When: Sunday, February 15, 2009 at 1:30 p.m.
Where: The One National Gay and Lesbian Archives
909 West Adams Blvd., Los Angeles 90007
What better way to honor and respect the 30th anniversary of the Radical Faeries than by queerly protesting the grossly inaccurate, manipulative story of this gay grassroots movement being promoted by long-time Los Angeles community organizer Don Kilhefner and supported by his co-presenter, journalist and author Mark Thompson, this coming Sunday at their presentation on “The Radical Faeries at 30.”
Renowned for being a loose-knit organization of gay men attracted to the notion of an indigenous gay-centered spirituality, the Radical Faeries has also always unfortunately been surrounded by controversy due to the tendency by many of those involved to act-out unconscious violence in vicious, mostly passive-aggressive ways, an issue perhaps related to gay people being such a fiercely oppressed minority. This heinous lack of psychological responsibility in the Faeries is once again getting played out around the 30th anniversary celebration that is now being concocted by Don and Mark, and deserves a spirited response in favor of better psychological responsibility.
Don’s recent articles on Radical Faerie history in the L.A. gay magazine Frontiers (January 27 & February 24, 2009) self-aggrandizingly over-emphasize his own role in forming the Faerie movement with gay rights pioneer Harry Hay, while at the same time completely erasing the major part played by his one-time colleague, gay psychologist and activist Mitch Walker, offering only one very brief dismissive mention of Mitch that seriously mischaracterizes what actually happened as documented in Stuart Timmon’s book, The Trouble with Harry Hay. This erasure of significant gay history is especially problematic because one of Mitch’s primary aims in being involved with Harry, and then Don, in those beginning days was to bring psychological-mindedness and honesty to the proceedings by confronting covert authoritarian, dominating, passive-aggressive, and other coercive behaviors, both in himself and in others.
These early efforts to directly address what C.G. Jung generally referred to as the shadow within the original Radical Faerie organization provoked a ferocious resistance that then sought to demonize Mitch and anyone else daring to name this problem, as it made the whole difficulty entirely disappear. Yet, inspired by those original efforts to be more responsible, a persistent tradition of opposing psychological hypocrisy in the Faeries has arisen over the years. Thus, it should come as no surprise that when any new Radical Faerie endeavor is being advanced with such ugly signs of the old violence still in control, a reaction to that ugliness may well spring forth. Presenters Don and Mark in that sense seem to be asking to be confronted about the distortions, manipulations, and abuse of power they have actually been maliciously generating for a long time through their extensive networking capabilities and historical prominence in the gay community. Moreover, that they are both well known to espouse the highest ethical and spiritual standards highlights the grotesqueness of their ongoing hypocrisy in an ethical way which particularly demands some kind of redress by sincerely moral homosexuals.
The attached personal essays by Wendell Jones and Chris Kilbourne [see blog archives]offer further insight into this otherwise-forbidden history of the Radical Faeries. Please join us for this lively and educational public event on Sunday, and feel free to invite anyone else you think might be interested to learn more about this fascinating side of our gay history and to same-sex-lovingly stand up against entrenched hypocrisy for the sake of true Faerie Spirit!
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