February 12, 2009
Thirty years after the launching of the Radical Faerie movement, psychologist Don Kilhefner continues his habit of mocking inconvenient truths, now by greatly exaggerating his role in the founding of that movement while trivializing the pivotal contributions made by his one-time collaborator and co-founding colleague, Mitch Walker, in his new series of articles in Frontiers on Faerie history that started January 27, 2009. He will be speaking at the One National Gay and Lesbian Archives with Mark Thompson on February 15th about the Radical Faeries, where he will no doubt continue this whitewashing of past and present realities.
Before going on, I must clearly state that Don, as a relatively well-respected community leader and powerful organizer who uncommonly and prolifically espouses what he refers to as “gay consciousness,” shows a feisty, unyielding politics that refreshingly flies in the face of dominant assimilationist and deconstructionist attitudes within the gay community, and I feel it is sincerely impressive that he vociferously expects gay people to stand up against the tremendously hateful forces of unending societal homophobia, to take better responsibility for the gay community, and to mature as “gay adults.” There are simply no others today who address gay-centric ideas as forcefully and consistently over so long a period of time as he does, aside from Mitch Walker. Also like Mitch, he is a psychologist who brings a rare level of psychological understanding to his activities and pronouncements. He should rightly be appreciated and honored for his genuine contributions to gay community building over the years. And so, from that angle, more power to him that he would blow his own horn as he does, in his relentlessly self-promotional writing and public events (he showed a film of himself at the Gay Men’s Forum last year).
This leads to the darker side of the situation and the necessity to address some serious concerns regarding Don’s leadership activities, as well as why all gay people should take notice of such matters. That I had a serious working relationship with him for more than a decade in the non-profit corporation, Treeroots, which is to this day dedicated to gay self-realization, and also that through this association I have been personally affected by him, both positively and negatively, may lend a certain credence to my views. So even as I can’t help but admire Don for his significant accomplishments, and feel honored to have been able to work with and know him, I also must say that I have in addition felt personally deeply hurt by him. That Don has it in him to be so, in my experience, hurtful, is one thing, but how he has consistently avoided addressing such issues with me when I tried to raise them is another and even more telling matter.
What does it mean that such an important community leader refuses to try to engage or resolve such differences in any meaningful way, as I maintain that Don has done with me? As long as I have known him, he has avoided personal conflict and intimate candor at all costs. If I did anything that would have caused him to treat me in the ostracizing way he does, he’s never indicated to me what that might be. How can I help but wonder about a psychologist leader who espouses psychological reality but does not walk the talk?
Even more disturbing for me about Don is how badly I’ve seen him treat Mitch, and especially his failure to at all acknowledge Mitch’s ideas and activities. Every time I read an article where Don omits acknowledging the significant influence Mitch has arguably had on him, I wince inside. It is doubtful, for example, that the Radical Faeries, which Don now claims so much credit for founding, would exist without Mitch’s participation. Also, Don likely wouldn’t be at all psychologically-oriented, even to the superficial degree that he is, if not for Mitch’s influence. How could Don so demean his one-time associate, who so closely worked with him during such key years, and especially given how many of Don’s own current ideas have likely been affected by that association, ideas like being shamanic, Jungian, psychotherapeutic and a gay leader as such, ideas that Mitch continues to espouse as one of today’s most important gay activist-intellectuals in his unique dedication to exploring gay-centered psychology and spirituality?
Aside from my own grievances and their implications for his questionable ethics, Don’s prominence as a community leader itself demands a more critical evaluation of his actions, in so far as they impact his effectiveness in that role.
It seems to me that the personal is political in Don’s case particularly. There is the fact that when dealing with spiritual and psychological matters, one should feel more compelled to practice what one preaches because of the high value placed on these special qualities, and for the same reason that this be done not just in theory, but as a practice of honest living. That said, it is likewise imperative that my own shadow issues, unconscious violence, shame and homophobia be named here as well. Yet as I try to honestly own that aspect of my own views and discussion, it still feels that the point I am attempting to make through these words is valid, indeed, highlights the question at issue, which is, why there needs to be a realistic standard of psychological responsibility for assessing true leadership in forging a better gay liberation, especially one claiming to be at all psychologically minded.
