#larry mitchell

[gatheringbones]

[“The faggots and their friends and the women who love women can keep the men off balance for a long time by subtly, but continually, changing their identities. The men who are in charge of controlling it all find it difficult always to know how many of each kind there are, and who they are. Each group can grow and shrink as the men's changing ferociousness demands.

But the men's viciousness will grow as their panic increases. They carry with them the knowledge always that there are enemies. And even when the men have trouble seeing the enemies clearly, they do not stop punishing. To punish, at random if necessary, is believed effective against the enemies. The faggots and their friends and the women who love women know that for a while they can find some safety in the confusion they create. They can have some time to develop their resources to survive.”]

Larry Mitchell, The Faggots And Their Friends In Between Revolutions, 1977.

[androgynealienfemme]

"Some faggots were more beautiful than other faggots. The beautiful ones only wanted to touch and be touched by the other beautiful ones. Orchard was the most beautiful of all and all the beautiful faggots wanted to touch Orchard. One day Orchard made himself ugly, very ugly. When the beautiful faggots saw what he had done, they wept and then turned their backs on him and forgot him. Only the ugly faggots now wanted to touch Orchard. So he gathered them all together and took them to a mountain top where they lived in harmony and joy. As they learned to lobe each other more and more, Orchard and the other ugly faggots grew more and more beautiful. After many years they floated down from their mountain top into the town. The beautiful faggots were astounded by these newly arrived creatures. The beautiful faggots wanted to touch them all and love them forever. But Orchard said, "No, you are too ugly for us. Go and love the ugliest faggot you can discover and then we will love you in return." So they left the town and did as they were asked to do, spreading the notion that to love the ugliest will make both beautiful. At last, one day, all the faggots everywhere were so beautiful that no one had to think about it any more. Now they all loved and touched each other with great pleasure and ecstasy."

"A Faggot Fable" The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions, Larry Mitchell (1977)

[variousqueerthings]

happy pride reccing some anti-assimilationist, anti-capitalist, and abolitionist books and texts

BOOKS

Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? edited by Matilda Bernstein Sycamore (2012)

"Whatever happened to sexual flamboyance and gender liberation, an end to marriage, the military, and the nuclear family? As backrooms are shut down to make way for wedding vows, and gay sexual culture morphs into "straight-acting dudes hangin' out," what are the possibilities for a defiant faggotry that challenges the assimilationist norms of a corporate-cozy lifestyle?"

Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come by Leslie Feinberg (1992)

This pamphlet is an attempt to trace the historic rise of an oppression that, as yet, has no commonly agreed name. We are talking here about people who defy the ‘man’-made boundaries of gender.

Transgender Warriors: Making history from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman by Leslie Feinberg (1996)

[Leslie Feinberg's] book celebrated the resistance to transphobia and a vision of trans liberation articulated from the perspective of class struggle. It understood that no liberation from transphobia or any of the divisive and violent oppressions in class society is possible without the transformation of capitalism into socialism.

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell (1977)

Stories told of these times make the faggots and their friends weep. The second revolutions made many of the people less poor and a small group of men without color very rich. With craftiness and wit the faggots and their friends are able to live in this time, some in comfort and some in defiance.

Also this interview

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation edited by Kate Bornstein, and S. Bear Bergman (2010)

Today's transgenders and other sex/gender radicals are writing a drastically new world into being.

Made In India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects by Suparna Bhaskaran (2004)

Made In India explores the making of "queer" and "heterosexual" consciousness and identities in light of economic privatization, global condom enterprises, sexuality-focused NGOs, the Bollywood-ization of beauty contests, and trans/national activism.

That's Revolting: Queer Strategies For Resisting Assimilation edited by Matilda Bernstein Sycamore (2008)

As the growing gay mainstream prioritises the attainment of straight privilege over all else, it drains queer identity of any meaning, relevance or cultural value.

How To Blow Up A Pipeline by Andreas Malm (2021)

Malm argues that sabotage is a logical form of climate activism, and criticizes both pacifism within the climate movement and "climate fatalism" outside it.

