FAERY SEXUALITY, FAERY POLITICS

© 1985 by Stuart Norman


Appeared in RFD #43, Summer ‘85, “Relative Forms of Desire.”
I call this article one of my manifestoes on gay liberation.


        Faery is a way of thinking, being and behaving contrary to the role expectations of our culture. We are enchanted beings, posessed of a rare power to love and spread joy and brotherhood. At least that is our ideal; the reality falls short. Yet most of us who consider ourselves faeries are gay men, but the definition can include both sexes, even the heterosexual orientation. There has been a tendency among us to practice a separatism that almost rivals that of radical feminists. But in these times we would well find our commonality with other people of like minds and see our place in the whole scheme of humanity.
        We have adopted many of our beliefs from much older peoples: Native Americans , pagans, the political left, eastern religions; and we share issues with many special interest groups. But how many of us know our cultural roots? Judy Grahn and Arthur Evans, among others, have documented our existence going back into prehistory and demonstrating other cultural views of our place in the world.
        Today, what are we about? We have our set of beliefs which relate to the Native Americans, New Age movement, environmental movement, antiwar and nuclear arms, etc., and we need to form coalitions with these groups to further our goals for a better world where we can live and love freely without threat of prejudice and violence.
        These things we share with Native Americans, New age and environmental groups: sacredness of life, the Mother-Earth Goddess, spirituality rather than organized religion, ecological concerns, personhood, individualism, freedom and self-liberation, decentralization, appropriate technology, non-genderist/sexist relating , community sharing, cooperation rather than competition, alternative healing and nutrition, shamanism, antiwar and anti-violence. All believe in a crying need for cultural change to create a new, humane society, the true brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity.
        A common thread among these groups is to look back to the tribal, matriarchal cultures of prehistory. Scholars are reasonably sure these cultures did not have war, and their political structures were nonhierarchical. However, men and women were equal but different. We can also assume that their politics and religion were integrated into the structure of tribal life. Also, these cultures were one with nature, living in harmony with the seasons and the earth, bodies and souls still together. Then with the rise of patriarchal culture the separation of body and spirit and the evolution of the self-conscious, egoic mind, the Goddess was dethroned in favor of the masculine Father image which has ruled all of western cultural history - an imbalance which has brought much misery to humankind and now threatens its very existence.
        Do we need look back to recreating the matriarchal, Goddess cultures? Why not integrate the masculine and feminine into a new, balanced value system? That would be an evolutionary leap in consciousness that begins first with becoming androgynous.
        We are already examining new ways of thinking and behaving that are part of a different consciousness. And we are creating new roles for ourselves. It is a process of unlearning negative cultural patterns, inhibitions, taboos, self-denial and fatalism. Thus we are becoming a different people in the midst of our society, but we must take caution not to consider ourselves superior. We still have much in common with our hetero brothers and sisters. To others as well as ourselves we must be able to demonstrate good-will, respect, trust, responsibility, honesty, love, self-confidence and self-affirmation. The us vs. them approach of either/or thinking must cease. We need not put down or power trip on ourselves and others. Faeries are dealing with the problems of youthism, ageism and sexism within our community. And we must deal daily with the problem of possessiveness and ownership, whether of people or things. Still there are issues of separatism and racism that must be addressed. We still must decide whether political correctness, with its restrictive viewpoint, is a valid way for us to gain our rights. We look to a voluntarist, cooperative model for society. But can we be accepting of others’ differing beliefs and behaviors?

