Radical Faeries - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Radical Faeries are a loosely-affiliated, worldwide network and counter-cultural movement seeking to reject hetero

Heteronormativity

Heteronormativity is a term invented in 1991 to describe any of a set of lifestyle norms that hold that people fall into distinct and complementary genders with natural roles in life. It also holds that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation, and states that sexual and marital relations...

-imitation

Imitation

Imitation is an advanced behavior whereby an individual observes and replicates another's. The word can be applied in many contexts, ranging from animal training to international politics.-Anthropology and social sciences:...

and redefine queer

Queer

Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...

identity through spirituality

Spirituality

Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...

. The Radical Faerie movement

LGBT social movements

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender social movements share inter-related goals of social acceptance of sexual and gender minorities. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies have a long history of campaigning for what is generally called LGBT rights, also called gay...

started in the United States among gay men

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

during the 1970s sexual and counterculture

Counterculture

Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...

revolution. The movement has expanded in tandem with the larger gay rights movement, challenging commercialization

Commercialization

Commercialization is the process or cycle of introducing a new product or production method into the market. The actual launch of a new product is the final stage of new product development, and the one where the most money will have to be spent for advertising, sales promotion, and other marketing...

and patriarchal aspects of modern LGBT

LGBT

LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

life while celebrating pagan constructs and rituals. Faeries tend to be fiercely independent, anti-establishment

Anti-establishment

An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine New Statesman to refer to its political and social agenda...

, and community

Community

The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...

-focused. Faerie culture is undefinable as a group; however, it has similar characteristics to "Marxism

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

, feminism

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

, paganism

Paganism

Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

, Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

and New Age

New Age

The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...

spirituality, anarchism

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

, the mythopoetic

Mythopoeic thought

Mythopoeic thought is a hypothetical stage of human thought preceding modern thought, proposed by Henri Frankfort and his wife Henriette Antonia Frankfort in the 1940s...

men's movement, radical individualism

Individualism

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...

, the therapeutic culture of self-fulfillment and self-actualization, earth-based movements

Ecology movement

The global ecology movement is based upon environmental protection, and is one of several new social movements that emerged at the end of the 1960s. As a values-driven social movement, it should be distinguished from the pre-existing science of ecology....

in support of sustainable

Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...

communities, spiritual solemnity coupled with a camp

Camp (style)

Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...

sensibility, gay liberation and drag

Drag (clothing)

Drag is used for any clothing carrying symbolic significance but usually referring to the clothing associated with one gender role when worn by a person of another gender. The origin of the term "drag" is unknown, but it may have originated in Polari, a gay street argot in England in the early...

."

Radical Faeries today embody a wide range of genders

Gender identity

A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...

, sexual orientations

Sexual orientation identity

Sexual orientation identity describes how persons identify their own sexuality. In addition, they may choose not to identify their sexual orientation, or dis-identify with a sexual orientation.This may or may not relate to their actual sexual orientation...

, and identities

Terminology of homosexuality

The terminology of homosexuality has been a contentious issue since the emergence of LGBT social movements in the mid-19th century. As with racial terms within the United States—such as negro, black, colored, and African American—the choice of terms regarding sexual orientation may imply a certain...

. Many sanctuaries and gatherings are open to all

Homo

Homo may refer to:*the Greek prefix ὅμο-, meaning "the same"*the Latin for man, human being*Homo, the taxonomical genus including modern humans...

, while some still focus on the particular spiritual experience of man-loving men

Men who have sex with men

Men who have sex with men are male persons who engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, regardless of how they identify themselves; many men choose not to accept sexual identities of homosexual or bisexual...

co-creating temporary autonomous zones. Faerie sanctuaries adapt rural

Rural

Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...

living and environmentally sustainable concepts to modern technologies as part of creative expression. Radical Faerie communities are generally inspired by indigenous

Indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....

