tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7596560675926385832024-03-14T09:33:11.563+00:00GaySocratesI seek, from an experienced and seasoned perspective, to wisely corrupt the Gay Youth of today with Love!GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.comBlogger147125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-61606746969570842542020-11-05T14:37:00.004+00:002020-11-05T15:14:30.237+00:00Ayahuasca told me to shut the f*ck up!<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_jJqPHv8K-Q/X6QULfjNlhI/AAAAAAAAHXk/x2dWxVxKMzg_B6jz2AfUjxM9B1pOLIbVgCLcBGAsYHQ/s556/GRANDMOTHER.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="556" data-original-width="452" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_jJqPHv8K-Q/X6QULfjNlhI/AAAAAAAAHXk/x2dWxVxKMzg_B6jz2AfUjxM9B1pOLIbVgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/GRANDMOTHER.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few years ago I participated in an Ayahuasca ceremony. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">Physically this involved being together with an intentional ceremonial group over the course of many hours throughout the night and imbibing an entheogenic concoction of the DMT containing leaves of a very particular shrub and the MAO inhibitor containing roots of a very specific vine. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">Spiritually and psychologically it required an openness to the possibility that this so-called Grandmother Medicine- used over millennia by the indigenous peoples of South and Central America- might offer me some kind of healing communication from the world of plant intelligence.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">The following day I was a profoundly changed human being!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">The experience had been a surprisingly physical and pleasurable one. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For hours on end my gut, heart and throat areas had undulated in gentle, rhythmical, sub-orgasmic pulsations causing me to chuckle and groan with a gleeful ecstasy. Visually I had been presented with kaleidoscopically morphing fractal imagery of cathedral columns ornate archways, gargoyles, rainforest branches and lush leafy undergrowth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">And whilst this rollercoaster intensity of sensations was buffeting me I was struck by how long-lived the plant-life has been on our planet, compared with the relatively newcomer mammalian life-form with it's less experienced, arrogant, language-based intelligence. I was in awe of this opportunity to commune in a non-linguistic way with an ancient intelligence. An intelligence which had accompanied me throughout my life but to which I had hitherto been blind and deaf.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">Within a number of spiritual/ Faerie communities there is the oft repeated axiom:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'Separation is simply an illusion. In truth we are all one'</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, as I was being battered, shaken-and pleasured even- by Grandmama, the awareness descended on me that for the vast majority of my life I had focussed on firstly learning but then (from my 20s onwards) fastidiously teaching what I'd learned. As a young medic the career mantra back in the 80s was: 'See one. Do one. Teach one’ . I subsequently became a practitioner and teacher of listening and counselling skills and then a junior doctor trainer and ultimately a senior doctor appraiser.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">During the course of my profound and extreme Ayahuasca encounter, I witnessed myself attempting to register and remember what was happening so I'd be able to pass it all on....</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so what was the big message transmission from the world of plant-life? It was this:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">"If you truly believe that 'We are all one' then you can set aside this teaching/preaching fetish you have cultivated over the years. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">The extent to which you have the impulse to transmit verbally what you have learned is the extent to which you doubt the reality that is:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THE INTERCONNECTIVITY OF ALL OF LIFE </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">Know instead that knowing is enough. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stop all your thinking, talking and teaching. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's time for you to FEEL your feelings </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And for you to simply BE your joyful self. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">That should be enough!"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">So at the tender age of 60 it’s probably high time for Gay Socrates to shut up and sign off- it’s been a total blast!</span></p><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></p>GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-11980153636543655802020-08-31T17:47:00.007+01:002020-08-31T17:53:53.223+01:00Radical Faerie Gatherings: The Cultivation of Queerness<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-66QFE2ode1I/X00meWXXtCI/AAAAAAAAHDs/IU53TbHMJ8gQs2eAkefH0DYhB87q7iqYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s589/Faerie%2BGathering.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="589" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-66QFE2ode1I/X00meWXXtCI/AAAAAAAAHDs/IU53TbHMJ8gQs2eAkefH0DYhB87q7iqYgCLcBGAsYHQ/w471-h320/Faerie%2BGathering.jpg" width="471" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Radical Faeries have been gathering together and creating transient pop-up queer community for more than 40 years-ever since the very first call to gather in early September 1979. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">These pre-Covid19 Gatherings (which until recently had become a regular global phenomenon) would often be held on the occasion of pagan earth-appreciating festivals as a way of tuning into natural seasonal rhythms. Some Faeries might say that the fundamental purpose of these gatherings was to enable an energy (which could be named as 'The Queer') to heal itself from the destructive attacks of those who </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">felt threatened by it and</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> who, for many and varied reasons, would wish to establish themselves as 'Non-Queer'</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">By creating community-encouraging-of-Queerness, Faeries have been able to develop their consciousness around power dynamics and the mechanisms of persecution, seeing their positioning and roles in the complex intersectionality of oppression as it manifests in the various -isms (sexism/misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism). And to also appreciate the potential world-healing value of this natural-Faerie-propensity to engage in this particular kind of work!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I've been attending gatherings for over 10 years now, and during this time I've been able to acknowledge the homophobic inflicted pain and suffering I've had to endure as a same-sex-loving Human Being. However I also see that this horribleness of experience is just a 'drop in the ocean' of what it might have been had I not been identifiable as a member of the most privileged classes (i.e. white, educated, middle class, cis-seeming-male, and able-bodied/ able-minded).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">This realisation hasn't made my own pain and suffering any less and it hasn't meant I've been able to avoid a whole lot of work to understand its far reaching effects on my personality (particularly the extent to which I'm hampered in my ability to engage in intimacy with others).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">But I'm now tuned into the way homophobia is just one facet of the many-faced invisible oppressive forces constantly directed towards women, towards the undereducated, towards the non-white, towards the colonised, towards the differently abled and towards my dear queer trans siblings.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">It's interesting to see how, within our various Faerie communities, once the intention of creating a queer-nurturing environment and ethos is set, the forces which seem to oppose this intention begin to assemble. The microcosm begins to manifest elements of those oppressive forces from the macrocosm. Shock! Horror! A group of predominantly able-middle-class-cis-white-gay-men unintentionally/unthinkingly behave in ways which are uncomfortable for women, non-white, poor, disabled, trans etc. folk!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Thankfully Faerie Gatherings are becoming increasingly more inclusive and this has meant more work to do in understanding our relative privileges and the ways in which these might be contributing to the ongoing oppression of others, or alternatively, how they might be engaged with constructively to raise awareness and to work towards the redressing of unfairnesses and inequities.</span></p>GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-41639107469744365902020-06-29T20:42:00.002+01:002020-06-29T20:50:26.254+01:00The Story of an Oppressed Gay Child Who Abolished Their Feminine for Over 40 Years<div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.7px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When I was a child I hung out a lot with my sister. I liked the company of girls. Boys were strange aggressive creatures who obsessed over cars and football. Together with my sister and her friends I found men to be mysteriously attractive. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The boys no doubt saw me as a lisping sissy who played with the girls, cried easily, danced, skipped, skated, couldn't kick a football and threw like a girl!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In primary school all the boys wore shorts and one day a sexually precocious girl taught us how to play a secret game called ‘nervous’ which started with the girls touching the boys on the inside of the knee and then slowly inching it up their inner thighs asking all the time ‘Are you nervous yet?’ The boldest among us would allow the finger to pass under the hem of our shorts, pass inside our underpants, move onto our scrotum and then finally allow a whole hand to grasp our little prepubescent willies. It felt amaaazing! I quickly adapted the game so I could play it with my classmate Michael, under the desk during maths lessons, and with my friend Benny, in the shallow end of the swimming pool.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">My dad was a Scout leader and this meant, as a family, we’d go on camping holidays with scores of horny adolescent lads. I remember, at the tender age of 9 being adopted by Kestrel patrol - a gang of 7 teenagers who, upon realising I didn't actually know the answer to the question ‘Do you know how you were born?’ took it upon themselves to educate me into all the elaborate ins and outs of sex as they understood it. This included stories of boys wanking behind their desk at the back of the classroom and being able to ejaculate ‘spunk’ more than six desks in front of them. Someone they knew had been born as a result of ruptured Durex or ‘Johnny Bag’ which was known as ‘Being born on a bursted Johnny’. There was also talk of ‘Homos’ and ‘Lesbos’ and a clear message that none of this was acceptable. Nevertheless all this talk from man-boys with deep voices, prominent Adams apples, hairy armpits and athletic physiques firmly cemented my erotic curiosity in the direction of male secondary sexual characteristics and made it all a deliciously irresistible forbidden bowl of fruit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As I hit my teens the boys in secondary school started to violently police the behaviour of the boys they identified as different. This involved constant name calling, pushing, shoving, kicking and shaming. Making sure they knew they had been clocked and excluded from the possibility of any sort of social connection.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Once this started my preservation instinct kicked in and I rapidly learned to perform the correct code of conduct. Not backing down from a fight instigated by the accusation of being 'a puff’ saved me from closer scrutiny. Then, to further develop my laddish credentials I would hang out with the smokers by the bike sheds pretending to be interested in their sex talk of fondling, fingering and shagging. I even started dating girls with the sole purpose of making conquests I could subsequently brag about. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There were some boys who were very gentle and softly spoken. They seemed unwilling or unable to behave in acceptably masculine ways. They were mercilessly punished on a daily basis. I didn't bully them myself but watched on as it happened, fearing that defending them would blow my cover and I'd end up having to suffer the same fate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In 1960, the working class world I was born into knew nothing beyond a very strictly policed gender binary. I had a penis so I was a boy-simples! But I was a girly boy. I wished I could be a mother and become a housewife. It made me sad that this option wasn’t open to me. I envied girls and their ability to attract sexy men. I wanted to wear makeup and once dusted my face with some foundation powder from a discarded compact of my mothers. My dad noticed immediately “Wash that muck off your face!’ A few months later I patted a bit of talcum powder on my cheeks then forgot about it. Again my dad spotted it and with disgust said ‘What have you done to your face? Wash it off and don’t let me ever see you do that kind of thing again!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So I was efficiently detected as a potential gender transgressor and rapidly knocked back into line. I quickly learned that some of my speech patterns, mannerisms and gestures could be identified by others as ‘girly’ and were therefore potentially dangerous signifiers of differentness. I felt this girlishness was somehow related to my secret attraction towards men and so for the sake of my social survival it needed to be eradicated from how I presented myself to the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Thus began the extended performance of a macho-ish false self. The voice had to be lower and gruff with no squeals or screeches. Hands had to be anchored in pockets. The walk became a cocky lolling swagger with a man-spreading gait suggestive of a need to avoid scissoring an imaginary pair of big balls between upper thighs. I was pretty convincing to the point that I almost believed it myself! Even beyond the age of 20 when I came out as gay, the straight-acting-ness was firmly ingrained and would remain so until met the Faeries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Then, at the age of 49 I put on a wig, a dress and some make-up. It was such a transformation that no-one seemed to recognise me. A part of me that had been frozen began to thaw out. This presentation of me wasn’t seen by the Faeries as disgusting but was celebrated and appreciated. What a relief it was to no longer be policing myself, to be allowing free reign to any whim or style of being without fear of reprimand.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But then it got complicated, some of the presentations of my repressed femininity could seem like a caricature or a parody of womanly behaviour and thus I noticed a potential to cause offence to female and trans faeries. The enjoyment I experienced in allowing my cis-male programmed behaviours to recede led me to wonder about my gender identity. Sadly when I dared to consider that I might be trans*, the young trans Faeries shook their heads seeing me as too cis-seeming. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So, now at the grand old age of 60 I know I’m not a conventional gay-cis-male. Within a cis/trans spectrum I tend to get pushed away from the trans end. And within a Gay/Bi/Straight spectrum I’m experientially fairly gay even though in my youth I did engage in faux-straight sexual activities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There’s certainly something odd about my gender so I tend to describe it as ‘cissish’ and when it comes to pronouns, I do tend to be referred to as ‘he’ but generally I prefer to be seen in all my plurality as ‘they’! </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I reckon that the oppressive policing of my gender and sexuality has wounded me pretty deeply. I've had to work hard to find at least a degree of healing from all of this. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’m wondering if, for some who have experienced a similar kind of wounding, when it doesn't, for whatever reason, get fully processed can it kind of manifest itself as an ‘identification with the aggressor’ and does it then present itself as misogyny and transphobia?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I know that whenever I detect misogyny or transphobia directed towards others it presses on the memory of my own oppression and I feel a twinge of pain from those suffocating 40 years of self policing</span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-60574872062375386832020-04-29T21:07:00.001+01:002020-04-29T21:20:45.618+01:00Faerie Tribes Within Tribes: The Recognition and Sacrifice of Privilege<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">The Faeries were started up around 40 years ago by white, middle class, cis gay men. They wouldn’t have seen themselves in these terms; what they knew was that:</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">a) as homosexuals, they were gravely persecuted, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">b) there was a gay civil rights movement pushing a conservative assimilationist agenda (i.e. we can earn equality if we just keep quiet and act straight) and </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">c) there was a need for space where faggots could 'shed the ugly green frog skin of hetero-imitation’ and explore the true and natural purpose for their sissy selves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Harry Hay, one of these cis-gay-men, had been pushing for gay men to be seen as a human rights minority, but the Mattachine Society (the first gay rights organisation which he himself had founded) expelled him because of his communist background. After his expulsion he spent time reflecting on what might be nature's reason for creating sissies and came across writings referring to the Native American 'Berdache' (later referred to as Two-Spirit). </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">They were honoured members of many North American tribes. Combining male and female traits, they performed sacred ceremonies and passed on arts traditions. Harry's discovery of the Two-Spirit radically confirmed his view of gay people's role in the world. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Harry Hay chose the word ‘faeries’ rather than ‘faggots’ to describe what gay men might be(come) because, he said, “faggots (as bunches of kindling- used to set fires under witches during the burning times) can be burned or broken in half over your knee, but faeries are magical, elusive and frustrating to the "straights" who can't pin them down”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Forty years on and many of us have a well developed awareness of the workings of patriarchal, classist, racist, ableist, and colonial, systems of oppression. I am a white, middle class-ish, cis-ish gay man and, as such, am aware that I sit at the most privileged end of the LGBTQIA+ acronym within my Faerie community. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For gay men there is a tribal memory of our past oppressions, however these are nothing compared with the experience of those who are most oppressed by virtue of their positioning at the intersections of the so-called 'protected classes'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So how do we all respond to the persisting inequalities and inequities experienced by our queer siblings? One response is to recoil from calls to check our privilege and (with an outrage akin to the weaponised ‘white tears’ of the fragile non-black privileged) maintain that since the Faeries were started by cis-men then the Faeries are for cis-men <b><i>only</i></b> and that non-cis-men are spoiling the fun of the party.</span><br />
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The alternative is to attempt the practice of radical inclusivity. To take the pains of past oppressions, transmute them into a determination to ally with the oppressed, and to address inequalities of access to our transformative Faerie-space. After all, in the cis-male gay struggle against straight oppression haven’t there been privileged allies who were kind enough to have done the same for us?<br />
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GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-50038408305078455792020-02-29T16:12:00.000+00:002020-02-29T16:12:35.408+00:00My Qu-heroes<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What is this process of Gay Iconic veneration? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Looking back on the iconography of my earlier life, (Kenneth Williams, Quentin Crisp, Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand, Freddy Mercury, Will Young), I see how, with each figure, I managed to create an image-construct. Its value, for me, being that of knowing there was a story of a real person, like my own queer struggling self, who was capable of transcending adversity (or if not, was at least enduring its suffering in a truly fabulous way!) These Gay Icons gave me the courage to come out of my closet. They were individuals who dared to express their forbidden amazingness and desires shamelessly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">More recently however, I’ve had little spells of hero worship for gay men who are remembered for their role as visionaries, political activists and fighters for queer social justice. Here are my top 3…</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Walt Whitman</b>: 19th Century American poet who dared to openly publish poems about “the manly love of comrades” at a time when celebrating a reality which included sex would have him branded as an obscene writer throughout his lifetime. His poetry strongly influenced…</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Edward Carpenter</b>: Early 20th Century British writer and socialist poet who became a hero to the first generation of Labour politicians. At a time of Victorian homophobia (his contemporary Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for 2 years with hard labour for the crime of “gross indecency with sodomy”) he managed to live in an openly gay relationship and publish books allowing folk to discuss the possibility that sexual orientation was natural and biologically determined rather than being something to be morally condemned or criminalised. His books were read by…</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Harry Hay</b>: (1912-2002) American communist who was able to see the link between queer and black oppression and had the vision and courage to establish the first, pre-Stonewall gay rights movement called the Mattachine Society. Doing this meant risking his life, his job and his liberty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Society became a victim of its own success, got a sudden influx of conservative members who saw Hay’s communism, at a time of McCarthy’s witch-hunt trials, as a liability, ousted him and established itself as an assimilationist lobby. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Undaunted Hay then went on to argue for a different kind of liberation. For queers to ‘cast off the ugly frog-skin of hetero-conformity’ and for them to discover their queer purpose through the realisation of their true faerie nature in community at Faerie Gatherings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I suppose I’ve been following Harry’s lead in this respect for the past 10 years or so. For me he’s not so much an Icon or Hero-to-worship. In fact the more I’ve learned about his egocentricity, intellectual bullying, and temper tantrums, the less I feel I would have liked him as a person!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">He’s more of a flawed fore-father-figure…a guiding queer ancestor…a giant who stood on giant’s shoulders. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">His own shoulders now invite us all to step up and see the amazing view!</span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-70306311383231984522020-01-09T21:13:00.000+00:002020-01-09T21:13:41.657+00:00Cultural Heritage Transmissions (...and Emissions)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As a child Didier Eribon knew that he felt different. Growing up in a socially deprived suburbs of a French town riven with racism, misogyny, toxic masculinity, domestic violence and homophobia all he wanted, was to escape. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As he hit adolescence he became increasingly aware of the constant shame that the insult 'Faggot' evoked. He realised that, for him, ‘this dizzying word, arising from the depths of time immemorial’, and words like them, represented the dreadful presentment that such words, and the violence they carry, would accompany him for the rest of his days.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He realised that this stigmatised identity preceded him and he would have to step into it and embody it. He would need to somehow deal with it in one way or another. He would have to find some way out in order to avoid suffocating.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">With the charm of his gay youthfulness he entered the cruising scene of his town. Men wanting sex with men would hangout around the Public Toilets near the Theatre in the centre of town. And little by little, at great personal physical, and emotional risk to himself, through a process of repeated sexual emissions and co-incidental social cultural transmissions, he gradually began to assimilate a sense of how to be a young gay man in a small-town-world hostile to his existence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He was a bright kid and began to dream that, by some miracle, if he were to study hard and read lots of books, he might somehow become an intellectual living in the big city where he would be free to live an open life as a gay man.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">His extensive reading of communist tracts, Sartre, Gide, Foucault and Simon de Beauvoir would provide the stepping stones towards an intellectual existence which would ultimately lead to a position as a world renowned academic sociologist, journalist, and author. However, those thousands of informal initiatory gay discussions and discoveries in queer space and time, became the medium through which a cultural heritage was transmitted to him. One which would ultimately allow him to thrive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In Paris his intellectual friends and colleagues were not wholly welcoming of his sexuality and he began to understand what characterised a queer life, for him, was both the capability and necessity of moving regularly back and forth between spaces- from ‘normal’ to ‘abnormal’ and back again. What was most shocking to him however, was the extent to which, having left behind his working class background and having entered the bourgeois world of academia, the shame he had been made to feel for his sexuality was substituted for a deep shame of his background of poverty and deprivation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He would later read 'What is important is not what people make of us, but what we ourselves make of what they have made of us'</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So let's keep talking and socialising and having sex- giving ourselves the queer space to fabulously re-make ourselves from what they have made of us!