Speaker 1: felt very connected to the books.
Speaker 8: A few years later, when I finally did hook up
Speaker 8: with the BDSM world, there were Golorians among us who
Speaker 8: took various handles straight out of the novel. It was
Speaker 8: more about obedience and women serving the will of their master.
Speaker 1: There's no way to know how many people in the
Speaker 1: US or in the world call themselves Gorrian or try
Speaker 1: to live according to the principles in the books. But
Speaker 1: if you move in BDSM spaces, you may come across
Speaker 1: them once in a while.
Speaker 8: I once met a Gourian couple where the guys started
Speaker 8: to tell me, well, you know, all women were born
Speaker 8: to be submissive, And that was like the end of
Speaker 8: the conversation right there, you know, because really, you know,
Speaker 8: there's no universal anything about male or female this world.
Speaker 1: It's been hard to pierce as an outsider reporter and
Speaker 1: a woman. Gorrians are extremely protective of their lifestyle, knowing
Speaker 1: that their choices are probably not accepted in the mainstream.
Speaker 1: Those who did talk to me shared fears of being
Speaker 1: outed and losing their jobs or jeopardizing their families. In
Speaker 1: order to better understand what it even is to be
Speaker 1: a Gorrian, I spent six months lurking in the online
Speaker 1: spaces where they hang out these days, Reddit and discord,
Speaker 1: and listening in on these conversations. I was able to
Speaker 1: glean some information. For example, there's a spectrum of Goreyan participation.
Speaker 1: On one end are those who keep it virtual where
Speaker 1: they role play the master slave dynamic online. And on
Speaker 1: the other end are people who live every day like this,
Speaker 1: couples who enter into a contract. Sometimes we're in sometimes not,
Speaker 1: where the woman submits to the man, relinquishing her rights
Speaker 1: to choice, freedom agency. It sounds shocking, but for some
Speaker 1: people it is very sexy and very satisfying.
Speaker 8: I do believe that Gorrian's, just like other bdsmmers, are
Speaker 8: very choosy and carefortable about who they give power to,
Speaker 8: and they reserve power for their masters. If you have
Speaker 8: two really good people who really are compatible, that's going
Speaker 8: to be fun. But if you are with somebody who
Speaker 8: is flawed, or has mental health issues, or is actually
Speaker 8: really a troubled person, it could be quite dangerous.
Speaker 4: I've been a twenty four to seven slave owned by
Speaker 4: Master Zarius since two thousand and four. One of my
Speaker 4: friends that calls me a pragmatic hedonist. I'm totally down
Speaker 4: with that.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at a social media account that Teleina created.
Speaker 1: In her bio, she describes herself and her husband Tom
Speaker 1: aka Master Zarius.
Speaker 4: We're a Gorrian family and belong to the Gray Eagle family.
Speaker 4: Previous to being owned by Master Czarius, I was a
Speaker 4: BDSM submissive to a variety of masters and mistresses. I've
Speaker 4: been in the lifestyle since.
Speaker 1: I was eighteen. This is a dramatization of some of
Speaker 1: Telena's writing on fet life, a dating and social media
Speaker 1: site for people interested in fetish and BDSM picture Facebook,
Speaker 1: but with dick pics and leather. If you're curious. It's
Speaker 1: not safe for work unless your work is making a
Speaker 1: podcast about all of this. I was able to see
Speaker 1: Telena's profile simply by signing up for an account. As
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, there was a time when
Speaker 1: Telena was a prolific fet life user. She connected with
Speaker 1: new friends, found events to attend, and shared a lot
Speaker 1: of personal writing. Although fetlife is primarily a sexual form,
Speaker 1: there's not much on her page about sex at all.
Speaker 1: Most of what she shared was overwhelmingly wholesome. Little essays
Speaker 1: focused on the banality of everyday life, and people would
Speaker 1: respond with kind comments. This was clearly her chosen community,
Speaker 1: where she felt safe to be herself.
Speaker 4: I've spent too much of my life being so harsh
Speaker 4: on myself. My house isn't as clean as my mother's.
Speaker 4: My waistline isn't as small as someone else's, my hair
Speaker 4: is too stringy, my taste buds aren't developed enough.
