girls.
'Would you like to take her in your arms?' asked the Lady. Gina.
I began to squirm. 'Please, don't hit me,' I begged.
'Speak, Slave!' commanded the Lady Gina.
'No, Mistress. No, Mistress,' I said. 'I would not want to take her in my arms.'
She suddenly cuffed me, angrily, and kicked me. 'You can be slain for a lie, Slave,' she said.
'Forgive me, Mistress,' I begged.
'Did you lie?' she asked.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said. 'I lied! I lied! Forgive me, Mistress. Please, forgive me!''
'You would, then,' she asked, 'like to take her in your arms?'
I looked at the supine girl before me, holding her body as though chained. What a desirable female she was, exciting far beyond anything I could have believed existed.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said.
The Lady Gina then spoke to the two girls. Lola rose to her feet. She tied the brief rag again about her hips. Both took their quirts well in hand. They were long quirts, some two feet in length. They held them now, each of them, with two hands.
'You will now be beaten twice,' said the Lady Gina, 'once for having, as a frightened, ignorant slave, dared to lie to your mistress, and once for having desired to take a beautiful girl in your arms.'
I was then twice beaten, each time with twenty strokes. The Lady Gina, then, placed the chain leash which was snapped on my collar in the hand of Lola. As I lifted my head, miserable, cringing, my back and legs lacerated and bloody, I saw, truly noticing it for the first time, a deep mark, a lovely mark, about an inch and a half high and a half of an inch wide, incised in Lola's left thigh. I was startled. It was a brand. Lola had been branded. The mark was exquisite in her flesh. The design was rather floral. It consisted of what seemed to be a straight line, rather severe, with what appeared to be, adjacent to it, to its right, two fronds, curled and graceful. I would later learn that this was, in cursive script, the initial letter of the Gorean expression 'Kajira', which is the most common Gorean expression for a female slave. The design also, according to some, is supposed to have symbolic significance. The straight line is supposed to represent the staff of discipline and the two fronds the beauty of a woman. The significance of the whole, then, would be beauty subject to the staff of discipline. Interestingly, the design also bears a remote resemblance, if one thinks about it, to the English letter `K'. Since the first sound in the expression 'Kajira' would be represented in English by the letter `K' it is quite possible that this resemblance is more than a coincidence. Certain letters of the Gorean alphabet, not all of them, bear a very clear resemblance to certain letters in certain of the alphabets of Earth. This, I suppose, was to have been expected, given the doubtless Earth origin of all, or most, of the human Goreans. The Gorean name for the letter in question, if it is of interest, is 'Kef'.
I was gasping from the beating. My body stung. But I could not, for the moment, take my eyes from the exquisite mark, the brand, in the girl's thigh. It was clear upon her, and beautiful. She wore it in her very flesh. Lola was clearly, decisively and beautifully marked. Anyone who looked upon that mark would know what she was, a female slave. I looked to the thigh of Tela. That same mark, lovely and identical, was burned into her thigh. She, too, was well marked as a female slave.
Suddenly Lola struck me in the belly with her quirt, a vicious, lashing blow. Tela, too, then, hit me with her quirt, though on the left shoulder. I cried out with misery. I looked up, puzzled, at my mistress.
'You looked upon their brands,' said the Lady Gina to me. 'Do not forget you are only a slave, Jason.'
Lola jerked on the chain leash and thrust her quirt under my chin, pressing upwards. I stood. She tapped me on the belly and at the small of the back. I stood straight, frightened.
'Look upon the slaves,' commanded the Lady Gina. 'See their ankles, their legs, the sweetness of their bellies, the loveliness of their breasts, the beauty of their shoulders, their throats and faces, their hair.'
'Yes, Mistress,' I said. The hair of slave girls is commonly worn long and loose, unbound. The hair of both Lola and Tela was long, falling well to the small of their backs.
'They are desirable, aren't they?' asked the Lady Gina.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said, tensing myself.
'You would like to own them, wouldn't you?' asked the Lady Gina.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said, clenching my body against the blow or blows to come.
Then Lola, at a sign from the Lady Gina, struck me with the quirt.
'I am confused, Mistress,' I cried. 'I do not know what to do! Why are you doing this to me?'
'It is not different from what is done on Earth,' she said. 'Only there, except for children who can be, and often are, physically abused, the whips are social and verbal'
I looked at her with horror.
'It is the type of conditioning to which a male of Earth is almost certain to have been exposed,' she said. 'Would you like me now to remove your manacles and give you one of the girls for an hour or so, for your pleasure?' she asked.
'No,' I said, honestly, shrinking back.
'Lola?' she asked. 'Or Tela?'
'No,' I said. 'No, Mistress!'
'Suppose that I ordered you to perform with one of them, for my interest?' she asked.
I looked at her, terrified. 'I could not do so, Mistress,' I said
'A few minutes ago,' she said, 'you could have used them well.'
'Yes, Mistress,' I said.
'And now?' she asked.
'Not now,' I said. 'Not now.'
'I am teaching you, as men of Earth are taught,' she said, 'to fear and suppress your sexuality. The process is simple. Tantalize and punish. Tantalize and punish. Soon, by natural psychological linkages, an association will be formed between sexuality and punishment. You will come to fear your sexual feelings, as being precursors to pain, physical or mental. This will induce anxiety in sexual situations and impair sexual effectiveness. In children, of course, the punishments are commonly forgotten, at least on conscious levels. Inexplicable anxieties, however, often remain. These anxieties, and the rules that seem associated with them, pertaining to the suppression and inhibition of sexuality, must, of course, by thinking organisms, be rationalized. An entire structure of myths is then raised to protect the individual from the insight that he was, long ago, when defenseless, mutilated and crippled. You are familiar with the nature of such myths, such superstructures and defense mechanisms. They are many and varied. These range from the praising of an idiotic celibacy in the interests of a presumably nonexistent spirit to the genres of dirty jokes and stories, in which a vengeance is taken on the thwarted sexuality by trying to make it appear small and dirty. Between these two madnesses is a variety of more dangerous antisexisms, more pernicious because subtler, recrudescent Puritanisms masking themselves under the garbage of trigger rhetorics, the usage of such expressions as 'persons' and such, designed to suppress thought and enforce social conformity.'
'But what would be the point of all this madness and cruelty?' I asked.
'Why do the ugly disparage beauty?' she asked. 'Why do the weak belittle strength?'
'I do not understand,' I said.
'Masculinity in the male,' she said, 'is closely allied with sexuality. Masculinity may be best attacked by an attack on male sexuality, and the more pervasive and pernicious it is the better. Men are the natural masters. This is obvious in the study of primate biology. Thus the male must be hobbled, broken and crippled. He must be, as a male, destroyed. Women can then assume their place as his equal, or superior.'
'Why do you hate men so?' I asked
'I am not one of them,' she said.
'Why do you not carry your cause outside the pens?' I asked.
She laughed. 'I am not a fool,' she said. 'Do you think I want to be branded with a hot iron? Do you think I want to be put in a steel collar and thrown naked to the feet of men beneath their whips? No, my dear Jason, I do not wish that. Those are not men of Earth up there, who will consider the arguments for their own castration with reflective care. Those are Gorean men up there.'
'You are afraid of them,' I said.