</span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-75850202659246181672019-11-03T16:17:00.001+00:002019-11-03T18:34:00.425+00:00Full Spectrum Faerie Sex Magick<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Faeries are a fairly diverse bunch of queers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">However, in the early days, 40 years or so ago, at the very first gatherings of Faeries, the vast majority of attendees were gay men who were drawn to the idea of meeting together as faggots in nature to celebrate their sissy selves and explore their spiritual consciousness, asking the questions: 'Who are we, where are going, and what are we for?'</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">From the exploration of these questions, (and from a growing awareness that, although a lot of gay men seemed to be having a lot of sex, they were often craving an intimacy with each other which seemed forever-out-of-reach), there emerged an intensive workshop aimed at helping those who felt the call, to delve into the personal and interpersonal reasons for the many obstacles to intimacy encountered by gay men. These healing workshops, facilitated by volunteer Faeries, for the benefit of Faeries, have been running for the past 30 years and are known as Faerie Sex Magick (FSM) Workshops.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">These days Faerie-space is now a much more diverse and inclusive network where those from across the full range of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum are invited to enrich the exploration in community of the questions: 'How does it feel when a) I dare to stand in the full power of my sexual orientation b) the expression of my gender identity is not only unrestrained but is completely appreciated and celebrated?'</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Until now the FSM workshops have been confined to fagot identified men. The logic for this being that there is a real kind of hurt experienced by faggots growing up in a homophobic social environment, and that faggots are best able to develop an understanding of this. Fags are uniquely able to sooth and heal each other's wounds around blocks to intimacy related to this kind of trauma.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">However in recent years trans* men have been invited to attend the workshop and during this time there has also been a growing momentum of enthusiasm to have FSM workshop participants reflecting the full diversity of identities and sexualities present at modern Faerie Gatherings.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So very soon there will be the pilot of a workshop which will be open to the full spectrum of queer sexualities and genders. What will happen when a fully inclusive group sits in heart circle to explore the obstacles to emotional and physical intimacy that exist between them? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The intention of the heart circling within the traditional workshop is to reach a state of community trust to the extent that co-created rituals, involving permitted group erotic touch, are able to be devised and consensually enacted.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">How might this look between individuals not accustomed to considering erotic touch with genders and sexualities beyond their habitual erotic arousal patterns?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Nobody knows but it’s the beginning of a radical adventure into a better understanding of how faerie queers, with a range of sexuality and gender expression, might more freely express the erotic together in community…</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Watch this space!</span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-49165433041131632282019-11-03T15:52:00.000+00:002019-11-03T18:13:16.658+00:00Heart Circling for Mental Health<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I used to be a Psychiatrist. Yes- I spent most of my adult life studying and </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">helping to alleviate the pain and distress of major mental illness. Now in </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">the 5th year of my retirement I find myself writing a column on the subject </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">for an LGBT+ community listings magazine. So what to say?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">20 odd years ago, when I first arrived in Brighton, excited by the prospect of living and working in our very own fabulous Gay-playground-by-the-sea, and keen to make lots of new friends and acquaintances, it was this very GScene magazine I turned to as a resource. Maybe, I thought, I could find a group of like minded free-thinking queer folk I'd be able to join forces with to change the world and make it a better place- I was in my late 30s so the naïvety and idealism of my 20s were still very much a part of my world outlook! </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Scanning the community self help resources, all I could find were groups to support those who were HIV+, those who were drug and alcohol addicted, in physically abusive relationships, etc, etc. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sadly I found myself, as an adjusted, though not well adjusted homosexual, not quite unadjusted enough to qualify for entry to the available supportive peer groups on offer…</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So I joined in with the throngs of pubbers and clubbers, made some friends via the Rainbow Chorus and gradually became disenchanted with the idea that my sexuality could possibly constitute the basis of some form of common denominator for my social networks.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I realise now that I was searching for others who recognised that their early developmental experiences of being an unsupported queer in a hostile world had left us all with a malaise, a wounded-ness, to which we had uncomfortably adjusted and which had left us limping along to a greater or lesser extent. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We weren't mentally ill yet, but our wounds opened us up to a greater chance of developing addictions and mental health problems when exposed to the standard stresses and strains of daily living.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thankfully, after years of searching, I stumbled across the Faeries who celebrate and endeavour to heal our very own brand of wounded-ness through the creation of pop-up, time limited, residential intentional communities (or Faerie Gatherings), where radical inclusivity, compassion, and self-acceptance can be practiced in varying degrees of safety.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Central to these practices is the Heart Circle. What happens when you are given the space to articulate what you are feeling whilst engaged in queer community building. Sitting in circle with 15-20 pairs of ears, listening, without judgement, and without fear of interruption, as you hold a talisman, speak with radical honesty, locating and bearing witness to your authentic, unedited self…</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I've been attending Faerie Heart Circles for over 10 years now, and although I wouldn't quite say that I'm now ‘fully adjusted’, I'm certainly majorly less unadjusted than I was before. Faeries call it casting off the ugly frog skin of hetero-conformity. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It's a great feeling!</span></span></div>
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GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-67933090994703444522019-06-23T20:33:00.000+01:002019-11-03T16:02:20.605+00:00Is “Fitting In” Making You Sick?<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Yep- we booked ourselves a ‘walking float’ slot for up to 30 marching Faeries!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This is a controversial move because- as everyone knows- the Faeries are very elusive creatures. You might catch a glimpse of one and then, Pouff, gone, never to be seen again…</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Faerie ‘development of consciousness’ grew from the U.S. counterculture and gay civil rights movements of the late 60’s. Within 10 years of the Stonewall riots, a call went out to convene “gay brothers” to a Spiritual Conference of Radical Faeries. Those interested in ‘re-establishing a communication with Nature and the Great Mother and, in feeling the essential link between sex and the forces that hold the universe together’ were invited to come together (kinda literally) for a long weekend in early September 1979.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Since then Queer Folk from across the spectra of gender and sexuality have been hearing the call to convene in Nature and to celebrate the awesome naturalness of their sexual and gender queerness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Faerie Gatherings are about queers co-creating foundational intentional community- nurturing and celebrating our ancient historical roles as medicine people, healers, prophets, shamans, witches and sorcerers. We encourage ourselves to engage with that endless and fathomless process of coming out as Queer, as animals, as humans AND as mysterious and powerful spirits that move through the life cycle of the cosmos…</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The tradition of Faerie-ness has been counter to the cultural pressure from the mainstream to assimilate; to resist the lure of acceptance ‘as long as you can just stop being THAT WAY’. Faeries drill down into what it feels like (and what it means) to be ‘THAT WAY’. As Faeries we endeavour to be more ‘THAT WAY’ than ever we were before!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Faerie-ness resists ‘fitting in’. It proudly and queerly presents itself as a challenge to the status quo; as an opportunity to bring to consciousness those forces which endeavour to obliterate different-ness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So, what are the Faeries doing in a Pride Parade with its corporate drive to have the queers put on a show, draw the crowds and bring millions in capital to boost the Brighton business economy. The irony of a non-political parade celebrating 50 years of queer civil rights activism would be funny if it weren’t so creepy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Well, Faerie-ness has been a little known and barely recognised force empowering queers, over the years to refuse to fit into an inauthenticity-glorifying world.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If you’re reading this before the Parade, look out for us. We’ll simply be turning up in all our non-corporate weird uniqueness and representing that awkward voice asking: 'Is this all there is?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If any of all this chimes with you then find the Faerie Camp @ Queer Spirit Summer Festival in Northamptonshire <b>August 14-18</b> or just google Albion Faeries and see what its like to co-create spiritually nurturing community together at a Gathering.</span></span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-63832809165187914412019-05-01T17:15:00.000+01:002019-05-01T17:25:07.860+01:00Can the Haters be a Source of Joy?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When I was a tiny baby, I was on an emotional roller-coaster. Swinging from the lows of despair and abandonment when I was hungry, lonely or uncomfortable to the highs of euphoria and joy when I was nourished, soothed and comforted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I don’t remember any of this intellectually, yet it happened! And it set the foundations for a deeply ingrained fundamental emotional binary of ‘GOOD-AND-BAD’ which then conveniently mapped onto a simplistic set of value systems for ‘GOOD-AND-EVIL', ‘ACCEPTABLE-AND-UNACCEPTABLE', and ‘US-AND-THEM’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">However, being queer gave me the uncomfortable and challenging vantage-point to call into question this socially accepted style of value-construction. I was forced, by virtue of my nature, to resolve the conflict of finding myself (in the eyes of family, friends, school and church) most definitely on the ‘wrong’ side of these binaries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So began the journey of moving from a position of self-loathing and fear of rejection, through a stage of desperately seeking approval, towards a position of self-compassion and then ultimately finding compassion for those with values different from mine. Only then was I able to fully see the immaturity and corrosiveness of using ‘othering’ as a ploy to gain social power</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Through the grace of my queerness, the complexity of my consciousness was enriched.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I used to feel that my personal quest for social justice was possibly creating a current of favourable opinion towards the idea that diversity and inclusiveness were worthwhile pursuits in the development of a healthier and happier world. Today, though, I feel caught in the eddy currents of a tidal shift.