Speaker 1: Whatever, Telena revealed a lot about her life, her insecurities,
Speaker 1: her ongoing weight less journey.
Speaker 4: I tried on the cute pants first, and they fit
Speaker 4: like they were made on me. And it happened. A
Speaker 4: small smile curled the left side of my mouth, and
Speaker 4: for the first time in many weeks, I was able
Speaker 4: to see my entire body in the mirror, and I
Speaker 4: liked what I saw.
Speaker 1: Her adventures in baking a short.
Speaker 4: Time later, voila an excellent dessert, which the guys at
Speaker 4: my office are enjoying right now as I type this.
Speaker 4: I cut the result into squares and stack them to
Speaker 4: make a cute little strata. Everyone here thinks I'm an
Speaker 4: excellent baker.
Speaker 1: Reading through these essays, I got a real feel for
Speaker 1: Tellina's personality. She's spunky and adventurous. In one post, she
Speaker 1: talks about skydiving with her niece, but she's also not
Speaker 1: afraid to be vulnerable.
Speaker 4: I started thinking about how so much of my life
Speaker 4: has been work to find the balance between being tough
Speaker 4: and being soft. I went a little overboard in the
Speaker 4: toughness department, to the point where I had no soft
Speaker 4: edges at all. On more than one occasion, I was
Speaker 4: thrown out of bars for fighting. A little before I
Speaker 4: turned thirty, I started getting tired of always having to
Speaker 4: be so tough, so my pendulum swung.
Speaker 1: The other way.
Speaker 4: I became all soft all the time. When I took
Speaker 4: off the exterior shell of toughness, my soft underbelly was
Speaker 4: all that was left. I cried at the slightest provocation.
Speaker 4: My feelings were frequently injured, and I showed her poppy
Speaker 4: dog eyes to my owner when he raised his voice
Speaker 4: just a few decibels. Okay, So being tough all the
Speaker 4: time was exhausting, and being weak all the time was
Speaker 4: even worse.
Speaker 1: Si Teleina wrote a lot about her relationship with her
Speaker 1: husband Tom, who she refers to as Master Csaius or
Speaker 1: just Master.
Speaker 4: How well did I adapt to being property? Well, that
Speaker 4: depends on whether you ask me or Master lol.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly how or when Teleina and Tom met,
Speaker 1: except that they both served in the military, and by
Speaker 1: two thousand and four they were living together in Indiana.
Speaker 1: Teleina was thirty eight, Tom forty six, and it's possible
Speaker 1: that it was Tom who introduced her to Gore. According
Speaker 1: to his own posts on fet life, he discovered of
Speaker 1: books in his youth and they made a big impact
Speaker 1: on him. Here's a dramatization of Tom's writing.
Speaker 2: I began reading the Gore books in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: Within them, the philosophical tenets of a man being a
Speaker 2: man and a woman being a woman rang true for me.
Speaker 2: There was a twenty five year gap between starting my
Speaker 2: journey as a Gorrian mastering my first slave. I admit
Speaker 2: that mastering my Teleina these past ten plus years has
Speaker 2: been a very rewarding and insightful experience.
Speaker 1: According to her profile, Telena had been in BDSM type
Speaker 1: relationships since she was eighteen years old, but with Tom,
Speaker 1: she moved into something different, a master slave relationship that
Speaker 1: required her submission to him twenty four seven.
Speaker 4: I was not used to not being in charge of
Speaker 4: my time tasks, Destiny. It was an ugly adjustment that
Speaker 4: ended up bringing depth and greater understanding in my relationship
Speaker 4: with Master. Because we both wanted to be together in
Speaker 4: our roles so badly, neither of us expected it to
Speaker 4: be so hard.
Speaker 1: They lived strictly according to Gorerian principles, which meant that
Speaker 1: Tom was in charge of all decisions until Lena yielded
Speaker 1: control absolutely to her husband.
Speaker 4: I learned how to shut up. I know it sounds
Speaker 4: simple and truly it is. However, the amount of will
Speaker 4: power necessary to put this into practice is enormous. The
Speaker 4: self control practiced by all the slaves who I esteem
Speaker 4: is beyond imagining to most of those who don't serve.
