Looking back on the iconography of my earlier life, (Kenneth Williams, Quentin Crisp, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Freddie 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.
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 three…
Walt Whitman: 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…
Edward Carpenter: 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 two 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…
Harry Hay: (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.
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.
Undaunted, Hay then went on to argue for a different kind of liberation. For queers to cast off the “ugly green frog skin of heterosexual conformity” and for them to discover their queer purpose through the realisation of their true faerie nature in community at Faerie Gatherings.
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!
He’s more of a flawed fore-father-figure – a guiding queer ancestor – a giant who stood on giant’s shoulders. His own shoulders now invite us all to step up and see the amazing view!
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