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The hearts and minds of those not fortunate enough to have been exposed to challenge the ‘GOOD-BAD’ binary are being captivated and manipulated by Trump-like demagogues who play to those who wish for a less complex, more ‘black-and-white’ world-view. Folk who have felt subdued and shamed by what they have perceived as a stifling political correctness are now being offered bigoted role models and encouragements to ‘tell it as it is'. What’s wrong with a bit of misogyny, ablism, racism, homophobia, transphobia- after all it’s just the way most people feel!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Meanwhile the various social media exponentially multiply the distance between the ‘US’es and the ‘THEM’s confirming to each that they are RIGHT and the OTHERS are WRONG.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ is a catchy aphorism but if ‘thy neighbours’ are projecting an unconscious self-loathing onto you then they may be loving you- but only in that very special way they know how to!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So how to address the rising maelstrom of hate whipped up against minorities in our increasingly fragmented and disjointed world?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Just as I had to swallow the bitter pill of realising that, as a tiny baby, the source of all my loneliness and despair was, in fact, the very same mother who triggered my feelings of euphoria and joy, I’m exploring how best to engage with The Haters. How can they possibly be a source of euphoria and joy for me? And how can I possibly be a source of euphoria and joy for them?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s going to be a challenge!</span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-39505118014705262982019-03-05T21:55:00.000+00:002019-03-05T22:02:46.814+00:00“Please Don’t be Creepy!”<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This request, together with a profile pic of an attractive young man, was all there was to the</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Grindr profile... </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It got me thinking about all the things that I might say or do to others that could creep them out.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The #MeToo campaign has highlighted the shocking extent of unacknowledged sexual abuse in the form of implicit casting couch imperatives for career advancement in the entertainment industry. There is also, now, an ever growing recognition of the high prevalence of workplace based sexual harassment in general. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Since sexual creepiness has been an integrally endemic background feature of my culture, the chances are, I’ve got some blind spots and it therefore behoves me to examine the extent to which creepiness has crept into me!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">With this in mind I took the question “How might I be creepy?” to a week-long Faerie retreat. </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One of the glorious aspects of Faerie community is its queer diversity in terms of shapes, sizes, ages, genders, races, and sexualities. So I began to explore, privileged as I am, with elder, white, middle class, apparently-cis-male, predominantly homophilic status, how that capital might possibly be being unconsciously exploited in the pursuit of my erotic interests.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Faeries often tend to be seekers from a broad set of spiritual backgrounds. Newcomers to Faerie-space are particularly vulnerable, often, having rejected a rejecting and sex-negative Abrahamic belief system- possibly exploring for the first time a more earth-based and sex-positive framework.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So here’s what I came up with after a week of enquiry and meditation…</span></span></div>
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<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The essence of creepiness is a mismatch between professed and actual intention. If I were to present myself as someone who is available to give help, advice, and guidance on how best to negotiate Faerie-space whilst secretly lusting after, and planning on the sexual conquest of a newfound ‘apostle’ then I’m being as creepy as a creepy fingered masseur who has offered the service of a massage but who is, instead, covertly taking sexual pleasure from the tactile sensation from his wandering hands!</span></span></li>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Emotional authenticity with full transparency of intention is key to establishing creepy-free relationships.</span></span></li>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When there exists some kind of power gradient across a relationship regarding e.g. youthfulness, attractiveness, maturity, experience, wealth, etc., I need to give voice to what is there, and explicitly acknowledge the real possibility that this differential of capital may be open to emotional or sexual exploitation.</span></span></li>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Super-creepiness happens when sexual overtures are made and continue to be made in the absence of a receptive audience. It becomes abusive if it continues after it has been made clear that the sexual attention is unwanted.</span></span></li>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Once intentions have been made clear, and the potential for abuse across power gradients has been explored then clarity of consent is paramount. “How would you like me to enter into intimacy with you? How would you like to enter into intimacy with me?” If these questions can be answered with clarity and if the answers can be honoured fully then we’re likely to have moved into a creepy-free zone!</span></span></li>
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GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-84969359567006251842018-12-29T20:49:00.000+00:002018-12-29T20:55:19.574+00:00To Other or not to Other?: That is the Question!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vGnWSfEOFTE/XCfYQR582YI/AAAAAAAABMk/KVt8Qf54Ufw3Py7pLKM8Yp71rQJ5oA_xQCLcBGAs/s1600/Othering.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="214" data-original-width="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vGnWSfEOFTE/XCfYQR582YI/AAAAAAAABMk/KVt8Qf54Ufw3Py7pLKM8Yp71rQJ5oA_xQCLcBGAs/s1600/Othering.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A very creative performer friend of mine recently posted on Facebook just how much he HATED the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. And then a few days later in a different post, a disabled friend proclaimed how disappointed he was that he had finally sunk to a new low in that he had just had sex with a guy who wore Crocs (<i>by the way that guy was me!</i>). Both posts released a torrent of seemingly harmless, supportive hatred from friends and followers. All were in agreement that these subjects were quite legitimate targets for their light-hearted communal disapprobation. Who could get hurt? After all the RHCP are just a bunch of over rated, over-played recording artists! And aren't Croc wearers just seriously fashion challenged idiots? Right?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I wondered just how my sensitive, performer friend would have felt if someone had lanced a 'social media anger abscess' in his direction with the purulent exudate engulfing him and his vulnerable creative offerings. I certainly didn't feel unscathed by the wave of Croc-hatred unleashed by my disabled friend. I ended up pondering just how many times he might have had to endure the discomfort of witnessing 'harmless' disablist sentiments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It seems like the public articulation of ‘dislikes’ is becoming something of an international pastime, opening up widening chasms between diametrically opposed echo chambers which themselves splinter and fragment!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Essentially, there’s a whole lot of ‘othering’ going on. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Othering is the process of casting a person (or group) in the role of ‘the other’ and establishing one’s own identity through opposition to and, frequently vilification of this ‘other’</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In my experience of facilitating Faerie Sex Magick Workshops, I have found it to be the single most common source of blocks between workshop participants, creating what, at times, seem to be insurmountable barriers to the potential that intimacy might be possible between certain individuals within the group. What’s magickal about the workshop, though, is that the other-ers are meeting together day after day in an emotionally intimate group setting where compassion and empathy has space to grow. And in this context the ‘other’ can be viewed as a potential source of learning; this ‘other’ can begin to be seen as a diverse and complex entity worthy of love and desire, even!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So how might this burgeoning social media-amplified other-ing compulsion be countered? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">First of all, to recognise that it is happening. Secondly to register when it is happening. And finally to decide NOT to define oneself through opposition to any individual or group.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s really up to you!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>To Other</b>:Verb transitive. The act of holding intransigent exclusionary values as a means of creating blocks which become insurmountable barriers to the potential for an intimacy to develop between the 'othering' human being and 'othered' human being....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>If another others you, well, it just feels like poo!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Other another: Judge the book by its cover...</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Don't other that other-er!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>One way or the other, that other-er's your brother-er</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Could you make 'em your lover-er?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>It's all down to you!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>Btw: No Femmes! No Smokers! No H&H! No Twinks! No Partnered! No Tories! No Trump Supporters! No Brexiteers!</i></b></span></div>
<br />GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-65322005216760741602018-10-17T16:06:00.000+01:002018-10-17T16:07:35.536+01:00In Quest of the Paternal Nurturing Phallus....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DxWEJypj0qQ/W8dOPmbhClI/AAAAAAAABLc/ZwxbVKnDk0ocbOYgaS0ssJHdR06DYlRYwCLcBGAs/s1600/Internal%2BPaternal%2BNurturing%2BPhallus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="469" data-original-width="584" height="256" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DxWEJypj0qQ/W8dOPmbhClI/AAAAAAAABLc/ZwxbVKnDk0ocbOYgaS0ssJHdR06DYlRYwCLcBGAs/s320/Internal%2BPaternal%2BNurturing%2BPhallus.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My dad was a physically and emotionally unavailable, aggressive bully who's patriarchal reign tolerated no male ego expression within its dominion other than his very own vicious brand of toxic masculinity!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Little surprise, then, that his sissy-faggot son would be irresistibly drawn to exist in a world where men might instead be gentle, loving and caring towards each other....</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As soon as I was able to thrust myself away from his oppressive gravitational field, I was on a quest to find an affirming relationship with an older man. Could this, at last become, for me, a source of nurturing father-son intimacy?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At the tender age of 20, I finally summoned up the courage to acknowledge my queerness, which took the form of a brief relationship with Jimmy. He was an economist, in his 40s who was established in a proper job (a board member at British Rail). An out-and-out-gay-man, he also owned a gay bookshop and ran a support group for gay men who were too scared to come out of their closets- you can probably guess how we met!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">His amazingly proportioned phallus launched me into a size-queen career on the glittery 1980s gay club scene in London where I was able to repetitively and compulsively (if only transiently) satisfy my craving for nurturing daddy masculinity by introjecting it- in the form of a regular helping of big fat dick!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It took me decades of repeating this compulsion to realise how ultimately emotionally unsustainable it felt. This pattern of behaviour was failing to meet my desire for real intimacy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One day I read somewhere that the most successful and effective men consistently reported close and happy relationships with their fathers. Not having had this, I felt lacking, deficient and somehow irreparably broken. Then, in my 40s, as a counsellor, I learned that messy grief reactions were most likely to occur, not in those with fabulous relationships with their parents but rather, in individuals who had been in conflict with them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It occurred to me that my tyrannical father had already messed me up once in his lifetime- I was buggered if he was going to mess me up again as a consequence of his death!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The question was, could I take my anger and resentment at his inadequacy as a nurturing man and apply some compassion instead?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thankfully the answer was yes! In the ten years or so before he died, I was able to visit and revisit the complexity of why he was how he was and, eventually, found a way to forgive him. Now, </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">at the grand age of 58, 4</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> years after his passing, I'm just starting to locate and dismantle my internalised misandry... to recognise that I've been uncomfortable with my own masculinity simply because I've always identified it with its ubiquitous toxic forms. So my latest self-improvement project is to celebrate my internal paternal </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">nurturing phallus</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Long and proudly may it stand erect!</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Joyfully may it ejaculate its nourishing seed!</span></span></div>