Speaker 1: For most people, me included, the word slavery does not
Speaker 1: have any positive connotations. Wars have been waged to abolish it.
Speaker 1: Generations of people have worked to ensure no one endures
Speaker 1: such a fate, and here is someone voluntarily living this way. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I find it hard to wrap my head around. And
Speaker 1: yet the way Telena described it, their relationship sounded more
Speaker 1: nuanced than I had expected.
Speaker 4: I see so many posts asking what is quote normal
Speaker 4: for a master, mistress owner to do. This is my response.
Speaker 4: Our real master gets up at six am on the
Speaker 4: weekend to take the dogs out because his slave has
Speaker 4: a migraine. Our real master waters the basil plants when
Speaker 4: his slave is away, even if he doesn't like to
Speaker 4: eat this stuff himself. Our real master goes for a
Speaker 4: walk rather than taking his anger out on his slave.
Speaker 4: Our real master understands that his slave won't always perform perfectly.
Speaker 4: While setting the atmosphere for perfection to happen. Our real
Speaker 4: master punishes his slave when she does something wrong because
Speaker 4: he loves her. A real master uses his hands to
Speaker 4: hold and comfort a slave when she's overwhelmed with fear.
Speaker 4: These are all things that I believe a real master
Speaker 4: should do, and the these are all things my master
Speaker 4: does regularly. I'm a blessed girl.
Speaker 1: Teleina freely shared the inner workings of her relationship with
Speaker 1: the Gore community, and over time became an expert, someone
Speaker 1: who guided others new to the lifestyle. I discovered from
Speaker 1: digging through her old posts that at some point she
Speaker 1: actually began formally teaching classes with Tom on how to
Speaker 1: be in a dominant submissive relationship. Here's a description of
Speaker 1: a class they taught in twenty thirteen called Formal Dinner Service,
Speaker 1: where slaves were taught how to serve food while naked.
Speaker 4: Learn the science behind serving table covers, how to serve
Speaker 4: formal table settings, napkin folding. Then go deeper into the
Speaker 4: mindset behind formal service. Take some time to experience the
Speaker 4: thrill of coordinated movements, feel the rush of performing a
Speaker 4: job well. Acknowledge the place deep inside yourself where a
Speaker 4: desire to serve naked lives. While you'll walk away with handouts,
Speaker 4: the most valuable gift you'll receive is the knowledge that
Speaker 4: setting and serving at a formal table is within your
Speaker 4: immediate grasp. After the class, join us for a luscious
Speaker 4: dinner where you can practice your skills, either as a
Speaker 4: diner or a server.
Speaker 1: Deep diving into the Gore series, the subculture that is
Speaker 1: cropped up around it, and Telena's embrace of its principles,
Speaker 1: I had so many questions, the most pressing being why
Speaker 1: would someone so smart, self aware, and opinionated like Telena
Speaker 1: want to engage in a dynamic like this. Don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, there's a part of me that understands the
Speaker 1: allure of seeding control. There are plenty of days where
Speaker 1: I feel so burned out that I don't want to
Speaker 1: decide anything what to eat, or what to wear, or
Speaker 1: even what show to put on to decompress. But as
Speaker 1: a woman, wife, and mom, equity in my head household
Speaker 1: is really important to me. My partner and I deliberately
Speaker 1: strive to share the mental and physical loads of life,
Speaker 1: play acting these roles for kink and pleasure in the bedroom.
Speaker 1: I get that, But to live within this dynamic where
Speaker 1: the male partner always has the final say. It goes
Speaker 1: against every fiber of my being. Why would someone desire this?
Speaker 6: For many people, it feels comforting to not have to
Speaker 6: be in control all the time. There's this feeling of
Speaker 6: glorious freedom actually in not having to make decisions anymore.
Speaker 6: You've just become an instrument of somebody else's will, and
Speaker 6: this is actually liberating because now, instead of being constantly
Speaker 6: faced with all of these choices that maybe overwhelm you,
Speaker 6: somebody else is going to make them for you, and
Speaker 6: that feels good.