, native

Indigenous peoples by geographic regions

This is a partial list of indigenous, aboriginal, native peoples by geographical regions. Indigenous peoples are any ethnic group of peoples who inhabit a geographic region, with which they have the earliest known historical connection....

or traditional spiritualities

Two-Spirit

Two-Spirit People , is an English term that emerged in 1990 out of the third annual inter-tribal Native American/First Nations gay/lesbian American conference in Winnipeg. It describes Indigenous North Americans who fulfill one of many mixed gender roles found traditionally among many Native...

, especially those that incorporate genderqueer

Genderqueer

Genderqueer is a catch-all term for gender identities other than man and woman, thus outside of the gender binary and heteronormativity...

sensibilities.

History

The Faeries trace their name to the 1979 Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies

Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies

The Spiritual Conference for Radical FairiesHay and others switched to the alternate spelling of faeries after 1979 . was organized as a "call to gay brothers" by early gay rights advocates Harry Hay, John Burnside, Don Kilhefner, and Mitch Walker. The 1979 conference was held over three days,...

.Hay and others switched to the older spelling, "faeries", after 1979.
Harry Hay (1996) Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of its Founder, edited by Will Roscoe. The conference, organized by Harry Hay

Harry Hay

Henry "Harry" Hay, Jr. was a labor advocate, teacher and early leader in the American LGBT rights movement. He is known for his roles in helping to found several gay organizations, including the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States.Hay was exposed early in...

and his lover John Burnside

John Burnside (inventor)

John Lyon Burnside III was the inventor of the teleidoscope, the darkfield kaleidoscope and the Symmetricon, and, because he rediscovered the math behind kaleidoscope optics, for decades, every maker of optically correct kaleidoscopes sold in the US paid him royalties...

, along with Los Angeles activist Don Kilhefner and Jungian therapist Mitch Walker

Mitch Walker

Mitchell Lynn Walker is an American gay activist and Jungian psychologist who has written many influential articles and books on gay-centered psychology.-Biography:Mitch Walker, Ph.D...

, was held over the Labor Day

Labor Day

Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September that celebrates the economic and social contributions of workers.-History:...

weekend in Benson, Arizona

Benson, Arizona

-Transportation:Benson Airport is located 3 miles north west of the city.Benson is served by Interstate 10 to the north, which travels directly to downtown Tucson....

and attracted over two hundred participants. From this, participants started holding more multi-day events called "gatherings". In keeping with hippie

Hippie

The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...

, neopagan, and eco-feminist trends of the time, gatherings were held out-of-doors in natural settings. To this end, distinct Radical Faerie communities have created sanctuaries that are "close to the land".

It was Hay who adopted the name "Radical Faerie" for this burgeoning movement, with "radical" referring to its politically extreme viewpoint. The term "Faerie" was chosen in reference both to the immortal animistic spirits of European folklore

Fairy

A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...

and to the fact that "fairy" had become a pejorative slang term for male homosexuals. Initially, Hay rejected the term "movement" when discussing the Radical Faeries, considering it to instead be a "way of life" for gay males, and he began referring to it as a "not-movement".

The magical and "radical humanist" views of Arthur Evans

Arthur Evans (author)

Arthur Scott Evans was an early gay rights advocate and author, most well known for his 1978 book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture.-Early life:...

, specifically his 1978 book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, influenced some early members of the movement. Evans had previously formed the Faery Circle in San Francisco in the fall of 1975, a group that "combined neo-pagan consciousness, gay sensibility, and ritual play."

However, less than a year after the first "Radical Faerie" gathering in 1979, internal pressures threatened to fracture the group. Walker secretly formed the "Faerie Fascist Police" to combat "Faerie fascism" and "power-tripping" within the Faeries. He specifically targeted Hay: "I recruited people to spy on Harry and see when he was manipulating people, so we could undo his undermining of the scene." At a gathering in Oregon designed to discuss acquiring land for a Faerie sanctuary, a newcomer to the group, coached by Walker, confronted Harry about the power dynamics within the core circle. In the ensuing conflict, the core circle splintered. Plans for the land sanctuary stalled and a separate circle formed. The core circle made an attempt to reconcile, but at a meeting that came to be known as "Bloody Sunday", Kilhefner quit, accusing Hay and Burnside of "power tripping". Then Walker resigned, in the process allegedly calling Hay a "cancer on the gay movement" (a remark Walker later denied making). Walker and Kilhefner formed a new gay spiritual group called Treeroots.