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GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-26304657451693120782018-07-06T01:55:00.000+01:002018-07-06T02:04:02.824+01:00Giver or Receiver: Top Bottom or Versatile?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So what’s your preferred position in the giving and receiving game?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There is a time honoured principle in Faerie Community that No-one is Turned Away For Lack Of Funds (NOTAFLOF). Those who have easier access to financial resources are invited to give more than the break-even cost of events and those who don’t are invited to give less cash or none at all. This challenges the community to grapple with the dynamics of giving and receiving money.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It has caused me, personally, to reflect on how it is possible for giving and receiving- not just in terms of cash but in all energetic aspects-to settle into a balanced equilibrium and allow for harmonious inter-personal relationships within community.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In Faerie-space I have often received great pleasure from giving but there have been times when my giving has caused me to feel depleted and has not necessarily felt welcomed. As a recovering people pleaser and approval seeker I have struggled to be comfortable in the receiving position. I could also feel guilt or resentment that my giving was out of balance with my receiving. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So I developed my own Faerie Acronyms GOAA-BAGS and ROAN-BARS. I determined to Give Only As Able-But Always Give Something and to Receive Only As Needed-But Always Receive Something. An effort to balance my giving and receiving on the basis of my <b><i>ability</i></b> to give and of my <b><i>need</i></b> to receive.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This was all fine and dandy until I came across the ‘Wheel of Consent', a model of consensual giving and receiving developed by Betty Martin. Within this model the concepts of giving and receiving are each partitioned into two modes and set within a framework of consent. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Consensual giving can be both active and passive. When it’s active it is offering an accepted SERVICE and when it’s passive it is ALLOWING an agreed action of taking.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Similarly consensual receiving is active when it involves TAKING something that someone has allowed and it is passive when it is ACCEPTING an agreed offered service.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So, penetratively speaking, I can give by either offering the SERVICE of a thorough fucking (active), or by ALLOWING someone to take pleasure from fucking me (passive). I can receive by TAKING pleasure from being allowed to fuck (active) or by ACCEPTING the offered fucking (passive).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">From all of this I have learned that even gifts need to be accepted or taken consensually.<b><i> </i></b>I have also become more conscious of my preferred modes within this framework. I can understand now why I’m happy to fuck as a service and to allow a fucking to happen to me (active and passive giving) whereas the taking pleasure from fucking someone or the acceptance of a good servicing (without fretting about the comfort of the servicer) -active and passive receiving- are still areas of growth and exploration for me….</span></span></div>
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GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-74194383306012977212018-05-03T18:06:00.000+01:002018-05-03T20:12:06.301+01:00We are STARDUST!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A friend just recently back from a meditation retreat in India was reflecting with me on the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything….</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;">We got to talking about death and suffering and the extent to which the unarticulated fear of death and chronic, painful terminal illness can loom over us, limiting how we might live our lives in the fullest possible way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;">My friend asked me ‘Do you believe that all that you are disappears when you die?’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;">My answer: ’I don’t know-nobody knows!’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;">That, for me is what makes it such an interesting journey to be on. It’s a journey I’ve been on from the moment my germinal ovum kissed one microscopically small tadpole of a sperm cell. Death and dying are the YIN to the YANG of life and living.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;">I told my friend I was ready for death. Cultivating a fascination for my creeping decrepitude and decay was becoming my Next Big Project. He wondered how I had reached this contented level of equanimity towards a subject that most are programmed to avoid like the plague.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;">On reflection it’s probably something to do with how I have come to feel about the questions ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What happens to ‘who I am’ in death?’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;">So who am I? Apart from being a big old queer!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;">My presence is indisputably in existence on a number of parallel levels:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;"><b><i>The scientist/materialist</i></b> would say I am the sum total of all the atoms and molecules which make up the compounds, water, salts, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, cell walls and DNA of my body and all the electrostatic and electromagnetic forces around and between them. In death every atom of this aspect of my presence is available for re-purposing elsewhere: Stardust to Stardust!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;"><b><i>The zoologist</i></b> would say that I am a mammalian creature who has a survival instinct; hardwired to breathe, keep warm, drink, piss, eat, shit and f*ck.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;"><b><i>The magician</i></b> would say that I am a magickal creature, invested with my very own sovereign power to purposefully manifest. To energise thoughts and ideas, to authentically articulate and express emotions and to cultivate nature in all its aspects.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;"><b><i>As a Faerie</i></b>, my presence is about acknowledging the full spectrum of my emotional life and giving this permission to take up space. I’m acknowledging my fears and developing a fierceness in my determination to become who I am purposed to be. Feeling relief as I connect to nature. Allowing myself to feel anger, awe, joy, love compassion and intuition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;"><b><i>As a thinker</i></b>, I have a presence which shows up as my thoughts, ideas, values and beliefs. Some believe this presence is who they are!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;">I’m certain that all of these aspects of who I am will have an impact beyond the date of my death. Just as the presences of all my queer ancestors have impacted on my own sense of purpose.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-kerning: none;">Beyond this, who knows what lives on. Soul? Nature Spirit? …..Back to the Garden?</span></div>
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GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-41024457258284817262018-04-22T17:26:00.002+01:002018-04-22T17:33:35.759+01:00Hope Along the Wind: A Film About the Sussex Man who Started Two Queer Revolutions in the USA!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gay Socrates talks to Harry Hay's friend and carer Joey Cain about Hay, the man, and the movie made about his life, coming to the Brighton Fringe next month.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Harry Hay (1912-2002) was born in Worthing. As an adult he became a gay activist in the US and founded the first Gay Liberation movement (The Mattachine Society) in 1950. He then went on to co-found the Radical Faeries.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'Hope Along the Wind...' is a lovely movie which sets this unlikely story in its historic context and captures rare interview footage of this iconic character in his later years.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Joey Cain knew Harry in person and was one of the devoted band of 'Loving Companions' who tended to the care of Harry and his partner in their closing years. For the 100th anniversary of Harry’s birth in 2012, he curated a major exhibition about his life and times in San Francisco and co-organized a conference about Harry in New York City.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Joey is flying from his home in San Francisco to present a screening of this movie as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival next month. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">GS: Who was Harry Hay to you?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">JC:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Harry was a dear friend, political comrade and gay visionary the likes of which we probably won’t see again. Without his tenacity, deep thinking and integrity, the LGBT revolution, at least as far as the USA goes, would have been a much longer time coming. He traversed many worlds, as Gay people often do. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Communist activist and great music lover who was a trained baritone, he read long and deep in history and anthropology to find the hidden history of our People. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">GS: Why are you bringing Harry Hay's story to the Brighton Fringe?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">JC:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Harry was born in Worthing, his birth house still stands, and we thought it would be a lovely idea to “bring Harry back” to this part of England, where he started out. This whole area is so rich in Queer history what with Edward Carpenter being born in Brighton, Oscar Wilde writing “The Importance of being Ernest” practically around the corner from where Harry was born. And that’s just scratching the surface. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">GS: Why do you think conceiving of the Radical Faeries was important to Harry?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">JC: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Harry always said that the Radical Fairies was the realization of the dream he had when he started The Mattachine Society in 1950. The essence lies in the 3 questions he posed to be answered by both groups: Who are we? Where do we come from? W</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">hy are we here? For Harry, the Fairies were about answering those questions and acting on the answers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>'Hope Along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay' is showing at the Fabrica Gallery, Tuesday May 8 7.30pm </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tickets: </span><a href="http://www.brightonfringe.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.brightonfringe.org/whats-on/harry-hay-founder-of-the-radical-faeries-124999/</span></a>GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-14421685664353508662018-02-28T20:43:00.002+00:002018-02-28T21:06:52.064+00:00Radical Faeries: Why Are We Here? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yo4EWCY7TFI/WpcTLX4dmiI/AAAAAAAABG8/xfCJmvHDTaIw59-rDi6MZVlhlv9ZJVSKACLcBGAs/s1600/hope%2Balong%2Bthe%2Bwind2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yo4EWCY7TFI/WpcTLX4dmiI/AAAAAAAABG8/xfCJmvHDTaIw59-rDi6MZVlhlv9ZJVSKACLcBGAs/s1600/hope%2Balong%2Bthe%2Bwind2.jpeg" /></a></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">There are times in the history of our humanity when, suddenly, unexpectedly, and dramatically, human consciousness shifts. When this happens, historians are usually curious about how these changes came about. Who did what to whom, and when?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The development of an LGBTQI+ liberation movement is one such event. We all know there was a time, back in the dark ages, when queerness didn’t even seem to have a consciousness of itself. And then there was a time when queers were vilified and persecuted- even killed and eugenicised. And then came the time when one queer said ‘No!