Speaker 1: This is Julie Fennel, a sociologist and longtime member of
Speaker 1: the BDSM community who studies gender and sexuality. She's the
Speaker 1: author of Please Scream Quietly, a story of kink.
Speaker 6: I guess the last thing is just providing pleasure and
Speaker 6: happiness to another person, which is a very human thing
Speaker 6: to enjoy doing that. You really get a lot out
Speaker 6: of seeing your dominant feel pleasure and be happy and
Speaker 6: knowing that that came from you.
Speaker 1: Julie told me that people who choose to live as
Speaker 1: submissives are oftentimes a healthy, well adjusted, and self confident,
Speaker 1: making the choice out of free will. But she acknowledges
Speaker 1: that's not the case for everyone.
Speaker 6: I have data that suggests to me that a lot
Speaker 6: of people are motivated by unhealthy things, which, unfortunately the
Speaker 6: BDSM community is terrible actually having frank conversations about I
Speaker 6: put the data in my book from twenty seventeen is
Speaker 6: quite clear that submissives have lower self esteemed than dominance do.
Speaker 6: I think a lot of times people are motivated to
Speaker 6: be submissive because they think they aren't good enough at
Speaker 6: being a person, and so they want somebody else who
Speaker 6: they think is better at being a person to help
Speaker 6: them be a person.
Speaker 1: There's a stereotype the people who are into BDSM must
Speaker 1: have had bad experiences in their childhood that led them
Speaker 1: down this path, and that BDSM is a way to
Speaker 1: grapple with or relive those traumas. And maybe in some
Speaker 1: cases that's true, but as Julie explained it, many others
Speaker 1: just like the sensation of a whip on their skin
Speaker 1: or being tied up with ropes.
Speaker 6: I can take them for a walk. I like putting
Speaker 6: people on leashes.
Speaker 1: It's fine, as she said, not everything has to be pathologized.
Speaker 1: Julie pointed out that a big draw of BDSM is
Speaker 1: the community aspect, finding others who don't judge you for
Speaker 1: who you are. Beyond online spaces like fat life, it's
Speaker 1: not uncommon for BDSM ors to congregate in person, whether
Speaker 1: that's at nightclubs, backyard barbecues, or dungeons.
Speaker 6: Any good socia just can tell you that just being
Speaker 6: part of the community is usually very good for people's
Speaker 6: mental health. I think finding community is often the biggest
Speaker 6: reason why people end up being heavily involved in the
Speaker 6: buds and subculture. Like sure, they might like doing kinky things,
Speaker 6: but ultimately the thing that really gets some joy and
Speaker 6: why they keep coming back to this what is functionally
Speaker 6: a social club, is because they like the people there,
Speaker 6: and they feel emotional support and validation from them. On
Speaker 6: the whole, it's pretty beautiful to be around. It can
Speaker 6: be pretty beautiful to be around other people who share
Speaker 6: your outlook and values.
Speaker 1: I get that, but is the gore community beautiful? I
Speaker 1: have limited insight, but the conversations I observed in gore
Speaker 1: spaces were pretty misogynistic. In one discord form I joined,
Speaker 1: the women slaves were constantly talked down to and seemed
Speaker 1: unable to share their opinions freely. Their names had to
Speaker 1: be in lowercase letters, and they couldn't even talk about
Speaker 1: themselves in the first person, she instead of I. It
Speaker 1: didn't take long for me to get kicked out of
Speaker 1: the forum for simply asking one of the women what
Speaker 1: it was like to identify as a slave. This Goreyan culture.
Speaker 1: I observed it seemed to me to be a cover
Speaker 1: for old fashioned beliefs about the superiority of men.
Speaker 6: Oh will hasten to add that that is like way
Speaker 6: outside of mainstream BDSM right now.
Speaker 1: Goreyan philosophy is an outlier in the BDSM world. Julie
Speaker 1: says that's because gore really goes against the current understanding
Speaker 1: of gender, which is far more fluid and dynamic. She
Speaker 1: mentioned a survey she conducted among bdsmers asking them if
Speaker 1: they agreed with the statement I believe that men are
Speaker 1: naturally dominant and women are naturally submissive. Only ten percent
Speaker 1: did Yes.
