Kajira

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The kajira "kef" symbol (or "staff and fronds") of the Gor books.

Kajira is the term for "slave-girl" in John Norman's Gor novels. Slaves in the Gorean lifestyle will refer to themselves as kajirae. The phrase "la kajira" is said to mean "I am a slave-girl" in the Gorean language, the most widely-spoken lingua franca in the known regions of the planet Gor (this is one of the few complete Gorean-language sentences given in the Gor novels).

Historical and modern versions of Chinese character Unicode U5974 奴, used by some Goreans as a non-Norman-derived kajira symbol.[1]

The word is usually seen in the feminine form "kajira" (pl. "kajirae"), as most slaves in the Gorean lifestyle are female; the masculine forms are "kajirus" and "kajiri" (following the rules of Latin nominative adjective morphology, as seen also with words such as "alumnus"/"alumna", etc.). The construction "kajiras" is incorrect, but is occasionally seen in third-party writing.

A common misconception among people practicing the lifestyle or playing out the Gorean theme online is that kajirae never refer to themselves in the first person, using the terms "me" or "I", instead being allowed only to refer to themselves in the third person. If one is adhering to the novels this is inaccurate, as virtually all of the kajirae in the Gor novels do often refer to themselves in the first person (the phrase "la kajira" being an example), with third person speech being uncommon in the text. However, the books do support the idea that third-person speech is considered distinctively slave speech (in Captive of Gor, chapter 15, Ute issues the command "Speak as a slave!", meaning in the third person), and that slaves may be specifically commanded to speak in such a way.

[edit] Literary influence

Some aspects of Gorean slavery described in the Gor books — such as the basic nadu kneeling position[2], and the custom in the northern temperate zone city-states that a kajira's garments should allow an open-air path to her private parts, to symbolize and facilitate her constant availability and accessibility to her master — were probably influenced by the classic erotic novel Story of O.