So here is the juice. Don in his articles says nothing new or insightful or even all that instructive about what made the Radical Faerie movement originally so exciting and substantial, a substance so truly unique and fresh as a historic manifestation of gay-centered vision, that nothing since can qualitatively compare with it, except for the possible insight to be further gained if one then tries to seriously face the Radical Faerie shadow. While Don did appear to be committed to examining that shadow for a brief period of time long ago, he has since come to demonstrate that, to the small degree to which he advocates for any psychological-mindedness at all, in doing so he only pays lip-service to really addressing the gay psychological unconscious.
Why should Don try to suddenly make the Radical Faerie scene seem so important when it has pretty much formally died out here for a long time now? Could it be that he has nothing else to offer but stories of his past glories? Or that as he ages, he feels increasingly compelled to magnify himself, as has been the want of other fading gay elders (Anyone remember Morris Kight in this regard?).
The blatant self-promotion that permeates his discussion of the rise of the Radical Faerie movement, aside from being embarrassing to behold, in Don’s case ironically shows how cynically and hypocritically he can behave, and in the very ways he is ostensibly so opposed to as the exercise of unjust power. Nowadays he publicly rails about the need for gay people to mature and take responsibility, and yet I myself can give various examples of times when he was directly or indirectly irresponsible and hurtful to me personally, which he has never attempted to acknowledge or deal with, and which I’ll examine a bit more shortly. I naturally contrast his behaviors with those of Mitch, whom I became intimately involved with a year before meeting Don. Of course, Mitch like everyone else, has a dark side, but he, unlike most anyone else I’ve ever met, has rigorously and relentlessly outed that in himself and in others to the best of his ability, and besides this remarkable trait, he has passionately and devotedly promoted gay love both with me and as a crusade in the world, an amazing activist endeavor. In contrast, with Don, no matter how closely I’ve worked been with him, and even including one time when we even attempted to awkwardly have some sort of physical or sexual encounter, I never felt a warm feeling coming from him towards me personally, more like what seemed only a kind of political or impersonal expediency, along with an almost hyper-vigilance and uptightness. I did experience from him an occasional expression of joviality, though in a distant way, or sometimes a brash, intimidatingly mocking gregariousness (one time more recently, after our clear estrangement, when I ran into him while he was handing out fliers for one of his events, he had the audacity to yell out to me to help him, which I felt was mocking, for I knew he would never ask me to help him relate more substantively). This said, it is not my intent to attack him for having a shadow per se, because everyone has that problem, but for unapologetically acting it out meanly, and for failing to seriously acknowledge this matter or demonstrate in any substantive way how he struggles to overcome its seeming domination in him.