Speaker 6: Subculture as a whole is extremely liberal for a variety
Speaker 6: of reasons. There's this thread in pan sexual media, so
Speaker 6: I'm community that, like, we're all, regardless of our gender,
Speaker 6: have all the ds and roles equally available to us.
Speaker 6: The idea of a system that would restrict that is
Speaker 6: very antagonistic to that norm. And so it's one of
Speaker 6: many reasons why I would say mainstream medias some subculture
Speaker 6: tends to like giggle a lot nowadays about Gore.
Speaker 1: Gore gets a laugh, the sci fi elements, the arcane beliefs,
Speaker 1: we're so far past women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean it's harmless.
Speaker 6: It is not unheard of for people who are in
Speaker 6: master slave relationships to say that they have given up
Speaker 6: their safeword, which means that like whatever the top chooses
Speaker 6: to do to them, the bottom has said that they
Speaker 6: will take it.
Speaker 1: Giving up your bodily autonomy, it can make you vulnerable
Speaker 1: to abuse, to being in dangerous situations, which made me
Speaker 1: wonder was Teleina ever in harm's way. There was one
Speaker 1: essay she wrote that gave me the shivers.
Speaker 4: Not long ago, Master, and we'll call it a difference
Speaker 4: in viewpoints. That sounds pretty benign, right, he he he.
Speaker 4: That difference in viewpoint culminated in me making a conscious
Speaker 4: choice to not follow Master's protocols for greeting him when
Speaker 4: he came in one evening. Frankly, I had come to
Speaker 4: the conclusion inside my head that Master didn't care about
Speaker 4: the greeting ritual and wouldn't mind me skipping it. Boy,
Speaker 4: was I wrong. When I was close to Master, he
Speaker 4: reached out his arms as his lips came close to mine.
Speaker 4: I thought we were going to have a hug and kiss.
Speaker 4: Imagine surprise when Master's hand went around my throat and
Speaker 4: he forced me to my knees while calmly and quietly
Speaker 4: asking did you forget something? I believe he even had
Speaker 4: a smile on his face.
Speaker 1: As a reporter who has spent a decade writing about
Speaker 1: domestic violence, this story raises all the alarm bells. But
Speaker 1: I asked Julie what she made of it. She tells
Speaker 1: it as this story of like that she was grateful
Speaker 1: to be reminded of She was happy that he cared
Speaker 1: enough about it that he would punish her and put
Speaker 1: it back on her place. But I've spent my career
Speaker 1: writing about domestic violence, and so for me, it's hard
Speaker 1: to read that essay and not see it as abuse.
Speaker 1: And like, I've seen a lot of victims of domestic
Speaker 1: violence really come up with really creative ways to justify
Speaker 1: the behavior and make sense of it in their own relationship.
Speaker 6: You tell me this story and you say this is disturbing,
Speaker 6: and I understand why. But I hear that the story
Speaker 6: and I think.
Speaker 8: Oh, that's hot.
Speaker 7: I'm not going to say say I think there's something
Speaker 7: seriously wrong with John Norman and his followers.
Speaker 1: This is Jess the Internet sleuth in Minnesota.
Speaker 7: I'm not like out there, I'm woman. Hear me, roar right,
Speaker 7: I'm not doing that. But it would be a cold
Speaker 7: day in how before my husband whipped me or told
Speaker 7: me I could or couldn't do anything because he would
Speaker 7: find himself outside the house.
Speaker 1: After finding out about Telena's disappearance from a Facebook post,
Speaker 1: it doesn't take just long to connect to Lena to
Speaker 1: the Gorrian subculture.
Speaker 7: I did like digging, like her name to Lena Tzar.
Speaker 7: I was like, that's that's weird. So I kind of
Speaker 7: just googled and this Goryan stuff popped up. And then
Speaker 7: as you go through with some of her friends, it'll
Speaker 7: say Gorrian or master or sister wife or just little
Speaker 7: odd tidbits and I'm like, what is that?
Speaker 8: What is that?