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There is a scientifically recognised phenomenon known as ‘morphic resonance’ (discovered by biologist Professor Rupert Sheldrake) whereby, a puzzle or dilemma solved by one living creature is immediately more likely, and more rapidly, to be solved by another, <i>regardless of geographical proximity</i>. Maybe it is by this little understood process that historic shifts of consciousness occur. However, in terms of queer liberation, there must have been that moment when, not only did one particular queer say “No! This is not acceptable” but then went on to say “And this is how we’ll go about changing it...”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It is quite possible that the name of that queer was Harry Hay. He was one of the founders of the first gay liberation movement organisations in the U.S.- the Mattachine Society. The story of how that small group brought hope and then ultimately tangible human rights equality to a growing number of nations across the world is told in a short, gripping movie biopic <b><i>‘Hope Along the Wind’</i></b> coming to the Brighton Fringe Festival in May.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Interestingly, Harry Hay’s involvement at the inception of the LGBTQI+ liberation movement was not the end of the story. After the movement’s historic successful legal challenge of a cottaging charge, the movement was flooded with ‘assimilationists’ (who believed ‘we’re just like straights apart from our sexualities’). He stepped away from the movement believing steadfastly that having sexualities was one of the few things that queers <b><i>did</i></b> have in common with the mainstream. He believed that queerness gave us a unique window through which we are able to view society and that we then favourably influence society through our own individual cultural engagements.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He threw himself into research constantly asking his famous three questions: “Who are we?’ , ‘Where do we come from?’ and ‘Why are we here?’</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Following his discovery of a resonance with the Native American identity of Berdache or ‘Two Spirit’, he began to see queers as a tribe of magical spiritual creatures with a unique role to play in the development of human consciousness. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As Faeries, we locate our own unique purpose by celebrating our wild and mysterious natures together in community......</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>‘Hope Along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay’ is showing at the Fabrica Gallery, 40 Duke Street, BN11AG </i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>TUESDAY May8 at 7.30pm. Tickets £8 </i></b></span><b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>& £6: </i></b></div>
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<a href="https://www.brightonfringe.org/whats-on/harry-hay-founder-of-the-radical-faeries-124999/">https://www.brightonfringe.org/whats-on/harry-hay-founder-of-the-radical-faeries-124999/</a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>Come along and say hello to the Brighton Faeries!</i></b></span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-43954196589088448042018-01-06T23:52:00.000+00:002018-01-07T17:59:21.461+00:00The Epiphany as Magical Radical Politico-Spiritual Direct Action<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’ve had a few major Epiphanies during my life so far.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That dawning realisation at a time of crisis. The seeing of the truth of something unproven. That sudden recognition of purpose…</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There’s always a numinous sense of ‘Higher Power’. An alliance of self with ethereal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My first Epiphany was when I could see no other way than to be true to myself and my sexuality when I (finally) came out at the age of 20. I was depressed, hopeless and in despair at the time, and, 'coming out' was this profoundly religious resolution for what had become a totally fucked up unhappy life. And thus was created a reality receptive to my starved appetite for sexual encounters with men.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Subsequently, taking ‘coming-out’ to it’s logical political conclusion I became one of the Stonewall supporters pushing for assimilation (accept us please because we’re just the same as you apart from our sexuality) and basic equality rights. At the time I never imagined that there would ever be rights for LGBTQ+ers to adopt children or to marry in my lifetime. The very fact of this immense socio-political shift in the course of just a few years, for me, is testament to the existence of Magick: the art of changing consciousness at will by the setting of intention (against all odds!)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’ve had other sizeable Epiphanies but my most recent one- around 10 years ago- happened after I had cornered myself into a heteronormative assimilationist lifestyle. Ostensibly monogamous and middle class, locked into a busy professional career, partnered to a lover who had become asexual and was suffering from chronic fatigue. I was thoroughly miserable! Once again the Epiphany came to the rescue. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thankfully my openness to that leap of imagination, into something unestablished, unproven, messy and chaotic- my spirituality- allowed The Faerie Tribe to enter into my life and in this way I entered into the Faerie Tribe.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On reflection, whenever the chips have been down and there has been nowhere else to turn, suddenly from out of the blue comes this unfolding of what hadn’t been there before: the offering of a future “Warp” to what is seemingly the meaningless ‘Weft’ of my life until now. And there it is again: the glimmering promise of future purpose!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As an Intersectional Radical Faerie I’m beginning to realise that my queer politico-spiritual purpose is to remain as open as I can be to this very act of Epiphanizing: to keep re-imagining an inclusive future. It isn’t present just yet, but it will become that future allowing our uniquenesses to keep eroding at the intersectionalities of heterosexism, gender binary-ism, ageism, classism, racism and ableism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Faeries can find the ways for our diverse tribe to keep growing, flourishing and thriving together in harmonious and mutually supportive ways! So Mote It Be!</span></span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-28144055377582432502017-12-25T16:41:00.000+00:002017-12-25T18:17:15.796+00:00A Dream from the Margins of an Intersectionality<div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">1</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i'm present at a Faerie gathering.....</span><br />
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... wandering around feeling like i don't belong....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... some folk going off somewhere and i jokingly trying to find out what they're up to....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... young Faerie quietly tells me that my questioning is 'overly-intrusive' and where they are going will be unknowable to me....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... refers me back to a time when folk were meditating in a workshop and i was (unforgivably) using my mobile phone to call people....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i know that at the time i must have been 'in the spirit' of the workshop but can't exactly recall what she is referring to....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i know that what i'm being accused of is something i would not normally do....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i try to talk with her about it to help me remember what had actually happened....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... she shuts me down and refuses to discuss it any further....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i'm preoccupied by the sense of being unjustly accused....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... it's a familiar feeling and i adopt my usual position of welcoming this 'shadow' into my experience....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... but there's a smouldering sense of wanting to become an outspoken 'shadow' in this gathering....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... a familiar Faerie comes over to me, sits down and rests her legs across mine....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... she recalls the time last night when i sucked her cock and she came in my mouth....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i joyfully remember the sweet taste of her semen as she spurted her ecstasy into my mouth....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... (she had been wearing a Santa Claus hat with red flashing fairy-lights and in the darkness of the bushes we had been transported to a psychedelic red-light disco of sensation)....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... but she was crest-fallen and told me that someone had approached her to say that they had witnessed it all and that <b><i>ejaculation</i></b> at gatherings was 'offensive' to them.... </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... she wanted to check with me that there was indeed a rule that we had broken....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i told her that i hadn't been to a gathering for a while but this certainly wasn't a rule i was aware of....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... again that smouldering sense of being called -or rather confronted- to take this on....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">3</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i 'm reminded of the rules at naturist gatherings where nudity is acceptable but there is the rule to carry a towel around to sit on-reminding us all of the need to protect the community from the dangers of bottom contamination!....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i say to her 'don't worry - it's probably something to do with some Faeries' phobia of bodily fluids'.... </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i'm overheard and suddenly realise i have become 'That Shadow Faerie' for daring to speak out this authentic speculation....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... this means for some or many, i have now become 'Other'....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i, for them, am the enemy within our co-constructed utopian family....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i walk away from the gathering with that 'not-belonging-feeling' again....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... walking past shops now.... there's a second-hand furniture shop and i leap and bounce off one of the chairs- i realise immediately i shouldn't have done it.....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... the shopkeeper sees what i did and raises an eyebrow but doesn't remonstrate with me....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">4</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i find myself now in familiar surroundings- i used to live in this neighbourhood years ago....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i'm trying to walk up a hill but finding that, in spite of enormous effort, i'm hardly moving forward at all.....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... there's someone behind me and i invite them to pass rather than try to keep ahead of them....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i look down at my feet and see that they are floating above the pavement....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i remember once again that i can fly but i'm now carrying books and a bunch of bananas and don't want to fly with these encumbrances....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... so i slip them into the suitcase i'm wheeling behind me....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i'm now in a hotel corridor and aware that because of the suit case i must appear to be one of the guest here but i haven't paid for a room....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i take the case downstairs to the reception area....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... wanting get away but having to continue to offload things into my suitcase....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... the receptionist is confused by my behaviour but assumes i'm there to check out....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i'm still taking things out of my pockets and slipping them into the case....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i'm holding a wallet containing my valuables- it's in the form of a tiny handbag....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i decide to hold on to this and slip it into my inside pocket....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i try to recall where my laptop is and remember that it is safe back at the gathering....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">5</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... but now the reception area is becoming crowded with scores of folk checking out....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i look for my suitcase but it is now lost in a sea of similar looking suitcases....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... hotel porters are busy loading the luggage into the coaches waiting outside....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i approach them and ask if they have seen a large black suitcase</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... only to see that all the loaded suitcases are large and black but don't quite look like mine....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... i'm desperate to convey that the case was in the reception area just two minutes ago....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... surely it cant be that far away....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... they point to a massive container-load of suitcases and say that if it was in the reception area it would now have been removed to this container ready for loading onto the coaches....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... there's a part of me that isn't really bothered- I still have my valuables and laptop so what is there to worry about.....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... but then they start to speculate about an employee who was recently fired from his job....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... it wasn't clear what his job had been but there had been some sort of incident and a number of the hotel guests had complained about him....</span></div>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... 'it's probably him getting his revenge.... he'll have stolen it thinking you was one of the complainants'....</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">6</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">.... 'he's going to track you down- I'd be careful if I was you sir!'.....</span><br />