        Faeries can be teachers and healers of humankind, workers for social justice and cultural change. That was the subject of an article in the Los Angeles Gay Academic Union newsletter by Radical Faery Don Kilhefner. His premise is that the political activism of the 1960’s is dead. Now is the time for us to be shamans, i.e., healers and visionaries to aid others in the transition to the new age. I’d rather think of us as shaman-warriors, taking our roles from the Native Americans and from the Don Juan of Carlos Casteneda. The warrior is never compelled to fight nor need use violence. The Indians left that decision to the individual (“Today is not a good day to die.”) with no stigma attached to it. Both the warrior and shaman have impeccability: that sense of personal honor, self-respect and courage, and must find a “path with a heart.” If we are to be teachers and healers we must be centered and balanced, in touch with self and the earth. From that point we can be free, lighthearted (clowns), bringers of wisdom and joy, celebrants of life, offering caring, affection, support and always open to new experiences.
        Yet we must ask ourselves if the tribal and shamanic way are appropriate roles for us, since we now see ourselves as a people, a different view from any of past cultures and having wide-ranging political implications. Especially our insistence on the freedom to love whomever, whenever, wherever, however is a political issue of great importance to our culture.
        We can use sex for recreation, for giving and receiving affection or as an expression of love. Our beliefs about sexuality and brotherhood unite us. But in the wider gay community issues of sex and friendship and a sense of brotherhood are sometimes at odds. Often there is a belief that one should not have sex with friends. It could be fear of commitment to another person, and with the emotionality of sex arising makes it difficult to sort out emotions. This issue of how we treat relationships has gained importance in this time of curbing sexual expression due to AIDS. For in friendships we commit ourselves with love, trust, respect and sharing. And usually we don’t choose our friends in terms of physical/sexual attractiveness. That’s why rarely sex partners become friends; the personality is not the same as the body it is contained in.

        Faeries pride themselves in exploring new ways to relate. In a faery circle everyone can have a sense of making love with everyone else with or without sexual contact. The decisions of the circle are nonhierarchical. All will be heard and their concerns taken into consideration to arrive at a consensus. Even this group solidarity can be exclusive, elitist, isolating us from the whole gay community and others. Yet it is not wrong that we do our own thing, but we must be aware of being misunderstood by those not associated with us, or pulling away from relating with non-faeries. At least we have our wide-ranging networks and support groups similar to those of lesbians, but often lacking in the whole gay community. Gay males need more support groups.

        At this point I must turn to an analysis of the gay movement and its problems, and then to the reasons why our culture is homophobic. Then I will turn to some solutions.
        Gays are going against 3000 years of western culture. Our movement questions the established political order, rejecting it, and is a threat to it. We represent an unknown factor, thus the fear and hatred directed toward us. We live a free sexuality and pleasure-affirming lifestyle for its own sake, which conflicts with the prevailing belief in sex for procreation and marital bonding. In our society pleasure has no value unless it can be sold, then it is a product and thus useful. The sexual revolution was only a triumph of consumerism, not sexual liberation. And too, there is that deeply-seated fear of the feminine, which unconsciously represents the ancient witchery, visionary, spiritual ways which our culture repressed. It is tied to fear of the devil, of evil. It is the ego defense against the gnostic knowing and self- knowledge which would break the cultural bonds by letting us see through the boundaries of cultural expectations, finding them less than perfect.
        We have tried a civil rights movement modeled after the black CRM, petitioning the government for special protective anti-discrimination legislation. On some local levels this has worked, but on the federal level only a few sponsors of House and Senate Bills are forthcoming, and this administration is not supportive of our cause.
        Even blacks and other ethnic minorities are not fairing well under this administration. Racism and bigotry are again growing. These minorities are threats to the cultural beliefs expressed as dominant, white, heterosexual, middle-class, professional, protestant, male values. We gays are more of a threat to those values than any other minority. How did this happen?
        The history of western civilization is the domination and subjugation of nature and women and the superiority of men and all things masculine. Thus there was suppression and persecution of visionaries, shamans and witches who represented the feminine aspect from which that power arises. This situation arose with the dawn of ego consciousness which produced an awareness of separation of the individual from the Goddess and from the tribe or extended family. With that awareness of separation also came the realization of mortality and the fear of death. Ego defenses arose to protect the fragile individual psyche, the self, and denied death. All that was associated with the Earth Mother Goddess was a reminder of death, of the eternal return to the earth. The ego prevented the knowledge of oneness with the Goddess. The visionary powers were curtailed, forcing further separation. And we have been running from that fear for millennia. So even sexuality and pleasure was suppressed because of its impulse to engender life and stir up visionary powers, more reminders of the feminine.
        The rise of monotheism and hierarchical social organization with its glorification of the God King (male) began at this time. And western culture became devoted to mind, reason, rationality, ego - a culture of authority and regimentation, duty to the leader/state, self-denial, imperial/conquering, progress and production oriented, erotophobic, with the subjugation of the person to mass/social concerns. It is a win/lose game of power for conquest and war fueled by fear of death.
        Thus western culture denied that humans were part of nature and the earth and caused the body/mind split that has been characterized as schizophrenic. This imbalance toward the masculine creates a block to the visionary, right-brained, spiritual experience, and allowed a defensive politics of cold, rational power unfettered by human emotion.
        We still have our emotions to contend with. By learning in childhood emotions are repressed by the ego defenses so that we became robots, programmed to certain responses, easy to control by those at the top of the power hierarchy. Emotion is to be released in the privacy of the home or in public only in drama or war. From this repression arises the unthinking, unfreedom of fascism. It is a move toward the totalitarian, technical collective order of the anthill or beehive. We are neither ants or bees.
        Yet most people are not aware of the price they pay for living in our civilization. They do not realize what can be gained by cultural change. We live with limited emotional response, body rigidity and inflexibility, fear of touching and sex, little spiritual awareness, of pleasure that fills no social role or duty, and with the nuclear family - that most isolating of social institutions. We are caught in a rationalistic-reductionist objective reality.