Speaker 1: Scrolling through Telena's Facebook just comes across a post from
Speaker 1: January twenty twenty, just a few months before Telena goes missing.
Speaker 1: It's a photo of Telena's new Oklahoma driver's license, along
Speaker 1: with her story of dealing with the bureaucracy of legally
Speaker 1: changing her name.
Speaker 4: Here's the conversation I had at the Social Security office today,
Speaker 4: me I've had a name change and need to get
Speaker 4: my card changed. Social Security worker, Why did you change
Speaker 4: your name because I wanted to? Did you get married
Speaker 4: or divorced?
Speaker 7: Know?
Speaker 5: Then?
Speaker 4: Why did you change your name because I wanted to?
Speaker 4: So you don't have a reason. Yes, I have a reason.
Speaker 4: The reason is because I wanted to. I don't feel
Speaker 4: like we're getting anywhere me same.
Speaker 1: So right before Telena disappeared, she legally changed her name,
Speaker 1: and not just her last name, both of her given names.
Speaker 1: She went from Jana Lovic to Teleina Galloway. Galloway was
Speaker 1: Tom's last name, even though they never formally married and
Speaker 1: Tom had been dead for over two years, carrying on
Speaker 1: his memory in this way seemed important to her, and
Speaker 1: the name Teleina. She'd been using that first name for
Speaker 1: years amongst friends and family. According to the petition she
Speaker 1: filed with the State Online, she used the handle Telena
Speaker 1: tzar for her social media accounts. Jess isn't sure where
Speaker 1: tzar comes from, but Telena it appears she had taken
Speaker 1: it directly from the Gore books. The Gore world is
Speaker 1: one just knows nothing about, but she's willing to learn.
Speaker 7: So I started reading the novels and then listening to
Speaker 7: him on audiobook, and it's different. It's not something I
Speaker 7: would read, I don't think.
Speaker 1: And how many did you read?
Speaker 7: I think probably ten.
Speaker 1: While the rest of the country is exploring new hobbies
Speaker 1: during quarantine, Jess is getting a mini education in BDSM
Speaker 1: and Gore culture, and from what she learns, it seems
Speaker 1: like a subculture where women could easily be taken advantage of, hurt,
Speaker 1: or even killed. Jess knows that Talina's late husband Tom
Speaker 1: couldn't have been involved in her disappearance, but what about
Speaker 1: the other men in the Gore community, Men who saw
Speaker 1: women as property, men who were not used to hearing
Speaker 1: the word no.
Speaker 7: They have very black and white views on I'm the man,
Speaker 7: It's my job to protect. It's your job to submit
Speaker 7: to me and never ask questions. Ever, you do exactly
Speaker 7: as I say when I say it. I'm going to
Speaker 7: put a collar on you. You don't need dinner until I
Speaker 7: say so. You have sex with who I say so.
Speaker 7: You wait on me, hand and foot as I say so.
Speaker 7: Very very just dominant, submissive, not like fifty Shades of Gray,
Speaker 7: but like some of the stuff I saw on fet
Speaker 7: life because I created a fake profile to creep on
Speaker 7: these people. I mean, there's women in cages, there's women
Speaker 7: that they bleed, that like cut them so they bleed.
Speaker 7: They do something called kid play where they wear diapers
Speaker 7: and for turn their kids. It's very not my cup
Speaker 7: of tea.
Speaker 1: Jess and the internet sleuths start wondering is their main
Speaker 1: source Toelena's friend Marty also a Gorian. For one, there's
Speaker 1: that photo where he referred to Toelena as another of
Speaker 1: his wives. And then there's his unusual nickname Wolf or Wolfy.
Speaker 7: I remember a conversation where we all refused directly to
Speaker 7: call Wolf wolf because we were like, we're not calling
Speaker 7: you by some pseudo friggin' you know, master name. All
Speaker 7: of us we're like, this is disgusting, we're not into it.
Speaker 7: And then I came to understand that that was not
Speaker 7: his Gorrian name, so we decided to call him Wolf
Speaker 7: and Wolf tried very hard for the first I want
Speaker 7: to say, two three weeks to cover up the goryan
Speaker 7: aspect of it, even though we were very convinced that
Speaker 7: had something to do with it.