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GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-66261427030209323152017-10-27T18:29:00.000+01:002017-10-27T18:45:28.415+01:00Ten Commandments to live by for 2018<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zSNSkhbi2NE/WfNu6Y-35eI/AAAAAAAAAyE/OheSa4jbkj8f_EIAVWYJekBRFVqNGkwbwCLcBGAs/s1600/Ten%2BCommandments.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="200" height="308" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zSNSkhbi2NE/WfNu6Y-35eI/AAAAAAAAAyE/OheSa4jbkj8f_EIAVWYJekBRFVqNGkwbwCLcBGAs/s320/Ten%2BCommandments.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=759656067592638583" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Taking stock after a very full and exerting year, much of which was spent in and around Faerie Gatherings, I’m starting to formulate some useful principles to live by for the rest of my life!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I am a little saddened that it has taken me the best part of sixty years to arrive at, what now seem to be, these fairly self evident truths. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As queer mammalian creatures with our crazy-mixed-up vicariously motivated parents and teachers, and our fears and hungers and drives, we bounce ourselves into relationships, social circles, lifestyles, careers and patterns-of-being which often serve us less well than they might. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Well, that’s what happened for me and it has taken a lifetime as an over-busy professional and 2 whole years of ‘doing-nothing’ post-retirement for the mists of conditioning and self deception to finally begin to clear.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So here are the personal 10 Commandments I will endeavour to live by, if not for the rest of my life, then at least for the next 12 months or so…..</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">1 Thou shalt become ever fiercer in thine honesty regarding personal integrity</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This involves locating what I am feeling in my heart and being brave enough to bear witness to it regardless of how this revelation might be viewed by others as shameful, undesirable, unlikeable, unenlightened, - whatever!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">2 Thou shalt stop apologising for whom thou art</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">3 Thou shalt stop seeking the approval of others</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">4 Thou shalt start to accept that being disliked for thine authenticity is the integral and undeniable flip-side of being liked for thine authenticity</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">5 Thou shalt stop using the words GOOD and BAD</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">These words are a root source for Duality and are Black Magick spells which establish the fault-lines of Divisiveness. I need to continue to recognise them as lazy signifiers of a privileged value system and always worth opening to scrutiny.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">6 Thou shalt find a different way of saying “I hate it when…”</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hatred can so easily find its way into consciousness even via this ostensibly playful invocation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">7 Thou shalt avoid opinionated people</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Keep remembering that they are desperately attempting to impose some order onto the gloriously, implacably, chaotic nature of life, the universe and everything. Attempting to challenge opinionatedness just cements it in place. Simply knowing what I know should be enough. Chaos will prevail.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">8 Thou shalt stop being drawn to positions of ‘leadership’ </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">They are a mirage. I am only able to lead myself. Just find some space and see what happens by being in it. And then endeavour to stop seeing what happens and simply ‘be’ in it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">9 Thou shalt keep identifying what brings thee joy and keep engaging with it on a regular basis</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">10 Thou shalt recognise when what thou art engaged with has become joyless and, no matter how worthy-seeming the project, thou must let it go. And let it go as quickly as possible!</span></b></span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-54004159169553924632017-09-05T19:42:00.000+01:002017-09-05T20:02:03.254+01:00Hate Crime in Brighton- Maybe we need to get out more?<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’m still recovering from a summer of Faerie Gatherings!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Faerie-space is where I’ve been able to allow my spiritual queerness to be fully present, affirmed and celebrated. Over the years I’ve really benefitted from the opportunity to be quiet in nature. Here I've revealed to others my most shameful aspects. And here I’ve found love and acceptance <b><i>not in spite of</i></b> my perceived shortcomings <b><i>but because of</i></b> them!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I decided therefore, to offer myself in service to this fabulous, anarchic gang of consciousness developers. So I put myself forward to facilitate three consecutive gatherings during July and August.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">First of all was Faerie Sex Magick at Folleterre, the Euro-Faerie Sanctuary in France. Thirteen brave Faeries together with 3 facilitators and a cook came together for an week of intensive heart circles exploring our barriers to intimacy. Our objective: to reach a point where all of us could agree that we had developed a deep enough emotional understanding of each other to safely enter into an erotic space together. This was my sixth workshop and, as always, there was much to learn from this very unique form of emotional skinny dipping!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Exposed to an angry participant I was opened up to my extreme avoidance of unpredictable anger and violence. Though my father is dead and gone, the wounding he inflicted on me with his aggressive volatility, was still very much alive in me as a pattern of pretending I didn’t need anger as part of my emotional life. I realise now that depriving myself and others of this vibrant aspect of my self-expression gives an indistinct and unreal feel of ‘who I am’ making if difficult for others to fully engage emotionally with me. So now I’m tuning-in to, and expressing my anger as it arises. What a refreshing change!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My next two gatherings were the Global closely followed by the Afterglow Gathering.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Global Gatherings are a controversial development for the Faeries in that rather than making a call to Sanctuary for established Faeries, there is an active intention to reach out to activists in those parts of the world where there is no Faerie culture, raising funds to assist with air travel and subsistence, and shifting the focus away from inner/interpersonal healing towards outer and inter-continental healing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For whatever reason the LGBTI+ human rights position in UK is now very privileged compared with many countries across the globe.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And, sure, there’s hate crime in Brighton but it’s nothing compared with the hate cultures I’ve been hearing about from activists in Chechnya, Uganda, Pakistan, Benin, Singapore, and Beijing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Prior to my encounter with the Faeries I was an assimilationist, desperate to prove to anyone that I was just quite ordinary <b><i>apart from</i></b> my sexuality. Now as a Faerie I know that I am quite extra-ordinary <b><i>because of</i></b> my sexuality.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’m feeling my anger rising against queer hatred and I’m recognising it as a valuable element of my Faerie-Superpowers! </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Watch out hate-crime-bitches. We're coming for you!!</span></span></div>
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GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-30913823831718953102017-07-01T19:52:00.000+01:002017-07-01T20:04:50.543+01:00Unconditional Giving as a Symptom of Approval Seeking<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’ve got a bit of an obsession with Bindweed at the moment!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Over the past 17 years it has mutated, from being a rather pretty climbing vine with lovely white trumpet-like flowers in the corner of our little back garden, into a rapidly growing, infiltrating, triffid strangling all my lovely plants and shrubs, and suffocating them out of light and life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This summer I’ve spent hours at a time in that garden unravelling the binding growth from fragile stems and branches. Each time the compost heap ends up with five or six armfuls of the stuff yet within a few weeks it has grown back again with a vengeance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’ve had a series of friends recently who were just like that Bindweed in my garden. People who at first seemed exotic and alluring from afar. People who claimed themselves unjustly judged. People for whom my intuition was screaming ‘Beware-they’re dangerous’ (and I disregarded the warnings because I wanted to prove my programming wrong). People who hinted that they were weak and fragile and in need of some support. To these people, metaphorically speaking, I invited them to grow up into the trellis-work of my life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As the years have gone by, the weight of their vegetation and the suffocation of their foliage have taken their toll on me, draining me of my creative energy and vitality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’m sure I’m not the only one this has happened to. Until fairly recently I was a prize people pleaser; a total sucker for validation from wherever I could find it. I got pleasure from sensing gratitude from others for the gifts of attention, touch, love, money, food, and rounds of drinks I would bestow on them. I was happy to offer myself as a resource and allowed myself to be used by others as and when they pleased.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Unfortunately this approach attracted individuals who were happy to accept my gifts and took the resources I allowed them to access. But rather than this resulting in a natural Yin-Yang balance of giving a receiving, I eventually began to feel drained, depleted and used.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I came to recognise that the fertile soil of my generosity was simply cultivating fields and fields of Bindweed-like users and takers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I felt a bit sad when I abandoned my approach of unconditional beneficence but, with the help of the Faeries, as I grew to love myself and came to honour the queerness of my own true nature, I no longer felt the need of approval from others, at any cost, to shore up my confidence. I began to recognise that there was nothing ‘enlightened’ about what I was doing. I was simply taking my own natural power to continue becoming my truest authentic self and just pissing it up the wall!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I could easily spray a weedkiller on the Bindweed in my garden but, for now, I’m enjoying the hours and hours I’m spending meditating on the delicate balance of give and take in human relationships!</span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-7306410903129680832017-04-30T17:01:00.000+01:002017-04-30T17:01:10.835+01:00Bears and My Reflections on My Reflections on My Reflection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 255); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I have a fear of Bears because they have, in one way or another, got me into the realm of body judging!