Blog Statement

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Gay Psyche Politics

This blog is presented by the Gay Psyche Politics Collective, a Los Angeles-based group of gay male and associated lesbian activists dedicated to bringing homosexually-centered psychological self-awareness to the top of the agenda in the lives of ourselves and all members of the same-sex-loving community as a needed extension of gay liberation politics and activism, as an answer to the growing stagnation of increasingly assimiliationist-oriented gay society and discourse, as a more realistic way than established methods to identify and actualize homosexual emancipation individually and collectively to the fullest, of better getting at both personal challenges to being more maturationally gay and at interpersonal as well as collective problems in our community arising from or importantly contributed to by psychological factors, consequently enabling the better realization of that always-living vision about the best which same-sex-loving peoples can mean and become humanistically, spiritually, profoundly, to themselves, each other, and the world.

Consequently, here is a public forum for discussing why and how an improved gay psychological literacy—the constructive ability to realistically “read,” comprehend and interact with subjective psychodynamic issues and feelings in regard to evolving homosexual personhood—is vitally in our emancipatory same-sex-loving interest, what this novel type of enhanced gay subjective fluency might consist of and enable, as well as how it is that organized attempts to advance this more progressive comprehension in our community will be quickly challenged by entrenched psychological interests afraid of losing unjust power. Indeed, we believe these unfair defensive motives for the most part unconsciously rule most people, their interpersonal relations, and the societies they together create, whether in the gay community particularly or in the larger culture generally. Such regressive, unexamined interests of the “private” emotional self seek to reproduce internal contradictions expressively through hypocritical thought, feeling, and behavior by oneself and in collusion with others. As activists, we have all seen this psychologically-sourced dysfunctionality express itself in many noxious guises, such as during attempts at group organizing when ubiquitously-occurring, so-called “personal issues” and “personality clashes” are worked out entirely differently than rational, so-called “business” matters, usually with a great deal of secrecy, shame, and violent manipulation through factionalism often leading to ferocious and devastating outcomes rarely ever addressed overtly at the time or afterwards, much less entailing any attempted comprehensive healing. This corrosive problem sourced in the shadow-side of human psychology has played out in our same-sex-loving community and overall for as long as we are aware of, silently unaddressed in any community sense up ’til now. However, in our opinion historical conditions require that anyone interested in becoming more authentically emancipated subjectively today, meaning better inwardly self-determined and autonomously self-empowering, must as part of this progressive personal task inevitably take up accurate responsibility for individual emotional motives which unfavorably distort self-perception and interpersonal relations, especially the terrible and often well-disguised motivations twistedly arising from unaddressed childhood emotional trauma, which we think is, unfortunately, an endemic human dilemma, but which now, finally, in the face of possible species extinction, must be more openly and adequately addressed. Accordingly, a much enhanced sense of psychological honesty, responsibility, and therefore literacy in these growingly-essential matters is urgently called for, which for us as homosexual people includes upfrontly recognizing and purposively addressing shadowy emotional dysfunctionalities still pervading our lives as gay and lesbian most so due to homophobically-heightened childhood trauma that has not been fully enough confronted or resolved but instead has become defensively entrenched and regressively controlling through overarching collusional and passive-aggressive means, such as we also see in the larger society generally, and which has led us same-sex-loving folk politically to an increasingly-victorious gay assimilationism paradoxically of a vitiating effect in crucial regard to a homosexually-centering point of view or path of better self-realization advantageously available legitimately after achieving a secure gay identity.

The task of better getting at this deadening individual and group problem is a most disconcerting one, as covert collective collusion or codependent interpersonal machinating around shadowy psychological agendas tends to protect itself fiercely and effectively. Thus, in the assimilationist-oriented gay community today as everywhere else, retrogressive psychological defenses tend to dominate, and in anti-democratic consequence it is pretty much forbidden or at least exceedingly daunting to openly tackle this reactionary collectivist tyranny. Such a collusively-repressive stranglehold is nowhere better demonstrated than in pertinent regard to that gay historical situation which has brought this Collective and its participants together in the first place, that notable situation concerning the futile attempt during and since the early Radical Faerie movement, the first gay-centered spiritual tradition of modern times, to introduce more psychological literacy there, in that those promoting this more provident direction were back then and are still now resultantly smeared maliciously by powerful opposing forces to damaging effect as personally destructively monstrous, hence only worthy to be completely dismissed and ignored. Thus, those farsighted people trying to bring improved psychological mindedness to gay activist organizing in the Faerie tradition, starting with co-founder Mitch Walker and his partner Chris Kilbourne thirty years ago and leading up to those participating with Mitch and Chris in current public educational activities today such as our Collective and this blog, are treated by opponents of a better psychological direction as if they don’t exist or don’t matter, nor does anything they say or do, such as their writings or public efforts. We can observe this nasty ostracizing tactic, for example, being applied fairly successfully now for a number of years by Don Kilhefner, another Faerie co-founder, highlighted in his more recent public maneuvers to maliciously alter early Faerie history in order to eliminate any recognition of those systematic attempts being mounted from the beginning to address the difficult covert and interpersonal violence which was psychologically going on within the early Faerie organizing effort and which eventually led to his own resignation as well as that of Mitch Walker from the original Faerie activist circle at its summer solstice meeting in 1981. Not only has Don persistently moved to distortionally obfuscate these significant historical matters in a self-serving way because he too might otherwise be unflatteringly exposed, but he has been heartily colluded with in this malodorous maneuver by various prominent supporters, as notably demonstrated around his nervy attempt to collectively validate this neutered version of Faerie history at a Los Angeles One Archives presentation on February 15, 2009 with the conniving help of journalist and author Mark Thompson. When this nefarious exclusionary effort then elicited a public protest outside the hall of around 25 people sponsored by this Collective, the presenters inside claimed to have no idea as to what the dispute was even about, while a slanted report against the demonstration appeared in the following week’s Frontiers newsmagazine (the local gay paper) along with a linked vicious blog attack against the demonstrators by journalist Karen Ocamb (www.bilerico.com/contributors/karen_ocamb/).