Speaker 1: You did think I had something to do with it initially.
Speaker 1: I did, absolutely Still Jess is not afraid to ask
Speaker 1: Marty Wolf pointed questions about Gore.
Speaker 7: He gave me a very PG version of things. He
Speaker 7: had told me that it was like live action role
Speaker 7: play of dungeons and dragons, but they have sex with
Speaker 7: each other. That's how he explained it to me, and
Speaker 7: I said, oh, okay. I didn't want to think that
Speaker 7: I was super judging him, because I don't want to
Speaker 7: make anybody feel bad about their sexual preference or what
Speaker 7: they want to do as long as everybody's gong holl
Speaker 7: for it. Cool sounds good.
Speaker 1: But the more I talked about it.
Speaker 7: More it sounded like these women weren't They were consenting,
Speaker 7: but they were all abused or had had really bad lives,
Speaker 7: and I didn't think that they were mentally capable really
Speaker 7: of making the choice to consent to something like that.
Speaker 7: And when I questioned him on it, he just rubbed
Speaker 7: it off like that I didn't know what I was
Speaker 7: talking about, and maybe I don't. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: As the COVID shutdown stretches from days to weeks, Marty
Speaker 1: lets down his guard opens up about gore life. He
Speaker 1: eventually explains to Jess that Teleina and Tom and Marty
Speaker 1: and his wife were all in a Gorerian family together
Speaker 1: called the Great Eagle Family.
Speaker 7: To take their family group seriously, the mento had rings
Speaker 7: of an eagle, and they all had the same ring
Speaker 7: because they were in the Great Eagle Family. He was
Speaker 7: very proud of it. He thought it was great.
Speaker 1: Teleina seemed to be proud of it too. Here's how
Speaker 1: she identifies at the top of her fet life profile.
Speaker 4: We are a Gorrian family and belong to the Great
Speaker 4: Eagle Family who hosts an event in Oklahoma called Gorefest.
Speaker 4: We always have a fantastic time.
Speaker 1: Gorefest was a festival created by Marty. Every so often,
Speaker 1: he and his wife invited Gorrians from across the country
Speaker 1: to their sprawling property in Oklahoma for a weekend of revelry.
Speaker 1: Talina and Tom loved going to Gorefest so much so
Speaker 1: that they ultimately moved to Oklahoma to be closer to
Speaker 1: Marty and their Goryan friends. It was also at Gorefest
Speaker 1: where Teleina met Corey, who went on to become her
Speaker 1: roommate after Tom died. I found an old website that
Speaker 1: Marty ran dedicated to Gorefest that includes this little history.
Speaker 9: In nineteen ninety nine, a few Gorrians from online html
Speaker 9: chat decided to get together for a small gathering to
Speaker 9: share in real time what they felt in virtual time.
Speaker 9: To honor the spirit that John Norman wrote about in
Speaker 9: his books. It would be a time for all to
Speaker 9: come together and share thoughts and ideas while enjoying for
Speaker 9: a short time what each role plays online, whether free
Speaker 9: or slave, to enjoy the freedom of being themselves. From
Speaker 9: the original thirteen that were here in the fall of
Speaker 9: nineteen ninety nine for the first gathering to the record
Speaker 9: seventy five attending in two thousand and four, there exudes
Speaker 9: an astounding feeling a family.
Speaker 1: Clicking around on this old website, I found the list
Speaker 1: of events. Sparring acts, throwing tug awar and serving slaves
Speaker 1: could take part in a position competition testing their knowledge
Speaker 1: of the ten submissive positions they should be able to
Speaker 1: assume upon command. According to Gorean philosophy. Don't look these
Speaker 1: up at work either, and there was also cy a
Speaker 1: slave auction. On another page was a list of gore
Speaker 1: Fest attendees, divided into two categories. In one list, I
Speaker 1: found mass Csarius, Tom, Master Shekhar Marty. In another, the
Speaker 1: slave list, Telena tzar czar as In, belonging to Master Czarius.
