Gathering Kinds: Radical Faerie Practices of Sexuality and Kinship

Gathering Kinds: Radical Faerie Practices of Sexuality and Kinship By Jesse Sanford A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Lawrence Cohen, Chair Professor Stanley Brandes Professor Jake Kosek Spring 2013 Abstract Gathering Kinds: Radical Faerie Practices of Sexuality and Kinship By Jesse Sanford Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Berkeley Professor Lawrence Cohen, Chair Though they began as a gay male counterpart to the lesbian separatisms of the 1970s, the radical faeries are now a growing movement with thousands of partici- pants in the United States and Europe. This dissertation argues that they are also a kinship phenomenon, a form of extended family. Faeries’ polymorphous sexual ethics and economic collaboration entail consequences and constitutive exclusions di- vergent in some ways (but not others) from those of the United States’ dominant homonormativity. While some faerie practices are also reminiscent of a new religious movement, others are not, and a careful consideration of the phenomenon in fact destabilizes the distinctions between sexuality, religion and kinship. The case of the radical faeries suggests that religiosity be seen as an erotic orientation and the coming out experience as a religious conversion. Although faeries articulate in many ways the anarchist and ecological themes of modern Euroamerican homosexuality, their own normative philosophies can be rooted in deistic and ultimately authoritar- ian totalizing ethics, and might be productively re-thought via greater attention to issues of difference and mindfulness. Moreover, while some faeries have achieved remarkable success in establishing rural collective property and new patterns of migration, their consensus-based governance processes can be rife with conflicts that might bely claims of filiality. In the conclusion, I argue that same-sex marriage does not go far enough and that advocates for progressive family law reform would be wise to take the example of the faeries into account. 1 Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 2 Rethinking Kinship 20 3 Intimate Events 36 4 The Political Economy of Touch 51 5 Homonormativities 61 6 Harvest Season 67 7 Time of Monsters 75 8 Matter of Others 92 Conclusion 107 Bibliography 110 i Acknowledgements Faeries surround me on all sides. It has not been possible for me to depart their company long enough to consider them from a distance, with the leisure of reflec- tion. I am writing in part about my friends, lovers and roommates, about one of my chosen families. Dozens have had to live with my research and writing process, fol- lowing the joys and travails of this project through the simple reality of living with me. Moreover many are relentlessly self-archival, savoring bits of their collective history, constantly trading in stories. In addition to the usual audiences for a dissertation — my colleagues and advisers in the academy, particularly future graduate students — it has been impossible to write the present work without considering it as part of an evolving archive the radical faeries keep for themselves. I imagine some of my readers, if indeed I am to have readers, may identify as faeries, others as their friends. Reader, I acknowledge you, be you scholar or faerie or both. Whatever path brought you to this page, be welcome. Quite a few scholars made insightful suggestions about the present work and asked questions that could at times be uncomfortable. Stanley Brandes, Philip Brettschneider, Donna Haraway, Cori Hayden, Seth Holmes, James Holston, Jake Kosek, George Lakoff, Michael Lecker, Laura Nader, Aihwa Ong, Elizabeth Povinelli, Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Michael Warner have each been inspirations in their separate ways. I am especially grateful to my adviser, Lawrence Cohen, whose un- flagging support kept me going during a few years in which I wondered if I could ev- er produce. All made suggestions that shaped my future reading and intellectual tra- jectory. Over a series of conversations, Will Roscoe offered insights both queer theo- retical and specific to the field; I am consequently both indebted and somewhat em- barrassed that our conclusions do not always match. I was lucky to receive excellent financial support during my years as a graduate student. Two fellowships covered the bulk of my living expenses and tuition: a Berkeley Fellowship from the University of California and a Graduate Research Fel- lowship from the National Science Foundation. I am enormously grateful for their support, and that both institutions continue to fund basic science in a broad range of fields including cultural anthropology. The Department of Anthropology and the Graduate Division at Berkeley provided additional funding for research and travel expenses. For their hospitality during the writeup phase I would also like