More needs to be said about Dr. K.’s leadership, some of which can be gleaned from this very brief and hopefully interesting look into his involvement with the Radical Faeries. To start, it is quite revealing that he has never, that I am aware of, publically addressed the problems that compelled him to resign from the original Radical Faerie organization along with Mitch Walker in 1981, specifically those having to do with the Radical Faerie scene at that time being dominated by the eloquent and forceful Harry Hay, who in doing so was leading it into an anti-psychological and thus hypocritical direction. People who saw Harry Hay as the spokesperson were learning from his example to put on a show, to talk up the positive side of the “Radical Faerie Vision,” the fun, the beautiful, at the expense of avoiding, ignoring, and neglecting the unconscious dark side, and how each person brings their unresolved hetero-inflicted psychological damage to the scene. So while the Radical Faerie situation could put on a party, and people could sometimes get extraordinarily high on a remarkable spiritual experience of gay-centeredness in the form of sexual openness, intuitively channeled fey mystical explorations and freedom from other trappings of heterosexist constraint, there was also an unacknowledged and ugly shadow side going on, for the most part unacknowledged, except for the efforts of Mitch Walker, who tried at the time to address the issue repeatedly, only to become the target of some peoples’ disowned shadow projections. Hidden power plays, covert violent actions, and insidiously fascistic group-think came to infect the ostensibly loving, free and blissful atmosphere and the organizational mechanisms of Radical Faerie events. While Harry was extraordinarily effective at invoking a powerfully numinous feeling of sacred brotherhood, as he was uniquely capable of giving voice to it in the most compellingly expressive ways, he was also narcissistic and could be cold, calculating, dismissive. And while he was instrumental in creating a movement for the first time in recent history practically rooted in a gay-centered spirituality, he could also be domineering in a viciously anti-psychological fashion. To a certain extent, Harry was effective at promoting consensus, a form of organizing that he described in the most romantic and ideal way as based on the beauty of deciding matters in a circular formation in the manner practiced in many Native American Indian cultures, where everyone is supposedly equal—unlike heterosexist hierarchical linear forms—and where no decision is made if even one person disagrees. Yet, Harry demonstrated how, through his charismatic manipulative abilities, one person could sway the majority to intimidate those who might disagree with him. Thus, Faerie consensus became a tyranny of the group, and such insidious oppressiveness became a pervasive aspect of Faerie scenes. For example, if you didn’t kiss everyone who wanted a kiss, you would be made to feel like a “bad faerie,” and few dared talk openly about such problems.
A sickly hypocrisy soon reigned, and still often does in those faerie scenes that nowadays do gather, as far as I know, thereby undermining the true potential of the gay spirit vision and leaving only those types who could thrive in such an unhealthy, oppressive context of officially unrecognized, emotionally violent, duplicitous relations with others.
I never saw Don challenge Harry on these problems, and he didn’t speak up about them in any way I was aware of. It seemed that he didn’t at first understand, as few probably could have, Mitch’s efforts to stand up to Harry’s intimidating behaviors. I remember one time in 1980 when Mitch came back from a several-week stay at the house in Los Angeles where Harry and Don were living, terribly upset, hurt and confused as to how to deal with Harry, whom he was feeling increasingly hopeless about in terms of being able to communicate honestly about difficult interpersonal conflicts. Harry would have no part in it, as he adamantly refused to acknowledge that he had an unconscious at all.
I was fairly uninitiated at the time and understood very little. I had moved into a tiny apartment on McKinley street in Berkeley just a month before a very unusual man moved into the apartment above mine, who turned out to be Mitch Walker, the most intriguing man I’d ever met. I felt for the anguish Mitch was suffering around this early Faerie organizing quandary and which he openly struggled with in front of me. Then Don came from Los Angeles to visit Mitch in Berkeley, as I recall, because he was beginning to admit that there were problems with Harry, and he became more receptive to Mitch’s idea that the unconscious had to be psychologically addressed in activist gay organizing.
A major turning point occurred in the Fall of 1980, when the Gay Vision Circle, as they then called their organizing body, was to meet in a house near Roseburg in Oregon. It was while staying at that house that they planned to visit different plots of land in the area which might be suited for the Faerie Sanctuary they wished to establish, a place where it was envisioned Radical Faerie ways and practices could be better developed.
Mitch thought I should be able to participate in this activity, even though he hadn’t gotten the others’ approval beforehand. He didn’t think that it was right to keep the organizing circle so tightly closed; he felt that Radical Faerie ethics meant that everything should be open and transparent to all interested parties, and by inviting me to the meeting he was making the statement that a person could challenge Faerie consensus thusly. I knew my presence was not going to be accepted easily, and I was very scared. It was a crucial initiation for a rather timid gay kid who had never felt entitled to be a player with such high-powered people.