It is our position on this important matter of open gay discourse that too many “community leaders” who shape the predominant gay and lesbian conversation, all the way from conspicuous activists and spiritual authorities to journalists, editors, and publishers in the gay press and elsewhere, along with their supporters or enablers, tend to demonize, erase, ignore, shut down, perhaps even attempt to destroy, those of us who actively challenge the pink velvet authoritarianism of gay anti-psychological defensiveness stifling the community today. Our response to such reactionary meanspiritedness is to devotedly persist in exposing this silent power racket, to name what we think is really going on concerning such matters when and where we can, and to hold those people accountable who are there so hypocritically helping maintain that entrenched, violent, knee-jerk, anti-psychological, group-think attitude which pervades all of contemporary society to our terrible collective detriment. We of course thus wish to hold ourselves to that same ethical standard, and so we seriously strive to ongoingly wrestle frankly with our own subjective motives and dynamics concerning these issues, internally and between ourselves, as we seek to live out a more liberating gay vision on our challenged planet today, and, because we have discovered how remarkably corrective it is personally and politically to become more psychologically literate, authentically and gay-centeredly, in particular regard to better fulfilling our profound homosexual potentials, we feel it is of pivotal importance for better emancipatory advancement to actively extend such an improvedly open and healthful way of moral functioning into gay community consciousness overall, even though when attempting to do so, fierce opposition to that trailblazing endeavor is then inevitably raised by important figures in community politics and media who themselves appear to be in serious denial about the distorting capabilities of their own unresolved psychological issues and consequently about this entire matter altogether, powerful blind spots which then compel distasteful behavior of a most “un-gay” and inhumane sort, especially toward those trying to sincerely practice and fairly promote more thoroughly waking up from heterosexist group-mindedness as a better alternative to stultifying assimilationism, as a much likelier route realistically under today’s corrupt political conditions to renascently achieving justly enhanced freedom, truer self-actualization, and fuller tangible realization of our vast creative and participative possibilities as gay and lesbian peoples.

Same-sex-loving individuals with the visionary audacity to courageously stand up overtly for more responsibly, gay-centeredly addressing the regressive psychological shadow in current homosexual society are the truer political “heroes” of the gay liberation movement today because, in thereby attempting to actualizationally move forward more so during a paradoxically-successful assimilationist age, they will have to expect, unfortunately, to be mightily ostracized, misunderstood, and demonized for their brave efforts by those entrenched factions in their own community, interpersonal relationships and even subjective self which most need to defensively resist such a heroically-new psychological ethic now legitimately wishing to see better gay liberation practically gained for our good gay selves and valuably striving community. This blog intends to create a safe place to voice these provocative yet possibly-determinative views, to honestly point out current and new situations illustrating the psychologically-based, interpersonal and political issues here being vernally synthesizingly raised, as well as to invite reactions thereto from interested readers, all of which can help build a deeply-needed, constructive dialogue about better psychological literacy and responsibility among same-sex-loving peoples and everybody, a pioneering community effort here inaugurally focused on that may consequentially contribute most astutely to our additional emancipation and greater fulfillment in a deserved gay and lesbian future of growing qualitative value, spiritual presence, contributive participation, and meaningful satisfaction in the world rather than empty absorption by a revoltingly rotten “mainstream.”

Blog Contents

The contents of this blog are organized as Archives by post date in reverse chronological order, meaning the latest posting is listed at the top. If you are new to this discussion, it would probably be best to read the postings in chronological order from the start, which will most comprehensively inform and guide the experience and usefulness of this blog.

The Gay Psyche Politics site currently includes the following three sets of postings:

April 2010—three new substantive and lengthy responses to the Frontiers article and associated Karen Ocamb blog commentary about our Feb. 15, 2009 protest event (pdf format available by clicking each statement’s title)

April 2009—a three-part video with interviews of some of the demonstrators and excerpts from the Q&A section of Don and Mark’s Feb. 15 Faerie presentation

March 2009—Wendell Jones’ initial response to Karen’s article/blog attack; Chris Kilbourne’s letter to The Advocate criticizing an article on the founding of the Radical Faeries that omitted Mitch Walker’s pivotal role, a letter to Frontiers by demonstration participant Ali Moinzadeh challenging their publication of Karen’s biased article and blog link, Chris’s correspondence to Frontiers on the same matter and a brief notice that the editor had acknowledged receipt, the text of Karen’s Frontiers article and a link to her blog commentary, protester Philip Lance’s discussion of his participation in the Feb. 15 action, photos of the demonstration, and the original three documents that comprised the email announcement for (and hand-outs at) the One Archives protest, including personal statements by Wendell and Chris.