Gay fairies
Fairies of New England: The Little People of the Hills and Forests
I recently came across a channel in the travel diary of Fr. Jacques Marquette (the first European missionary to travel down the Mississippi River), in which he describes how “men” who lived as women among the Illinois people of the seventeenth century occupied a spiritually elevated position in the society. Here’s the passage:
As you can see, Fr. Jacques claimed that members of the Illinois tribe who lived as women (being born biologically male) would pass for “manitous” or “spirits.” The word manitou has a wide range of meanings in Native American religion. It can be used when speaking about the Great Soul or God, a life-force pervading nature, or individual spirits associated with spontaneous features of the landscape. All these manitous were an object of reverence for the Native peoples, and although not exactly “fairies,” they could be nature spirits.
This inevitably raises the question: What is it about living as a woman that gave some people special access to the spiritual realm and caused them to become identified with spirits?
Is spiritual Published in:January-February 2011 issue.
WHEN FUTURE GENERATIONS look back on gay liberation’s role in the greater creation of human consciousness, and what ideas helped shepherd civilization from its most primitive tendencies to more noble evolutionary possibilities, they will, in my opinion, possess to spend substantial moment studying the Radical Faerie movement, which was launched in 1979. They will find it particularly informative, I imagine, to notice how two competing historical accounts would emerge about who the Faeries were and what became of them: one gay-centered and psychological, the other seemingly gay-centered but covertly anti-psychological, focused on a romantic and revanchist portrayal of how the Faeries were formed.
The Radical Faerie movement is historically important because it was the first large-scale effort to structure gay-identified men on an indigenously homosexual spiritual basis, unlike gay synagogues, churches, and so on, which rely on heterosexist mythologies and dogmas. At preceding Faerie gatherings, gay men came together as never before, as Harry Hay put it, “to fling off the ugly grassy frogskin of hetero-imitation to find the shining Faerie p
“Fairy” is a common phrase of homophobic abuse that gay men have reclaimed as a symbol of their magic powers. Since the 1970’s “fairy” or “faerie” has been used as a positive entitle for radical gay individuality. Fairies are historically linked with gender transgression and homoeroticism in the pagan cultures of Europe. The related term “faggot” is derived from fagus, the beech tree around which fairies dance.[1] Faeries soar with queer spirit.
Eros, Ancient Greece, Museum of Pleasant Arts, Boston
In ancient Greece, the winged gods Eros and Hermes represent the archetype. Eros is the androgynous god described by Plato as the hunger and pursuit of wholeness.”[2] Hermes is the god of crossroads, limits and thresholds. Today, queers stand for this liminal realm. Lodging in the space between established alternatives – male and female, visible and invisible, possible and unfeasible – we guide souls from the constricting limits of what is, to the unknown, unknowable, but nevertheless yearned-for possibility of going beyond this.
Fairies include a contradictory nature – they fulfill humble tasks, yet possess extraordinary powers. Like queer people, they are prone to sudden transformation
Radical Faeries
The Southeastern Conference of Lesbians and Gay Men served as a catalyst for the emergence of the Radical Faerie movement and later, Gay Soul Visions.
From 1979, regular Faerie gatherings took place at Running Water Farm in North Carolina, as adv as the Short Mountain Sanctuary in Liberty, Tennessee. The gatherings “nurtured a warm sharing among male lover men in a attractive setting [and] provided a vehicle for the discussion and exploration of alternative gay male identities.”
“One of the guys [at the Southeastern Conference of Lesbians and Gay Men] was Mikel Wilson, who owned Running Water. He looked like an Old Testament prophet. He had lengthy hair and a bushy beard. The men were sitting there. We’d never intentionally sat down just to be a organization of gay men together. We had a really beautiful, moving conversation, and at the end we all said we’d enjoy to cotinue this. It had just never ocurred to us, I contemplate, because of privilege, that a group of men needed a space too. Mikel invited us in June, around the solstice, to come up to Running Water. So the 1978 conference is compassionate of a catalyst for the Running Water Farm gathering.” .
Published in:January-February 2011 issue.
WHEN FUTURE GENERATIONS look back on gay liberation’s role in the greater creation of human consciousness, and what ideas helped shepherd civilization from its most primitive tendencies to more noble evolutionary possibilities, they will, in my opinion, possess to spend substantial moment studying the Radical Faerie movement, which was launched in 1979. They will find it particularly informative, I imagine, to notice how two competing historical accounts would emerge about who the Faeries were and what became of them: one gay-centered and psychological, the other seemingly gay-centered but covertly anti-psychological, focused on a romantic and revanchist portrayal of how the Faeries were formed.
The Radical Faerie movement is historically important because it was the first large-scale effort to structure gay-identified men on an indigenously homosexual spiritual basis, unlike gay synagogues, churches, and so on, which rely on heterosexist mythologies and dogmas. At preceding Faerie gatherings, gay men came together as never before, as Harry Hay put it, “to fling off the ugly grassy frogskin of hetero-imitation to find the shining Faerie p
“Fairy” is a common phrase of homophobic abuse that gay men have reclaimed as a symbol of their magic powers. Since the 1970’s “fairy” or “faerie” has been used as a positive entitle for radical gay individuality. Fairies are historically linked with gender transgression and homoeroticism in the pagan cultures of Europe. The related term “faggot” is derived from fagus, the beech tree around which fairies dance.[1] Faeries soar with queer spirit.
Eros, Ancient Greece, Museum of Pleasant Arts, Boston
In ancient Greece, the winged gods Eros and Hermes represent the archetype. Eros is the androgynous god described by Plato as the hunger and pursuit of wholeness.”[2] Hermes is the god of crossroads, limits and thresholds. Today, queers stand for this liminal realm. Lodging in the space between established alternatives – male and female, visible and invisible, possible and unfeasible – we guide souls from the constricting limits of what is, to the unknown, unknowable, but nevertheless yearned-for possibility of going beyond this.
Fairies include a contradictory nature – they fulfill humble tasks, yet possess extraordinary powers. Like queer people, they are prone to sudden transformation
Radical Faeries
The Southeastern Conference of Lesbians and Gay Men served as a catalyst for the emergence of the Radical Faerie movement and later, Gay Soul Visions.
From 1979, regular Faerie gatherings took place at Running Water Farm in North Carolina, as adv as the Short Mountain Sanctuary in Liberty, Tennessee. The gatherings “nurtured a warm sharing among male lover men in a attractive setting [and] provided a vehicle for the discussion and exploration of alternative gay male identities.”
“One of the guys [at the Southeastern Conference of Lesbians and Gay Men] was Mikel Wilson, who owned Running Water. He looked like an Old Testament prophet. He had lengthy hair and a bushy beard. The men were sitting there. We’d never intentionally sat down just to be a organization of gay men together. We had a really beautiful, moving conversation, and at the end we all said we’d enjoy to cotinue this. It had just never ocurred to us, I contemplate, because of privilege, that a group of men needed a space too. Mikel invited us in June, around the solstice, to come up to Running Water. So the 1978 conference is compassionate of a catalyst for the Running Water Farm gathering.” .