Number 178 Summer 2019 • $11.95 DIRECT ACTION / STONEWALL 50Issue 179 / Fall 2019 BETTER ANARCHY! Submission Deadline: July 21, 2019 www.rfdmag.org/upload Can we do anarchy better? As we celebrate Stonewall 50, we are reminded that ten years later the first “official” gathering of Radical Faeries met on Labor Day weekend at an ashram in the Arizona desert. Recog- nizing that many circles had already formed and explored fey conscious- ness earlier, this date is a marker in creating large gatherings and sharing new vistas of consciousness. Where have we come since then? Circle process and consensus politics are the cornerstones of anarchist communities. As we have used these technologies to grow and nurture our communities, urban and rural, permanent and transitional, how have we molded these approaches to meet our own needs? Where have we failed each other and these ideals through these past four decades? What have we learned along the way? We are seeking an honest and robust discussion that shares experiences within our sanctuaries, urban co- housing spaces and collectives. How have we used circles to advance our cause—and/or hurt each other? Do we really know how consensus works? As our community grows, wel- coming members from new genera- tions of qweer folk who have grown up in a manner different from old- timers, how do we honor and pass on our legacy while folding in new ways of thinking brought by fresh faces. How do we walk while holding hands as we work together to build a brighter future? RFD 178 Summer 2019 1 Rebellion Feels Delicious Vol 45 No 4 #178 Summer 2019 We remember Stonewall by dedicating issue 178 to direct action: that is, to a mode of civil disobedience that seeks a better world directly, whether through demanding immediate change from those in power or through self-empowerment outside existing systems. Dale Corvino interviews accomplished man of letters, Bruce Bender- son, about Stonewall and the values that have motivated his resistance. Maytag Dishwasher calls out callout culture. Jacques Servin, a leader of the Yes Men, gathers with climate organizers Dami Feral, Laurel Mac- curdy and Patrick Robbins to talk about direct action, Occupy, Standing Rock, and the methodology of resistance. Others offer poetry, lots of po- etry: on the uses of Stonewall, on the direct action of bodies in love (and lust), on the moment when the cork pops and the water starts to flow. Politics might seem so hopeless in this time. We are up against spread- ing state capture, grand corruption, and populisms fueled by climate fears and propaganda. How important then to recall: Stonewall was a riot; so was Compton’s; so the White Night. We would do well to remember Mario Savio in 1964: “one thousand people sitting down some place, not letting anybody by, not [letting] anything happen, can stop any machine, including this machine! And it will stop!!” All machines will stop, all tyrannies finally come to an end. So it is, so mote it be. Wishing you a summer of health, freedom and queerness, —The RFD Collective Between the Lines2 RFD 178 Summer 2019 RFD is a reader-written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative life- styles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, Radical Faerie consciousness, and nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volun- teers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. RFD (ISSN# 0149-709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302. Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $9.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive it four times a year. First class mailed issues will be forwarded. Others will not. Send address changes to submissions@rfdmag.org or to our Hadley, MA address. Copyright © RFD Press. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and as- sociated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 85 N Main St, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001. On the Covers Front: “Death of Maddie” by Doug Sandelin Back: “Torso” by Mark Everett Sanders Production Guest Editors: Jesse Oliver and Nikita Managing Editor: Bambi Gauthier Art Director: Matt Bucy Submission Deadlines Fall–July 21, 2019 Winter–October 21, 2019 See inside covers for themes and specifics. For advertising, subscriptions, back issues and other information visit www.rfdmag.org Visual Contributors in this Issue Images or pieces not directly associated with an article. Artboydancing ..................42,44,48,50,54 Bertrand Le Pluard ..........................5 Blackbird. .................................59 Chris Moody ..............................6,7 Donald L. Engstrom-Reese ...................57 Doug Sandelin ......................8,17,20,33 Joseph Minutello .........................2,46 Keith Gemerek ............Rear Inside Cover,10 Richard Price ........................38.40,41 Richard Vyse .......................12,23,29,55 “Fight For All of Us” by Josheph Minutello RFD 178 Summer 2019 3 CONTENTS Announcements .....................................................................4 Bruce Benderson on Stonewall at Fifty ........Dale Corvino ............................5 Subtle Settles Stonewall .....................Robert Woodworth .......................9 Call Out Culture Is Fucking Gay ..............May ...................................13 “To go on is victory” ........................Qweaver ...............................16 Stonewall”: Memory and Meaning ............Notre Dame des Arbres ..................18 Stonewall Heels ............................Robert Fleming .........................21 the window ................................Jordan Eby. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 My Summer of ‘69 ..........................Franklin Abbott .........................24 A Conversation on Direct Action .............The Ancestor Circle at Hickory Hollow ....25 Fanning the Flames .........................Walter Holland .........................28 Balance of Power ...........................D. Scott Humphries .....................30 Jesse James Rides Again .....................D. Scott Humphries .....................31 All the World’s a Stage: Jussie Smollett and the Performance of Victimhood ...........Arsalan Haq ............................34 Portraits from the 21st Century Book of Faeries .........................Richard Price ...........................39 Splash .....................................Scott Hightower .........................43 Springmelt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rowan Smith ...........................45 Poems .....................................Steven Cordova .........................47 Decanter of Endless Water ...................Marzipan ...............................49 Yin and Yang Activism ......................Hammer ...............................51 The Evans Symposium: Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture and Moon Lady Rising ...................Donald L. Engstrom-Reese ...............57 A Moment of Fear, A Change of a Lifetime ....Randy Goeke ...........................58 Conjure ...................................Blackbird ...............................59 False Eyelash on a Bar Napkin ................J. James Keels ...........................604 RFD 178 Summer 2019 2020 Visions Inter-Sanctuary Stewardship Summit Hosted at Zuni Mountain Sanctuary, New Mexico August, 2020. Specific Dates to be announced. Calling All Stewards —Past, Present & Beyond. A bell is being rung to step through a visionary por- tal. The Stewardship of our Sanctuaries is a precious and ongoing legacy...The 40th Tranniversary of the First Spiritual Conference for Radical Faeries ap- proaches. Since 1979, and our auspicious collective inception in Arizona, five interdependent Sanctuar- ies have been birthed in the United States, along- side others across the world, and our global Queer culture has erupted, evolved and diversified. As 2020 nears, we vision forward and ask the questions: What is our collective herstory? What is sustainable stewardship within radical community? What will be the inheritance of our Sanctuaries for future generations? We gather to listen, re-member and strengthen our courageous relationship to community and our ethos of Sanctuary. This Summit will be a sacred skill-share to refine our processes, deepen interper- sonal connections and cross-pollinate: a new inten- tion for gathering, a convocation of communities, a Summit for Stewards past, present & future. Contact 2020VisionsSummit@gmail.com to envision with Usssssssssssss. Spanish Gathering On October 4, 2019 we’re going to gather in the beautiful Crystal Inn in Cartama in the south of Spain for a gathering of eight days where the Faeries are invited to explore their lives and community connection through the guidance of Abuelita, Grandma. I summon up a deep spiritual lessons from the mother of the jungle to heal us as individuals and to our community with the request to meet our queer ancestors. The gathering will contain: - Kambo Cleansing - Three Abuelita Grandma Ceremonies - Heart Circles - Cannabis Ceremony - No Talent Show - Workshops - Medicine Wheel Ceremony - Relaxing time in nature The price for the gathering is 550 Euro including everything. People who are willing to pay more are invited to do so and it will allow people who need a discount to be helped by them so we can pay for the place and the services. Bring your creative and beautiful Clothes to the Crystal Inn so we can have a variety of Drag to enjoy from. To find more details contact me please, Bellaco Caspi through my profile: www.facebook.com/dududavid. About me: A student of Avito, head of the Cami- no Arcana tribe. Practicing and Facilitating Abuelita Ceremonies as part of the Camino Arcana Tribe. The ceremony involves teachings by Peruvian, Ca- naanite, Queer Shamanism and Non Violent Com- munication. There will be no sexual interactions in the gathering as part of the tradition of Camino Arcana. The idea is for our community to meet on spiritual level respecting the tradition of the Culture of Abuelita. So this is a call for brave light warriors to join in and send queer healing to ourselves, to our community and to our queer ancestors. ANNOUNCEMENTS RFD 178 Summer 2019 5 DC: 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stone- wall Rebellion, which I understand was a long weekend of fighting back against police brutality, led by bar pa- trons, gay street kids, drag queens, transgender folks, and hustlers. The way it’s been commemorated has morphed over the years. Last year, I was at a meeting where a young organizer from Heritage of Pride (HoP) presented proposed changes to the parade route. I asked him if the NYPD had been involved, and he con- firmed that they had dictated the proposed changes, and HoP just accepted this, in the name of safety, security, and minimizing disruption. This anecdote brings to mind your observation about the gentrifica- tion of the gay rights movement. So, fifty years later, how should we reflect on Stonewall? BB: Well, one thing you didn’t mention is revi- sionism. I feel that the identity of Stonewall has been revised. Stonewall was a mafia-run bar, it’s true. Though drag queens were not always well treated, it was incredible, the most popular bar in the West Village, packed every weekend. It had dancing. You could dance any way you wanted; sometimes people slow danced. When the lights