        The primary form of political institution that evolved in western culture is the state, which has been the greatest oppressor of humankind. It is the instrument of cultural preservation. The problem with the state is that it cannot respect individuals, only individuals can do that. The state is only a mass social phenomenon based in competition and hierarchical control. It promulgates an us vs. them defensive philosophy. But competition makes enemies. One can’t be open and humane if one has to put others down, beat them at the game, to stay on top. Even revolution cannot cause cultural change because it is part of the competitive process within the state. Any attempt to overthrow the patriarchy is to use a patriarchal technique, playing a no-win game.
        The individual is powerless against the state. Only large numbers of people are relevant, thus special interest groups must form to have political power. So our political system is a purely utilitarian numbers game of mass influence. Even our beliefs in rule of law rather than of personalities, and in the later development of rights of the individual are insufficient to respect personhood against the fundamental cultural infrastructure of authority, hierarchy and sense of mass collective social order. There may be forced collectivization, but never true cooperation within the political system. Both the left and the right are products of western patriarchal culture and built on its biases, and both ideologies of force and repression, not of freedom and liberation. True liberation begins with the individual self.
        So we should not be surprised today that our great ideals for government and politics based on principles are no longer followed. Fairness has gone out of it. There is no long-term vision among our political leaders, only the immediate expedient political moves for manipulating power. Now only pressure groups and influential people turn the government’s ear.

