Gay Spirit Warrior

Gay Spirit Warrior: An Empowerment Workbook for Men Who Love Men

By John R. Stowe

I bought this book when I first moved to Brighton from Newcastle 12 years ago.

I was moving away from the oppressive North to The Gay Mecca and I was going to radically change my life!

I started the workbook and managed to get to chapter 4.

Then life got in the way!

Then things got really tough!

Ultimately I found myself faced up to the consequences of having neglected my spiritual self. For me this manifested as creative exhaustion, emotional paralysis and preoccupation with a fear of aging and ailments.

Then The Edward Carpenter Community came to the rescue.

I attended my first Laurieston Gay Men’s Week in September 2009, returned the following year and then was back again last year. The magic of these weeks gave me the space and sanctuary I needed to properly attend to my spiritual growth. The book seemed to feature fairly prominently in the 2010 September week and I returned to Brighton with a fellow Brightonian ECCer with a joint resolve to work through the book together.

We worked through a few chapters at a time then met up over lunch and glass or two of wine about once a month. We shared with each other our thoughts about each chapter, the progress we’d made with the set tasks and the impact we had felt from having carried out the exercises.

It was interesting for me to compare the experience of having tried to do the book alone in the past with the completely different situation of having a fellow traveller there to spur me on and make sure I didn’t get tempted to skip the awkward and challenging exercises.

The book is in two major parts. The first part helps you to get you in touch with some of the wounds gay folk have had to endure growing up in homophobic families, religions and schools and to register the consequential impact this has had on the ways we relate to ourselves and others, the fear we have of disclosing our true nature and the effect this has on our emotional availability for intimacy.

The second part introduces some Gay Archetypes and helps to develop a personal and healing connection to each of these. We therefore start with the Magic Boy. We all have an inner child who is playful, joyful and creative but is likely also to be sad, hurt and fearful because of a whole range of difficult past experiences. There are exercises designed to help you to contact this aspect of your self and to begin a self-healing, self-nurturing process.

Next chapter is The Sacred Androgyne (we have a greater dose of the feminine in our gay male nature than the average straight bloke). Ancient societies and cultures recognized the special qualities of feminine acting boys and gave them important roles in their sacred rituals. In this chapter there is the chance to acknowledge, honour and own our feminine aspects. A chance to heal some of the hurt inflicted on us by a society, which invalidates any gender expression other than the male/ female of a very strict either/or gender binary.

Next is The Lover. We all can identify with this aspect of ourselves and of others. What an interesting chapter this was for me! It was really eye opening and penny-dropping. If you are intending to work through the book I would hate to spoil the surprise! Suffice it to say there is more insight, healing and inner development in store.

I’ve just finished the chapter on The Elder and I’ve yet to work through The Shaman Healer, The Warrior and The Explorer. And then there’s a final section, which is called Taking Your Place- (I presume as a nicely rounded Gay Spirit Warrior).

Sadly last year my Gay Spirit Warrior partner had to drop out of our process because of family pressures and so inevitably, ever since, the impetus to complete the book has dwindled. Given that I’m reasonably highly motivated to finish this book I do have to ask myself why is it that it is taking me such long time to finish it?

I think it’s something to do with the practicalities of having enough time. This is an activity book that will give returns in proportion to the time and emotional energy invested. You would be wasting your time giving it a quick skim read. Each chapter has 6 or 7 suggested activities each of which could take up to 1or 2 hours each to carry out meaningfully. I’m also dragging my feet because as with anything which threatens to change me-even if it’s likely to be for the better- I find excuses to do it really well-tomorrow or at the weekend when there’s more time and when I’m likely to have more energy to deal with the challenges. But then social life, visitors, parental illness, friends, culture, holidays all seem to push my best intentions aside.

Having worked through just over half of the book now (in just over 12 years!) it’s easy to see that if you have enough time on your hands and if you’re really interested in getting a better understanding of yourself it’s a book which could well change your life by helping you to understand how society’s take on your sexuality may have negatively impacted on your development and, by providing you with a route map for healing and growing into your power as a thriving, nurtured, self respecting, uniquely gifted man.

What I’d really love to do- once I’ve finally worked my way through to the end- is to run a Gay Spirit Warrior Book Group or Heart Circle –maybe on-line which would provide the peer group energy needed to support and stimulate what could otherwise be a pretty tough and solitary practice.

If there’s anyone interested do get in touch gaysocrates@gmail.com and give me that final impetus I need to just get on and finish it!

Men of Brighton: 6 Good Reasons to Wear a Sexy Dress for Pride

1 If you’ve never done it before, there’s no better excuse than a Pride Parade to slip into something slinky. ‘But being gay doesn’t mean I’m a woman’ I hear you say. That’s fine! Wearing a frock won’t change your gender but it could just get you in touch with the feminine side of your nature.

2 As gay men we have programmed ourselves away from anything, which on top of our wayward sexuality, might attract disapproval. Consequently, although our limp wristed, camp comedians are tolerated by society at large (if they are funny enough to be really laughed at!), the gender portrayal that we seem most comfortable with is that of the Straight Acting Male. What? You’re gay? You would never have guessed! So straight acting! Well done you! At the other end of the spectrum we have the screaming queen who seems to have no shame at the blatant portrayal of a feminine-like sexuality without so much as the slightest attempt to tone it down. Those who, over the years have been able to get away with it, have repressed and concealed any clue as to their true sexuality- often taking their macho caricature to an almost ludicrous and camp extreme. Those who don’t pass, often aggressively camp it up; attack being the best form of defence for them. But what are we scared about? Put something frilly on and celebrate that Anything Goes in 2012!

3 Wearing a dress can face us up to our internalised homophobia. Slip on those nylons and feel the discomfort. What’s wrong? What nasty taboo are you breaking? You are allowing yourself into a domain reserved for women and you’re boldly going where you as a man have not been before! You were told from an early age by parents, teachers and peers that any hint that a man might behave in a feminine way [like for instance fancying the pants off the boy sitting at the next desk] must be jumped on and annihilated at all costs.

4 And if we’re uncomfortable with being perceived as feminine-acting what’s so bad about that? How about facing yourself up to your internalized misogyny. We exist in a patriarchal society. We have subliminally incorporated our sense of superior male entitlement right into the core of our personalities to the extent that we are hardly aware of it. We might even deny its existence until we catch a glimpse of a high riding hemline in the mirror and we are horrified. You are flying in the face of all your programming by blatantly disregarding the eleventh commandment: ‘Thou shalt not behave like a sissy’. Enjoy the subversion. Stand in solidarity with yo’ sistas and become an Effeminist!

5 ‘But what if people get the wrong idea and think I’m a tranny?’ Good! Let them think you have trans issues and enjoy their squirming disapproval. Feel the depth of your own internalised (or overt) transphobia and learn to love your inner girlie persona. Feel the danger of creating an ambiguous gender portrayal in the presence of people who might erupt into violence when faced with anything other than a simple gender binary. Buy some daring red lippy from Boots and get a girlfriend to do your nails in a nice sparkly pink shade.

6 ‘But I don’t look any good in a dress!’ Get over yourself. You clearly haven’t looked hard enough to find THAT dress. When you find it you will be transformed into the Belle of the Ball! And always remember the three golden rules for looking absolutely fabulous: Accessorize! Accessorize! and Accessorize!