to thank Buzz Bense, Ahnika Delirium, Jeff Gilman, Aryeh Primus, and Paige Stevenson. My biological family has also been an enormous source of respite and en- couragement. I thank them for their patience as years passed by with no dissertation emerging, but most of all for the value they place on learning and scholarship. If the remarks that follow have qualified as a dissertation in anthropology, it is at least in part due to academic privilege I did not earn, but inherited through the lucky cir- cumstance of having been born into a family that included professors of archaeology and philosophy as well as two librarians. The greatest share of my gratitude, however, goes to the radical faeries and their friends who create, through living, the milieux explored herein. So many people are implicated in the present work that it would be impossible to list them all, but if the imagined social worlds of radical faeries and their friends are labors of ii love, in a certain sense, then all those who have contributed to them have indirectly put a little of their love into this dissertation. For specific conversations and insights, I thank Andrew Adams, Zac Benfield, Joey Cain, KD Calfee, Carol Carmick, Davi Co- hen, Dennis Collinson, Everic Dupuy, Murray Edelman, Free to Be, PJ Geise, Stephan Georgiou, Wallace Gorrell, Gavi Kessler, Alexander Monsanto, Noam Parness, Ari Rosenbaum, William Stewart, Frank Susa and Paul Wirhun. There have been many others as well. What follows marks a beginning, not an end. Factual and interpretive errors no doubt remain for which I take full responsibility. The work makes an argument about kinship, tells some tales from radical faerie worlds and reflects for awhile on some rather queer ethical issues. Parts may amount to philosophy or criticism. Yet the kind of ethnography I would rather write, and which I believe represents the best of the anthropological tradition, is one in which the voices and stories of the interlocutors are front and center, in which the richness and pathos of the inform- ants’ lives shines more brightly than the bourgeois syntax and academic pretension of the author. Alas, the exigencies of completion and political economic reality kept me from doing the more in-depth storytelling the topic rightly demands. Perhaps more than is usual, what follows therefore consist in a series of opinions. I have at- tempted to inform them. May you find them helpful. iii I THINK it may perhaps be agreed, once for all, that the human mind is incapable of really defining even the smallest fact of nature. The simplest thing, or event, baffles us at the last. It is like trying to look at the front and back of a mirror at the same time. The utmost squinting avails not. — Edward Carpenter, “Exfoliation: Darwin vs. Lamarck,” 1921 1 1 Introduction “We improvised recipes to bake each other cookies, cakes, breakfasts in bed, weekly free meals in the park, great feasts celebrating our courage and kinship so we might taste their sweetness on our very tongues.” — CrimethInc., Fighting for our Lives: An Anarchist Primer “First the dishes, then the revolution!” — Anonymous It is a warm night in September, the sky free of clouds but hazy and orange from smog and the streetlights’ glare. Only the brightest stars best their collusion. A general automotive rumble and the occasional honk rise toward a rooftop where forty people have joined hands in circle. They are a variety of colors, but mostly pale; a variety of ages, but mostly in their twenties and thirties. Three stand in the center, hands linked behind themselves such that they form an inner circle facing outward, toward the larger group. We om, and one of them starts speaking. “Thank you all for being here with us. Yes, we are here. I am so glad you could join us.” Clearly improvising his words, the speaker explains that this is to be a three-way commitment ritual. Each of the three will make their promises to each other, and then to the collected multitude. “So, last week I was on the train, the long, long train toward the beach to be with my family for the weekend — and this was causing me a lot of stress and on the way there I was just really overcome with gratitude, realizing — I’ve been living with you both for three months, you wonderful faggot peacocks you, and I realized I was entering this space of difficulty with, uh, the family I was granted in life, and realizing how grateful I am for the family I’ve been able to choose, and realizing that I can’t – live – without – the family I’ve chosen. I feel sooo blessed to be in your presence and I would just like to be able to show as much of the lovingkindness and caring and support — and absurdity absurdity as you both — as you can — as you have provided for me, uh —” There is an interruption of laughter from the crowd, and another voice pipes up, “That’s a lot!” “— so, uh, yeah that’s that.

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