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FOUNDING MEMBER
B o o k R e v i e w
Faggot Revolution
BY SUSIE DAY
“The Faggots and Their
Friends Between Revolutions”
is a gossamer, sexdriven
fantasy — and/or
manifesto — and/or survival guide
— for the moral and mental uplift of
radical queers. It’s our story of perseverance
in the empire of Ramrod.
Ruled by “rich men without color,”
Ramrod is a falling, failing power
known for its fi erce weapons and
elaborate violence. Fashion-wise, the
rich men without color only wear
grey, but that’s OK; the faggots wear
all the other colors.
Ramrod’s maximum leader is
named Warren-And-His-Fuckpole.
Warren, the most paranoid, ergo the
most vicious, of colorless men, seeks
to rationalize with the faggots’ leader.
But the faggots don’t have a leader,
nor do they have much rationality.
Ditto their friends. The faggots and
their friends survive Ramrod with
their homemade grandeur and the
sacred pleasure of promiscuous love
play. They dream of glorious, nonviolent
revolution.
The faggots have the routines of community
and the rhythms of the streets
to live by: late day tea, walks, accidental
encounters, organizing, issuing
manifestoes, putting on plays, changing
lovers, shifting alliances and living
arrangements and gossip, endless gossip…
They created the ritual of the brief
encounter, the ritual of dying love, and
the ritual of outrageousness. They live
in a world invisible to the men.
Written in 1977 by Larry Mitchell
and illustrated by Ned Asta, “Faggots”
was infl uenced not only by liberation
movements of the time but also by
Lavender Hill, a gay commune that
began in the late 1960s and existed
for about 10 years outside Ithaca,
New York. The book’s resident faggots,
known here by fruity monikers
like Heavenly Blue, Loose Tomato,
Hollyhock, Pinetree, and Moonbeam,
were based on Mitchell’s friends in
and around the commune. Their
peaceable queendom also sheltered
denizens from communities of other
Ramrod exiles: the women who love
women, the queens, the fairies…
“Blechh,” you say? “Today’s queers
don’t need escapist fantasy. Life here
in Ramrod is good, now that we’re
allowed to get married and join the
“The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions” fi rst came out in the 1970s, but was re-printed with
essays from Morgan Bassichis and Tourmaline.
Ramrod military. All hail Ramrod!”
If you actually said that, you suck.
Also, you have not noticed that, in
2021, we live in an obscenely unequal
and dangerous world. We still live between
revolutions.
In real life, Mitchell’s faggots and
friends were radicalized white people,
mostly Jews and Italians, who had
been changed by Black Power activism,
Vietnam War protests, and the
beginnings of the women’s and gay
liberation movements. They came
from a generation steeped in the rigors
of global, anti-colonial revolution
— Che Guevara’s call for “two-threemany
Vietnams,” for example — with
a “vanguard” and “the masses” and,
of course, “political correctness.”
So back in the day, it must have
been sobering to read that the faggots
had never been asked to join the
vanguard:
The faggots, it was noticed, want
only to eat so they can play love play
while the vanguard demands endless
talk about the hunger of others
and the seriousness of work. The
faggots, it was noticed, are too quick
NIGHTBOAT BOOKS
to believe that the revolution had
come and so too quick to celebrate.
The vanguard demands that the revolution
go on forever and so demands
that the celebration only be planned,
never enacted.
When “Faggots” was fi rst published,
prospects of a revolution were actually
receding. The war in Vietnam had been
won (by the Vietnamese, lest we forget)
three years before; the Black Panther
Party had been infi ltrated and forced
underground; and much political activism
was turning inward. Many people
with the time and resources began
to use them to consult Mother-Goddess
tarot decks, invest in essential oil
startups, fi gure out how to navigate
non-monogamy, and publish wistful
books about matriarchal utopias.
Interestingly, in a climate where
books like Sally Gearhart’s “The
Wanderground” and Monique Wittig’s
“Les Guérillères” appeared on both
mainstream and countercultural
sales charts, it was hard to fi nd a
publisher for “The Faggots and Their
➤ REVOLUTIONS, continued on p.17
JULY 15 - JULY 28, 2 16 021 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
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