blinked on and off it meant the cops were coming, and you just separated for about 30 seconds, and then went back to what you were doing. I know it’s perverse to say, but the mafia- run bars in New York were some of the most enjoy- able, lively, sensual, sexy, festive places, my favorite bars. I didn’t know at the time they were mafia run, but that’s why they were so much fun, because a lot of the rules were suspended, such as male-on-male danc- ing. There was a certain amount of gay freedom at the Stonewall. Other bars didn’t allow dancing, certainly not close dancing. I always had the most wonderful time there, and never once did I feel like the sort of homosexual who had to shrink off into a corner, or that I’d get arrested. The cops were probably paid off, because the light- blinking episode would last less than one minute. I’m sure the transvestites had it much worse than I did. To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember seeing them, although they must have been there. When the rebellion started, there was a law on the books against cross-dressing. I don’t think that the rebellion started because we were repressed gays being exploited by the Stonewall owners. It started because the cross-dressers were being harassed by the police. And now that whole thing has been revised; there have been movies about it in which Stonewall is this dreary, intimidating place and you’re hiding in the shadows and you could get arrested at any moment. That’s not how it was. The revisionist tendency is that Stonewall’s history involved gays who had been repressed, punished, and exploited by that bar. It was the opposite. Stonewall was a banquet of sensuality and opportunity. The mafia was probably making a lot of money, but it was not a negative experience for the customers, and it’s been revised as practically like a prison, a punishing place where you were in danger of ending up in jail or being beaten up by the cops. The pleasure that we had there doesn’t exist in the history books, but it doesn’t exist anywhere today, that pleasure that comes from a mixing of the tribes. The reason that no clubs are enjoyable today is because there’s much less mixing of class and race. As an example, take Studio 54, which was excit- ing not only for its celebrities, but because it was a class democracy. Inside you could see a black bicycle messenger dancing with someone like Liza Minnelli. Every class and race and sexual orientation and gender were welcome, if they looked interesting, and looking interesting could involve something very eccentric. Once you got in, you were free to relate to everybody from every economic level, every race, and that’s what created the party at Studio 54. The moment Reagan was elected and Times Square got gentrified by Mayor Giuliani, the races and the classes were torn asunder, poor people were pushed to the peripheries, and real estate was bought up and Bruce Benderson on Stonewall at Fifty Interview by Dale Corvino Bruce Benderson. Photo by Bertrand Le Pluard, ©20196 RFD 178 Summer 2019 renovated. This ended that festive atmosphere of which the Stonewall, Studio 54, and even Julius’s were incredible examples. DC: You have argued that marriage and the mili- tary—the two high-profile issues of the gay movement of recent times—are essentially conservative institu- tions that we should want nothing to do with. You make the case that marriage exists as a conflation of church and state. BB: Yes, right. And I thought that the constitution guaranteed the separation of church and state. People want to be bound together into couples, to raise chil- dren, to insure inheritance, all the other things you get out of marriage; but all of that could have been realized by domestic partnership, which has absolutely nothing to do with religion. In the 60s, during the early days of the gay libera- tion movement, communes formed in which there was no central family authority—twenty people living together who all had the same agency—who raised children as a collaboration. It was more like an Israeli kibbutz, a communist idea. When gays are allowed into these mainstream institutions like the military and marriage, there’ll always be that segment of gays—like me—who can’t relate, who were already alienated from the construct of “community” before, and who are now doubly so. We won’t even have our gay brothers and sisters any more, we’ll be weirdos, the new spinsters, old maids, in fact.. I know it’s a big dream to end marriage in the Unit- ed States and allow—in legal terms—only domestic partnerships, and let people add whatever religious rit- ual they wish. It seems like an impossible change. Well, guess what else seemed impossible? Gay marriage. Gays openly serving in the military. Why didn’t they work for these other goals that would have improved society so much more and been more in tune with social changes? Marriage is not working. You want to get married? Marriage is falling apart. Marriage as an institution hasn’t worked for a millennium. Marriage has been defined and redefined, as I discussed in my book. Marriage as the result of romantic pairing is historically recent. My grandparents, from Russia, were in an arranged marriage. And guess what? There were almost no divorces at that time. I’m not saying it was an open or free system, but marriage for love is a volatile formula. Why should gay activists promote it? DC: Now that we’re at this place where we have gay people getting married, being married, is there the po- tential to redefine marriage in some ways? Even hope that our participation might cleave the state institution from the religious? BB: I think the state will cleave us. What I think will happen is those liberal heterosexuals who welcomed us into the community of family will discover—es- pecially when it comes to two men—that we do not follow the same rules they do, and when they discover it, they will be astonished and possibly so disgusted that—well, maybe it’s an exaggeration to say it could lead to a new Holocaust—but it might lead to even more rejection of gays by the general social body. When they find out a man with children goes to peep- shows to suck the penises of strangers? There will be a backlash when they find out about those things be- cause obviously no one’s talking about peepshows, or promiscuity in general, when they talk about marriage. How will they react to the discovery of those married gay men who still go to peep shows, have three-ways, have open relationships? DC: As for your case against the focus on military service, is it coming out of pacifism? BB: Yes. Don’t join the military, dismantle the mili- tary, or change the military. Instead of fighting to be a member of the military, fight to end unjust wars, right? Like they did in the Vietnam era. The 60’s gay liberation movement didn’t want to join the military, they wanted to stop the war. Do these new militant gays even believe in the wars we’re involved in? And why does that issue never seem to come up? DC: I tend to agree, but then I think of poor and working-class gay people who see the military as the best of very few options for employment and/or “Glowing” by Chris Moody RFD 178 Summer 2019 7 access to education. BB: That’s a very good point, and the same could be said for service on a police force. As for openly serving in either, I have nothing against that. What I’m against is making those two things—marriage and military service—the major political goals of the gay movement. Working-class gays in the military, police, or fire departments should have freedom to express themselves, and laws protecting them. But the more important goals are those we started on in the 60’s, which have been cast aside. What really disgusts me is that we are begging those who hated us to accept us. These are the people who put men like us in mental institutions, who arrest- ed us and put us in jail, sometimes falsely, for corrup- tion of a minor. Is that really the major goal of the gay movement? How about being for better education for working-class people so that they have more choices? I find the new social goals for gays very cynical goals, because they’re all about inclu- sion. We want inclusion from people who rejected us, from people who tortured us. So that we can be just like them? Well, they were horrible. It reminds me what happened to the feminist movement. When feminism first started, I thought it was great; they were challenging masculinity. But guess what many of those feminists wanted? They wanted male privilege. They wanted the most op- pressive male traits. They wanted to be CEO’s, to be lawyers, heads of banks. The goal should have been to dismantle the male paradigm around those occupa- tions and change them, not just let a woman join the company and be just as big an asshole. Hasn’t it always been change we’re after? Not merely inclusion. DC: Maybe what our movement (and other move- ments) need is working from within and from without to effect change? I wonder if open service for gay and trans people can have an impact on the mission and purpose of the US military? I more or less doubt it. BB: I’ll be even more nihilistic: I do not believe there’s a homosexual identity. Back when homosexu- ality was oppressed, we developed a very rich defen- sive culture that was full of parody, irony, bitterness, mockery. That was homosexual culture, a culture of oppression. Once these oppressions got lifted you began to realize–and you can see this in the current vapidity of gay magazines, that perhaps there is not a profound gay identity. DC: Circling back to Stonewall, with respect to your challenge to the notion of gay identity. We’ve commemorated this incident of fighting police sup- pression one hot weekend fifty years ago as central to gay identity. We’re at a point where there’s HoP, which is criticized for being heavily corporate, for letting the very body that oppressed us dictate the parade route. Now a second organization, Reclaim Pride, is counter- ing those tendencies. Where do you think that leads towards understanding gay identity such as it is, and the movement? BB: A second group that opposes this whole event? Well, you have to tell me more about them. Sounds good to me. DC: On one hand, you have the official group running a corporate-sponsored parade, providing the NYPD with buy-in and hours of overtime pay. It’s a tradition, now overrun by police concerns of safety and security. On the other, you have a group that’s looking to honor the notion of resistance, willing to raise difficult truths, in particular the sore point that the NYPD has never apologized for its violent oppres- sion of gay people. We ourselves are at this cleaved state about how to commemorate Stonewall. BB: Well, I don’t know how much change this splin- ter group will be able to effect or how much power they’ll have, but I certainly like the idea. This isn’t the first time that splinter groups have tried to influence gay commemorations and gay history. In ‘86, NAM- BLA members wanted to march in the LA Gay Pride Parade, and Harry Hay supported them. We can’t decide who we want and who we don’t want, whether we approve or not, because they’re part of homosexual culture and the movement, and Hay spoke up in defense of them. So of course, they weren’t allowed to march. There have been splinter groups opposing the mainstream before. “Dino Club / The Stonewall Inn” by Chris MoodyNext >