        All of us are culturally conditioned from birth to feel guilt and fear about sex, to admire and obey authority, to unthinkingly accept patriarchal, sexist gender role behaviors. If we attempt to go against these taboos we will feel guilty. We are breaking trust with society, with the father/family, and ultimately with God, as our culture perceives him. This is why liberation is so difficult. Therefore, I doubt our culture, as it is, can assimilate us. If it can’t suppress us it will try to trap us in its mold. But if being out is perceived as a political act by the majority in our society, nevertheless, we don’t have to be on the defensive. It is they who are on the defensive to preserve the cultural values we threaten. It depends on how we react to them. How they react to us is their problem. We need to demonstrate a tolerance to them; give them some time to adjust to our way of life, to get to know us as persons. It does not mean we need to hide our ways of life and beliefs from them or change our behavior when in their presence. But we must not push our lifestyle down others’ throats. We still need to stress our common humanity, yet teach others to revel in human differences. Lest we forget that our defensiveness arises out of unsureness about ourselves, for heterosexuals out of their sexual insecurity.
        We need to stop thinking that we are oppressed, that we are waiting for liberty, or that we will overcome someday. Waiting for someday can take forever. It is a mindset to put off, to keep us hoping but not doing, to prevent actualization of our goals.
        The Jews have had a persecution complex and waiting for a messiah mentality, thus their worst expectations were realized in the holocaust. I don’t mean to single out Jewish people or to suggest that they called down the holocaust upon themselves, but they are a good example. Blacks had a slave mentality, an inferiority mindset, until they examined themselves and began doing for themselves, demanding their rights and taking responsibility to get them. Gays, too, have a persecution and guilt mentality which must be overcome. It often prevents our full participation in the good aspects of our society. So we need to learn to speak out on other issues irrespective of our gayness.
        Because we are a microcosm of our society and thus have the same types of social interactions and prejudices as do heterosexuals, we are not so supremely special a people, only different. We know that conformity doesn’t work, but still we have competing factions within our community. We need to learn to respect differences and diversity, too.
        People are people, no matter what they do or believe. And we should try getting along as people, forgetting the labels we place on them. But there are those who use rhetoric to divide and separate us into warring camps, who want us to see our differences in a negative light rather than as a celebration of divine variety. All they can preach is hatred cloaked in resounding words for causes that will assuredly save the world only if we follow them. Their way is death. Fortunately it is only a vocal minority who find themselves so caught up in a rigid belief that it becomes a burning passion without regard for humanity or the means to its end.
        When rhetoric and labeling are used some people will be swayed by it and swell the ranks of followers because it is easier to go along with the tide than oppose it. It is laziness, purely and simply. They are being manipulated for power by having their fears and guilts played upon and fed a direction to channel their anger. That is the method of scapegoating - placing the blame elsewhere.
        The good people in this country are a vast majority, but most of them don’t think they know anyone who is gay. Yet most do. Come out to those you know, and if they are true friends they will adjust to it. Give them time to come to terms with it. We must cultivate patience in this area.
        We can also learn to talk to people in their own language, using words they understand that have special meaning for their socioeconomic background. For example, the buzzwords of the left will turn off those on the right, whereas they might listen to the issue if it is communicated in their reference system. Far leftist or rightist rhetoric simply turns off most Americans. Using epithets and name-calling of an opposing group only lowers you to their level of rhetoric. And these inflammatory buzzwords will only escalate the misunderstanding, fear and hatred between you. Labels make us tend to confuse the despised behaviors with the person. We call them straights, as if we were crooked or they inflexible; they call us queer, which used to mean strange, or faggots, which were used to burn witches. This must cease.
        There are many non-gay people who support us, ranging from those who don’t care what we are or do, to those who actively support our rights because sexual and minority liberation will liberate society so that their own unconventional lifestyles can be fully lived; and to those who believe it is a matter of simple human dignity and spiritual growth. These are the people we must get to know and work with.
        How many of us have heterosexual friends? Are we afraid to associate with them? That should be an important issue for us in these times. Even the sexual freedom of heterosexuals is at stake. So we do have something to offer our society to gain support from others. If we make gayness an issue of sexual freedom for everyone rather than a gay civil rights or human rights issue, it is more practical.
        So do we abandon a civil rights approach at this time? No. But we must develop other grassroots programs and support groups to diffuse the fear and loathing for us. We can work to get others to know us as people and to understand that some of our values might be better for them. There are many people committed to changing our culture before it destroys us and all life on earth. It is time for humanity to again come together as stewards of the earth. We can be part of this new recreation of humanity.


Contents The Great Faerie Caravan Gay Liberation