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When I was a Twink in the ‘body fascist’ phase of my life, I used to think that Bears were just a bunch of guys with hairy backs who had lost the Battle of the Bulge and had found a way to reassure each other that the fight hadn’t been worth fighting in the first place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Now in my twilight years, having hung around with The Faeries for the past 8 years, and having conscientiously and consciously challenged my socially programmed preference for the Body Beautiful, I am just about able to summon up some compassionate forgiveness for the opinionated brat that I was!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">However, when someone I meet says they are a Bear, I kind of fear that my Faerie identity will be judged as too girly, not-manly-enough, not-hairy-enough, not fat enough (with the wrong sort of fat), not socially-locally-connected enough, not interested enough in raising money for charity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Since I don’t actually know any Bears, I know these are simply my own personal projections onto a group of people who don’t deserve to be feared in this way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Take the American Black Bear for instance. It seems like it’s reputation for being a dangerous killer is a whole lot of nonsense cooked up in the paranoia of the US collective sub-conscious. In reality they are beautiful, sweet and gentle creatures who are simply trying to get by, just like anyone else.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Anyway, the Bear theme for this month got me thinking about my body and how I judge it (and how I fear it is judged by others). It reminded me that a few years ago, in a fit of self-improvement, I did an exercise aimed at flushing out my subconscious negative body self-talk. I stood in front of a mirror- naked- and wrote down all the words that sprang to mind to describe what I saw. Then by the side of each word I wrote down its opposite. This is what emerged:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>My Reflections on My Reflections on My Reflection</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Here is a Body, Vulnerable and Exposed…..Shameless</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Sacred Holy, Totally Acceptable and Divine</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><i>, </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Spiritually Balanced</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Slim and Trim,</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Surprisingly Youthful</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><i>, </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Young and Vital</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Cuddly and Curvaceous</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><i>, </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Smooth and Furry</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><i>, </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Muscled</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Beautifully Androgynous</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><i>, </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Masculine Enough</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><i>, </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Dinky Genitals- Perfectly Formed</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Beautiful, Amazing, Hairy and Handsome</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Strong, Adapting, Dynamic, Evolving, Growing</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Wonderful Changing Regenerating Miraculous!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Attractive, Sexually Magnetic, Tasty</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>In Surprisingly Good Nick</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><i>, </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>A Great Oak</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><i>, </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>A Well-Looked-After Vintage Car</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Hello!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>You are Smouldering, Sensual and Sensuous</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Feeling, Touching, Tasting, Smelling</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>The Silent Witness and Guide </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Where Ethereal and Material Clash</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>The Vessel</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><i>, </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>The Instrument</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><i>, </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>The Tool</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Transient, Transitory and Transitional</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Indispensable Now- Yet Ultimately Disposable</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>Body!</i></b></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><b><i> </i></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>Talk To Me!</i></b></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><b><i> </i></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>Show Me How You Feel!</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s an interesting exercise- try it and see what happens!</span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-3854329443056681422017-03-11T15:01:00.000+00:002017-03-11T15:11:38.604+00:0010 Steps Towards Emotional Intimacy: The Faerie Heart Circle Ritual<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(16, 16, 15); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #10100f; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>1</b> Find at least one other person you feel able to confide in and who would be able to confide in you. (If you don’t know anyone you need to find a new set of friends- or start up a Meet-up Group!)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>2</b> Find a special object- call it a Talisman- to hold and pass around the circle.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>3</b> Designate a date and time and set aside at least 2 hours free of disturbance.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>4</b> Turn all your devices off and prepare to communicate the truth of what is going on for you right now. In the Flesh. No edits. The raw, honest authentic truth! </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>5</b> Pick up the talisman and say <b><i>‘In this Heart Circle I will have the opportunity to share but only when I hold the Talisman. Do you agree to do this too?’</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>6</b> Wait for all present to say- Yes I agree! (if they don’t, then send them home and find another group!)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>7</b> Light a candle and pass the Talisman and this text to the left. The next person says<b><i> ‘At the beginning of my sharing I will say my name and it will be repeated back by the circle as an affirmation of mutual support. Do you agree to do this too?’</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>8</b> This person lights a candle then passes the Talisman and this text to the left and so on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>9</b> These statements are said, <b><i>asking for agreement</i></b>, by other participants or if there are just 2 or three of you they are shared between you:</span></span></div>
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<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(16, 16, 15); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #10100f; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>I will speak from the heart</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i> about what is alive and true for me right now.</i></span></li>
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<li><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I will own my statements by using ‘I’ and ‘my’ rather than ‘you’ or ‘we’. </span></i></li>
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<li><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I promise to listen with empathy and to have a compassionate awareness of any judgement as it arises within me. </span></i></li>
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<li><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">During the circle, I may hear something that resonates with me. I will not directly comment on, or offer any advice to others. However it may affect my subsequent sharing.</span></i></li>
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<li><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>I may say</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(16, 16, 15); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #10100f; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i> nothing when the talisman comes to me but I will allow myself time to be present with my feelings before</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i> passing it on. </i></span></li>
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<li><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I will allow others personal space to be fully with their own experience- in tears or laughter. Comfort or hugs may be non-verbally offered and accepted when the sharing has finished. </span></i></li>
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<li><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I will look after my emotional and physical needs and if I have to leave the room I will do so at the end of a share. </span></i></li>
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<li><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If I would like to talk about something said in the circle with that person afterwards, I may ask but I accept that the answer could be no. </span></i></li>
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<li><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I promise to keep everything in this heart circle CONFIDENTIAL. </span></i></li>
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">10 </b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Now take the talisman and share from the heart for as long as it takes then pass it on. When all has been said hold hands. Take 3 deep breaths then blow the candles out. Enjoy!</span>GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759656067592638583.post-69912996923381900852016-12-31T12:46:00.000+00:002016-12-31T12:47:02.696+00:00If You Like To Take It Up The A*se- Does That Make You A Sissy?<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Last week I had sex with a guy in the sauna. Yay! And afterwards when we were cuddling and chatting in our little cubicle (it can happen sometimes- occasionally) we got on to the subject of how to respond to THAT QUESTION: ‘Are you a Top or a Bottom?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It’s a question often furtively asked during the course of a bit of fumbling exploratory touch. It seems to be asked by guys in a rush to get to some kind of destination. They ‘aint looking for some mutually explored erotic adventure. It’s like they want to fast forward to some live-action, conventionally plugged-in, porn cum-shot.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I usually indicate that I’m enjoying the touch happening right now and that I’m capable of going with the flow of wherever it might take us. Which usually gets us back in the zone!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My sauna buddy seemed interested to talk about this topic, so I told him, for the record, that with regard to gender I personally identified as a bigendered. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And, furthermore, having reflected on how my bigendered-ness impacts on my sexuality, I’ve come to the conclusion that the feminine pole of my gender is BISEXUAL! She’s into men who are into her femininity and she’s also into women who want to engage in sexual play with her. (Hmm- one of these days that fantasy of a dominant woman with a strap-on taking me to heaven will become a reality!). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And then there’s the masculine end of my spectral identity, who is a sexually versatile gay guy. He enjoys f*cking, being f*cked, s*cking, being s*cked, d*minating and s*bmitting. It’s all f*cking great!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Then my sauna lover said ‘Well, I’ve done Queer Studies and they said there, that ‘Bigendered’ doesn’t exist because gender is all fluid-like’. He was young and not a little irritatingly- if not invalidatingly- correct. I suppose!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As a sissy child I was ruthlessly coerced into eradicating any element of femininity from my behaviour. I was a quick learner and a good little actor and so rapidly acquired a reasonably convincing straight-acting veneer of false-self. It’s taken years to recognise and challenge the shame that I was made to feel about my sissy self. Thankfully I am now able to honour and reclaim it as my precious birthright.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Why does this ugly gender expression repression happen? And why do so many men continue to hide and despise their feminine nature. Is it because we live in a patriarchal, misogynist culture hating women and seeing men who resemble women as even worse?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Whatever it is, we do appear to be stuck with this gender binary thing and it does seem, for many, to touch on something deeply fundamental which shouldn’t be messed with! </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Maybe I’m just a freak of nature. Maybe most men are just men. In which case that’s just fine too!</span></span></div>
GaySocrateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01517914043175326298noreply@blogger.com2