Speaker 1: By the time Telena went missing, Master Czarius was dead,
Speaker 1: so did Telena belong to someone else. Marty explained to
Speaker 1: Jess that Telena was now an unknowned slave. Marty had
Speaker 1: Telena's quote protection caller, which meant that he was looking
Speaker 1: after her. He wasn't her master, but he was a
Speaker 1: protector of sorts, though what she needed to be protected
Speaker 1: from was unclear.
Speaker 7: I asked about the protection caller he said he had
Speaker 7: for Telena, and then he explained to me when Tom died,
Speaker 7: he moved in there to help Teleina because she hadn't
Speaker 7: dealt with her own money or anything. When Tom was alive,
Speaker 7: Tulina had no control over her own life. Everything was
Speaker 7: decided by him. When she went to work, what she wore,
Speaker 7: what she ate when they ate, Any money she made
Speaker 7: went straight to him and he covered you know, he
Speaker 7: paid the bills. So when Tom died, wolflipped there and
Speaker 7: did all that for her. So he said that it
Speaker 7: was his Telena wife, so it was a second wife,
Speaker 7: and said the caller was just to protect her from
Speaker 7: other Gorrians trying to take her caller, and at that
Speaker 7: time I didn't know what that.
Speaker 1: Meant, other Gorrians trying to take her coller. Jess is
Speaker 1: suspicious of the list of men who attended Gorefest over
Speaker 1: the years, masters whose real identities are unknown to her,
Speaker 1: but Marty is adamant that all this Gore stuff has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Telena's disappearance. She's looking in the
Speaker 1: wrong place. Jess thinks there's more he's not telling her,
Speaker 1: but as time goes on, she starts to believe he's
Speaker 1: being earnest.
Speaker 7: We built kind of a trust, you know. I feel
Speaker 7: like he would tell me a little bits and pieces
Speaker 7: of things about his relationship, and he'd become really vulnerable
Speaker 7: with me. He'd cry. He started telling me personal stories
Speaker 7: about his life, his family, his mom, and we just
Speaker 7: built a relationship. He'd like to FaceTime with me and
Speaker 7: he'd see the kids in the background and he'd say
Speaker 7: nice things. You know, he never said anything creepy to
Speaker 7: me or the kids. To me, he'd sometimes say creepy things,
Speaker 7: but never to my children. He'd always, Oh, look at Mattie.
Speaker 7: It looks like she's grown since the last time I
Speaker 7: saw her. She looks beautiful. Like things that you would
Speaker 7: say to me, you know, you'd be like, oh, your
Speaker 7: daughter is still pretty or something. You know. We back
Speaker 7: and forth, like he'd say nice things about people's kids
Speaker 7: to them, and we just got close.
Speaker 1: The two are an unlikely pair, a nosy bartender in Minnesota,
Speaker 1: a geeky goryan master in Oklahoma, having intimate conversations deep
Speaker 1: into the night, trauma bonded in the depths of COVID isolation,
Speaker 1: when all of a sudden, a new clue takes the
Speaker 1: investigation in an entirely different direction. And I'm telling my
Speaker 1: buddy this as we're sitting in the garage.
Speaker 7: And he said, do.
Speaker 2: You not think that you just got created an entity,
Speaker 2: an a possible friend.
Speaker 1: That's next week on What Happened to Telena'sar? What Happened
Speaker 1: to Telenazar is a production of iHeart Podcasts. It's written, reported,
Speaker 1: and hosted by me Melissa Jelson, with writing and story
Speaker 1: editing by Lauren Hansen. Our executive producer is Ryan Murdoch.
Speaker 1: For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Jason English and Karl
Speaker 1: Catle Well fact checking by Savannah Hugley. Zoe Denkla is
Speaker 1: our associate producer. Jeremy Thal is our editor. Original music
Speaker 1: by Aaron Kaufman, with additional music by Jeremy Thal and
Speaker 1: Gideon Crevische. Episodes are mixed and mastered by Carl Katle
Speaker 1: Voice acting by Lizzie Gore, Chris Ferry, Stephanie Frame, Pete Monica,
Speaker 1: and Molly Maslin. Our logo is designed by Edo Moore.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening.