The Flaming Magic Wand Revealed

 

Being gay has been a mystery to me as long as I can remember. When I was a boy, people constantly warned me to be careful about the way that I spoke, or people might think I was, you know… what? I wondered. What does that even mean? I didn’t get it. 

 

I learned from other children that the way that I talked and moved my body made it seem like I might be faggot. The girls did not seem to mind, but other boys would either tease me in good fun or earnestly counsel me about how to sit or stand or talk without raising the wrong kind of questions. From what I understood, the appearance of swishiness and flamboyance was to be avoided.  

 

My parents were of a generation that the news media at the time seems to have credited with starting what was referred to as “The Sexual Revolution.” Before the 1960s, the story I heard was that sex was something people didn’t talk about. The young people at the time, my parent’s generation, thought that sex was natural and that not talking about it caused problems and made a natural thing seem shameful, or unacceptable. So they started a revolution. 

 

I felt accepted by the people in my world, but the idea that other people might not understand that I was “okay” if they didn’t know me was a real concern for them. That is how I first came to understand that I was queer. It was not a positive identity at first, but an identity that was defined by what I was not. 

 

I remember looking out the window as my father drove our family car along Polk Street in San Francisco in the 1970s. A tall man with long blond hair flowing down his back walked in front of the car as we sat in traffic, the long easy strides of his loping gait somehow a transgression of what it means to be a man, wearing bell bottom jeans. My father said, “He looks like a woman!” I was not confused. I remember thinking, “No, he doesn’t.” 

 

I knew I was a boy, and I knew what kind of boy I wanted to be. All the pressure I felt to deny my homosexuality made me want to question the demands that I affirm my heterosexuality. I wanted to be a boy who could express himself freely, to show affection, and to be kind without setting off any red flags that I was not safe to be with. I wanted to wear bell bottoms, and walk in long strides with an easy, loping gate. 

 

I was in my early 20s when I read Another Mother Tongue by Judy Grahn. This helped me appreciate the symbolism of the faggot, the flaming wand of fennel that Prometheus used to defy the gods and carry fire to humankind in the form of knowledge and technology for civilization. I began to identify myself as a faggot and a queer person, not only a not this and not that person. I claimed the power of the epithets that had been used to deny my masculinity as a young person as my own. 

 

I was convinced that if I did not identify myself as queer, I would be contributing to the oppressive control of the patriarchy on the people of my tribe who did not have the choice or ability to pass in a heteronormative world. I would be selfishly benefiting from my unearned privilege as a White man. I read the Metaethics of Radical Feminism by Mary Daly, and somehow managed to stay committed to smashing the patriarchy in principle even after being horrified to learn her ultimate vision of what that would mean in reality. I can think of some better uses for my White privilege. 

 

Notice the demands made on you to explicitly identify your sex and gender in public and in the workplace. What are you expected to do in order for other people to feel safe about their own identity? 

 

Recognize that the wrong kind of questions have predetermined answers that have nothing to do with you, and everything to do with maintaining existing power structures. As long as people are afraid of what they do not know, there will be an expectation for you to affirm your identity so they can feel safe. Consider the price you pay and also who benefits by your allegiance to orthodox standards of sexual identity in support of the corporate interests including the forces of rainbow capitalism.  

 

Respond by exploring your identity with a game of hide and seek. Don’t talk about sex like you are checking boxes on a questionnaire. You’re IT. Seek, and you shall find. Find yourself, and respect the body autonomy, mannerisms, and gender creativity of others. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Neither deny what is false, or affirm what is true in a normative system and you will protect your identity from being traded like a commodity on the open market.

 

The neurotic demand for an ever and ever more complex taxonomy for our identity has taken over the sexual revolution. True revolutionaries are needed more than ever before. Work on behalf of those with the least freedom, those denied justice on the basis of the wrong kind of questions. Wave your flaming magic wand.

 

 

* GODSPEED stands for “Gather Only Data in Sync with the Purpose of Every Excellent Deed.