On Connection by Kae Tempest (2020)

On Connection is medicine for these wounded times.

Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Y. Davies (2003)

If you know anything about Angela Davis—anti-racist activist, Marxist-feminist scholar—you know that her answer to the question posed in the title is "Yes." This is a short primer on the prison abolition movement

Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell

This profound, urgent, beautiful, and necessary book is an invitation to imagine and organize for a less violent and more liberatory world.

Black Marxism by Cedric Johnson (1983)

Influenced by many African American and Black economists and radical thinkers of the 19th century, Robinson creates a historical-critical analysis of Marxism and the Eurocentric tradition from which it evolved. The book does not build from nor reiterate Marxist thought, but rather introduces racial analysis to the Marxist tradition.

The Transgender Issue: An Argument For Justice by Shon Faye (2021)

[Shon Faye] provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond.

Burn The Binary: selected writings on the politics of being trans, genderqueer, and non-binary by Riki Wilchins (2017)

This single volume offers a selection of Riki’s most penetrating and insightful pieces, as well as the best of two decades of Riki’s online columns for The Advocate never before collected, from "Where Have All the Butches Gone," to "Attack of the 6-Foot Intersex People"

ARTICLES

Assuming The Perspective Of The Ancestor by Claire Schwartz (2022)

Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on building constructive, future-oriented politics, at scale.

The Gender Binary Is A Tool For White Supremacy by Kravitz Marshall (2020)

A brief history of gender expansiveness - and how colonialism slaughtered it

Meet Chris Smalls, the man who organized Amazon workers in New York By Anna Betts, Greg Jaffe, and Rachel Lerman (2022)

The fired worker and former rapper did what nobody else has done in the U.S.

The Nuclear Family Was A Mistake by David Brooks (2020)

The family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together.

Universal basic income seems to improve employment and well-being by Donna Lu (2020)

Extinction Isn’t the Worst That Can Happen by Kai Heron (2021)

"This brings us to the third problem with eschatological framings of the climate crisis: they overlook the fact that for many, the end of the world has already happened. In October last year, Nemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani woman, mother and leader, wrote a desperate letter to the western world reminding us that for Indigenous peoples, “the fires are raging still”."

MISC

Manifesto: An Aromantic Manifesto by yingchen and yingtong

free to read

their tumblr (with further resources)

Essay: I Dream Of Canteens by Rebecca May Johnson (2019)

There is a space for everyone. A space, a glass of water, and a plug socket.* Chairs and tables and cleaned toilets. So many chairs so that no one is without one.

Acceptance Speech (video and text): The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters speech by Ursula Le Guin

Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.

And here's a video to cleanse the soul: bell hooks: Transgression

bell hooks & Gloria Steinem at Eugene Lang College

[sontagspdf]

read faggots and their friends between revolutions it will keep you warm

[billornot]

[vonnegutcunt]

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions. Illustrated by Ned Asta

[bi4bihankking]

The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions Summary:

The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions is a beloved queer utopian text written by Larry Mitchell with lush illustrations by Ned Asta, published by Calamus Press in 1977. Part-fable, part-manifesto, the book takes place in Ramrod, an empire in decline, and introduces us to the communities of the faggots, the women, the queens, the queer men, and the women who love women who are surviving the ways and world of men. Cherished by many over the four decades since its publication, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions offers a trenchant critique of capitalism, assimilation, and patriarchy that is deeply relevant today.

This is How You Lose the Time War Summary:

Two agents of the time war keep leaving extremely intricate letters to each other and it gets to the point where it’s like wow! This is somehow WAY more intimate than sex!