Philosophy and ritual

Faeries represent the first spiritual movement to be both "gay centered and gay engendered", where gayness is central to the idea, rather than in addition to, or incidental to a pre-existing spiritual tradition. The Radical Faerie exploration of the "gay spirit" is central, and that it is itself the source of spirituality, wisdom, and initiation. Founding Faerie Mitch Walker claims that "because of its indigenous, gay-centered nature, the Radical Faerie movement pioneers a new seriousness about gayness, its depth and potential, thereby heralding a new stage in the meaning of Gay Liberation."

In her study of the Pagan movement in the U.S., sociologist Margot Adler

Margot Adler

Margot Adler is an author, journalist, lecturer, Wiccan priestess and radio journalist and correspondent for National Public Radio .- Early life :Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Adler grew up mostly in New York City...

noted that the Faeries placed a great emphasis on the "transformative power of play", believing that playful behavior had a role within ritual that could lead to an altered state of consciousness. In keeping with this, they were often the "public anarchists" at Pagan events, challenging the formalized ritual structures propagated by other Pagans; at one event in the 1980s, a group of Faeries stood at the entrance to the ritual circle, calling out "Attention! No spontaneity! We're the spontaneity police!" as a way of parodying what they saw as formalised trends within Pagan ritual. Adler also noted similar trends within other Pagan groups, such as the Reformed Druids of North America

Reformed Druids of North America

The Reformed Druids of North America is an American Neo-Druidic organization. It was formed in 1963 at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota as a humorous protest against the college's required attendance of religious services. This original congregation is called the Carleton Grove, sometimes...

and the Erisian movement

Discordianism

Discordianism is a religion based on the worship of Eris , the Greco-Roman goddess of strife. It was founded circa 1958–1959 after the publication of its holy book the Principia Discordia, written by Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst after a series of shared hallucinations at a...

Sanctuaries and gatherings

Radical Faerie sanctuaries — rural land or urban buildings where Faeries have come together to live a communal life — now exist in, for example:

North America
- Nomenus Wolf Creek Sanctuary in Oregon
- Short Mountain in Tennessee
- Faerie Camp Destiny in Vermont
- Zuni Mountain in New Mexico
- Kawashaway in Minnesota
- AmberFox in Ontario
- Blue Heron Farm in far upstate New York
- and others
Europe
- Folleterre in France
Asia
- Asian Faeries in Thailand
Australia
- Faerieland in New South Wales

Faeries hold gatherings at faerie sanctuaries and also in non-sanctuary space all over the globe ranging from non-Faerie centric rural spaces (such as IDA) in Tennessee to urban spaces, such as Queer Magic in Oregon.

Cultural influence

The Faeries were a contributing influence to John Cameron Mitchell

John Cameron Mitchell

John Cameron Mitchell is an American writer, actor, and director. He is best known for his motion pictures Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus and Rabbit Hole.- Early life:...

's film Shortbus
Shortbus
Shortbus is a 2006 comedy-drama film written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell. The plot revolves around a sexually diverse ensemble of colorful characters trying desperately to connect in New York City. The characters converge in a weekly Brooklyn artistic/sexual salon loosely inspired by...

. Notably the performance artist Justin Bond

Justin Bond

Justin Vivian Bond , formerly simply Justin Bond, is an American singer-songwriter, performance artist, occasional actor and Radical Faerie. Described as a "fixture of the New York avant-garde", Bond arose to notability playing the role of Kiki DuRayne in the drag cabaret act Kiki and Herb from the...

appears in the film (as vself).

Queer as Folk season 4, episode 2, "Stand Up for Ourselves" features a storyline where the characters Emmett and Michael attend a gathering to discover their "inner Faerie." Various adventures ensue at the gathering, including a mystical encounter with Harry Hay

Harry Hay

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Philosophy and ritual

Sanctuaries and gatherings

Cultural influence

See also

Periodicals

External links