I was cruelly treated by Harry, John and Don for the entire week that we all stayed in that little country house. I was excluded from planning circles and I was ignored by the three men. It was rather unbelievable. It was a small house and it rained a lot and it was hard to avoid each other, yet they acted strictly as if I didn’t exist, never talking to me, never looking at me. There were two other co-organizers there from San Francisco, who like Mitch had also spontaneously brought an unannounced companion whom they felt should be able to be involved, an additional person who was likewise then excluded and ignored by the other three. For some time I was polite about all this while Mitch tried to reason with them. But eventually I couldn’t take the hurtful treatment anymore. All the pain of it finally surged to the surface and I became overwhelmed by feelings of despair and the terrible loneliness of being so cruelly outcast as a basic human being. I went out of the house to the stable where I had my things, and, sobbing, began packing to leave while Mitch talked with me about how I was acting-out an old injury that was being triggered by this incident, the deep woundedness from all the homophobic attacks and abandonments of my torturously un-gay childhood. Mitch encouraged me to see that there was an opportunity here to redeem that trauma. It took some time, but he was able to reassure me and empower me with the notion that I had just as much of a right to be involved in the organizing as any of them. And I really wanted to be. I wanted deeply to be involved in the creation of such a wondrous experience as what the Radical Faeries could bring about. But I knew that what was going on there in that house was obscenely hypocritical to this ideal, and I knew that I had a rare chance to make a difference by insisting on my Radical Faerie birthright to be able to contribute.
I then resolved to confront them, rather than just slipping away. The next day, after the group went off to look at some land as I felt very hurt that I couldn’t go, I went out and bought some food, which I prepared for everyone’s return. At dusk, they came home. Harry and John went right to the food without acknowledging me, got some and sat down at the little table. I asked them why I couldn’t be involved. No answer. I asked several more questions, with still no response or even eye contact from them. I had been anticipating the moment all day, imagining what could happen, struggling with my anger and shame and fear. At that point I finally lost my temper and, while calling them pigs, hypocrites, and “scum on the ground,” I flung a bowl of fruit salad that I’d made across the floor, near where Harry and John were sitting, splashing some onto their legs. Clearly surprised and outraged, they immediately got up and headed out the door.
All the while, Don was standing near the dark entryway with Mitch. After Harry and John stormed out, Don left too, but Mitch went out with him and they talked during a long walk down a wet Oregon road. Don was apparently furious with me at first, but Mitch, building on the earlier rapport the two had been developing, helped Don see the importance and value of confronting the hypocrisy going on. A few months later, in the Spring of 1981, the two of them resigned from the Gay Vision Circle, sending reverberations through the Radical Faerie network, and then in the Fall of the following year, Don and Mitch formed Treeroots as a non-profit educational organization dedicated to gay spirituality and the psyche. After that, as far as I was aware, Don avoided Radical Faerie events for many years except for a brief period when Treeroots worked with the Los Angeles Faeries to create a Southern California Faerie gathering. I believe he was not otherwise involved with them for decades, until now.
His subsequent participation in the non-profit corporation Treeroots over the following decade after quitting the Faeries is equally instructive, including how he would regularly fail to show up at meetings, oftentimes right after he called to say he would be there, and his ongoing refusal to deal with interpersonal feelings, even though the intention of the organization was to directly address the unconscious, and then, his ultimate resignation from the board without any explanation.
All of this is intended to illuminate how Don Kilhefner now writes and talks about the Radical Faeries as if none of the above ever happened. He whitewashes where he can, and then invents a new history, à la Dick Cheney, when his hand is forced by a truth he refuses to face. This, in my view, is cynically disingenuous and parallels the hostile behavior that he once acted out on me more than a quarter century ago in his collusion with Harry’s intimidating, domineering control, in his generally cold, withholding emotionality, in his exclusion of my participation in Radical Faerie organizing without explanation, and in his refusal to acknowledge my existence while we were both cooped up in that little house for a week. His early anti-psychological attitude continues, though now camouflaged by ideas like “gay consciousness,” and “gay soul.”
Even to the degree that my personal experiences with Don may be considered subjective, it should nevertheless be of serious concern that his take on early Radical Faerie history is so disturbingly twisted. It should set off alarm bells for all who are responsibly concerned about the integrity of our leaders in the gay movement, especially those who espouse high spiritual and ethical standards as Don does.
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