[ghosts-of-love]

excuse the pisspoor photo quality but these were some of my favourite parts of The Faggots & Their Friends Between The Revolutions (Larry Mitchell, 1977)

[the---hermit]

The Faggots And Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell

This book was published in 1977, and for this reason I read it for the studyblr w/knives pride reading challenge for the prompt old queers. This is a fantasy novel, often categorized as a queer utopia, that in my opions has major fairytale vibes. I am pretty sure the first idea of the author was to create a children's book, but then since one of the main focus turned out to be sexual liberation he changed the target. The story is inspired by the author's own experience living in a queer comunity, and in my opinion it feels very much like a time capsule. The general way things are described, the themes used are evidently those on which queer people focused their protests in the 70s. As I was saying sexual liberation plays a major role, and it's one of the central themes. There are huge critiques to how society is formed, and how mutual support and empathy are what keeps people who stand outside of what this society's norms are standing up. I personally appreciated how different ways of opposing one self to this society are shown, some people rebel with anger, some use pacific methods, there is not a fixed way. Each character has different stories and backgrounds, reminding the reader that as queer people we do stand together but we are different people with different stories. This is a point to our favour and we shouldn't push each other into a specific set of rules to be part of the group. Overall the book is not the easiers read you'll find on your path, at least I did find it harder than expected, but it's surely a book I would recommend reading. As I said if felt like a time capsule, I feel like reading it is a good way to learn a bit more how those who came before us fought for our rights, what were their ways. I read this book as an ebook, but if you plan on reading it I would recommend looking for a physical copy. There's some great illustrations, and the digital version doesn't make them stand out as much as it should. I feel like I might reread this book in a few years to see if I can get more out of it, because although I did like it the feeling I have now that I am done with it is that I still missed something. I would be very curious to know if anyone else has read this and what your opions are on it, because I haven't really heard many people talk about it.

I will soon post a new update on the pride reading challenge.

[honeysound]

Choosing to stay and think, day after day.

Nehalem Bay - The Weather Machine // The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions - Larry Mitchell // Wake Up - Folies & Vices // Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws - Kate Bornstein // Get Fucked - Mustard Service // Painkillers - Rainbow Kitten Surprise

[androgynealienfemme]

"As they grow older the queer men learn from the faggots all the techniques for telling who will do what with whom. As they grow older, they learn to identify each other and occasionally two or three queer men will become friends. Such friendships are lived through in secrecy. These friendships are dear to the queer. men for they are the only contact they have with love. It is with their friends that they elaborate a sensibility of self-preservation. They share with their friends that detachment which comes form leading two lives, one of which is respectable and admired and the other of which is despised and fugitive.

The queer men continue to hope that the men will stop caring so much about who is or who is not sucking cock. If the men would stop caring so much, the queer men could then be men, only men who suck cock. They could eliminate the life that is despised and fugitive.

But alas, the men continue to care too much. So the queer men have to continue to hope too much and continue the life that is despised and fugitive.

This hoping and this constant detachment from their lives leaves the queer men tired. They fall easily into stupors and cant and irrelevancy. Their energy is low so they can only manage to carry on as they have always carried on. There is no energy to merge the acceptable and the unacceptable into something new and probably also unacceptable."

The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions, Larry Mitchell (1977)

[blightedkudzu]

excerpt from "the faggots & their friends between revolutions" by Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta

[alder-knight]

I was thrilled to be gay because there were two things I didn't have to do now—go into the army or get married. And of course over the years the two things that the gay movement fought for was to be able to go into the army and get married. But we were thrilled that we didn't have to do that. We thought it was fantastic! The gay movement did not follow us there. It went towards acceptance, and we were not about acceptance. We were about changing the rules. We were about opposition.

— Larry Mitchell, 2012

[becoming-with]

"The faggots have never been asked to join the vanguard. The faggots, it was noticed, do not know how to keep a straight face and the vanguard demands constantly straight faces. 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."

Larry Mitchell, The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions, 1977

[bitchreads]

The strong women told the faggots that there are two important things to remember about the coming revolutions. The first is that we will get our asses kicked. The second is that we will win.

The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell

Since I reblogged that post from this book a few days ago, I figured I’d dig up one of my favorite quotes from this endlessly quotable book.

[goldenrecord]